While Hongkongers moan about the ever hotter summers, Tibetans living in mountainous northern Yunnan province are really feeling the pinch of climate change. On a trip sponsored by the green group WWF, teachers were led by local reserve vice director, Zhong Tai, to Tongduishui village. The village is in the mountains and can only be reached by a bumpy, narrow trail from the nearest road in Deqin county.
Tongduishui is a typical Deqin county village. Dozens of two-storey Tibetan houses and tiny terraced fields stud the mountainside. The villagers have electricity but still have to collect water from a nearby river.
Several dozen villagers - men and women, young and old - greet the teachers enthusiastically, before leading them into a dimly lit but spacious room, and telling them how climate change has affected their livelihoods.
The community of 176 lives in the Baima Xueshan - 'White Horse Snow Mountain' - Nature Reserve. While households earn around 4,000 yuan (HK$4,450) from crops such as corn, harvesting highly sought-after matsutake mushrooms - which fetch spectacular prices in Tokyo - and vegetable caterpillars or Yarsagumba - a prized ingredient in Chinese medicine - is their major source of income.
'The matsutake here are the best in the county,' says Mr Zhong who is Baima Xueshan Nature Reserve's vice-president. 'But both the quantity and quality have been decreasing in recent years. Each household used to make 6,000 yuan annually from selling matsutake, but now they can only earn half that amount.'
Matsutake grows beneath fallen leaves and in other shaded areas. Every villager has their own secret spot they harvest from, but many are no longer home to any matsutake. 'The situation with vegetable caterpillars is even worse,' says Mr Zhong. 'Before you could harvest as many as 200 in a day, earning around 10,000 yuan each year. But this year the biggest harvest was only a 20th of that.'
