For people who wish to understand the vicissitudes of history, Manchunman village, located in the banks of the Mekong River, is a prime example. About fifty years ago, changes in society and the economy changed the village in ways that would doom it eternally. But the main cause of the profound changes inflicted upon the strong values of an ethnic culture has been in fact the “commercial economy.”  The tourist economy baptized this village with the name “Dai Minority Garden” in the late twentieth century.  It became known the world over and attracted huge numbers of tourists.  As a result, everything in the village underwent a thorough transformation - the significance of faith, the means of livelihood, the concepts of trade, the conflicts with outsiders and the way of dealing with them.       Following the Mekong River down its course, I came upon the Akha ethnic group in Chiang Mai, within the Thai border. This ethnic group is of the same origin as the Hani ethnic minority within the Chinese border. In the 1980’s, this area began to open up to tourists.As the tourist economy developed, the cultural and historical wealth of the Akha people was impacted, too, and I believe that these kinds of impacts will only speed up.
    Traveling along the Mekong River, I took pictures of the obvious changes as well as not so obvious signs of changes.
    Manchunman is a Dai ethnic village in Xishuangbanna in China, whose name means garden village. Historically, this village was the main growing area of plants and trees for Xishuangbanna, thus the origin of its name.  Present day Manchunman exemplifies the effects of the opening up of the tourist industry of the 1990.  Most of the original archaic culture has been coated with a thick commercial coloring.
    One thing that I saw that stayed with me was a girl dressed in her ethnic costume elegantly dancing the Peacock dance of the Dais. A while later a few other girls came holding typical Dai umbrellas, dancing along.  Within the group of people that had gathered to watch the performance, there was an elderly Dai woman wearing flowers on her head and a traditional Dai costume, seemingly out of place  in the group of tourists. The dancers were obviously dressed up for the performance, but this elderly lady was dressed as herself.  She was still part of tradition.
    In Manchunman, many elderly women still keep the tradition of having their own workshops where they spin and weave  However, the clothes that most make are not actually of their ethnic group, but in the styles of other ethnic groups, or even just whatever sells well.  Still, we saw a woman sitting at the spinning wheel weaving, and the cloth she was working on was indeed Dai, although we soon realized that the piece of cloth was strictly for demonstration and never actually gets done.
    Silverware was once a Dai traditional handcraft.  In this area, where everything is of a commercial nature and people have become accustomaed to performing, the people engaged in this performance are in fact Han Chinese.
    At the prospect of selling one of these tinkling and shiny objects they become full of jubilant joy, as if they were passing on something dear to them coming from their ancestors. Why do the Dai people themselves not sell these objects?  Apparently, they feel that making and selling them is too much work for the money they can make, so they don think it is worth it.