With great reluctance, Han Xingde, a middle-aged man from the Salar ethnic group of Qinghai Province, presented the sheepskin raft, handed down in his family for generations, to a nearby museum recently, after he won the gold medal in a recent sheepskin raft race on the Yellow River.

"After driving it on the Yellow River for more than 20 years, sheepskin raft now becomes such a rarity that the cultural bureau treasures it in the museum," Han said.

The 44-year-old began to sail the raft to transport timber when he was 12. Sheepskin rafts were the only means of transportation for the older generation of Salar residents in Xunhua county of the northwest China province. All the men of the Salar ethnic group were capable of sailing rafts.

For centuries, they rode on sheepskin rafts to escort logs drifting downstream and transport daily necessities. "It was an indispensable conveyance we could not live without at that time," Han said.

But, sheepskin rafts are being used less and less in people's daily life after 16 highway bridges built on the upper reaches of the Yellow River over the past few years.

The mileage of highway in Qinghai, a landlocked province on the northeastern part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, has increased from 462 kilometers in the early 1950s to 18,268 kilometers in 1999. The Salar people now travel by bus and some have even bought their own cars.

"The disappearance of sheepskin raft indicates a shift in the way of living for the Salar people," said Han Shanghwen, deputy magistrate of Xunhua county.

Local residents have built woolen mills for producing cashmere and sweaters, which sell well throughout China. By taking advantage of the abundance of sunshine and difference in temperature between day and night on the highland, an increasing number of people began to grow out-of-season vegetables and fruits and sell them to other parts of China for higher profits.

The new line of operation helps increase the per capita net income of residents in Xunhua to 1,000 yuan annually. This is considerable progress for this remote and underdeveloped county, though it is still much less than many other parts of the country.

To narrow the gap in income between eastern and western China, the central government has launched a long-term strategy to accelerate economic growth in the western region. One of its chief purpose is to raise the living standard of all ethnic groups in the region, said Bai Ma, an official in Qinghai.

With easy access to transportation, sheepskin rafts have turned from a means of transportation to a sports item to lure tourists. Descendants of raft drivers are doing jobs in other trades.

"However, sheepskin raft is an important way to understand the history of the Salar ethnic group. The courage, skill and confidence displayed by the Salar people in driving rafts will carry on," said Su Ming, a research fellow in Qinghai.

(Xinhua 09/29/2000)