Among the Tribes in South-West China

1948
Silent
42m

This alluring travelogue follows a missionary on his colourful journey into the ethnically diverse mountains of Yunnan, south west China.

A western missionary and his cohort of assistants and armed guards penetrate deep into the mountains of Yunnan in search of the Miao and Nosu minorities. This beautifully shot film shows the challenging terrain of this southwestern province, where ethnic tribes lived in isolation and primitive conditions. On reaching the villages, the party give medical treatment to members of the community.

Almost half of China's 55 ethnic minorities inhabit Yunnan, on the border with Vietnam, Laos and Burma. Many lived in poverty and isolation due to the inaccessibility of their mountainous habitat. Before the Communists came to power in 1949, a year after this film was shot, missionaries were the only source of education, medical treatment and regular meals, which explains their success in converting large numbers of the populace as compared with the rest of China. While made to celebrate missionary achievements, the film nevertheless provides a good insight into the Miao tribe in the mid-20th century.

Somewhere in China

There's so much more to China than Western eyes usually see. Explore the country's giant interior in the footsteps of some of the early 20th century's more intrepid filmmakers.

China's vast interior remained largely unexplored and undocumented by British filmmakers well into the 20th century. The European concessions and colonies of the east coast - in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong - were an irresistible lure for western visitors. This is a journey into deep and distant China, through extraordinarily diverse landscapes: towering mountains, expansive deserts and along 3000-mile rivers stretching halfway across Asia. It's a record produced by intrepid explorers, missionaries and travellers, who brought portable home-movie cameras to document their holidays, anthropological studies, humanitarian work or evangelical activism.

The films showcase China's remarkable ethnic diversity, meeting Mongol, Miao, Nosu, Uyghur and Manchu minorities on journeys from Kashgar to Inner Mongolia, around Hunan and Sichuan Provinces, and deep into mountainous Yunnan Province, where centuries-old methods of farming and hunting still prevailed. On the way cities too, still uninfluenced by encroaching western modernity: Kunming, Chongqing, Suzhou, Hangzhou and Changsha. But in all of China's vastness, it's not possible to identify the source of these fascinating images. So much is still unknown.