Published on : Saturday, May 19, 2018
Beiji Village, is located in the Dahinggan Mountains at 53 degrees north latitude and is China’s northernmost village.
The main means to transport logs out of the village was horse-drawn sleighs. Since the 1960s Dahinggan has been a traditional source of timber. Its 78 percent of the land area is covered with forest.
The primary sources of income in Beiji was once wood cutting and breeding horses for transportation.
Chang Bin, deputy head of Mohe County which administers the village stated that Horse-drawn sleighs carried logs out of forest, but now, they are a tourist attraction taking visitors for a ride through the vast forest.
After decades of logging the forest area shrank from 780 million cubic meters in the 1960s to just 60 million cubic meters in 2008.
Gao Wei, a villager currently in charge of the Horse-drawn Sleigh Association of Beiji Village stated that he earned his living by cutting wood but the forest shrank and the forestry authorities stopped commercial logging.
After logging ban in 2014 the number of horses fell sharply from over 60 to no more than dozen in a span of three years.
The tourism development helped in bringing fortunt to the village the only resource being forest. Neither agricultural nor industrial development is possible here due to extreme cold.
China National Tourism Administration gave the village in 2015 gave the highest rating as a 5A-level Scenic Area. Many local residents were soon recruited by tourism development companies and villagers noticed that tourists were curious about horse-drawn sleighs and were interested in sleigh rides.
Locals were encouraged to bring more strong Mongolian horses to attrct tourist and the Horse-drawn Sleigh Association was set up to ensure fair competition and protect the interested of tourists.
Sleigh rides have become a special activity in Beiji, which is covered by snow for around seven months of the year.
The village saw an increase in tourism having an annual growth rate of 40 percent of for three years in a row.
100,000 tourists visited Beiji last year and the association includes villagers from 48 households as members boasts 48 horses and takes bookings at a fixed price. It evenly distributes the earnings to its members and paid out at least 10,000 yuan (1,568 U.S. dollars) to each household in just two months last winter.