Changes in the Seasonal Working Spaces and Pasture Environments of a Herder’s Family in the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau (1985–2022)

Qinghai is located on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau known as the roof of the world. It is a multi-ethnic province in northwest China. The plateau climate makes the vast area ideal for animal husbandry. In the 1980s, China implemented a policy of reform by opening up the region which resulted in the pastureland changing from a collective operation to a joint production contract system. Collective pastures are allocated to each household to operate, yet the land still remains a collective. In order to increase income, herders began to increase the number of livestock. This has led to the degradation of pastures. To protect the ecological environment of pastures, the government introduced a series of protection measures, one which is to transfer payments from the central government to some specific areas in Qinghai to provide economic subsidies for herders to protect the ecological environment. This chapter discusses Gahai, a village of animal husbandry in Haibei Autonomous Prefecture, and Qinghai as a specific site. Using field methods in anthropology and geography, this research project uses an in-depth interview with a herder and a series of data to describe the changes of this village from the 1990s to 2020.