Nikkei Asia Prizes 2005

Devoted to preserving Dongba script

The Dongba script, the world's last remaining pictographic writing system, was created and is still used by the Naxi, an ethnic minority in China. Guo Dalie, a Naxi himself and a leading scholar of the history of the Naxi people, has made his life's work preserving the Dongba script and Naxi culture.

Guo, 63, lives in Lijiang, Yunnan Province, where most of the roughly 300,000 Naxi people live.

His energetic activities transcend those as an academic and reflect Guo's deep concern about the viability of the Naxi culture. "Hsiung-Nu, Xianbei and other peoples once thrived but then disappeared because they lost their cultures," he said.

He set his heart on studying the history of the Naxi while a student of the Central Institute for Nationalities in Beijing. "I had growing awareness of my identity as a Naxi as I mixed with students and teachers of a vast variety of ethnic backgrounds" at the institute, Guo said.

His aspiration did not wane even after he graduated in 1964 and began working in the education bureau of a local government in Yunnan Province.

Guo, who worked at a municipal office for 17 years straddling the Cultural Revolution, had to wait until 1980 before becoming an ethnologist at the Yunnan Province Institute of Sociology. For the next 20 years, he devoted himself to studying and writing books about Naxi history and culture. In the process, he was confronted with the question of how to preserve and even energize an ethnic culture.

In 1999, Guo and his wife launched an experimental project to give elementary-school pupils extracurricular classes in the Naxi language, Dongba writing and traditional Naxi dance. Seeing a growing number of Naxi people lose their ability to speak their vernacular because of the official use of the Han language in schools, Guo came to think that "the ethnic culture needs to be nurtured as part of the education system."

The project soon gained the support of the local authorities, leading to the spread of the classes among other elementary schools. Some higher-level schools began creating follow-up classes.

Financial rewards

Guo has been eager to help foster business related to the Naxi culture, such as selling T-shirts printed with the Dongba script. "The Han language and culture have been spreading even among ethnic minorities because this helps bring them material benefits," Guo said. "So if knowledge of the Naxi language and culture generates profit, it will motivate people to learn more about them."

Of about 6,000 languages now used in the world, nearly half are projected to vanish within 100 years. Ethnic minorities around the globe struggling to keep their indigenous cultures amid relentless globalization can learn from the approach of Guo and his wife - utilizing the education system and creating businesses that take advantage of the culture to ensure its survival.