One of China’s smallest ethnic minority groups, the Oroqen, is in danger of disappearing

His face ruddy from the sun, Bai Sezhu, 61, carries the weary air of experience. Wiping sweat from his brow, he stoops, plunging his threshing fork deep into a bundle of grass drying in the heat of the midmorning sun. Dust rises into the clear blue sky. He has been up since 4am, preparing stores of food that will see his three horses through the coming winter.

“No one hunts any more,” he says with a lilt, in Mandarin, “and the young don’t even speak their own language. I talk with my horse in Oroqen. He understands.”

Hunting was central to Oroqen culture, with kills shared among families. The semi-nomadic people lived along the banks of the Heilongjiang (“black dragon river”), a long, dark, snaking body of water forming the border between northeast China and Russia, in tepee-like structures called djiu, which were built of birch bark. Society was arranged in non-hierarchical groupings called mokun, with several large family units (or wulileng) at each clan’s core. Shamans, who could, it was believed, communicate with the spirit world, provided guidance and medical aid.

The shamans have all but disappeared, lost during the chaotic years of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), and many Oroqen are no longer clan-based forest dwellers with no clearly defined national identity. Their young are now often deeply sinicised urbanites, seeking careers as engineers, politicians and businesspeople.

Bai rides only occasionally now and lives in a bungalow built by the state. Tuohe, the remote settlement he calls home, stands in the Oroqen Autonomous Banner, a 60,000 sq km region on the northern plains of Inner Mongolia. The banner, which is almost twice the size of Taiwan and contains seven Oroqen settlements (there are another six in Heilongjiang province), was demarcated in 1951, the aim being to provide an administrative centre for the minority.