Camel carriages. Senior ladies do needlework on the velvety grassland.

Buryat women in their holiday best.

In the warm sunlight, midday is a good time to dry clothes.

Senior ladies do needlework on the velvety grassland.

Buryats follow Lamaism.

At home on Inner Mongolia’s vast Hulunbuir Grassland is a group of ethnic Mongolians known as the Buryats. Small in number, they are a relatively unknown people. In these pages, through a few of the many images he has captured in the course of a five-year project, photographer Wang Xuelin presents the Buryats’ way of life, their work, and the land upon which they live and by which they are sustained.

The world was changed much by the irresistible force of globalization, and some may feel less anchored, less individualistic, than before. We live in similar cities; we rely on similar modes of transportation; we use similar communications devices; even our tools of entertainment are the same. Living with this sameness of modernity, long-time city dwellers may readily admire those peoples who still sustain their traditional ways of life far from the urban environment. We may even envy the lifestyle as natural and as simple in function as that photographer Wang Xuelin represents in his photographic works. His subject is a group of ethnic Mongolians today living on the vast Hulunbuir Grassland known as the Buryats.

The Buryats were once nomadic herders tending their livestock and hunting on the grassland around Lake Baikal and Outer Khingan Mountains. In 1207, after Genghis Khan united the grassland, he dispatched one of his younger brothers to lead a force in conquering the “people amidst the forests,” including the Buryats. In 1698, czar-ruled Russia forced the Qing (1644-1911) government to sign the Treaty of Nerchinsk, which established the Ergun River as the new national border, and the czar thus snatched a large stretch of land west of the Ergun River, including Lake Baikal. In 1917, the October Revolution broke out in Russia, and the defeated bandits withdrew to the land of the Buryats. They pillaged, stole the Buryats’ draught horses and money, and abducted young Buryat men to serve among their ranks.

To escape conflict and hardship, about 700 Buryats of 160 households followed their leaders in a migration to the Xini River on the Hulunbuir Grassland. There they settled and established the Buryat Banner in 1918. They brought with them the scythe, the horse-drawn mowing machine, and the then updated technologies of warm livestock shed building, breeding selection and improvement. Thus was new vigor injected into local life and production.

Today, there are about 6,500 Buryat Mongolians living on the Hulunbuir Grassland. They are diligent, open, optimistic, fast learners, and willing to adapt to foreign cultures. Their level of animal husbandry mechanization is ranked among the best in China. Buryats wear richly-colored costumes, setting themselves apart from other ethnic Mongolian groups. The red-tassel hat and the woman’s separated long gown still retain clannish traits. Influenced by the Russian diet, each Buryat family incorporates into their yurts or brick-and-tile houses an oven for roasting Russia-style bread, their staple food.

Wang Xuelin explains that these photos are an epitome of Buryat life, offering a brief glimpse into a unique and traditional way of life. Setting out to record the Buryats of modern times, Wang dedicated five years to the photographic project, satisfying his long-held passion for the grassland. The images may enable readers to learn a little about the Buryats, a people who migrated to and settled on the Hulunbuir Grassland, and a people who preserved well their traditional ethnic customs.