Award: Top Prize

Time: 2004
Place: Muli County, Sichuan, China

Lijiaze is a mysterious village surrounded by mountains and virgin forests. It is a rare matrilineal society found so far. All the families living here are matrilineal families linked with blood and can be regarded as the only living fossil among the matrilineal families. Its living state and way of life as well as their living conditions show us a complete continuity and succession of the ancient culture.

1. Hostesses from lijiaze matrilineal families.
2. Erche Zhuoma, the hostess of the Ake family.
3. Lijiaze women getting in bitter buckwheat, which is the main agricultural produce in the high and cold land.
4. Lijiaze people like to wear coats made of yak wool, anti-water and warm keeping.
5. Children playing under the barley racks and the mother weaving cloth under the racks. Lijiaze children live with their mothers. It is uncle, mother’s brother, not father that takes the obligation to bring up children.
6. Lijiaze people at funeral. After people die, all the people of the village are noticed by a horse rider.? People cut down pine trees for the dead to build a house like the one where the dead used to live. Then the corpse of the dead is put into the house which will be burnt down. They believe that the dead will go to the other shore with goodliness and live together with their ancestors.
7. Drinking Lijia people. Liquor is a necessity for Lijiaze people in their life and all the ceremonies.
8. Daba foretelling scripts written by original characters. Daba is the Lijiaze koradji, having an influence on Lijiaze people’s life.
9. Cattle and sheep are the main wealth of Lijiaze families. Stockbreeding is their foremost daily work.
10. The elderly grandmother of ninety-eight years old in Lijiaze village.
11. Four-side wooden house for Lijiaze families, belonging to human early residential house. The frame house are all made of trees in the mountain, with walls made of log and fir wood as its roof, divided into four parts with numbers of rooms in. This kind of wooden house is one of the most unique houses in the world.
12. Lijiaze origianal village surrounded by mountains and forests.