9/21/2025, Jiuzhaigou Valley – I went to the Valley of Nine Villages today, Sichuan, China. They used to be Tibetan villages. I chatted with people in taxis, at the hotel, and in restaurants. These young people speak Mandarin fluently, yet they are local Zang minorities. The hotel front desk girl told me that most young people today speak better Mandarin than Zang. With tourism now the main economy, people are motivated to learn Mandarin to find work. Gradually, many young people can no longer speak their own language. First gone is their language, then their identity is shifting from local to national. With that, songs, proverbs, and oral traditions often disappear next. She told me that many traditional arts and ways of life are disappearing too — even houses that used to be built with wood are now made with modern building materials.
Walking through Jiuzhaigou, I couldn’t shake off a shade of sadness. The valley is richer than ever, but a culture is quietly dissolving. The voices of the ancestors are fading; the homes that once carried stories are turning into concrete shells. Traditions that gave meaning to life are replaced by modern economy.
And perhaps this is not over. Today, Jiuzhaigou focuses on domestic tourists, so young people learn Mandarin. But when the valley becomes an international destination, they will likely start learning English. Another language will take root, and the Zang tongue may fade even faster. It feels as though every wave of progress carries the local culture a little further away from its roots.
Globalization gives comfort and opportunity, but it also pushes the world toward a single voice, a single rhythm. The price of modern life seems to be homogeneity — a world with fewer languages, fewer ways of seeing, fewer unique stories to tell. I wonder whether, one day, we will look back and realize that this loss is irretrievable — that in chasing prosperity, we let go of some of the most irreplaceable things that once made the world so richly diverse.