Transformation Of Livelihood Strategies And Community Development Of The Miao People In Southeast Guizhou During The Process Of Rural Revitalizatio

Livelihoods,as the underlying logic of observation in exploring rural revitalization,are extremely worthwhile topic to study how ethnic minorities in marginal areas sustain their livelihoods in the process of modernization,what kind of livelihood capital they possess,and how they continue to develop livelihood strategies to adapt to society under the context of reform and opening up and the new era.Livelihoods include life and production,where life is the driving force of production and production serves life.This article takes the "silversmith village”,Maliao Village in Xijiang Town,Leshan County,Kaili City,Guizhou Province,as a field observation point to explore the changes in livelihoods in this village,which has been famous for its silver forging skills for hundreds of years and is located in the hinterland of the Miao people in Southeastern Guizhou,before and after the reform and opening up and under the context of social development in the new era.In recent years,under the strong promotion of series of policies such as the national rural revitalization strategy and the development of tourism to alleviate poverty,the minority villages represented by the Mamong village have been given great opportunities for development.In the midst of such complex and diverse changes,what impact have these changes brought to the village? How do local villagers perceive these changes?How have they responded to these changes? Is it sustainable? These are all issues that need to be addressed in the practice of ethnic villages.Traditionally,the village has maintained a tradition of smallholder livelihoods based on farming,with rice cultivation as the main land product providing a basic livelihood,and the natural conditions of the mountains and water providing good access to material resources.At the same time,a large number of silversmiths in Maliao Villages travelled from village to village during the winter farming season in search of silver forging business,but at this time silver making was only a supplementary capital for livelihood.After the reform and opening up,driven by the market,copper gradually replaced silver as the raw material for forging,and the proportion of silversmiths’ businesses in their livelihoods increased significantly,with silversmiths moving from mobile to stationary and gradually moving from villages to cities.During this period,the majority of the young and middle-aged labor force began to leave the land,and the proportion of smallholder farming gradually shrank,while some silversmiths followed the wave of migrant workers as the profits from silver jewelry production declined,making their livelihood strategies more complex.However,overall,the livelihood strategy at this stage has turned to be mainly based on silver jewelry forging.With the accelerating modernization process,the Maliao Village has gained a lot of attention due to its distinctive ethnic,regional,historical and cultural characteristics,and has been successively awarded as the "Township of Chinese Silver Jewelry","Village with Chinese Minority Characteristics" and "Traditional Village of China",becoming an era window for helping rural revitalization in southeastern Guizhou.Under the context of rural revitalization,in addition to the livelihood innovations related to silver jewelry,the tourism linkage with Xijiang Thousand Household Miao Village has promoted a variety of livelihood strategies for the hemp villagers under the embedding of the market economy and derived a lot of thinking on sustainable development of villages.On the basis of the above interpretation,this paper continues to analyze the ethnic cultural inheritance related to silver jewelry,the changes in economic environment and villagers’ daily life style driven by modernization development,and explores the relationship between livelihood strategies and changes in livelihood capital.More crucially,as a typical village in the modernization and revitalization of ethnic minorities,Maliao Village is a representative area for improving the living standards of people living in ethnic minority areas,strengthening the material foundation of highquality development in ethnic areas,and consolidating a sense of Chinese nation community.This study adds value and practical experience to the exploration of the laws and characteristics of livelihood development of ethnic minorities from a micro perspective,which can promote the high-quality development of ethnic work in the new era and promote the "clinging together like pomegranate seeds" of all ethnic groups to create a better life together.