This well-researched ethnographic study examines how the caterpillar fungus boom in the first decade of the twenty-first century provided new forms of income to a pastoral society in Golok, a region usually considered to be part of the Amdo Tibetan highlands (now western Qinghai Province, China), and how this boom has dramatically changed the local economy. Caterpillar fungus, called yartsa gunbu in Tibetan and dongchong xiacao in Chinese (both meaning “in summer a grass and in winter a worm”), is a parasite that feeds on the larvae of ghost moths, germinates in the living larva, and kills and mummifies it, after which a dark brown stalk-like fruiting body emerges from the corpse. These fruiting bodies are in high demand in China as a medicinal plant.
In Trading Caterpillar Fungus in Tibet, Emilia Roza Sulek, a keen observer and critical thinker, provides the first book-length account of the yartsa boom. Through a multifaceted approach, Sulek illustrates the flexibility of a pastoral society to adjust to new economic circumstances and “modern life,” but on its own terms. The book consists of twelve chapters, including the introduction, conclusion, and afterword. In addition to illustrative images, tables, and maps, it also provides an important appendix (the English translation of a local county-level document regulating the yartsa harvest), a Tibetan word list, a bibliography, and a short index.
Many readers (and reviewers) skip introductions, but this introduction (pp. 15–36) is well worth reading, especially for the Amdo specialist. This is true not only because it introduces the scope of the book, discusses theoretical concepts, and posits the main research questions for this study, but also because Sulek questions some seemingly well-established truths about the Golok area, such as claims that Golok is a part of Amdo and that all Golok people self-identify as Tibetans. She argues instead that Goloks consider Golok to be a discrete geographic unit of its own—belonging to neither Amdo nor Kham—and that a substantial portion of its inhabitants claim Mongol descent (pp. 29–30). In addition, Sulek further deconstructs the stereotype that pastoralists are incompetent and naive when it comes to trade and their own economic interests.
The first chapter sets the scene for the high-altitude pastoralist township of Domkhok in the Golok Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai Province, where the bulk of Sulek's eleven months of fieldwork was carried out. In the second chapter, Sulek provides a vivid description of the strenuous work of locating and harvesting caterpillar fungus, which involves every available and able-bodied family member.
In chapter 3, we learn that although yartsa is a well-known medicinal plant in Tibet and in high demand in China, it is—and apparently always has been—of surprisingly marginal importance for local Tibetan doctors and the pastoralists (pp. 71, 73). This explains why the market price of yartsa as a commodity is mainly determined outside Golok, since it has little intrinsic value for the pastoralists themselves (p. 86). Chapter 4 then looks at markets and traders from the angle of the legal status of traders and the yartsa trade as informal economy and as “ethnic glue” in the sense of uniting ethnicities with often strained relationships—namely, Goloks, Muslims, and Han Chinese—in the pursuit of a common goal (i.e., profitable trading transactions). Chapter 5 examines how prices are established between diggers and traders according to quality and season.
Sulek addresses the questions of how the state regulates the yartsa trade and who actually represents the state in Golok in chapter 6. Here, another important feature of the study is that Sulek provides a full English translation of the detailed “Executive Programme” for the protection of caterpillar fungus resources of Machen (Chin. Maqin) County in Golok from 2010 as an appendix. Chapter 7 discusses how Goloks consider the money earned from yartsa—through digging and leasing out the land to outsiders for digging—to be “polluted” and potentially “dangerous” because it derives from activities that anger the local mountain deities and therefore are taboo. Chapters 8 and 9 describe how the pastoral life and economy in Golok have been affected by the yartsa boom. These chapters provide a wealth of data that will be especially useful for comparative studies on recent developments in other contemporary pastoral societies.
In her conclusion, Sulek not only summarizes her findings, but also examines the impact that a decline or collapse of caterpillar fungus production sustainability might have in the near future, as recent studies on climate change and overharvesting in the Himalayan region suggest. She argues convincingly that contrary to long-standing stereotypes of the Golok pastoralists as naive and economically backward and inexperienced, and more recently, as “lazy nomads” (p. 261), they very much inhabit modernity with bank accounts and housing properties. Caterpillar fungus traders, she argues, are well aware of the insecurities of relying solely on yartsa income.
Finally, I recommend the chapter-length “Afterword: A Note on Methodology,” which not only offers the anthropologist's account of data collection in the field and its limitations, but also highlights how the precariousness of the “partisan researcher” (p. 265) can work to his or her advantage by opening new doors that otherwise might have remained closed.
The main focus and strength of this study is its rich ethnography. Although Sulek has incorporated the relevant publications on the caterpillar fungus boom on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and in the Himalayan regions up to about 2016, some broader comparative analytics could have added important perspectives to the book. Nevertheless, this well-structured and vividly written publication is a most welcome and important addition to research on modern pastoral societies in Inner Asia and beyond and presents the only book-length study of the caterpillar fungus boom so far. It certainly is a must-read for anthropologists, modern historians, and economists with special interest in contemporary Tibet. Furthermore, Sulek's clear writing makes her work accessible for classroom teaching and for nonspecialists.
