Name: Building a border at 4,600 meters
Uploaded: 2018-07-03T08:13:55.000Z
Duration: 13 min 27 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

We're driving through a river right now
in the Jeep.

humans have drawn lines on the Earth,
dividing the planet into nations, but

there are some parts of the world that
no empire, nation, or state has been able to tame.

Just the geography here is
completely unruly.

so rugged, that states have found it
impossible to exert control.

We're about to hit 4,000 meters, feeling the effects.

Definitely feels like humans were never
meant to be here

settle in these places sought refuge
from borders.

But even here, among the highest
mountains in the world,

this stateless lifestyle is coming to an
end.

Non-state spaces have always existed,
all over the globe. They're usually high

up in mountains, far from the reach of
any government and the people who live

here didn't come here by chance. Most of
them are communities who fled into the

mountains to evade expanding government
forces, some communities were escaping

capture like those in Africa fleeing
from the Arab and Atlantic slave trades.

Other groups retreated to remote
regions to escape ruling powers who they

opposed, from the Inuit and the Arctic,
to the Berbers in North Africa, to the

Jivaroan in the Amazon rainforest.
Examples exist all over the globe of

people who chose rugged terrain over
taxes, war, famine, and subjugation from

state powers. Today, there are some 5,000
indigenous groups living in 90 countries,

numbering in total around 370 million
people worldwide. 70% of those are in

Asia. Most of these groups have
integrated into countries, but for those

who reside deep in the mountains,
geography has largely held off the

influence of any kind of centralized
government.

one community that fled to the mountains
1,200 years ago. Back then the Tibetan

Empire, which was just north of here was
pursuing its own state-making project,

its own empire, and it was growing. As the
Tibetan Empire grew, its borders

eventually encompassed the Bon religion.
This was a religious group that predates

Buddhism. The Bon fought to preserve its
culture within the Tibetan Empire. They

resisted the Empire, but eventually
failed and instead of assimilated to

this new Empire, they fled and they came
here to these mountains, where they

created a life away from the militaries,
the taxes, the religion, and the control

of the Tibetan Empire and that life
continues today.

Eventually this whole area would be
drawn into a modern state, the state of

Nepal. And Tibet, where these people came
from, would become China. But these people

don't identify as Chinese, or necessarily
Nepali. People here, they wanted the kids

to learn to Tibetan, like as their
language, because we are more related

The 25 families that live here 
have their own distinct identity.

They speak their own dialect of
Tibetan. They mainly live off the land,

The Himalayan mountain range is
particularly rich with these examples of

non-state spaces. So many examples in
fact, that a group of anthropologists

argue that this place should actually be
its own region. They use the term  Zomia

to describe this long range of mountains
where people have set up for thousands

of years without the help of governments
of states.

concept encompass a hundred million
people. It runs through eight countries,

but is on the periphery of each. The
diverse set of peoples living here have

a varying degree of interaction with
their country governments. I came to this

region, one of the most remote zones
within Zomia, but even here you can feel

that Zomia's stateless days are
numbered.

Everywhere you go up here, you see herds
of animals, shepherds guiding them

through the mountains. After leaving this
Bon village I moved north and came

across a different community, where this
family's lifestyle is based almost

entirely on the movement of their
animals. We're at 4,200 meters, Tibet is

This family's actually nomadic, they're constantly

moving around throughout the year, so
they'll be in this pasture for a little

bit while the yak will graze here and
eat this grass, and then they'll move on

to another place. Meanwhile the grasses
here will have time to regenerate, the

dung from these yak right now will help
fertilize the land, and they'll

eventually come back here, maybe next
year, and they will find a pasture full

of really wonderful grass that's full of
nutrients that their yak can graze again.

And there's no external inputs to this,
there's no fertilizer or irrigation infrastructure.

And this whole process and
technique hinges on their ability to be

able to move freely throughout this
region, which hasn't been a problem for

hundreds of years as this place has been
basically rid of any sort of borders or

control. But that's changing very quickly.

This is where the Tibetan language is
spoken. The many communities in these

mountains have always considered
themselves Tibetan, moving freely into

Tibet for trade and religious practices,
but in 1950 China controversially

annexed Tibet. They eventually negotiated
this border line with Nepal. Notice that

it goes right through what these people
think of as Tibet. The yak grazers I met

are mostly based down here on the Nepal
side, and luckily for them this border

only existed in theory. The yak grazers
continue to graze their animals deep

into Tibet, as they had for hundreds of years, but over the

years China started getting rich, which
came with a renewed desire to project

its influence and protect its borders,
especially in Tibet where people were

fleeing to get away from Chinese rule.
China now had the money, technology,

geopolitical motive to start taming this
region. They started crushing protests

from Tibetans and setting up military
infrastructure on the Tibetan Plateau

and in 1999 they built this fence on the
border, marking the end of the unfettered

mobility that these people had depended
on for centuries in this non-state space.

This place that had been too high for
borders, suddenly had to adapt to the

first concept of boundaries and control
coming from far away governments.

I wanted to go see this fence. At over 15,000 feet above sea

level, it has to be one of the highest
borders on Earth.

Tibetan Plateau, looking at the border
but we're half a kilometer away and

something really weird has happened. My
driver who's Nepali stopped and said we

can't go any further. I was like well
we're on Nepali sovereign territory, why

would why couldn't we just go up to the
fence? You'd be able to do this at every

other country I've ever been to. He said
no, the Chinese will come over and they'll