THE KEEPER of LOST TOOLS

The Nujiang River churns brown and is swollen with monsoon rain, thundering past the village of Lazhudi in Fugong county, Nujiang Lisu autonomous prefecture, Southwest China's Yunnan province.

On the riverbank, tucked against the steep valley slopes, stands a cluster of traditional Lisu wooden houses. From inside, the sound of ancient Lisu folk tunes drifts through the damp air, mingling with the scent of wood smoke from a fire that has never been allowed to die.

In Lisu tradition, the hearth is "the heart of the house". But as modern homes replaced the old bamboo-and-wood houses, most of these fires have died. At Akeji Mountain Homestay, one still burns.

Inside a building, behind an unassuming door, lies a museum that preserves more than 1,300 objects, ranging from bamboo rice boxes, wooden crossbows, and hemp blankets, to tools that most young Lisu people today can no longer name.

For nearly three decades, Cui Huanyue, a woman in her 50s, has been walking the remote mountain villages of the river valley, knocking on doors, asking elders what they still have in their storehouses, and buying up the discarded tools of a dying way of life.

Today, scholars believe her collection is the most comprehensive private assembly of Lisu material culture anywhere in the world.

"If you want to understand Lisu culture, you have to come here," Cui says, gesturing at shelves packed with bamboo rice boxes, wooden walnut crushers and crossbows.

In the 1990s, fresh out of a teaching college in Nujiang prefecture, Cui started writing her own music. But when she showed her compositions to her teachers, they told her bluntly that her songs had no Lisu characteristics.

"They said I needed to learn traditional Lisu music," she recalls.

Following the instruction, she went into the mountains, carrying small gifts of tea and cakes to the villages where the older people still remembered the traditional melodies. She sat by their fires and learned to sing the songs that had been passed down for generations.

"It was then that I saw it," she says. "The old tools and the everyday objects were just being thrown away."

As China's poverty-alleviation campaign transformed the remote prefecture — once one of the country's poorest — modern appliances and new homes replaced the old. Farmers traded their wooden plows for machines. Families moved from hillside huts into earthquake-resistant concrete houses. And the objects that had sustained Lisu life for centuries were tossed onto bonfires or left to collect dust.

"Development is a double-edged sword," says professor Gao Zhiying, a renowned ethnologist at Yunnan University who has studied Lisu culture for decades.

"It brought better lives, but some traditions couldn't be preserved," she adds.

Gao has watched Cui's collection grow from the very beginning. "When she started, she was a student of mine at the normal school," Gao recalls.

"She was so small — people say we look alike, but I'm 1.7 meters tall, and she's tiny. But in that small body, there's incredible energy, and I call it the spirit of the canyon women — once they choose a path, they never turn back."

A unique collection

The museum housed in a two-story building is organized into four sections: production tools, daily life items, hunting gear, and ritual objects.

Crossbows of bamboo and sinew hang on the walls — the kind Lisu men once carried into the high mountains. Nearby sit intricately woven bamboo rice containers, once carried to the fields by women. Hemp blankets, hand-loomed with traditional patterns, lie folded on shelves. Among them, small delicate cowrie-shell ornaments catch the light. Some of them tell a much larger story.

"Cowrie shells don't come from the mountains," Gao explains. "They come from the Indian Ocean."

The shells, she says, made their way through ancient trade routes from India to Myanmar, into the Nujiang Grand Canyon, and beyond to Lisu communities, and even to other ethnic groups like the Yi.

"These objects show that for thousands of years, these peoples were never isolated," Gao says. "They were connected — through trade, through marriage, through the exchange of ideas. This is the physical evidence of ethnic exchange and integration."

The cost of memory

But preserving memory comes at a price.

Cui works for the Fugong county cultural center, earning a modest salary. Since 2017 — when she began collecting in earnest — she has been the sole provider for her son and her aging mother.

"I'm in debt," she says.

She estimates that the best months bring in a profit of around 20,000 yuan ($2,944) from the homestay's restaurant and tourism activities, but other months run at a loss.

"For the past few years, it's been a struggle," she says.

She employs six people to help maintain the collection and run the property, but the real challenge is conservation.

The Nujiang Grand Canyon is one of the wettest places in Yunnan. The humidity and heat cause bamboo to warp, wood to rot, and hemp to disintegrate.

"The artifacts are deteriorating right before our eyes," Gao says with visible anguish.

There have been some signs of government support. Through a Shanghai-Yunnan partnership program — Shanghai has been paired with Yunnan for poverty alleviation — the town government contributed 200,000 yuan to help build the current two-story exhibition hall.

However, the funding was a one-time boost, and the museum still lacks proper display cases, climate control, and conservation equipment.

"Maintaining support is never easy," Gao notes.

Cui has applied for permission to be stationed full-time at the museum, but her request is still pending.

"If I could stay here every day, I could manage the restaurant better, host more study tours, and use the income to protect the artifacts," she says.

Her 28-year-old son now accompanies her on collecting trips. "At first he wasn't interested, but he wasn't resistant either. Now he comes with me the whole way," Cui says.

But there's a skills gap.

"I don't know how to use online platforms. My son doesn't really know either. Meituan, Douyin, Xiaohongshu — we're not good at any of them," Cui admits.

Her museum is open every day, free of charge. Visitors from outside the prefecture often wander in expecting just a meal, only to spend hours examining the objects.

"Sometimes the older Lisu people come and look at things they remember from their childhood," Cui says. "They get emotional. They tell me, 'I never thought I'd see these again.'"

Gao has made the museum a base for her students' research. "We're not just studying objects but also documenting an entire way of life that is disappearing," she says.

"These artifacts are not just pieces of wood or bamboo. They contain wisdom about how humans can live in harmony with nature — taking what they need without taking too much. That wisdom matters now more than ever," she adds.

For Cui, the mission is simple.

"I love this land. I love my people. I just want to do the small things I can, to keep our roots alive for our children. If we lose these things, we'll never get them back," she says.