Moving forward, backing away

Ethnic Jino areas that exist in modernization's limbo offer authentic slices of traditional life - but perhaps not for long, Will Wain Willams reports.

The ethnic Jino people inhabit Yunnan province's remote mountains, where they cultivate tea and medicinal herbs but still experience the country's rapid and massive transformation.

I set out to explore the lands on which they live, traveling from Yunnan's Xishuangbanna, a tropical settlement in the rainforest on the banks of the Mekong River near the border with Myanmar, northward toward the mountains leading to the Tibet autonomous region's highlands.