Grandpa Lijun

““When I gather mountain products, I can cross several mountains in a single day without feeling tired.”

Grandpa Lijun is in his sixties and serves as one of the village church elders, with responsibility for church finances. After his children and son-in-law left the village for work, he and his wife remained to care for two grandchildren.

Every year, the season for mountain products is his busiest time. Wild bamboo shoots, matsutake mushrooms, and mountain medicinal plants are all forms of “wealth from the mountain” that he knows intimately. In search of them, he may cross several mountains in a day without considering it unusually difficult. The forest is not only a source of livelihood, but also part of his continuing relationship with the land.

“I never miss Sunday worship.”

No matter how busy he is, however, he does not miss Sunday worship. As a church elder, he attends services and helps manage church affairs. Christianity has been part of life in Liju for roughly a century, and faith has developed alongside Lisu cultural traditions rather than simply replacing them.

In church, people read the Bible and sing hymns in the Lisu language. In family life, the hearth, mountain songs, and traditional customs continue. Weddings may include both church vows and ethnic rituals of offering toasts to parents; funerals may combine memorial worship with older practices surrounding the dead.

Grandpa Lijun’s life reflects this cultural interweaving. He maintains his faith while living from the forest, responds to contemporary migration while continuing village traditions. Through him, faith, land, and everyday life appear not as opposing worlds, but as relationships that have grown together over time.