It was not until last year, when I had an assignment in Guizhou, that I found out more about naked boat trackers. They used to drag boats along the Chishui River, as well as the other mighty rivers of China. They did not bother to wear anything because they had to constantly get into the water and it was impractical to change out of wet clothes. This was true mostly in mountainous areas where rapids are treacherous and beaches few and far between.

Life was hard for the boatmen, but they made slightly more than a typical farmer. When the steam engine was widely adopted in the 1980s, it killed the profession. So, the last authentic records of the naked boat trackers are from that era, when cameras were still rare.

The place I visited in Guizhou also tried to recreate the profession of being a naked boat tracker for the sake of tourism. I was shown a few photographs of these "actors" and they had such pale skin and fat stomachs that it was more of a travesty than homage. Obviously they did not have a decent casting director.

So, is it okay to revive the boat tracker as a cultural relic? Most commentators focus on the nudity, which they feel is debasing, but that is a modern urban perspective. Real boatmen were so comfortable with their skins they would not cover up even when passing a village with women doing laundry by the river. You cannot recreate that kind of atmosphere in a tourism environment.

The lack of authenticity in many of China's back-to-the-future approaches to cultural preservation is rooted in the principle of using culture as a promotional tool. The mammoth rituals that celebrate ancient sages - such as Confucius, Lao Tzu, Yao and Shun - have less to do with respecting and reviving Chinese civilization than creating an attraction that funnels money into the jurisdiction. At the very least, there will be photos and glowing commentaries that appear in the media and that local governments see as positive publicity.

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