Basing ourselves out of a Tibetan family guesthouse in Jiaju, we took two full days to properly explore the collection of unique villages along the canyons of Danba. After all it took us more than 16 hours of bus and minivan rides to reach this secluded Shangri-la, and it would be a shame to breeze through in 3 hours like the domestic Chinese tourists do.
Danba. The Kingdom of 1000 Watchtowers. One of the most beautiful villages in China by wide recognition among photographers. THIS was the primary reason for our mini-trip into the Eastern Tibetan Plateau. No other practically reachable destination in Western Sichuan, perhaps with the exception of Larung Gar, captivated my imagination like Danba.
Certainly there were other worthy destinations along our route. The road to Lhagang was famously scenic, and Mount Siguniang was a UNESCO World Heritage Site in its own right. But to me there's something wildly alluring about these whitewashed houses and mysterious watchtowers, and legends of an ancient matriarchal kingdom in these isolated canyons.
Until the 1950's this land had been virtually inaccessible from the outside world, a narrow basin surrounded by impassable mountains taller than the Swiss Alps. Even in this age of 21st Century highways a trip from Chengdu still easily takes 10 hours, before even taking into account frequent landslides in the monsoon season.
As we arrived in the dry season of November, many supposedly paved roads were still in an excavated and muddy state. The road from Lhagang was entirely torn up and rutted beginning from about 20km from Danba, and all the roads leading to the major villages were in no better state. Getting here wasn't easy at all. But we did arrive safely.
It was the authoritative Chinese National Geography magazine that voted Danba one of China's six most beautiful villages and towns. Except Danba isn't one village, but a number of geographically isolated villages scattered over five river gorges conjoined at the centre. While each village was no more than a few kilometers from the next, visiting all these villages turned out to be quite a challenge due to road conditions.
When we consulted our hostess Gema on visiting the four villages we set our sights on, she walked us up to the new government-funded viewing platform for a bird's eye view of the valley, her village of Jiaju and the roads leading to a neighboring village known as Niega.
"You can walk along this mountain road and reach Niega in a few hours," Gema pointed beyond a hilltop lined with 1000-year-old watchtowers, "then take a minivan on the way back." But all these dug-up roads was one big construction zone at the time, and ginormous dump trucks carrying rocks and construction material roamed these narrow switchbacks. I didn't want a strenuous hike with my wife still recovering from a flu, and at the end Gema pulled a few strings to find a private driver for us. That's how we met Jiangchu.
Jiangchu was some sort of relative to Gema, possibly a brother-in-law or cousin on her husband's side. Inheriting the same broad shoulders and tanned skin typical of the local Tibetans, Jiangchu operated another guesthouse about halfway between Jiaju and Niega. While his guesthouse was much harder to reach than Gema's, he did have one advantage -- a scrubby but reliable 8-seater microvan that occasionally carried tourists like us, as well as serving as a village bus for the local school children.
Cost of the private van seemed near exorbitant for the relatively short distances -- RMB 600 for roughly 60km of mountain roads over two full days. The 250km of winding alpine highways from Dartsedo to Danba cost us only RMB 700 in comparison, and the 160km from Songpan to Huanglong to Jiuzhaigou would cost us RMB 500. But this maze of treacherously narrow switchbacks were unnavigable to outsiders, and no sane taxi driver would take the risk of expensive undercarriage damages with 2-metre-diameter potholes. It was a monopoly, and we decided to bite the bullet.
With the luxury of a private van we quickly strategized our tour of four villages over two days, starting on Day 1 with a trip to one of the highest villages in the Danba Canyons, Suopo, known for its magnificent views over the canyon floor. By mid afternoon we would return to our home village of Jiaju for some exploration time.
Our Wuling microvan slowly climbed up the dusty switchbacks, navigating around massive potholes and dump trucks while managing to avoid falling off the unmarked cliffside. The village government had recently constructed several official viewing platforms, and Jiangchu stopped at each one, plus some unofficial ones, to find us the best spots for panoramas. Most of the photos in this article were taken under his escort.
Having a local guide -- and one able to converse in standard Chinese rather than the local Sichuanese dialect -- was instrumental in permitting us a rare glimpse into the daily lives of a minority tribe of Tibetans, found mainly in Danba and its surrounding areas and nowhere else. Tibetans in Tibet call these people outsiders, and there's even debate on whether these locals belong to Tibetans or the Qiang nationality, but that's another story.
This land of windswept canyons has always been the inhabited by the mysterious Gyalrong, a people culturally and linguistically different from the Khampa Tibetans we met in Lhagang and Dartsedo. I knew a little about the major branches of Tibetan ethnicity -- the U-tsang, Khampa and Amdo -- but prior to this trip I honestly hadn't heard of the Gyalrong people.
Our first impression of the Gyalrong was one of mystery and hostility, taken from our previous driver who spoke of a certain fear, or at least apprehension, about his safety on the road when passing through Gyalrong territory after dark. And these were words from a member of the supposedly fierce and powerful Khampa tribe!
But the Gyalrong people we met over the next three days were just as friendly as any others we've come across in any rural Chinese village. They're also the most Sinicized of all the groups of Tibetans we met along the way, starting with their apparent usage of Sichuanese as the language of choice, especially when greeting non-family members.
At the very top of Suopo village Jiangchu stopped the van in a local family's courtyard. "They will charge RMB 5 per head," Jiangchu advised ahead of the visit, "but the view is the best in the entire village." And he's right -- it turned out to be our best panorama of the Danba Canyons, overlooking a 400m drop to a narrow valley dotted with whitewashed houses and chimney-like watchtowers.
Across the canyon narrow footpaths zigzagged up the frighteningly steep mountainside to dizzying heights, where tiny hermitic huts suddenly appeared in the middle of nowhere. "These families escaped from the battles," Jiangchu referred to the civil war of the 1930's, "and have lived up there ever since." The deathly treacherous trail was their only connection to the outside world, and as Jiangchu surmised, "The elderly would never come down again."
Meanwhile the host family was busy milling their annual corn harvest into flour, for both cornbread and pig feed. The friendly hostess gave us a bunch of sweet round pears from her orchard for free, and we reciprocated by purchasing a few bottled drinks from the makeshift grocery store her daughter operated.
The elevation here at the top of Suopo was no more than 2400m -- still worrisome for us coming from sea level but a joke to most Tibetans. The next major town of Lhagang for instance stands at 3700m, even higher than the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. This is one of the lowest valleys in the entire Tibetan Plateau with its unique microclimate, resulting in a vastly different cultural landscape.
Instead of engaging in nomadic herding like most rural Tibetans, natives of Danba have for centuries converted their steep canyons into workable terraced fields for crops. And instead of wool-producing yaks, the locals breed the same domesticated yellow oxen as the Han Chinese do for tilling soil in their fields. Gema's family had one that kept eyeing us whenever we walked past the guesthouse entrance.
We had to be thankful for the free pears as we arrived too late for a proper lunch at Suopo village. Jiangchu parked the van outside Suopo Elementary School, still full of students at the time, and proceeded to look for a teahouse for refreshments.
This Gyalrong woman in traditional garb struck a conversation with Jiangchu and welcomed us into her home for snacks and tea. I would have never found this improvised teahouse by myself -- there was absolutely no signage aside from a handwritten advertisement on the exterior wall for flat tire repairs.
As unlikely as it seemed from the outside, this apparently was the communal teahouse where students and villagers would drop by for tea and cheap eats. Traditional Yak Butter Milk flowed as soon as we sat down at a table, and Jiangchu observed my wife's first sip of the salty beverage with amusement. I did enjoy the buttery smoothness in the tea, though I declined a second cup for concern of intestinal reactions.
Jiangchu politely left the last four Pork Baozi remaining in the kitchen to us, having nothing but Yak Butter Tea for himself. I think we paid for two cups of Yak Butter Tea and four Baozi with RMB 7, certainly one of our cheapest lunches anywhere in China. The portion left us slightly hungry though, and we filled up later in the afternoon with organic apples (RMB 3 for 500g!) we bought from a villager lady in Jiaju.
Opting for some private exploration time around Suopo village, we went for a stroll after lunch and asked Jiangchu to come fetch us along the main route towards Jiaju. When we saw his van again we were surprised to find the backseats overloaded with elementary school students. Our creative driver managed to squeeze out a few extra Yuan turning our chartered van into a school bus!
By mid afternoon we arrived back at our guesthouse in Jiaju. Jiangchu promised to return next morning and escort us to the villages of Zhonglu and Suopo, then carried on delivering his vanload of afterschool students along the potholed road towards Danba town.
For the rest of the afternoon we would explore the village of Jiaju by ourselves, hiking up to a restored watchtower by the village entrance then down to the next hamlet where a village party was taking place. We were surprised to find a nearly empty guesthouse upon our return, the 17 Beijingners having all departed and leaving the entire house to Gema's family and the two of us. My wife's cough wasn't getting any better as the evening was even colder than the first night, and we decided out of practicality to move to Danba town the next day.
Tibetan Villages of Danba Canyon - Part 2: Villages of Jiaju and Niega
Reviewed by Laura
Published :
Rating : 4.5
Published :
Rating : 4.5
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