Based out of a village guesthouse in Jiaju, we spent our third day in the Danba Canyons exploring other villages further afield. Our Tibetan driver Jiangchu awaited us outside our guesthouse as usual, though our perception of him had to be readjusted after the school bus incident the previous afternoon.
Our itinerary for the day also changed due to my wife's lingering flu symptoms, possibly exacerbated by the altitude. Her prescription medicine from a Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor in Shangli had run out the previous day, making a pharmacy run at the county town of Danba our first priority that morning. The pharmacist wasn't quite as helpful as we hoped, and it was already 10:45 when we finally reached our original destination of Zhonglu village.
Zhonglu, along with neighboring Jiaju, Niega and Suopo, were among the historic villages of Danba elevated to China's tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage Sites. While not yet household names even within China, these charming hamlets of Tibetan stone houses and ancient watchtowers are attracting an increasing number of mostly domestic visitors, especially in the autumn foliage season.
We arrived on November 10, near the tail end of foliage season at this alpine altitude. The hordes of Chinese tourist that we feared were nowhere to be found, and neither was the ticket collector at the checkpoint. "It's your lucky day," concluded Jiangchu. We just saved RMB 60 on entrance fees, though I was slightly worried that Jiangchu would later try to bargain and split the spoils with us.
The only access to the village was through a violently rutted and potholed dirt road, though this was nothing new to us after yesterday's rough ride to Niega. Our microvan crawled up about 400m in elevation along a steep switchback before arriving in front of the most massive Tibetan farmhouse we had ever seen.
"This is the home of the village chief," explained Jiangchu, "and the only authorized guesthouse here." A bell rang in my head -- this was our backup choice for a home base before we settled at Gema's house in Jiaju! Tourism infrastructure in these remote villages was still in its infancy, and finding a modestly comfortable room proved quite a challenge. This was one of three best-equipped village guesthouses that I had my eyes on.
Compared with our cozy family-run guesthouse in Jiaju, this ginormous farmhouse was effectively a 30-room hostel with a communal canteen providing half- or even full-board meal service. The atmosphere was rowdy and dorm-like with dozens of Chinese city-dwellers coming to rough it for a day or two, and the rooftop was always teeming with amateur photographers utilizing its strategic position as a viewing platform.
A medieval watchtower-cross-granary dating as far back as the 1300's dominated one side of the farmhouse complex. Walking into a near pitch-dark interior of timber planks and up several flights of precipitous stairs led to a few more beds -- the granary had been converted into a communal sleeping area featuring nothing but a couple of unshaded lightbulbs for illumination and a 1990's CRT TV for entertainment. I don't recall seeing a washroom.
Considered the cultural epicenter of the Danba Canyon, Zhonglu is one of the few villages possessing enough flatland for large scale agriculture. Women in Gyalrong Tibetan apparel could be seen cultivating fields and carrying anything from fresh produce to small children in their wicker basket backpacks. We chatted up an older lady in Chinese and asked about the turnip-like vegetables in her basket, which turned out to be feed for pigs in her basement.
"Don't forget to come back for lunch," Jiangchu reminded us again and again before we went off to hike a small foothill in the village. The oxygen was thin and we had to stay disciplined with our pace, but it was the falling gingko leaves that were truly breathtaking on this glorious autumn day.
While we hoped to gain an unobstructed panorama of the entire village, the deciduous trees were too leafy and we didn't come across a clear shot. Somewhere along our hike, unbeknownst to us until we started our descent back to the village, Jiangchu texted us repeatedly.
"Chi fan le!" he texted in Chinese. Time to eat.
I didn't understand Jiangchu's eagerness to herd us back until we arrived at the communal lunch room -- there were about 8 tables, each seating a separate group of clients cheerfully awaiting the day's offering. "Every table gets the same dishes," said our driver as he surveyed the tables in anticipation, "and there will be no food left for those who arrive late."
Jiangchu's original tactic involved sharing a table with the minimum number of occupants to maximize his share of the dishes, but the Beijingner couple at the table he chose kicked us out. It turned out to be a wise move for everyone involved as we ended up at a completely vacant table, just for three of us.
Dishes consisted mostly of locally grown vegetables such as cucumbers and eggplants, tossed in soy-and-vinegar based marinades or stir-fried with lard in typical rural Sichuanese style. They served no Yak Butter Milk which was understandable -- unlike most Tibetans, the Gyalrong tribesmen in Danba don't even have any yaks at this relatively low elevation.
Meat was considered a premium item in these remote villages, and unlike in the rest of the Tibetan Plateau, the main source of protein in Danba was pork instead of yak. At this point we had no idea how many courses we would get, but the dishes just kept on coming.
One of my memorable discoveries on this trip was how good Chinese lettuce tasted when fresh and organically grown. The Sichuanese have a poetic sounding name for these humble greens -- Fengwei, or Phoenix Tail. The locals believe that it has a cooling effect on the body to balance their fiery Sichuanese spices, but to me I just loved its hint of kale-like bitterness.
My favorite was a dish of Stir-Fried Pork Belly with Cabbages. It wasn't the pork belly that I found irresistible, but the crispy cabbages in a chillied sweet soy glaze. At the end a total of eight dishes arrived, not to mention refillable steamed rice with potato chunks. It was way more than the three of us could finish, at a reasonable cost of RMB 30 per person.
As we got up we glanced over at the Beijingner couple who kicked us off their table ... they cleaned up their eight courses better than the three of us could! Being kicked to a different table was definitely a good idea in retrospect -- we would have been no match in fighting for the food.
After lunch I poked my camera, just out of curiosity, into a few guestrooms where the occupants seemed to have checked out. The Spartan-looking rooms were clean enough and had the basic amenities of a private washroom, TV and Wi-Fi, though air-conditioners / heaters were still too much to ask in a village running mostly on solar electricity.
But our biggest obstacle during trip planning was in securing a room with a Westernized seated toilet, a rarity not only in Tibetan villages but in much of rural China. And to our surprise -- yes, there were a couple of rooms with seated toilets. To us it meant that we could have chosen Zhonglu instead of Jiaju as a home base, each with its own benefits and drawbacks.
Before leaving we climbed up to the rooftop terrace again, enjoying for a final time this pastoral scenery of antique Tibetan farmhouses flanked by soaring watchtowers. I thought about how our trip would have panned out differently had we chosen Zhonglu as our base -- we would have hired a car only for one day trip to Jiaju and Suopo, but probably having to skip Niega. In light of my wife's flu symptoms, I was satisfied with the quiet family guesthouse and comfy mattress we found in Jiaju.
Our microvan descended back to the valley floor, through the same backbreaking dirt roads that had so far prevented most casual tourists from visiting this spectacular and culturally exotic region of Western Sichuan. Jiangchu was in a light-hearted mood and we chatted about pig farming on the way to our final destination in Danba: the village of Suopo and its mysterious skyscraping watchtowers.
Tibetan Villages of Danba Canyon - Part 3: Zhonglu Village
Reviewed by Laura
Published :
Rating : 4.5
Published :
Rating : 4.5
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