Rongchang Tibetan Village

Rongchag County is located in Garze Tibet Autonomous Prefecture in the west of Sichuan Province. Five rivers merge here, the Greater and the Lesser Jinchuan, the Geshedra, the Donggu and the Dadu. The area is characterized by towering mountains, deep valleys and swift-flowing rivers. Scattered among the mountains below the snowline are Tibetan-inhabited villages such as Zhonglu, Pujiaoding, Dazhai, Jiaju and Badi with their own distinct architectural styles. The stepped-back red stone houses, shaded by  many different kinds of tree, have a beauty beyond the ordinary.

In front and behind the houses grow apple, pear and walnut trees, and in autumn there are lust too many fruits to be harvested, so they simply fall to the ground. Sometimes, the sound of fruits dropping to the ground can be heard deep into the night. The villagers and nature live in great harmony here. Besides, there are many sites herein Rongchag that shed light on the mysterious past-including stone coffins dating from 5,000 years ago and, perhaps the best known, its ancient watchtowers.

Some contend that the people of Rongchag are descended from the royal family of the Westem Xia (l038-1227). After their kingdom was destroyed by Genghis Khan, the surviving remnants of the royal family fled south across the Gannan Marshland and Hongyuan Grassland in Aba. One group settled in the Greater and Lesser Jinchuan river valleys, rebuilding the homeland of their dreams, shedding their noble sweat in this sunny land blessed by fine weather.

One morning, we walked east along the Lesser Jinchuan River to a place called Zhonglu. Most Tibetan villages were built near the top of the mountains, unlike Han Chinese villages that are usually located in the mountain valleys as close as possible to a water supply. This puzzled me. In a way. they  had chosen the least convenient places to build their homes.

I saw women getting water from a river and then carrying the water jars home on their backs. The leather straps securing the water jars were crossed across the chest, cutting into their Tibetan robes and emphasizing their breasts. Bright beads of sweat rolled down their rosy red cheeks. Their legs were muscular and their delicately braided hair danced in the wind. Now and then, droplets of water would spill from their jars, these water beads like colorful butterflies. In the brightly painted houses, babies eagerly awaited their mother's return so that they could be fed. I even saw old women carrying heavy sand up the mountains, for building houses. The most important labor was not the building work itself, but the carrying of materials.

They were walking at such a pace that suddenly they were, alongside us and just as quickly disappeared. Not much later, we met them again in the village; when we arrived there I discovered I knew nearly half the villagers already. The Tibetan-style houses were scattered here and there, and cattle droppings could be seen on the dusty roads outside the wattle fence. Unlike in urban areas, here cattle dung in the streets was not considered dirty stuff, but rather a kind of display. Though the village roads were empty of people, the cattle droppings symbolized the village's vitality. The dung blended nicely with the land and looked rather clean in this context. Besides, the dung did not stink, rather it gave off a mixed sort of smell, combining animal droppings and plants.

Two lama monks in red robes walked towards us, carrying a large drum. They looked very young, and their shaven heads were showing signs of re-growth. I knew that a Buddhist ceremony was about to take place and so I asked them about it. The result was that they took us to the home of Yeshe Dorjie.

Though I had been to Tibet before, this was the first time I had ever been into a Tibetan family home, and so 1 was totally unprepared for their warm hospitality. Almost everyone smiled at us and I saw the glittering gold teeth of the old people. They received us with buttered tea and climbed the fruit trees in the courtyard to pick apples and pears and stuffed our backpacks with them. Only then did we realize the important decorative role of the red apples and yellow pears on the fruit trees across the mountains, just like festival lanterns.

Our host said that they had too much fruit for their own consumption, but that since the cost of transport would be more than the price it would fetch, so nobody wanted to send the fruit to market and it was left to rot on the ground. Lying there on the ground, there seemed to be a tie between the fallen fruit and the cattle dung--a relationship. In other words, everything in the mountains belongs to the same big clan.

A typical Tibetan house usually has a courtyard and four stories. The first level is for keeping domestic animals. The kitchen and storage rooms are located on the second floor. The third floor is reserved for bedrooms and a prayer room while the fourth floor is a watchtower. The area of the third and fourth floors successively reduces, giving space on the roofs of the second and third floors for L-shaped platforms where grain is dried and family members can rest. The structure of the lower part of the house is mud and stone, and the outside walls are painted white, or with stripes of white and primary rock colors. The upper part is a red-painted timber structure and the eaves are painted red on the upper part and black on the lower part. All the Tibetan houses looked more or less the same and so we often walked into the wrong house, but whichever house we entered, we were greeted with the same hospitality. This seems to be a cardinal role in the village.

Every day when I sat down to write, I faced Mount Murdo, a huge snow-capped mountain, one of the most sacred mountains in the Gyarong region. On the far side of this mountain,"a journey of three days and nights," lies a mysterious lake, more beautiful than the famous Jiuzhaigou. But few people know this place as the road to it is very hard.

The watchtowers are military structures left behind by previous generations. They are generally between 20 and 30 meters high, and are a building form unique to Tibetan and Qiang ethnic groups; as a result they are widely distributed in areas inhabited by these minorities. But it is in Rongchag that the greatest concentration and variety of watchtowers can be found, providing examples of every architectural style. A careful visitor will not fail to detect history from the watchtowers.

The Shannan area in Tibet is said to be the birthplace of the watchtowers. Their construction went hand in hand with warfare, making Gyarong Tibetan area a key place for watchtowers. Most of the watchtowers in present day Rongchag are relics of campaigns fought along the greater and lesser Jinchuan rivers during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

Watchtowers out in the wilds are usually village watchtowers, but the majority belong to individual households. As an integral part of the house£¬they witnessed the relationship between routine daily lire and the life of heroes. In the history of Rongchag, life and warfare were one and the same. Between each individual household watchtower, a system of complex and responsive military defense works was formed; and when fighting broke out, the watchtowers gave the village settlements a new significance, turning them into imposing and impregnable strongholds.

There is a kind of harmony between the watchtowers and villages. They do not clash; the earth and stone watchtowers in tune with the fields combine perfectly, bringing into clearer relief the shifting relationship between War and peace.