Dedicated to

Dedicated to The Children and Teenagers of China who, because of their sheer numbers, will have a major say in this planet’s future. I believe they will rise to the occasion and help steer the world in the right direction. To my mother and my step-father who are extraordinary people and to whom I am forever indebted

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SECRET TOWERS OF THE HIMALAYAS Comprehensive Survey from 1998 to March 2005 and a book by Frederique Darragon Acknowledgements. This study of the amazing monuments that still grace parts of the tribal corridor of South-west China was made possible through the friendship and cooperation of hundreds, if not thousands, of many fine people, all of whom I cannot name here for lack of space but whose kindnesses I will never forget . I must thank first the local inhabitants. They were usually thrilled to have a Western woman interested in studying their old and, they believed, useless towers. They always made me feel welcome, trying their best to understand and answer my questions which I asked in broken Mandarin Chinese, carrying my equipment while accompanying me to search for out-of-the-way towers and, more than often, inviting me to share their meals and hosting me in their homes. I also warmly acknowledge the assistance of the local governments, and their eagerness to learn more about the fairly new concepts of sustainable tourism and of protection and restoration according to the UNESCO World Heritage standards. Taking in consideration the limited funds available to them, the overall enormous demands of maintaining an infrastructure in this high, rugged, earthquake-prone and isolated environment is daunting. A special mention for Xu Ting Zhang, Head of the Sichuan Cultural Relic Bureau and for Zhe Li, from Danba government, who, as officials, and I hope, friends, both command my deepest esteem. I express my profound gratitude to my friend Wang Shebo and his wife Zhang Yin, who have both earned my sincere admiration, to their many friends who helped me, to the volunteers who work in our Foundation, more especially to Liu Su and Xiao Yu, all of whom were always ready to find ways to provide me with what was needed. Moreover I could not have done a comprehensive research without the help of numerous Chinese, Tibetan and Western scholars and professors whose names are mentioned through this book. Obviously, Michel Peissel, always willing to share his knowledge with me, deserves a special mention and credit as well as and his daughter Octavia, who spent hours in libraries or at her computer on my behalf. Warm thanks also to my dear friend, Peter Foley, who was kind enough to take the time to edit my original text. I also thank Ted Turner who, although it was not the case at the beginning, became a strong supporter of my “tower project” while we lived together, and gave me the funds that enabled me to jump-start the Unicorn Foundation, and the people on his team who are still providing my endeavors with help, especially Sharon Lundy and Christina Hung. My thanks goes out also to Colleen Nunn, wife of Senator Sam Nunn and her friend Judith Mc Hale, CEO and President of Discovery Channel, as well as to Richard Stone from Science Magazine, who were the first ones to realize how extraordinary these towers were and how spectacular was the surrounding scenery. They also understood the validity of my project to use this phenomenal touristy potential to improve, through sustainable tourism, the lives of the impoverish minority people who till the land in the shadows of their ancestors monumental but, until now, near forgotten achievements. This book is about an extraordinary human heritage whose builders were not part of any Nation, as such this heritage truly belongs to human kind. This photo book also carries no flag because it would not have existed without the kindness, generosity and efforts of photographers from many different origins: Han Chinese, Tibetan, Jiarong, Yi, Japanese, American， English, Italian and French. All the photos in that book where graciously lent by … Andrea Bruno, Chang De, Mike Hill, Han Yuanhua, He Zhenhua, Lan Yong, Lu Hailin, Andrea Migliorini, Kenzo Okawa, Wang Kaiyou, Wang she Bo, Yang Qiang, Zhao Hong, Zhe Li ….( list not finished)

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INTRODUCTION Since the early 90’s, I had been roaming Tibet and rural China. I wanted to see the “real thing”, so I wandered alone, and, rather than hiring a private car, I preferred to hitchhike, travel by bus or ride a bicycle. At times I also bought horses or yaks. Once, in 1997, as I passed through a small town named Danba, through the pouring rain I had caught sight of some tall structures clinging to the far away mountain slopes. Later on, I saw other strange looking towers, more than 600 km to the west of Danba, in Kongpo, a region of South-east Tibet. Then in 1998, as I was leaving for Western Sichuan to investigate the snow leopards’ situation, a friend of mine told me about some free standing, “star-shaped” towers he had seen from afar sixteen years earlier while riding in a truck, with a broken leg, and no cast, after having been through an earthquake near the famous Gong Ga Shan (Minyag Gong-ka Mountain). He did not remember their exact location but, to my surprise, that region was at least 300 km away from where I had seen the first towers. As I wondered about these constructions he told me he was absolutely sure that no one knew who had built them, why and when. In Tibet, every old fort, called a “dzong”, has an attached tower. I had seen dozens of them and I was going to dismiss the idea until I realized that the towers he was telling me about, as well as the ones I had glimpsed at in Danba and also in Kongpo where totally different from anything I had seen in Central or Western Tibet., or, for that matter, anywhere else in the world. Once in Sichuan, since it was too early in the season to track snow leopards in the wild, I decided to investigate what was known about these mysterious constructions. Michel Peissel, the friend who had assured me that nothing was known about these towers, is very knowledgeable and had spoken resolutely. Still, it was hard to believe that these amazing constructions, in some places in great numbers, could have remained “ignored “by Western and Chinese scholars alike.

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PART1 : CIRCUMSCRIBING THE MYSTERY 1- A RIDDLE IN FULL SIGHT 1) Why is it still a riddle? In Chengdu, Capital of Sichuan Province, and home to a thriving cultural life with many universities including Sichuan University, the third largest in China hosting 50.000 students, I had many friends. Some were professors, such as Xu Xinjian, Wang (Shebo) Weiyang and Chen Zungxiang other were scholars such as Deng Tingliang. They all confirmed that, although quite a few studies had been done, usually on a regional basis, about vernacular architecture in the some of the towers areas, no one had specifically researched the towers and no one really knew for sure their history or their origins. Obviously local inhabitants, local governments, scholars, professors and even western travelers of the 19th century knew that the “tribal corridor” had some towers. But towers were a common feature in the medieval world so unless one got close enough to see how unusual these structures are and unless one has traveled all over Sichuan and Tibet, so as to realize both the sheer number of these towers and the vastness of their territory, one would just consider them as interesting and ancient elements of quarters and villages inhabited by various minorities living in the Tribal Corridor…. And this is what all had done before I began my own quest. These archaic, often star-shaped, stone sky-scrapers had never been mapped, dated or even researched as a separate architectural phenomenon in and of itself. Such a study is totally justified since all the constructions surrounding the towers are, barring one or two exceptions, from a different time period. In point of fact, most of these constructions are much more recent than the towers, since they are houses that have been built in the last 150 years. A few are much older, such as the “slate coffins” and their related stone dwellings, which have been dated circa 2000 to 1000 BC. It was, as Richard Stone, the author of the Smithsonian Magazine article later published about my research, put it “a riddle in full sight”….In, somewhat, full sight, now that roads and bridges have been built and that the closest towers are only a day away from an airport, but it had not always been so… Even the history of the whole area was wrapped in mystery. For hundreds of years, this area now known as the Tribal Corridor was a sort of no man’s land, caught between Tibet and China, inhabited by a number of “barbarian” tribes who had created fiercely independent kingdoms. Field research had been impossible, for these lands were, until recently, practically unreachable. There were no roads and travel was always very difficult, in summer because of the heavy rains, landslides and furious rivers, in winter because the snow would block the numerous 15,000 and 16,000 feet high passes. Before 1950, brigands were everywhere. After 1950 and until recently, the area was forbidden to outsiders by the Chinese government. There was no public transportation and Chinese professors had no cars and usually could not afford to rent them. Library research also was limited since there is no written history of the area. The local populations still have many different languages and dialects, none of which has a written form. Literary Tibetan was used in Buddhist monasteries but very few of these books, and all mainly treating of religious themes, have, even today, filtered out of the remote valleys of the area. Consequently scholars had to rely on texts written by other peoples (the 4

Chinese Annals, the ancient, also mainly religious, books written by Tibetans from Central Tibet, and some Mongol texts). These peoples were frequently at war with one another as well as with the tribes of the Tribal Corridor, therefore the stories they wrote were often biased or imprecise. So I realized that I first needed to locate all the towers, then find a way of dating them and determine if they had a common history. But before setting out, I searched through Chinese literature for clues. 2) Tall Towers in Chinese and Tibetan literatures Looking through historical Chinese records was of little help. The history and literature department of the Sichuan University contributed wholeheartedly to my research but the Chinese Annals provided only vague information. 30 to 40 meter tall (square) towers are often mentioned in Chinese records as early as those of the Han dynasty (206 BC to 210 AD). It is written that these 40 meter tall towers were built by the Ranlong people somewhere far away in the mountains Northwest of today’s Chengdu, by other Qiang tribes in the upper reaches of the Min River, and also, hundreds of miles away from there, by the Mon tribes inhabiting the south of the Tibetan plateau. (Chen Zungxiang and Dong Jingliang, referring to Han Annals). It is said that the Mon were nonTibetan tribes but it is not clear whether they were, or not, related to the Qiang tribes. Sun Hongkai ( “A preliminary Investigation…”) explains that the Ran Mang (or Ran Long) lived in Wen Shan , eastern county of contemporary Aba Prefecture and are believed to be the ancestors of most of the contemporary Qiang people. We also learn that the tall towers were named “Qiong Long” in the Han Annals, that the regular, three floor houses, were named “Ji Long” and that these words are Chinese transcriptions of Qiang words. Many citations also from the Sui and Tang Annals (Sui Shu and Xin Tang Shu) but all of them are quite vague, regarding tall (square) towers in the “Fu” Country (“Fu Guo”). Sun Hongkai also states that, after the 12th century, other minorities of the “Tribal Corridor” took up building, in small numbers, defensive watch towers (made of stone or dirt) to fight the Mongols. Many Chinese, Tibetan and Western scholars seem to believe that many of the towers still standing were built during the 18th century; some as the castles of the numerous “Tusi” (local chiefs), but most as defensive constructions that enabled the local population to successfully resist the armies of the Qiang Long Manchu Emperor of China during the first Jinchuan war. (The “Qiang” in Qiang Long is unrelated to the Qiang people) Since none of the towers that I have dated are that recent, most of these 18th century towers must have been destroyed during the second Jinchuan war that saw the victory of the Emperor’s armies, who, by then, were using the Jesuits canons. Some square watch towers have been recorded, in Chinese writings, as being built as late as 1850 by local governments. The tall towers were called “Diao” or “Chao”, which are Chinese words, in the Tang Annals and after. Today they are still called by the Chinese words of Diao 碉, Diaofang 碉房 and Diaolou 碉楼. All these words have a defensive connotation since “diao” means fortress. In specialized literature, “G-rong”, an ancient Qiang language word, is often used Surprisingly enough, the star-shaped towers are mentioned for the first time in the late Ming Dynasty (Records of Shu Guo, volume 1, Annals of Bao County, Annals of Zhanggu Village) That seems to indicate that, until then, few Chinese people had ever seen these star-shaped towers. As far as I know, the star-shaped towers have never been mentioned in any religious book.

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Samten Karmay, a native from Jiarong and now a researcher at the CNRS and an expert in Bon (a religion that preceded Buddhism, which still exists in certain areas, and from which Lamaism has borrowed many rituals) also believes that these towers were not built with a religious purpose in mind. Even a five-volume, 3000-page Chinese book recently published about Chinese vernacular architecture sheds little light on the subject. Only two star-shaped towers (from the Ma’erkang area) are mentioned, with, what I believe to be, an erroneous date of construction. In this book the “blockhouse culture” of the Qiang minority is dealt with extensively. One very helpful book was the one, written in 1944 by Deng Shaoqin about the legend of She Wu and the “Xixia Kingdom”. The whole study was considered not very serious by R.A. Stein. Still, and although Deng Xiaoding only wrote of hearsay, having himself never been in most of the places, in the 8th chapter he produced a list of locations of star-shaped towers. With the help of Professor Chen Zungxiang, who found and translated this chapter for me, this list turned out to be quite accurate, even if limited, and enabled me to locate many towers. 3) Locating the towers I set out to travel throughout the country, usually by bus, since it was a convenient way to talk with locals and to ask bus drivers, travelers, monks and pilgrims if, and where, they had seen free-standing stone towers. Very often I was sent to places where only mud towers existed. Other times there was nothing left to see and I had to interview local elders to verify if tall free-standing stone towers had once stood in the vicinity. I found three villages named “Bajiaodiao” (eight corner fortress-tower) where only small piles of stones remained. Once a tower starts collapsing, the villagers are quick to use the stones to build new houses. Many towers have been badly damaged by earthquakes. By the end of 1999 I was able to determine that, although dirt, wood or small stone towers were found all over China, the star-shaped towers were only to be found in 3 regions of western Sichuan and one region of the Tibetan autonomous region. 4) Dating the towers As I was locating the various towers, I always carried a GPS, a photo camera, and later on a video camera, but also a small saw and I had been collecting wood samples whenever possible. Collecting the wood was somewhat tricky, and not only because most of what was left of the now broken beams was often out of reaches without a tall ladder. Carbon dating indicates a bracket of about 100 years during which there is a 95 % chance that the wood has died. It is important to select beams which cannot have been replaced after the construction but also that have not been stored or used in another building previous to the construction of the tower under study. I usually tried to cut samples from small beams since these, coming from plentiful small trees, are unlikely to have been cut long before the construction in which they were used. If many beams of the same towers can be dated, the results are more trustworthy. But carbon dating is not an inexpensive process and this is why the few Tibetan or Chinese professors interested in the towers were never able to date them. When dating many towers from one single area, results obviously reinforce each other. This is what I usually did. The first 2 samples that I had sent in year 2000 came back with encouraging results: a tower in Kongpo was around 650 years old and the west twin Tower of Remede was dated circa 1038 to 1274 AD. To date, I have 6

dated 47 towers, the oldest one could be as old as 1200 years but most of them are around 700 years old. All the results are in the table in annex. If one counts both the towers still standing and the ruins beyond restoration, there are probably well over a thousand of them. It is very possible that we will, one day, find a much older tower. But the dating the towers by carbon dating wood samples from there beams has its limitation in fairly humid climate since once the tower is in ruin and its beams exposed to the rain, the wood tends to disintegrate. A thermoluminesence technique could be used, but collecting samples without exposing them to any light is a very difficult process. 2- ANCIENT TOWERS AROUND THE WORLD AND UNIQUENESS OF THE TOWERS OF THE TRIBAL CORRIDOR OF SOUTH -WEST CHINA 1) Ancient towers around the world As already mentioned, towers were, and still are, found all over the world. These towers are round or square; they can still be seen in large numbers in Ireland, Georgia, Greece and most Muslin territories. The most famous square towers are those of San Geminiano, Italy; their history is well recorded and they were mainly status symbols. The tallest round ones are usually religious “minarets” and, although some have reached over 60 meters, they resemble a tall chimney. They are very far from representing the architectural marvel of the largest star shaped towers in this study which are more than 11 meters (36 feet) wide at the base and close to 50 meters (165 feet) tall. There are also ancient hexagonal or octagonal towers, such as the Buddhist Chinese, Korean and Japanese “pagodas”. When these religious towering structures have 8 sides, thus being octagons, they are, in Mandarin Chinese called “Bajiaota” (eight-corner/angle-tour). I call the towers in this study “star-shaped” because, even when they have 8 outward-pointing corners, they also have 8 inward-pointing ones and consequently 16 sides. As a result they are not octagons. Nobody appears to have focused on that difference, since, when they have 8 outward-pointing corners, the towers of this survey are, in Chinese, designated by a name that could also designate an octagon. Indeed they are called Baguadiao 八卦碉 (eight-point-fortress), Bajiaodiao 八角碉 (eight-corner/angle-fortress), or bajiaolou 八角楼 (eight-corner/angle-building) Apart from the towers in this survey, there is only one other group of ancient star-shaped towers. These towers are only found in specific areas of Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan and they all are of the 16-sides kind. That is to say they all have 16 corners, eight of which point outwards while 8 are inward-pointing ones. These star–shaped structures were all built by the Turkish dynasties of the Seljuks and the Ghaznavids on the lands they ruled during the 11th and 12th centuries. These star-shaped towers were usually made of bricks and are not very tall because they were, in fact, the bottom part of taller round constructions. 2) Uniqueness of the stone star-shaped towers of South-west China The stone towers featured in this book have a set of very unusual characteristics; these specific traits are the very criteria that, in absence of any epigraphic remains and of any kind of significant documental information, enabled me to circumscribe my study and to classify these towers in a category of their own. 7

First of all, most of them very tall and free standing but, more important still, many have a shape that is found nowhere else: a very specific external shape that resemble a star with angles pointing outwards in numbers ranging from 5 to 12 and as many inward-pointing corners. As already explained they are totally different from hexagons or octagons. Their masonry style, also specific to these areas, always includes wooden beams inserted inside the stone work. These two characteristics are probably what have enabled so many of these towers to resist quasi annual tremors or earthquakes. It is amazing that these incredible constructions are all located in a few very remote mountainous areas. Although some valleys show traces of human occupation dating from 11000 B.C., (Van Driem Languages of the Himalayas, map 20, p.415), the populations that were living in these regions have been recorded in both Chinese and Tibetan historic texts as barbarians. There were no roads, no wheel and no written language, (with the exception of literary Tibetan used in Buddhist monasteries) until recent times... Designing and building these extraordinary structures must have required enormous efforts. What use could have justified such an expenditure of time and energy in places that were, at the time, and still today, very sparsely inhabited? 3- DEFINITION OF THIS STUDY AND TOWERS AS A CLUE TO ANCIENT TRIBES LOST MEMORY Astonished by the grandeur, uniqueness and sturdiness of these archaic sky-scrapers, as well as by the mystery dimming their origins, I decided to concentrate my research on these very sophisticated star-shaped towers. To my surprise, I was soon to discover, via the results of carbon dating wood samples from their old beams, that, both the shaped towers, and the tall square towers built in their vicinity, had been built during the same period. I therefore concluded that these tall square towers belonged to the same mysterious culture and I included them in my research. I also started to realize that a harnessing of cultural historical and archeological methodologies in the study of these epochal constructions would hold the most promise for illuminating the social and cultural universe of these quarters of the Sino-Tibetan Marches during what we call the Middle-Ages. Mud, wood and small square towers found in areas where no star-shaped towers are found are not part of this study, since the aim of this study is to determine if there was a “civilization of freestanding, often star-shaped, tall stone towers”. 1) Common characteristics shared by all the towers of this study, whether they are star-shaped or square, - Their outside walls are inward-sloping. This construction style, with a base larger than its top, lowers the center of gravity and thus adds stability; it is still used in contemporary houses in most of the Himalayas and neighboring regions. In the past it was widely employed by many different cultures and it can still be seen in the mud skyscrapers of Shibam, in Yemen and even in some humble Parisian houses dating from the Middle-Ages. - The interiors of the Sichuan star-shaped towers are round, those of the Kongpo towers somewhat resemble Andean crosses. The interiors of the square towers are square. Usually the towers have only peripheral walls; 8

these can be very thick, especially at the bottom. In the largest star-shaped towers the walls are about 1meter thick in the inwards pointing corners and up to 3 meters in the outwards pointing corners. At times there are reinforcing ridges, very seldom do we find partition walls - The floors were made of wood beams and planks and were linked by ladders. - Wood beams or planks, totally or partly inserted in the stone-work, are always used to link the walls together. The locals explain that this helps the constructions resist earthquakes. This technique is totally different from the seismic resistant masonry style customarily used in Lhasa, and in many regions of Central Asia, such as in Taxila, Pakistan. - The stones are always uncut, their size varies with the regions as well as the quantity of mortar used. The mortar is always dirt or clay, cement was never used. - Some of the Sichuan towers have sufficient remains to enable us to establish for sure that the roofs were flat, made of twigs recovered by rammed dirt, mixed with clay or oil, and supported by wooden beams. In Kongpo, the top part of the tower having disappeared, it is impossible to know what kind of roof was used. - Tibetan-style houses often have shallow foundations because the land is very rocky. I have not been able to find out how deep the towers’ foundations are. If this construction style is, obviously, efficient, it can only be customary of well forested districts since building a large tower can requires cutting down more than 40 fully grown trees. 2) The four different regions identified (defined) by groups of towers sharing all the same characteristics As I was thoroughly listing the characteristics of each tower, I came to noticed that, in fact, I could establish four groups of towers, each group sharing a number of common traits. Within each one of these groups the towers were fairly similar. But there were quite a few differences with the set of characteristics shown by the towers of the other groups. Each of these groups also corresponded to a different geographical “pocket”. It is only later, when I started researching the history of the different regions that I came to realize that the different groups of towers corresponded roughly to the ancestral lands of different ancient tribes. Three of these regions are in Sichuan and can be described as -the lands occupied by the contemporary Qiang of the Lixian and Maoxian counties -the region customarily called Jiarong, -the territories extending on both side of the Yalong River, from Muly in the south to Kanding in the East to Yajiang in the west and Daofu in the North The fourth region, Kongpo, is located in South-East Tibet 3) Continuity in the architectural characteristics of the towers, the very old, the old, and the contemporary houses Another point of importance is that both the very specific masonry that always includes some wood, positioned differently depending on the region, and the inside arrangements found in the towers are practically identical to the local techniques still used in contemporary traditional constructions. Since I have found quite a few very old houses, including a 700 hundred year old one, it would appear that the impoverished farmers who live around the towers are the descendants of the people who built the towers. As I already mentioned, since these areas were rarely traveled by outsiders and since there were no local written languages, very little is known about the history of the ancient tribes inhabiting the Tribal Corridor.

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However, there is one contemporary minority, the Qiang (Qiang “Zu”) that has been extensively studied by Chinese and western scholars alike. So I decided that studying the towers found in contemporary Qiang villages was a good starting point. PART 2: DIFFERENT STYLES OF TOWERS AND ANCESTRAL LANDS 1- TOWERS IN VILLAGES INHABITED BY CONTEMPORARY QIANG 1) Characteristics of these towers: They are not very tall and not quite freestanding since they are usually linked with houses, as they are part of fortified villages. The walls are not very thick, are built with small stones, lots of mortar and some wood beams inserted inside the masonry. These towers are round or square usually with reinforcing ridges on the outside of their walls. Typically, there was a wall built on the roof on the part of the tower facing the mountain so as to protect the back of the fighters who were facing the assailants coming from the lower part of the valley. This wall can still be seen in many towers. 2) Qiang “ren “ and Qiang “Zu” The Chinese ideogram “Qiang” is found in Chinese inscriptions centuries well before 1000 B.C. At the beginning they were probably nomads since their (Chinese) name is composed of the sign of a sheep above the sign of a man. Until the Han Dynasty, it is probable that all the tribes, whether aborigines or originating from elsewhere, living west of a then relatively small “China” were considered as “Qiang”. Many Western scholars think that the people early Chinese refered to as “Qiang” were different and sometimes unrelated tribes. During the Han Dynasty, the “people who lived in the south of the Tibetan plateau before the arrival of the Bod (Tibetan) people” were called “Mon tribe” but also “Xi Qiang” (Western Qiang) by the Chinese (Chen Zungxiang, Essay on Blockhouse Buildings in China). Such an imprecision should not surprise us: these were inhabitants of far away lands. I think the “Qiang” were all the tribes whose economy was based on sheep husbandry and who used sheep in their rituals. Obviously these people had, in a way, a common culture. Culture that was so ingrained that it lasted until recent times; many of the Qiang Tribes had specific names. These Qiang tribes are now identified as Qiang “ren” to differentiate them from the contemporary Qiang Minority called the Qiang “Zu”. In his 1400 page book “Languages of the Himalayas” Van Driem says that the Qiang “were one of the five barbarian nations who overran China in the 4th century AD”. Whether one can talk of a nation at such an early stage can be argued, but, at any rate he adds that “during the Sui (581-618) and Tang (618-907) Dynasties” (which is also the time of the rise of the Tibetan Empire), “the Qiang were driven off and dispersed”. Some of these tribes were then totally Tibetanized or Sinized and are now part of the genetic make up of the Tibetan or Han population, such as the inhabitants of Zhang Zhung or the Sumpi (Sum-pa in Tibetan). Other tribes fled and retained their identity for centuries. The best example are certainly the Dangxiang Qiang, who use the self-given name of “ Minyag” and who have created, in different areas, kingdom after kingdom, and still call themselves Minyag today. Another tribe could be the people identified as contemporary Qiang Zu. In the western world, not everybody is convinced that the modern Qiang Zu, most of whom now grow crops but who still use a white sheep in many of their rituals, are the direct descendants of these ancient Qiang “ren”.

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Today there are still two mutually unintelligible Qiang Languages, one in the North and one in the South. All the Qiang speak, and often read and write, Chinese. Different names of the towers (as reported by Sun Hongkai) -Qiang language of Heishui County: Ulu, elu, Auer -Qiang language of Wenchuan and Maoxian counties: Laodza 3) The Towers in contemporary Qiang Villages In the “Min Shan”, mountains north of Chengdu were the Min River flows, lie Maoxian and Lixian Counties where most of the contemporary Qiang live today. One can find numerous fortified Qiang hamlets harboring one or many towers. Now a days the tallest ones are only 20 meters (65 feet) high although D.C. Graham in “The Customs and Religion of the Ch’iang “ records many “100 feet tall towers”. There is a recurrent legend that I have heard in many Qiang villages: “Our ancestors were powerful and used to build very tall towers but, after losing an important battle they had to take refuge in the poorest mountains and were prohibited, by the Emperor who defeated them, to built tall towers”. Chinese Annals tell of a similar story. Many of the Qiang villages are built around a spring or and the water is channeled through the village by stone ditches, thus enabling the villagers to resist lengthy sieges. All the towers and houses are built with small stones and large amounts of mortar; it is impossible to see a difference between the construction technique of the houses and that of the towers. The mortar is dirt or clay and even in contemporary houses, very little cement is used. Such mortar allows the stones to be used over and over again in successive constructions. Near Lixian, there is an ancient Qiang village, Taoping, situated on a well traveled road and which is already a tourist destination. Chinese experts believe that this Qiang settlement is more than 1000 years old, since it is described in Chinese Annals. The oldest of the three samples of wood that I collected came from a tower in the hamlet of Ying Zui, in Heihu County, and was only 600 years old. It is obvious from their location in the fortified villages, and confirmed by the community elders, that these towers were originally built for defense. As the locals make clear, the houses, and the linked towers, were constantly being used and repaired, some until the 19th century, so it is impossible to know which piece of wood was part of the original construction. As a consequence it is not possible to date accurately a Qiang tower by carbon dating samples of its beams. Nevertheless, one very interesting feature of these towers, especially in the Heihu area where the Qiang from the “Black Tiger” tribe live, is their shape. They are round or square and almost always with buttress-like ridges on the outside of their walls making them star-shaped. Most of the towers have eight ridges but it can be any number from five to twelve. One can also see these buttress-like ridges on the outside walls of the houses and the inhabitants explain that these ridges help the constructions resist the very frequent earthquakes.

2- THE KINGDOM OF WOMEN, THE “JIARONG” VALLEYS, THEIR SEMI LEGENDARY 18 KINGDOMS AND THEIR TOWERS 1) Common characteristics of these towers.

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This is the region where the towers are the most numerous and the tallest. All of them are free-standing and most of them are square. When they are star-shaped, they have outward-pointing corners in numbers ranging from 5 to 13 with as many inward-pointing ones. The door is always far above the ground and the part of the tower below that door is solid masonry. 2) The Jiarong Region To the west and north of the Qiang “Zu” area lies another region where towers are found in great number: the renowned and somewhat mysterious Jiarong territories (“rGlayl-rong” in Tibetan) whose limits varied through time. These territories usually encompassed most of northwest Sichuan, with two notable exceptions: the area of the famous and powerful Dege kingdom and the lands inhabited by the ferocious Golok Tribes. Although it is also today the name of a group of Tibetans, the “Jiarong” Tibetans, Jiarong is originally a topographical name. As explained by Van Driem (Languages of the Himalayas), the Tibetan word “rGyalrong” probably stands for “Sar rGyal-mo Tsa-ba Ron” or the “Eastern Queen’s hot valleys”. Local legends link the “queen” with the native Bon goddess associated with mount dMu-rDo (pinyin Muerdo), a splendid mountain towering at 4820 meters and dominating the Danba valleys. But it could also stem from the queen of the “Eastern Queen Kingdom”. 3) The Kingdom of women A women’s kingdom is frequently mentioned in the Chinese Annals. As early as the Sui (581-618 AD) and the Tang (618-907AD) Dynasties it was described as a kingdom, ruled by a queen, where men had a secondary role. Paul Pelliot wrote about 20 pages about this semi-legendary kingdom, maybe linked with the Sumpi tribe, which might in fact have been two kingdoms, one in the West, and one in the East. The latest could have been located in the contemporary “Jiarong” area, where towers, mostly square, are found in great number and where gold has been plentiful since historical times. In the Chinese Annals, gold has very frequently been linked with this kingdom of women where it is said that “the queen lived in a nine story (square) tower and the commoners in six story ones”. In the Tibetan sources, the Eastern Kingdom of Women is also often mentioned and the Clan of the women rulers of this kingdom is called “lDong” (Stein, Legendes ancestrales….) These people were classified by the Chinese as Qiang. Stein also considers that some Sumpi were Qiang and their clan name was, until the VIII century, sTong, gTong and lDong; these being different pronunciations of the same word. It is possible that the last direct descendants of the Kingdom of Women are the people living in Zhaba. They still have a matriarchal family system, speak a language probably of Giangtic origins and still build towers in which they live. Very little research has been published about them. 4) The “Eighteen Kingdoms of rGyalrong” (Jiarong in pinyin) During most of the Ming (1368 to 1644) and of the Manchu Qing (1644 to 1911) Dynasties, that area, then called Jinchuan, the “gold river” by the Chinese, was partly under the Chinese, or Manchu, Empire’s loose control after the instauration of the “Tusi” system. The indigenous chiefs were left as rulers of their population while receiving honorary titles and paying tributes to the central government. For many Western scholars the “Tusi” system is the beginning of what the Tibetan sources call the “18 kingdoms of rGyalrong”. The number 18 in itself is not very reliable since it is a traditional number very often used

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in Tibetan legends. Many different lists of these “kingdoms” have been put together by Western scholars, usually based on Manchu reports. This is why, when I asked Western scholars for information about the “18 rGyalrong kingdoms” during the period from 1000 AD to 1500 A.D, I was told “these came much later”. This survey seems to prove that not only did these kingdoms exist but they might date from before the Yuan Dynasty (Mongols who ruled China from 1277 to 1367). As I traveled through the different “Jiarong” valleys, many of the villages had one or many free-standing towers and the names of these villages were the very names of the sometimes-believed-to-be-legendary kingdoms! Since most of these towers have been dated to be around 700 years old, these villages, each of them controlling a wealthy agricultural valley and being the potential “kingdom” of a warlord, are quite ancient and certainly not imaginary. As mentioned before, practically every village has a language that is totally different from the languages spoken in the nearby villages. That seems to indicate that each “kingdom” remained fiercely independent for a long period of time. 5) Who are the “Jiarong People” Here again there is no written language and consequently no locally written history. Since Jiarong is a topographic name it sheds little light on the ethnic origins of the inhabitants. During the 19th century, Western explorers traveling in the Jiarong area reported it was named the land of “Mantze”. This is how the Chinese then called most of the lands of the Tribal Corridor. This term was even more widely used during the 13th century; Marco Polo never went to northwest Sichuan, but he does mention the land of the “Manzi” and represents it on the map as all the southern lands under Mongol control. Marco Polo never heard about the towers and never ventured into the areas of the towers although his travels took him into nearby regions. As mentioned by Stein (quoting Bowels in “Mi-nag et Si-Hia” p.227 and note 7), it seems that some of the “rGyalrong Kingdoms” extended to areas populated by Minyag people, and I have even met local learned men who believe that all the Jiarong area was once populated by people who called themselves Minyag. Some of the Minyag kings had Jiarong names and were certainly of Jiarong origin. (Or at least they had been in Jiarong for a long time, since it is often how people got their name). As explained by R.A. Stein (Les Tribus Anciennes ….), the “18 rGyalrong Kingdoms” were recorded in Tibetan texts as populated by aboriginal tribes whose clan names were sBra, dBra (also written ‘Bras or Adra) and sometimes lDong. That last name, as we have already seen, was also attached to the Sumpi, the queens of the Kingdom of Women and the Minyag (including the lineage of the some of the Kings of Sikkim) Some scholars, such as Deng Tingliang, believe that the Jiarong are the direct descendents of a Qiang Tribe, the QingYi tribe. It is true that they are quite a few similarities between the Qiang and many Jiarong inhabitants, more specifically those of the Danba valleys. The Jiarong valleys used to be a stronghold of the “Bon” religion. This is why some Japanese scholars believe that the Jiarong are the descendants of people from Zhang Zhung, the semi-legendary Bonpo kingdom destroyed by Song Stein Gong Po during the seventh century. Samten Karmay, a native of Northern Jiarong, now a researcher at the CNRS in Paris and an expert in Bon, absolutely disagrees with this interpretation P. Mansier explains that, during the wars of the 18th centuries, many of the Bonpo monasteries were destroyed by the Emperor’s armies who then turned them into Gelug-pa, the Dalai Lamas “yellow hats” sect, monasteries.

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In conclusion, the region now called Jiarong, has been, since historical times, sandwiched between the harsh Himalayas that were to become the cradle of the Tibetan Lamaism Culture and the rich low elevation plains of the highly sophisticated Ancient Shu Kingdom that was to become the bread basket of China. Amid these two very different and expanding cultures, aboriginal and displaced tribes, invaders, bandits and traders, fought and intermingled. Therefore the Jiarong population is a melting pot, a case of what the Chinese call ” and that the Tibetan old texts use to explain as a “land of horses, and people, all of motley color” (Stein: Les Tribus Anciennes des Marches Sino-Tibetaines). This is well reflected in the nine or ten mutually unintelligible languages or dialects that are spoken in this region where, to communicate with people from the next valley, many people use Mandarin Chinese that they often also read and write since it is taught in schools. Van Driem (in his 1400 page book about Himalayan languages published in 2001) mentions that little is know about the numerous Jiarong dialects but he says that they are probably various separate languages all related to the Minyag and Qiang languages. A French linguist, Guillaume Jacques, has just written a thesis on a Jiarong language. He has found that there are at least five different groups of Jiarong languages, each with a few dialects. Quite inconvenient for an area representing 30.000 km2, about 25% of New York State! The three mutually unintelligible forms of Tibetan are also used. Because of the influence of Bon and Buddhism and of the traditional trade routes between Tibet and China passing through this region, traders, travelers and monks speak “Kham Gay”, a sort of Tibetan “lingua franca”. “Amdo Tibetan” is spoken by the nomads roaming the higher elevations where they live in tents close to their herds; surprisingly this nomadic language is also spoken in a few villages inhabited by sedentary farmers. Learned lay men and lamas speak and read Classical Tibetan. Since 1950 the inhabitants of the Jiarong valleys have, as most of the populations who practice Buddhism or “Bon”, been attached the Tibetan Minority, with whom they share many customs and many words. Most of the Jiarong people consider themselves Tibetan but they are, nevertheless, quick to add that they are “different from the Tibetans from Tibet”. 6) Towers in Northern Jiarong near Ma’erkang (Barkham in Tibetan): Songgang, Baish’er and Zhousejia (Khroskyabs in Tibetan) These towers are located in villages built in rich agricultural plains (around 2500 to 3000 meters of altitude) where valleys and trading routes met. A- In Songgang one finds two star-shaped towers, both of the 8 outward pointing corners kind, and both are in good condition. One is right in the village and the other is on a nearby ridge from which one can view far into the three main valleys. The taller of the two towers is about 50 meters tall. This is its original height since one can clearly see the bulging decorative pattern at its top. Carbon-dating indicates it is about 700 years old. On a nearby hill there are two smaller square towers in ruins, both with a good view of a smaller valley. The starshaped towers were built with fairly large stones and using mortar sparsely. People call the three towers standing outside the village, “fenghoutai” 烽火台, which means “beacon” in Chinese. B- In the middle of the village of Baish’er there is one star shaped tower in good condition and close to 40 meters tall (130 feet). This is its original height since one can also see the bulging wall at the top. On a nearby look-out ridge stands a square tower partly in ruins. Via carbon-dating a beam, this tower was dated to be between 620 to 820 years old. Here also the stones are fairly large and little mortar was used.

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As in the Qiang villages, many houses have buttress-like ridges and the inhabitants explain that these ridges allow the houses, and the towers, to resist quasi-annual earthquakes. An amazing technical discovery, whose efficiency is well proven since in that area, all the star-shaped towers are proudly standing while the square towers have all partially fallen. C- Not far from there, in the village of Zhousejia (Khro-skyabs in Tibetan), stands a star-shaped tower with 6 outward-pointing corners. I have not yet seen this tower but the photo has been graciously provided by Samten Karmay. D- Square Towers are found in many other villages but I have not yet dated them. Dareji, a local woman whom I met in New York where she is now studying, recalls a story her grandmother told her about the nine square towers standing in her village: the head man had nine sons so he had to build nine towers. 7) Towers in the Danba Valleys of Southern Jiarong In the Danba area valleys, all situated between 2000 and 2600 meters of altitude, there is often no central village. The pretty houses painted in cheerful colors, and dozens of towers are spread over the mountain slopes where terraced fields and groves entwine. Water is plentifully supplied by numerous little springs. The soil is rich, and the climate is amazingly warm for the altitude, which allows two harvests per year. The often snow-capped rMu-do Mountain appears to watch benevolently over its flocks. Gold used to be found in its rivers and earthquakes here are relatively rare. If Shangri-la were to exist, it would resemble Danba. Even today, one cannot avoid falling under its spell…I certainly did, and I bought a house there. This relatively easy life might explain why monks and monasteries are few in the area. Most of the local people are Buddhist or Bonpo but not very religious; they catch and eat fish. Meat is eaten all over Kham and Tibet but not fish. It probably was not so in the past, since Zhong Lu, apart from having numbers of “Slade Coffins” where 4000 year old potteries have been unearthed also boasts six monasteries. Most of them are empty and all are in grim condition but two of them harbor ancient murals painted by highly skilled artists. One monastery is said to be from the “black-hat” sect (Bon-po); I sent a wood sample from one of its beams to carbon-dating and the analysis yielded calibrated dates of circa 1180 to 1290 AD. The towers are called “K’a” and many have names depicting human characteristics. In Pujiaoding we find a “smart tower” and a “cunning tower”. In Zhonglu we have “Ka Pi” the “model tower” with was thought to be the oldest, but turned out to be “only” around 650 years old. Local scholars believe that towers were once counted in the thousands in the numerous Danba valleys. I have seen more than 100 square towers still standing, and still of a fair size, disseminated over many mountain slopes. There are also ten eight-corner star-shaped towers, usually one per mountain slope (that is to say per village), one five-corner tower and one thirteen-corner star-shaped tower. The later is in urgent need of restoration, last summer I paid a local man to install some wooden supports. The star-shaped towers are usually situated on a ridge where one can often also see the ruins of a castle. The reason for their sophisticated shape seems more to distinguish them from the more common square towers than as a protection against seismic occurrence. Of all the towers in the area, I can remember at least half a dozen, all of which are square, that still have their top decorating pattern and thus their full original height. One is 40 meters tall, the others are around 30 meters high. People say that some towers were 60 to 70 meters tall. I have never seen one that tall, but it is likely that the tallest ones were the first to fall. In southern Jiarong, not one of the star-shaped towers remains complete. They do not appear to have been as well built or as tall as the Northern Jiarong towers. Many square towers (as old as or older than the local starshaped ones) are still standing, nearly intact, so they were probably better built than the star-shaped ones. It is 15

likely that building square towers was a skill that had been mastered after centuries of practice by the local builders but that building the “fancy” shaped ones (featuring from 5 to 13 outward-pointing corners and as many inward-pointing ones) was an “imported” fashion that had not yet been fully mastered. This is confirmed by the legend about the Pujiaoding 13 corner star-shaped tower: “A local king wanted an extraordinary tower but nobody knew how to build him one; a Tibetan woman designed a 13 corner tower on the ground using a ball of string. The king got his tower and married the woman”. This tower is only about 500 years old and nearly half of it has fallen. It is said that there was another 13 corner star-shaped tower on another mountain but it collapsed a long time ago. As already mentioned, there is another legend that says that a tower had to be built by a family at the birth of a son. But in Danba it is added that only the base of a tower was then built, and that a new story was added at each of the boy’s birthdays. Many towers do appear to have been built in successive layers. But in fact there might be another explanation: that these towers were built by Minyag people since these apparent layers are in fact the trace of the wood planks that encircled the towers. This technique is used, not only in every tower in the Minyag area, but also in many contemporary Minyag houses. In the area of Danba alone, 5 different mutually unintelligible languages are spoken. (Not counting Mandarin Chinese) The topography is probably in part responsible for this state of affairs: within a few miles of Danba, four rivers, run into each other to form the Tung He, now named the Dadu River. In the Jiarong 嘉绒 area, the towers are also called by the Chinese words of -Hur de (built by the “Hur”, Tu Minority from today’s Qinghai Province) -Hor de (built by “Northern” people, could be Uighur, Xixia Minyag or Mongols) On a mountain slope one day away (by foot) from Danba there are some ruins said to be “of one of Genghis Khan’s houses”. Khubilai’s armies did pass through Ma’erkang and Danba in 1253 on their way to conquer the Dali Kingdom. If the towers had been essentially defensive structures one would have expected the fierce Mongols to destroy most of them. 5) TOWERS OF THE YALONG VALLEY AND OF THE CHALA KINGDOM: SOME OF THE MINYAG ANCESTRAL LANDS 1) Common characteristics of these towers: Most of these towers are of the star-shaped kind but always with 16 sides (8 outward-pointing corners and 8 inward-pointing ones). A small number of them are square; by and large the square towers are found sitting on mountain tops. The door is always located far above the ground and the part of the tower below that door is solid masonry. All these towers are usually built with big stones, little mortar, and wood beams inserted inside the stone work. As with most of the contemporary houses, the towers are always encircled with thin wooden planks. 2) An extraordinary history: that of the Minyag people The Qiang never called themselves Qiang. On the contrary, the word Mi-nyag is the self-given name of the ancient tribe (probably Tibeto-Burman), which the Chinese called the Dangxiang and which they also classified as a Qiang tribe. Old Tibetan texts also use the word Minyag when referring to this specific tribe. The Chinese Annals sometimes use the words Mou-ya or Mi-yao (“yao” written with an ideogram that was pronounced “yak” in ancient Chinese)

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In ancient texts, the references to the Minyag are numerous but confusing since it is both the self-given name of a group of tribes and also the name used to refer to the various kingdoms they created in different places. These people had a strong sense of identity that they have kept through their history, for more than 2000 years. Historical records describe the Minyag people as good builders and good horse breeders. It is also recorded that some kings of Sikkim are from Minyag descent. A- Minyag in ancient times As early as 200 B.C., the Dangxiang, were said, in the Han Dynasty Annals, to inhabit the highlands of today’s northern Sichuan and southern Qinghai Provinces around the head waters of the Yellow River, at least 300 km south of Kokonor (Van Driem, Languages of the Himalayas page 450). As explained by R.A. Stein (quoting Bowels in “Mi-nag et Si-Hia” p.227 and note 7) “Menia” was the name of a group of twelve aboriginal tribes who spoke non-Tibetan dialects and who inhabited the Yalong valley all the way from Tatsienlou (modern Kanding) to Kokonor. It is important to note that “Yalong” is the Chinese name of that river, and its Tibetan name is “Nyag-ron”. B-The Minyag at the time of the “Tibetan Empire” During the 6th and 7th centuries, there might have been some kind of Minyag “Kingdom” in northwest Sichuan, to the west of today’s Songpan. R.A. Stein mentions (“Mi-nyag et Si-hia”, page 228) some references in Chinese Tang Annals to “Mou-ya” people living in that area after having surrendered to the Tibetans. References also in Tibetan texts: the very famous Tibetan king Songtsen Gampo, who lived in the 7th Century, had a wife from the “Ruyong Clan, the family of the King of Minyag” (R.A. Stein, “Tibetan Civilization”, p.62,) at a time when he had conquered the Duomi, the Sumbi (Sum-pa in Tibetan), some Tuyuhun (then called A-zha by the Tibetans) and some Qiang (including some Dangxiang) tribes. It is also said that then “the Sum-pa tribes were sent to guard the borders of the Minyag Country” (R.A. Stein, “Les Tribus Anciennes…” page 43). Minyag and Chinese (sic) architects were asked by the Tibetan king gLan-dar-ma to build the Temple of gLantan sgron-ma, situated in Kham, in the early 9th century (R. A. Stein, Mi-nag et Si-hia, page 227 and 230) C-The “Old Minyag” or Tangut Kingdom Most of the references about Minyag are about the “Minyag of the North”. This “Old Minyag” kingdom was created by other Dangxiang Qiang tribes who, during the 7th century, were chased west and away from the vicinity of Lake Kokonor (Qinghai Province) where they had been for centuries, by the Tibetans. By the year 1036 the “Minyag of the North” Kingdom had grown in size and in power, had attracted many different ethnic groups including the “Tocharian” of Aryan origins, had invented a sophisticated original written language and had been given its independence by the emperor of China. Many of its inhabitants, but not all of them, were calling themselves “Minyag”. (As did the other Dangxiang Qiang tribes who were, earlier, mentioned as living in Northwest Sichuan). The Chinese named this kingdom Daxia or Xixia and the Western travelers would later call its inhabitants “Tangut” which was the Mongol name for the Dangxiang Qiang tribes and thus was the term used by Marco Polo. The word “Tangut” has, in some translations, sometimes been mistakenly used to describe the Tibetans. (Van Driem, “Languages of the Himalayas”, p. 448 and 449). At the height of its power, this then Buddhist kingdom was comprised of modern Ninxia, Shanxi and most Gansu provinces as well as part of Inner Mongolia to the north (Cambridge Encyclopedia, map 10, page 171). In 1227 the kingdom was attacked and destroyed by the Mongols. D-The “Kham Minyag” In Tibetan and Chinese texts we also find another “Minyag”, sometimes called Minyag of the South or “Kham Minyag” in Tibetan books. (Mathias Hermanns, Die Nomades Von Tibet, p.11). This is a smaller kingdom, maybe 17

mentioned as “Fu Guo’ in the Chinese Annals of the Sui and Tang Dynasty (Sun Hongkai, “A Preliminary Investigation..’), that was later named “Chala” on the Manchu/Chinese maps of the Qing Dynasty. It then consisted of part of today’s Sichuan province, including present day towns of Luhuo, Daofu, Kanding, Yajiang, and extending well to the South of the famous sacred mountain “Minyag Gongka”, past Jiulong and as far as Muly. It is not clear whether this “Kham Minyag” always existed as an independent state or was, at times, a part of other “kingdoms”.

3) Towers in ancient Minyag territory. A-Sade towers South of the Jiarong area, along the new asphalt road that runs for about 120 miles from Xindujiao to Juilong, one can see a dozen of towers within a 35-mile stretch; all but two of them are star-shaped with 8 outwardpointing corners. Two of them (the ones my friend Michel Peissel had seen) are side by side, quasi identical, and still in perfect condition; they do not appear to have been rebuilt. The wooden floors have been restored by the locals who now use the towers to store tsa-tsa (clay Buddhist offerings). The flat traditional roofs of dammed dirt over beams and twigs are also new and the original tops of the towers seem to have been cropped. On the outside the openings are small but on the inside they are fairly large and could allow an archer to stand and shoot arrows. These twin towers are massive: the diameter of the base is about 11 meters and the height is close to 30 meters. At the bottom some stones are as big as a car. The construction is extremely precise; each of the 16 sides has the same size, within a few inches. What an achievement when one uses uncut stones!! Two wood samples from two different medium sized beams from inside the west twin tower have been dated to be around 800 years old. There are four more towers in that village, Remede, which stands at about 3300 meters above see level; a few other towers can be seen along the road that follows the river. All these towers are star-shaped, in ruins and built with smaller stones. The four that I dated are about 700 years old. On a nearby ridge, there is also the base of a square tower that is said, by the villagers, to have been very tall and from which top one must have been able to see faraway into the valley. In another village, Laha, about 20 miles down the road in the direction of Jiulong, stands a lone square tower, also in ruins. Wood from this tower turned out to be 770 -/+ 50 years old, thereby confirming the results of the western twin tower. People from Laha say that there used to be many towers on the top of the surrounding mountains, from where one had a good view far along the river. This river, a few miles past the last tower, makes a sharp turn and runs into the same Yalong (Nyag-ron) River along which the first “Minyag” tribes had been recorded during the 7th century. Some 60 miles higher on this river, is the town of Yajiang (Tibetan Nyagquka) a famous ancient trading center. A few miles from Yajiang there is a village that is still named Bajiaodiao (Chinese word meaning eight-corner-tower/fortress); elders from that village confirmed the previous existence of star-shaped towers; now, nothing is left. B-Jiulong towers Joseph Rock mentions a village near Jiulong with numerous leaning, or partly fallen, towers as he tells of his travel from the Yunnan Province to Kanding.(National Geographic Magazine, October 1930) Two photos of the towers, and a dozen of lines about them, appears in the 15 page article. One of the photos shows a star-shaped tower that, in spite of its broken top part, appears to be well over 30 meters tall. It is clearly dangerously leaning and Mr. Rock thought it should be taken down. This is exactly what the inhabitants did in 1985.

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But after interviewing local elders and village officials I found out about many other such towers. Some starshaped, always of the 8-pointed kind, some square. The ones inside the villages had all been taken down, since five houses can be built with the stones of one tower. Some ruins could be seen on the top of the surrounding mountains but most were practically inaccessible. Jiulong was also a famous trading center on one of the “Cha Ma Gu Dao” as early as the Han Dynasty. These Chinese words (tea-horse-old-road) refer to the silk, tea and salt ancient trade route for these expensive goods, from the Shu Kingdom (where Chengdu stands today) into Burma. Similar routes went into Tibet and into the Tangut Kingdom. The pack animals were horses or mules. C-Muly towers. In the Muly region, not far from where the Yalong River runs into the Yangtze, I had been told about an isolated village, Luopo, where towers were still standing. As elsewhere, the towers in the village had been destroyed but one could easily see three ruins, each on the top of a nearby mountain. After a 30-minute motor-bike ride followed by a two-hour trek, I reached the very interesting ruin of an 8 corner star-shaped tower. It was only about four meters tall but one could still see the place where the wood-circling had been. Most of the wood had rotted away but I finally found one large piece. Its analysis yielded a calibrated radiocarbon date of 1240 to 1300 AD. I immediately informed the Sichuan Cultural Bureau which called the local government to make them aware of the importance of that ruin. It might be the southern-most star-shaped tower left, less than 100 km away from the border with Yunnan Province. 4-About the contemporary Minyag people It appears that contemporary Minyag people all speak the same language, with a few dialectic forms, which includes many Tibetan words and expressions but is also related to the language of the Old Minyag, itself related to the Qiang language. (Van Driem, “Languages of the Himalayas”). Many people speak Chinese and travelers speak “Kham Gay”, a Tibetan “lingua franca”. Minyag is the name of an ethnic group and more than just the name of the inhabitants of the Tangut Kingdom (Xixia), very many of whom were not of ethnic Minyag descent. The fact that many of the modern Sichuan Minyag are not descendants of the Xixia Diaspora seemed to be confirmed by an explanation given by Van Driem (Languages of the Himalayas, page 451) quoting reports by Huang (1985) and by Sun (1983) showing that the Sichuan Minyag verbal agreement morphology is more elaborate than that of Tangut as described by Ksenija Borisovna Kepping (1981, 1982, 1985 and 1994a). He adds that this makes sense “in view of the fact that the ancestors of the Minyag did not undergo the upheaval of migration that the Tangut underwent”. The fact that at least two towers were built before 1227 would also confirm that the “Minyag of the south” must have existed before, and then survived, the destruction of the “Old” Kingdom of Minyag. Name of the towers in Minyag (木雅 Muya: pinyin transcription) language Eluo, Wolong, Wu (Sun Hongkai says these are clearly different pronunciations of the Qiang word,) There is no Minyag written language; literary Tibetan is used in the religious literature. The Minyag people are officially part of the Tibetan minority to whom they feel close since they also are devout Buddhists. Nevertheless, many of them are proud of their Minyag identity and do not consider themselves Tibetan. I was told by various local lamas that all the region’s monasteries were destroyed by the Mongols in the late 13th century. Once again, why would the Mongols destroy the monasteries but leave the towers standing?

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I was not able to date any monastery in that area but the oldest books that I have seen are said to be around 670 years old. One of the possible explanations is that Tibetan books were all written by hand and extremely rare and fragile until 1410 when the first woodblock print of the Kanjur was produced in Beijing. (Bryan Cuevas, The Hidden History of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, 2003)

4- KONGPO AND THE KONGPO TOWERS 1) The Kongpo Region and the Kongpo people Today Kongpo is part of the Chinese “Tibet Autonomous Region”. It is a land of steep mountains and immense forests inhabited by numerous monkeys whose skin is used by the locals to line their most expensive silk chasubles. At 3500 meters of altitude, lies the “Pasum Tso” (Tibetan name), an incredibly beautiful turquoisecolored lake which is famous in Tibetan mythology. Numerous legends are associated with its waters, many of them linked to Ling Gesar, one of the most famous Tibetan heroes. Very little is known about the origin of the Kongpo people and once again there is no written history since there is no local written language. Many Tibetan books, including the texts that were to become the famous “Book of the Dead”, give a prominent place to Kongpo in the origins of the Tibetan Empire of the 7th, 8th and 9th centuries. It is even possible that Songtsen Gampo would have been a descendant of the Nyatrhi Clan from Kongpo. But since all the texts of the “Great Liberation upon hearing in the Bardo” actually derived from a single textual tradition only reaching back to the late 14th century (as it is the case with most Tibetan ancient texts), their value as historical records of long past events is limited. Kongpo might have become independent around 850 AD at the end of the “Great Tibet” since the famous Thangtsong Sam rGyal-po (Tibetan name) is said to have “reopened the Tibet road to Kongpo” by building a metal bridge in the late 15th century “. Today the Kongpo people consider themselves Tibetan. They all believe in the creation myth of the children of the she-demon and the monkey. The contemporary Jiarong and Minyag people as well as the “Tamang” of Nepal, who are also Buddhist, and the “Qiang Zu” mentioned earlier, who are not Buddhist, also believe in the same creation myth. As explained to me by Nicolas Tournadre, linguist, professor, and CNRS researcher, the Pasum Tso language is not a Tibetan dialect and it appears to have many similarities with the Qiang languages. As mentioned earlier, the Jiarong languages and the contemporary Minyag language (George Van Driem, Languages of the Himalayas,) are listed as Qiangtic Languages. Today monks, learned men and most of the commoners, -many of who, incidentally, are not from Kongpo but have been relocated there from other areas of Tibet- can speak Tibetan and sometimes write literary Tibetan. 2) The Kongpo Towers From far away these amazing towers appear star-shaped but in fact they are quite different from the ones found in Sichuan. Their outside as well as inside shape resemble the “Andean” cross with 90-degree angles, the result of a construction made of enormous interlocking rectangular pillars. Most of the towers have 12 outward-pointing 20

corners, as well as 12 inward-pointing ones, consequently presenting 24 sides! A few towers are of a simpler shape with 8 outward-pointing corners, 4 inward-pointing one and consequently 12 sides. This kind of tower is probably not as stable and most of them have nearly totally collapsed. All the towers must have been similar in size; their bases are 8 to 10 meters wide and their height must have been 30 to 40 meters. They are built with small stones and lots of mortar, like the Qiang constructions. All the roofs and the top parts have collapsed, but one tower still stands at close to 35 meters (120 feet). The Sichuan towers used to have a flat dirt roof supported by wooden beams. They also had a kind of thickening of the wall at the level of the roof. This style of construction with a flat roof and a bulge at the top of the wall, usually decorated with small pillars, is found in every traditional Qiang or Tibetan building (house, monastery or tower) built in not too humid a climate: that is to say Ladakh, Mustang, most of Tibet and Sichuan. In Bhutan, Nepal, as well as in Kongpo and other places where the climate is humid, the contemporary buildings have Swiss-chalet type roofs. It is impossible to know what kind of roof the Kongpo towers had. The door is at ground level thereby making them hard to defend. Why build such an impressive structure when the door can so easily be rammed? The other openings are very small, prohibiting any defensive use. One could maybe fire a gun through them but guns, probably invented by the Arabs in 1306, were not used when most of the towers where built. These Kongpo towers do not appear well fitted for defense and, except for what might have been a few houses, there are no remains of what they would have been defending. In four trips, I have seen about 30 towers in Kongpo, most of them in ruins and standing in seven groups; the local government has counted a total of about 80 towers. Three groups are in the Pasum Tso valley and one group, the most interesting because 5 fairly tall towers are still standing, is a few miles away, in Xuiba, along the Gyamda River (Nyang Chu in Tibetan). From 1998 to 2004, I collected 14 wood samples; one of these towers could possibly be as old as 1220 years. The carbon 14 calibrated evaluation indicated that there was a 95% chance that this piece of wood had died between 780 and 1010 AD, making this sample the oldest one I found. Most of these towers seam to be around 800 years old. There are many legends about the towers, none of them shedding much light on their possible raison d’etre. In 1935, the explorer and botanist Frank Kingdon Ward visited Kongpo and noticed the towers. He wrote that no one knew who built them but recalls two “possible” explanations: that they could have been built by the indigenous Kongpo people to defend themselves against the Tibetans, or that, 200 years ago, the Tibetans built them as a defense against the wild “Pobas” (Pom-ba, the people from Pome a region West of Kongpo). I have personally heard other “explanations” that are not much more credible: -the towers were used to produce a lot of smoke intended to make rain in times of drought; but Kongpo is an area of good rainfall, and there is no trace of tar on the inside walls. -the towers were used for trapping birds of prey which would dive into the towers in pursuit of their baited quarry (also reported by Gyurme Dorje). -some also claim that these were towers of pride and the “camping grounds” of Songtsen Gampo’s army. He is the most famous Tibetan King ….but he died in 650 or 667, more than a hundred years before any tower that I have dated. Another legend, this one from Tibetan texts, is that the towers were built by “demons” (“bad people”), headed by Ling Gesar’s enemy, Dud Achum –Gyelpo. As a result the towers are sometime called, bdud khang (Tibetan for “demons houses”). Usually they are called “Kar” or “Dzong kar”; a Tibetan word used, in Tibet proper, when speaking about a castle or fortress.

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CONCLUSION The title of this book refers to a Secret, so the reader will now expect, as he is reading the conclusion, to see the mystery of the towers revealed. Therefore I should answer at least the one question: why these believed-to-be primitive tribes of the Tribal Corridor, felt the need, and deployed the efforts, to build such extraordinary constructions? We do not know yet, for sure, the ethnic make-up of the people who inhabited these regions at the time. But we have seen that the characteristics of the towers vary significantly in relation to the area where they stand. Therefore, I will, for now, refer to the towers, for the sake of clarity and without making a definite claim as to who their builders were, by the name of the region where they stand. Later publications will deal with the possible identity of the builders. Let me just say that Chinese experts consider that the towers have all been built by Qiang “ren” (Qiang tribes). This theory is, in a way, probably correct, since, in historical times, most of the tribes living to the west of China were considered as “Qiang” including the Minyag, the Sum-pi, and possibly some of the ancestors of the Tibetans. But these tribes had differences since they already had different names 2000 years ago. In the harsh and fragmented environment of the Tribal Corridor and after hundreds if not thousands of years of alliances, conquests, invasions and mingling, many realms of unclear ethnic identity had emerged, and their people started, somewhat simultaneously, to build structures unlike anything else that existed in the world. They might also have “invented”, and put in use, for the first time the concept of “twin towers”. Nevertheless, if they are comparable, these extraordinary towering constructions, are in fact, as we have seen, quite different depending of the region. Consequently it is unlikely that they were all built by the same tribe. About the four different uses of the towers We have already established that they were not religious structures. In some places towers and monasteries are in close proximity and were built practically at the same time, as in Zhong Lu, but the towers are neither mentioned in the religious books nor recalled in religious oral legends. Nor were these towers built as monuments to historically important personages. In a sparsely inhabited environment, there should not have been, at times, half a dozen of them so close to each other. Could they have been built, as the pyramids or other ancient constructions, as a celestial map? It seems unlikely. In this part of Asia, there are no buildings known to be celestial maps, and, since these tribes had no written language, they could not transmit the necessary kind of knowledge from generation to generation. Since the towers are, often in small groups, in the middle of villages, most of them certainly do not mark the frontier of a kingdom. The climate always plays a critical role in the choice of materials and consequently in the building style. But this is not the likely explanation for the differences among the towers, since both stones and trees are plentiful in all these different regions. 22

In the absence of written documents describing why the towers were built, we have to rely on a careful study of each of their characteristics that is, to study their location in relation to their geographical environment, and the size and position of their openings. Obviously, regular, low buildings are built for different reasons, so the same must be expected of the towers After a careful study of the towers’ location, we can distinguish four main settings, and consequently four different uses: 1-Towers situated in fortified villages As we have seen, the ancient towers that are found in contemporary Qiang villages, still built as fortified hamlets, are definitively defensive structures. But in times of peace, they certainly also played a role as status symbol, as already mentioned, in the “Annals of Wenchuan County” that records ”… the wife of the last king of Chen Dynasty (538-589 A.D.), gave birth in the Su village (苏村) . The inhabitants of the Su village had built a sevenstory blockhouse for the event”. 2-Towers disseminated over mountain slopes that are not on main trading routes and often hidden from view The Danba towers, towering to incredible heights or featuring sophisticated shapes, disseminated over the mountains slopes among the cheerful houses, were certainly used for storage and eventually for defense but were, according to legend, mainly status symbols.. 3-Towers that are in villages located in wealthy agricultural valleys situated on trading routes These villages are usually built at the bottom and against the southern slope of a mountain, always with a good view of the valley indicating that security, as well as not using agricultural land for housing were of concern. This is the case of most of the towers situated in northern Jiarong as well as the ones on the Minyag ancestral lands and the ones in Kongpo. Most of these valleys are also situated on one of the “Cha Ma Gu Dao” antique trade routes. Contrary to camels that can walk for month, eating little and carrying a heavy load, horses, when daily food is insufficient, have to be either rested, or exchanged periodically. It is possible that these wealthy agricultural valleys, where many horses could be fed, served as relays for the horse caravans. The towers were built as status symbols to impress traders and brigands alike, and being earthquake-resistant and easily defendable, they were used for storing precious merchandise such as tea, silk and salt. This theory will probably only be proven right by organizing archaeological digs inside the towers, most of which, thankfully, have been in disuse for over five centuries. These “Cha Ma Gu Dao” could also explain the early wealth of these regions that many scholars believed only came with the Diaspora from the Tangut (Xixia) Kingdom after its destruction in 1227. If the towers had a commercial use, it would also explain why the Mongols left them intact while they destroyed the monasteries. 4-Towers situated on mountain tops, entrances to valleys or other strategic positions Many towers are also found, away from the villages, in strategic positions. These towers were used as beacons (as recorded in Songgang) or to transmit messages, probably using smoke signals. About protecting the towers and an humanitarian point of view

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Since many of the questions regarding the towers and the tribes who built them have not yet been answered, it is imperative to protect the towers and to continue the research, both in the field, and in libraries. We are creating an Electronic Forum with that intent. The purpose of my research, and of all my work, is mainly humanitarian, and aims at improving the living conditions of the inhabitants through sustainable tourism. By a happy coincidence, it turns out that this is also the best way to protect the towers. Ancient monuments are best protected when they can be the object of a well managed commercial use, which will insure sustainable funding for their maintenance. But in this particular case, the monuments are entwined with some ancient, some old and many contemporary dwellings. And we have to remember that “Tourism is like fire, harness it and it will cook your food, let it run free and it will burn your house”. We have seen that the main threats to these towers stem from ignorance, abandonment and even vandalism. Obviously, it is not enough just to raise awareness about their potential in attracting tourists for 2 reasons: 1) An influx of tourists to a limited , easier to access, number of sites might , in fact, destroy the towers by leading to Disneyland-type renovation, and will benefit only a few local people, if any, since the tourists will come in buses, take some photos and leave. 2) Given that the local population will feel no cultural link with these towers, they will have no incentive to protect them and their environment. More important still, if tourism does not provide the population with new monetary resources the locals will continue to demolish the out-of-the-way towers to re-use their stones and kill the wild animals for their meat or skin. So it is of crucial importance to pursue this research and it is irrefutable that protecting the towers can only be achieved by convincing the local inhabitants, the Chinese government at every level and the international community that these towers are, in many ways, an outstanding example of human creative achievement. This, in turn, will enable the local population to create, through micro-credits, small family enterprises to provide lodging, food and sporting activities for long-staying educated tourists.

About a World Heritage Nomination I also want to mention that these extraordinary archaic stone sky-scrapers would be perfect candidates for an inscription on the UNESCO World Monument under ALL OF its six criteria The towers represent a masterpiece of architectural conception, given the technical qualities of these structures: Criterion (i); it exhibits an important interchange of influences between the tribes inhabiting the tribal corridor: Criterion (ii); It bears a unique and exceptional testimony of a civilization (or strong culture): Criterion (iii); it is a practically unique shape of construction Criterion (iv); it is an outstanding example of traditional human settlement and land use which is representative of the adaptation of human primitive societies to mountains of high altitude (2000 to 3600 meters) and of frequent earthquakes (in places one per year): Criterion (v); if the Remede twin towers are, if fact, the first case of that concept in history, the Criterion (vi) is also justified

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Apart from satisfying the six above criteria, this amazing group of towers epitomizes ALL the preferred requirements of the World Heritage as stated art the Suzhou World Heritage Annual Conference. They are secular, vernacular and minority constructions, and they would be proposed as cultural landscape and a serial nomination. If the Kongpo towers are nominated with the Sichuan towers, it would also be an “inter-boundaries” nomination. They can be planned as a joint nomination with Si Gu Niang Mountain.

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