Danba Festival Video slideshow

This is our first holachina slideshow video. The photos were taken during the preparations for the Danba 丹巴Festival August 2004. Danba is a small town in Western Sichuan about a 3 hour Bus ride from Kanding 康定. The town itself is small and scruffy but its setting, nestled in a deep valley at the confluence of two rushing rivers and surrounded by traditional Qiang (a Tibetan minority) villages, makes it quite idyllic.  The highlights include stunning villages, such as Jiaju 甲居藏寨 and Badi (not Baidi as I have written in the video) and the Qiang watchtowers peppered on the slopes of the steep valleys.

The year we visited Danba there were very few other foreigners and no domestic tourists. The following year, 2005, the Chinese National Geographic claimed that  Jiaju village 甲居藏寨 (7kms from Danba) was the most beautiful village in China. Since then its popularity among travelers, foreign and Chinese alike, has grown rapidly.

We hope you enjoy the slideshow. Some people may find the music a bit painful. It’s the same music that was being played on the VCD’s on all the buses we sat on during our trip around Western Sichuan in 2004 and it brings back great memories.

If you are interested in going to Danba, click on read more below. Here you’ll find the information we published on holachina.com in 2004. Expect there to be a much bigger selection of hotels and restaurants now. [Read more →]

Tags: Culture, Sichuan Province, Travel by Adam
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Dream of Ding village 丁庄梦
A Novel by Yan Lianke阎连科
Published by Corsair and translated by Cindy Carter

Dream of Ding Village 丁庄梦

Setting the Scene

The book is set in Henan province, central China, around the city of Kaifeng, during the early to mid-1990s.

“They dug me up so they could take me to Kaifeng and bury me next to my dead wife. “ (Page 310).

Kaifeng, situated  in China’s Henan province on the banks of the Yellow river, once served as the Song dynasty capital (then known as Bianjing (汴京) and is thought to have been the world’s biggest city between 1013 and 1127. Much of its imperial splendor has been lost to the ravages of war, floods and rebellion, but it still retains one of the few remaining landmarks from that time, the magnificent Iron Pagoda (铁塔), built in 1049.

Another of its treasures is the incredible Qingming Scroll, painted by Song dynasty artist Zhang Zeduan (1085 – 1145), which captures the daily life of people from the epoch at the ancient capital, Bianjing; today’s Kaifeng.

Modern day Kaifeng is a pleasant city to visit, with lively night markets, interesting temples and pagodas and the added lure of finding traces of China’s tiny Jewish community. Huge skyscrapers, ubiquitous in most Chinese cities, are conspicuous by their absence: due to the wealth of ancient ruins and relics still buried under the ground, the digging of deep foundations is prohibited.

Strolling around sleepy Kaifeng, it is hard to believe that the villages and surrounding counties hide a dark secret that very few visitors will see, or even know about. In fact, any attempt by a foreigner to visit these places will immediately arouse the suspicions of local police and the security bureau. What are they hiding? [Read more →]

Tags: Book Reviews, Culture, Henan Province 河南省 by Adam
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Two days in Langzhong 阆中古城 (from our diary)

Langzhong Ancient Town 阆中古城

 This small town, with a big history, is situated on the banks of the Jialing River, some 225 kilometres from Chengdu (Sichuan Province). It is all at once the burial place of the Three Kingdoms general, Zhang Fei, birthplace of the Han dynasty inventor of the Chinese Calendar, Luo Xiahong, and home to a wealth of traditional Sichuan architecture.

Langzhong Gucheng 阆中古城

In short, Langzhong has plenty of things to see and do to keep a visitor busy for two days.

Day One

Your first priority on arrival is to find accommodation in one of the many traditional family mansions that are situated in [Read more →]

Tags: Culture, From Our Diary, Sichuan Province by Adam
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