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Going to church on Sunday. Now, what could be more ordinary?  Well, for me, the nearest church means a trip to Kangding, and a trip to Kangding is far from the ordinary.  'Kangding' is what the Chinese now call it.  Dartsedo, the meeting place - of two rivers, and of traders - is what the Tibetans have always called it.  Closed off until recently, few westerners have heard the call of her river and the rugged beauty of her mountains.  Chinese tourists who come have heard her song, but have never understood her words.  This small city, at 8,000 feet on the steppes of Eastern Tibet, is now the gateway to the Chinese Ganzi Autonomous Region of Sichuan Province, established in 1951.  It used to be the frontier between ancient China and mysterious Tibet. The 1990 census claims 98,000 inhabitants, spread out across farms and towns within the broader county district, including Guza where I teach English at a teachers college.  Not so long ago it was a wild frontier town, where Tibetan nomads and Chinese traders met to exchange yak and sheep hides, silver jewelry, semi-precious stones and barley for manufactured goods.  Tibetologists like Alexandra David-Neal took respite here between long months of traveling and studying in even more remote, inhospitable Tibet.  It was the supply point for launching expeditions into Tibet, reached from Chengdu after three weeks of walking or being carried by porters in a sedan chair.  By 1846, French priests had arrived to settle Catholic missions a day's journey apart along the road to Tibet. In June, 1940 two French explorer-scientists arrived from Chengdu at nightfall, riding in sedan chairs.  They reported seeing the glow of the city against the night sky as they approached.  They found a raging fire trying to engulf the homes, all wooden structures, alongside the Catholic church and mission, and people carrying buckets of water up from the muddy river bank.  They rested from their journey for two months, staying with the French priest at the Catholic mission.  They write about the difficulty in hiring animals, a cook and a guide to accompany them on their journey to find the source of the 'Tong' River, the headwaters of the Yangtze River. Only one of the two Frenchmen would survive this dangerous trip.

Old and young on bridge goes with passage about chic young ladies and the traditionally dressed.

Street level storefront and also, on right, alley leading to the church stairs.

What is now an eight-hour bus ride must have been a major summer's undertaking for nomads living in isolation in that trackless land.  I have heard tales from old timers of riders who would arrive on horseback with pack animals from these same remote mountains.  The Kham people who inhabit Eastern Tibet had long maintained their isolation through a reputation for ferocity and superior horsemanship.  Reports of uprisings and other acts of resistance in recent times strongly suggest that the Chinese government has found these people hard to subjugate, motivating the decision to keep this region sealed off from outsiders until this new millennium. At the heart of modern Kangding is a short stretch of road, about half a mile of modern buildings echoing Tibetan design and architecture, but finished with the Chinese favorite, shiny tile.   Young adults still remember the dread of being awakened at night by the alarm of fire brigades when the city was built of wood.  Today, buildings of reinforced concrete rise to six and seven stories.  These buildings sit along a stretch of a raging river, now tamed between stone walls topped by iron railings.  Traffic travels one-way on each side of the river.  At the north end of this stretch of road the river forks.  Following the east fork downstream, the road descends to Guza, where I live and teach, and eventually to Chengdu.

Newly opened fashionable dress shops and upscale restaurants are replacing the green-clothed construction sites that had made walking the streets of Kangding so hazardous when I first visited, nearly two years ago.  Young women in chic jeans outfits walk past women in long traditional Tibetan aproned robes, with red strands of cotton yarn braided across the top of their heads.

Three cross-topped blue cones ornament the roof line.  This is visible from across the river, but the church entrance is easily missed at street level.  The ground floor is leased and divided into shops, including a Tibetan furniture store and, around the corner, a Chinese restaurant.
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There is no English-lettered sign to invite one into the narrow gateway to an alley.  The stairs ascend, with but one turning about twenty steps up.  Services are on the third floor, reached by this long outside staircase.  I didn't discover that it was an active church until living here for half a year.  People I asked who 'knew' Kangding said they thought the church wasn't in use. Because the road was still under construction and the travel time would be unpredictable - from one to four hours - I went up to Kangding on Saturday night in order to attend Mass Sunday morning at 9 a.m.  I had learned on earlier visits that the priest is a circuit riding priest who resides in Ganzi city. Kangding is a mission church, getting serviced once every six weeks or so.  For the other Sundays, a middle-aged woman who could be a nun plays the organ and reads the scripture for the service.  When I stay in Kangding I prefer a Tibetan guesthouse where I am in a room with two beds, often alone, with my own bathroom and a quiet environment away from the heart of the small city. This particular weekend, instead I stayed at the Black Tent for the same price.  It is a hostelry listed in the Lonely Planet backpackers guide.  Although my colleagues have stayed there, I never did because the more fastidious of them described the place as being quite dirty.  However, when last I was in Kangding it had changed hands and was being painted and cleaned up.  Because of that, and its proximity to the church, I decided to stay there this weekend. At the Black Tent I was in a room with three others - two guys and a girl.  It is in the heart of the city, where the roar of the river is constant.  I heard voices and traffic all night. The toilet was down outside stairs and at the end of a hall.  The sink was in the hallway, which also gave entrance to the kitchen and the innkeepers quarters.  My roommates, the backpackers, invited me to have dinner with them.  I decided to join them, being hungry more for English-speaking companionship than food.  They relied on me and my smattering of Mandarin to show them Kangding.  They had already been there a few nights, but still felt lost.  These travelers had been lured here by Lonely Planet with a promise of the annual fire ritual on the mountaintop, performed by monks.  They had fallen victim to SIPS (SARS induced panic syndrome); the festival had been cancelled.  They were at a loss for further entertainment.

Butter merchant -  cute guy - the swarthy, handsome long haired.   Butter merchant lady - tho it's now spring, she still shows signs of the winter 'maroon cheeks kissed by wind and sun'.

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I took them to a restaurant, ordered something which didn't turn out to be what I expected, and then took them folk dancing.  Through their eyes I saw a town that doesn't speak English, that has no tourist information center, where friendly faces make you welcome with smiles and gestures but can't answer your most basic questions.

While the world slept in, I woke the innkeeper to unlock the door and headed to 9 a.m. Mass.  After the priestless service in Chinese, I started down the long stairway.  At the second floor landing some ladies milling about motioned me to enter.  I discovered that below the church there was a rectory of sorts, with a large kitchen.  We sat on wooden benches that lined the wall. The bench seats were open-slatted.  There were a couple of  wooden tables with narrow benches, painted glossy black.  I could hear activity coming from inside the kitchen.  We drank Tibetan tea in small enamel bowls. 
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Woman in sheep-lined coat

After about five cups of that, a pot of rice came out. One lady, in traditional Tibetan clothing and with a welcoming smile, brought out a dish of liang fen, cold congealed rice broth dressed with vinegar, sesame oil and hot sauce, cut into long square 'noodles'.  Another lady brought out a soup pot of fish, tomatoes and tofu, nicely flavored. Waiting for the food I wandered into the kitchen.  There I saw a poster with a large picture of the Pope.  My understanding is that the Chinese government permits the Catholic Church to exist in China only as long as it renounces any connection to Rome.  Bishops are not appointed in Rome, therefore priests are ordained by bishops who no longer can trace their line of succession back to Saint Peter.  Finding the picture of the Pope felt like finding a contraband picture of the Dalai Lama in a Tibetan home, behind closed doors. As a linguist, it was a treat to sit amongst these women, none younger than 60, listening to their chatter.  It occurred to me that they were alive when those same French explorers stayed at this same mission.  I wished I had the language to ask them about that.  I heard a lot of Tibetan words peppering their Sichuanese.  My meager Mandarin wasn't very useful, except for the simplest of phrases.  They were content to have me share in the fellowship.  Never mind we couldn't converse.  They wove me in and out of their conversations.  With their smiles and gestures, they made me feel welcome.

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Kangding is a city for people watchers.  It is still a trading post for the Tibetans in the outlying areas.  Women in sheepskin lined ankle-length robes walk by with maroon cheeks where the wind and sun shamelessly kissed them without letup. They sit on street corners selling butter pressed into large yak bladders. They are dressed for the city, their waist-long hair braided, the two braids tied at the ends, looped, and then slipped over the crown of the head like a wreath.

Ornaments are entwined in their braided wreaths, of turquoise-encrusted silver rings, bloodstone, yellow opal.  Bejeweled silver earrings are hooked in the earlobe, but cotton twine loops over the ear to share the load.  Their waists are heavily draped with embossed silver discs, and with amulets that hold precious relics, pictures or prayers to ensure their safety, and further hunks of semi-precious stones.  The men have strong, swarthy faces, and long hair.  Ornately molded silver sheaths protrude from the woven cloth wrapped around their waist, knives ready to slice off a piece of dried yak meat for lunch, or avenge an offense.

The Kangding Love Song is well-known throughout China, and is the lure for many domestic tourists.  It sings the beauty of pao ma shan, the mountain peak that soars 1,000 feet above the city, crowned with a Tibetan monastery and stupa scraping the clouds from the heavens.  It is a song with simple lyrics and a melody like a zephyr stirring the fir trees to dance.  It is a sweet image, belying the rugged past and culturally uncertain future of this little city in transition.

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