I've just come back from a three month tour of western China, during which I cycled from Zhongdian (aka 'Shangri La') to Kangding. I'll do a write up of the trip at some point, as much of it passed through areas of interest for Joseph Rock nerds. For the time being, though, I will do an update on Kangding, where I finished my tour and handed over my clapped out bike to the son of my former Tibetan guide, Gong Que.
In Kangding I met up again with Professor Zhu Dan of Sichuan University, who shares my interest in the photographs of Joseph Rock. Due to bad weather we abandoned our plans to revisit Gongga Shan, and instead spent a day trying to locate the places where Joseph Rock took his photos of Kangding town.
The photos were published in the National Geographic issue of October 1930, in an article entitled Glories of the Minya Konka (link here to pdf copy).
The article describes Rock's trip in the previous year from his base near Lijiang to the mountain we now know as Gongga Shan. When exploring the surrounds of the mountain, Rock based himself in the nearby town of Tatsienlu, also known as Tachienlu or Dartsendo, and now known as Kangding. As part of his article he posted a few photos of the town: one a panorama taken from a hillside, showing the Catholic church, and the others showing the 'Thunderbolt monastery' and the 'north gate' of Kangding.
On our visit last week, we tried to find the place where Rock took his panorama photo. It wasn't easy, because Kangding has expanded greatly since Rock's day and the new developments include a range of high-rise apartments built behind Anjue Si monastery, which now block much of the view from where we believed the photo was taken.
After a bit of trial and error, we found a track on the hillside where we guessed that Rock took the photo. There was a lot of thick bush on the hillside that blocked exploration and a highway and tunnel further up the hillside which further blocked access.
Using Google Earth, this is where we estimated that Rock took the photo, based on the location of the temple on the opposite hillside on the right of the photo, which still exists.
.png)
After scrambling up a minor trail above the path, we took this photo:
As you can see, the old Catholic church is no longer there. Local people who we later met in the new church (on the other side of the river) said the old church had been demolished in the 1970s, after surviving major fires and an earthquake in the 1950s. The site of the old church is now occupied by the Ganze government offices. There is also now a second church, St Theresa's, in Kangding 'New Town', that is located about 6km up the Yulin valley.
While researching the history of the Catholic church, Zhu Dan found many photos taken by photographer Sun Minjing in 1939. These are published in a book called Xikang: the Vanished Province. Here are a few of Sun's photos of Kangding:
This one was taken lower down the hillside, probably close to Anjue Si, where the high rise apartments are now located.
The above photo was take closer to where Rock took his photo.
The above photo was taken from the opposite side of the valley, looking west.
The above photo was taken from the same location as the Rock photo, but is looking to the south west, and shows Anjue Si monastery. The courtyard on the left is probably for the church. And finally, there is a photo of the interior of the church:
There is very little information online about the Catholic church in Kangding. According to Wikipedia, the former Cathedral of the Sacred Heart (known in Chinese as Zhen Yuan Tang 眞原堂 ('Cathedral of the True Origin (of Everything)'] at Tatsienlu was built by Jean-Baptiste Ouvrard in August 1912.
There are some archive reports (in French) of the Franciscan order, who ran the Diocese of Kangting until kicked out by the Communists after 1949.
In Kangding we also looked at the small Protestant church tucked down a side street on Guangming Lu, near Anjue temple.
It was closed up and looked little like the old church that had been run by the Inland Mission.
There was some information about the Protestant church in English and Chinese:
