My first visit to Waerzhai (瓦尔寨大寺, Waerdje) temple, Muli, Sichuan

 As part of my recent return to Muli trip we made a visit to the wonderful Waerdje monastery in the north of the Muli valley,  about 60km from Wachang. 

I'd never been to Waerdje before, but had been tantalised by Joseph Rock's description of it high in the valley above the Litang river, one of the three palaces of the Muli king. Until recently the only images I'd seen of Waerdje were those taken a decade ago by a birdwatching couple - John and Jemi - from Hong Kong. At that time the monastery looked only partially restored, and rather bleak.

So I was excited when my academic colleagues Zhu Dan and Wang Liang took me on a day trip to see Waerdje from Wachang by jeep. The first half of the day was spent visiting another local sightseeing spot - Mana Chajing Viewing Platform (玛娜茶金观景台), which has a great view of the three peaks of Yading. 

To get to this spot we drove north up the river for about 30km to Guzheng, then turned uphill on the G227  ascending steeply into forest via some switchbacks until we reached a kind of 'Little Switzerland' plateau of forest and pastures called Longsa. The road turned north again and eventually goes all the way over to the Shuiluo river valley. 

We turned off near the top and headed out to the edge of the plateau facing west, to get occasional glimpses of the three sacred peaks. The newly-completed road was excellent all the way, and we barely saw another soul - just one other car containing some local Tibetans at Mana Chajing.

At lunchtime we retraced our route back down to the Litang river valley at Guzheng, then turned north and drove further up the valley, almost to Chabulang. The valley was very green and fertile in September, but also quite hot - in contrast to the icy winds we'd experienced up at Man Chajing. There were quite a lot of hydro power dam works along the Litang river too.

After a brief lunch stop for some instant noodles and sausage at Shawan (and an impromptu game of snooker on a terrible table, I lost) we crossed the Litang river on a small bridge to the east side and began another switchback ascent up a minor road through Tibetan farm country. After about 30 minutes we arrived at the gates of Waerdje monastery (瓦尔寨大寺 Waerzhai Dasi). 

Parking the car near some prayer flags, we found about four monks in a simple kitchen and introduced ourselves. Wang Liang had been here before for some weeks, as had Zhu Dan, so they were familiar with the place and friendly with the monks. 

First we had a walk around the grounds of the two temples, located in an idyllic part of the valley, surrounded by rustling trees and singing birds. How do Buddhists manage to find such magic locations? One of the monks showed us the ruins of the old temple and palace that had existed during Rock's time and been destroyed during the Tibetan rebellion of the late 1950s. 

The temples have been extensively rebuilt. A sign said the full official name of the Gelugpa sect temple was Lading Ganden Dajilin and it is sited at 2800m altitude. It was established in 1584 by  Choje and Songji Gyatso, the first living Buddha of Muli, appointed by the Third Dalai Lama. modelled after the Ganden monastery in Lhasa, it is centred around a Sakyamuni Buddha Hall and an Awakening Buddha statue.

In its heyday it had 330 resident monks, but now only eleven. Tibetan Buddhist monasteries now only allow monks over the age of 18 to study for the monkhood. It was rebuilt after its destruction starting in 1988 and now features a Suowukang Hall, Cuoqin Hall and a pagoda (the sign says).

 The official sign also said the monastery had been restored as a centre of Buddhist learning, teaching the three disciplines of precepts, concentration and wisdom. Having said that, a large slogan at the entrance read: "Support Chinese national (ie sinicised) Tibetan Buddhism teaching direction."

Same location as photo above:

We spent a very pleasant couple of hours browsing the grounds of the monastery, especially around the placid duck pond. Our monk tried to show us where Rock's old photos of the monastery had been taken from, and tried to show up where the old buildings had stood, but it was hard to envision them, given the major new building works and the overgrowth of bushes and trees.

I also some spent some time in the kitchen/dining room with the monks, showing them my old photos of the monks at Muli monastery, and some of them spotted their younger selves, which raised a few laughs.

At around 5pm we called it a day. The monks insisted on giving us a formal farewell with a presentation of kata white scarves and some apples from their trees.

Waerdje definitely is a special place with that serene, forgotten vibe of times gone by that used to exist at Muli before it was developed into a massive modern temple complex. I'd love to go back and spend a bit more time there, just hanging out.

Not much more to say than to post a few photos and maps.

Revisiting Renjom Gompa (仁江寺) and Wujiao (屋脚)

 

Another part of my first trip to Muli in the 1990s took me though the village of Wujiao (屋脚). This is an unusual place because it is populated by a mix of Mosuo (matriarchal) people and ethnic Mongol descendants. As you can read of my original blog, the place was a bit of a backwater and I ended up kipping on the floor of the local store. 

Back then I also hiked down the river through a narrow gorge to visit the simple temple of Renjom Gompa (Ch: Renjiang Si (仁江寺), as mentioned by Joseph Rock. The place was inhabited by a single monk - Aja Dapa, and with a few local people helping out as caretakers.

[Renjon Gompa in 1994]

On this visit we drove up the gorge and stopped for a late lunch of chicken at the rather more developed Wujiao. It is now a place of ecological and biodiversity tourism - solar panels abound and there is now a posh hotel (where we had lunch). There was still a log cabin store in the spot where I'd stayed before but I think it was rebuilt. There was also a police checkpoint, this being the boundary between Yunnan and Sichuan. The cop looked at our IDs and waved us through. On the way back, he didn't even stop me when i was on my bike.

On my way back from Muli this time around I cycled back down the gorge after stopping for noodles in Wujiao - and seeing some of the local Yi women still dressed in that crazy mortar-board headress. This time the temple was still inhabited by just a single monk, and what a very nice young chap he was. He gave me a guided tour and the place looked much nicer and well looked after then the shabby simple building I'd seen 30 years ago. The monk even added me as a friend on WeChat.

Not much more to say than that, except to show some photos:

Renjom Gompa from the road [return trip]

Looking back towards the mountain pass to Muli.

With the new resident monk at Renjom Gompa

Yi woman in Wujiao

Wujiao gorge

Return to Muli monastery (木里大寺) after twenty years

If you’ve read this blog you’ll be aware that I first visited Muli monastery (Muli Dasi, 木里大寺) in 1994 on my first exploratory trip to try check out the travels of Joseph Rock. That solo trip was something of a landmark because it showed me that Rock’s maps were accurate and that the places he described were still there, although much changed since the glory days of the 1920s. 

When I saw it in the 1990s, Muli monastery was a spooky place. Just a couple of rebuilt temples and a handful of monks remained of the once thriving Tibetan Buddhist monastic complex on the side of a hill in the majestic canyon of the Litang river.

I subsequently made a couple of return trips, with the aim of exploring further beyond Muli to the Konkaling (Yading) mountains. Both attempts failed due to various factors: bad weather, a lack of accurate topographic maps and a breakdown in team cohesion between the other New Zealand tramping companions.

With the advent of the internet, I’ve been able to keep an occasional eye on developments in Muli from afar.  Over the last two decades I’ve seen reports of how the temple has been upgraded, with shiny new buildings constructed. I also read on Chinese website that the once isolated Muli valley had been opened up to development and tourism. 

When I visited there was only a poor quality dirt track road over the pass from Lugu Lake to the nearby village of Wachang, which itself was a collection of grim and utilitarian Soviet-era buildings. There was a better road down the valley to the town of new Muli (Bowa), which was open to trucks and buses. However, even this sealed road had some very dangerous sections that scared the life out of me.

So it has been interesting to revisit Muli for the first time in twenty years and see how it has changed. I went courtesy of Professor Zhu Dan of Sichuan University and his colleague Professor Wang Liang of Nantong University, both Rock-o-philes like myself.

This time the journey from Lugu Lake in a Landcruiser was relatively quick and easy, taking just three hours driving, not three days walking as per my first visit. The road over the Mt Gibboh Pass has now been sealed, and is good quality. En route we stopped in the same places I had rested at in 1994: Lijiasun, Renjom Gompa and Wujiao (more of these visits later).

The route itself was not much different from that I described in 1994 – a long looping track up the wooded valley to the pass over some limestone crags of Mt Gibboh. The only difference now was a sealed road and a couple of roadside viewing points – and toilets – for the sightseers. Because there were now more cars on the road. While in 1994 I had seen but one vehicle all day - a 4WD that got stuck fording a creek – this time there were cars passing every ten minutes or so: mostly independent tourists by the look of it. There was also a small settlement – Yangbude – near the pass which I hadn’t noticed before. The ‘Mt Gibboh’ pass itself was now titled Luopuluo Shan.

On our way we stopped at one of the many artificial water pools/ponds that have been created by the local government as a resource for fighting forest fires – of which there have been some terrible ones in the Muli area recently. And everywhere there are signs warning that no fires or smoking are allowed anywhere in the forest zone.

We stopped at the pass to take some photos but on the way in to Muli the weather at the top was foggy and damp, so we got no views. Descending to Wachang, we emerged from the cloud to see the sweeping green valley below us.

Arriving in Wachang (瓦厂) was a revelation – it was still a one street town, but the scruffy old buildings had been upgraded to modern multistorey apartments and a spanking new school. The scuzzy old concrete hotels had been replaced by neat Tibetan-style wooden guesthouses. There was even a Joseph Rock noodle restaurant.

I recognised some of the old buildings still standing from my first visit – the poky restaurant where I’d slaked my thirst after that marathon hike over the mountain was now a clothes shop. The post office was also still there – but the grotty post office hotel was – thankfully – long gone.

We checked in to the Kangsa Zhusu at the bottom end of town and had a wander up the main street. When I showed some of my old photos to a local woman she recognised one of the Tibetan  ‘hunters’ I’d taken a snap of up in the hills back in 1995, and she later brought him over to us to have a little reunion – we were both older and greyer than the original photo! He now helped run a shop in town and told me about his kids now going to college and settling down in the big city of Xichang.

That evening we had a great dinner with many dishes at the restaurant next to the Kangsa Hotel.

The following day – 27 September - we had a day out visiting the monastery. It was mild weather as we drove the 3km road round the hills to the monastery complex. It was barely recognisable from my previous visits, now comprising several grand temples, that had been rebuilt around 2015. The centrepiece was a building containing a replica of the Big Qiangba Buddha, 28 metres high and made from copper, coated with gold leaf.

I spent the day wandering around the monastery buildings, findings the original old temple now abandoned and used for storage. The old ruins of the 1920s monastery have been preserved, with protective walls and scaffolding placed around them.

During the day we were introduced to several current monks, who looked at my old photos of young adolescent monks from 1994 and recognised a few. They pointed to each one, saying where they had gone to – some to nearby monasteries, some further afield, to Lhasa, India or even Belgium. After snacking on walnuts and tea in the monk’s hall, several of the original monks who they’d tracked down were ushered in and we sat around chatting for a while. We even got to do a reunion photo in the same courtyard of the old temple.

Similarly, Zhu Dan was eager to do a then-and-now photo of one of Rock’s photos, taken with Mt Mitzuga’s crags as a backdrop. He located the likely spot, now overshadowed by the monk’s three-storey high accommodation block, and we recreated the group photo, even copying the same body gestures of Rock’s retinue.

I also walked off to the edge of the site to try find the place where I’d taken my original then-and-now photo of the side view of the old and new [destroyed] monastery complexes. It wasn’t easy to find – the old track had now been paved over with a car park, and the area had a sightseeing platform and wooden staircase. I think I found the right place, but you be the judge:

A local official and Buddhist adviser told us that the monastery was now the home of the 10th Living Buddha of Muli, Bianma Renqing, a local lad whose bio says that he studied at the Beijing Advanced Buddhist College.

We spent much of the day filming with the guys from Sichuan University and doing some interviews with various people on camera. I had to pose in various locations that I’d previously visited, and even ride my bike around for the cameras, followed by a drone.

So I was pretty exhausted by the time we drove back to Wachang – for another big dinner, this time at the Tibetan barbecue/hotpot restaurant at the top of town.

One last 1990s vs 2024 photos of Muli:

Return to Lijiasun (Lijiaju, 利家咀), 30 years later

If you read my account of my first trip to Muli, now more than 30 years ago, you will know that my first port of call once I 'walked off the map' was a small village in the hills north east of Yongning which Rock called Lijiasun. It was a couple of hours hiking from the hot springs near Yongning and back then it was a very primitive place of log cabins inhabited by rough-looking Mosuo, Naxi and Mongol people. No electricity or roads, and very few amenities such as running water. It reminded me me of the medieval village in Monty Python's Holy Grail - subsistence farmers literally living in mud.

I was to visit Lijiasun again in about 2004, when it was little changed, ie still very primitive.

So it was interesting to revisit Lijiasun (now known as Lijiaju 利家咀) a couple of weeks ago and find it transformed into a kind of Eco-Ethnic Holiday Village, now billed as "Lijiazu - the last Daba Matriarchal Heritage Village" tarted up and consisting of guesthouses and holiday homes, performance spaces, floral displays and with mobile phone towers powered by banks of solar panels.

What happened?

Well according to Chinese media, Lijiasun was recognised as a place of particular deprivation and isolation  about a decade ago, and became the target of modernisation and poverty alleviation efforts to develop Ecological businesses an install 4G broadband services etc. It has certainly made a big impact and transformed the village.

We drive there in about an hour from Yongning along a decent road, and parked up in the village 'square' next to a stupa, with a noticeboard now inundated with announcements and signposts. There was another tourist coach in the car park and a group were roaming around, photographing everything.

We met one of the village leaders, a livewire guy who calls himself 'Black Wolf' on his WeChat account, and who took us to find one of the older villagers who might recognise some of the people I photographed 30 years ago.  Uncle Du Ji  - a man in his fifties - lived in an ornate old wooden 'siheyuan' - a quadrangle courtyard house with an old prayer room at the centre. 

He invited us in to drink butter tea and eat walnuts, as I explained how I'd visited here before three decades ago. As I took out my phone to show him my photos, he waved it away and said "No need - I have them already". And to my astonishment he scrolled though his own phone's photo album to show me my own photos that he said he had downloaded many years ago from this blog site! At the time they were some of the few existing photos of people of that generation, he said.

"So you are the foreigner who took these pictures," he said, and proceeded to give me a rundown on who the people in the photos were - the young men staring sullenly into my camera lens, now an older businessman. The wretchedly poor people gathered round an open fire on the hillside - some now have died, bit others are still in the village, making a living in farming.

I spent a happy hour taking photographs and being shown around his magnificent dwelling house - now a holiday homestay - and the temple within. He had portraits on the wall of Genghis Khan (the Mongol ethnicity link comes from the leftovers of Khan's army venture into Yunnan a millenia ago) and groups of local people in traditional dress. I was also the subject of quite a few photos when the visiting tourists heard about my story - and wanted to get a picture with the 'old foreigner'.

Du Ji then guided us on our main mission for the day - to identify the location where a photo of Lijiasun was taken many decades ago. We thought it was a Joseph Rock photo, but a sharp eyed villager pointed out that a child in the photo was wearing more modern clothes, possibly from the 1980s onwards.

Our photo location quest took us on a hike up the hill behind the village, where we struggled to match the exact location because there were now new buildings and a lot more overgrowth of bushes and trees where it had once been a barren hillside.

It would have been nice to stay longer in Lijiasun, but we had to move on the get to Muli the same day - and that meant a long drive over the mountain pass.

Solving the 100-year old mystery of Joseph Rock's Mt Mitzuga (木仔耶) photo

 Just back from an excellent trip to Muli (木里), in the company of Professors Zhu Dan and Wang Liang from Chengdu and Nanchong, respectively.

The highlight of the trip was finding the location of the photo taken by Joseph Rock of an alpine tarn just below the crags of Mt Mitzuga (Chinese: 木仔耶, Muziye). In the original photo there are two figures on horseback in the foreground. We managed to find this spot (and recreate the photo, the place is unchanged) after many hours of terrible driving on a rough 4WD track from Wachang, including two punctured tyres.

Other highlights of the trip were returning to places I had visited 30 years ago on my trek from Lugu Lake to Muli - including Yongning's Zhamei Si monastery, the village of Lijiasun, the Renjom Gompa temple, Wujiao and of course Wachang town just near the monastery. Amazingly, at these places I was able to meet people who had been there 20-30 years ago and remembered me 'the foreigner' from those times. I will write about this later.

For this post, though, I will describe how we got to the summit plateau of Mt Mitzuga, which is at a height of between 4300 and 4700 metres.

(Pic: Driver Jiang Rong, me, Prof Wang, Prof Zhu Dan)

The credit goes to Professor Zhu Dan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Chengdu Botanical Research Institute. It was he who kindly invited me along on the trip that he organised, with three 4WD jeeps, a film crew and two local guides. I had always wondered about the location of that photograph, and was curious as to how Rock got to the summit crags of Mt Mitzuga from Muli. 

 

If you have read this blog you will know about our 1996 trip to Muli with some kiwi trekkers, in which we tried to cross from Muli to the Shuiluo river valley via Mt Mitzuga. That trip failed because we became snowbound over night and lost our way, bashing through knee deep snow and thick pine forests, unsure of where we were and making very slow progress over fallen trees. 

We never saw the summit crags of Mitzuga because the weather brought low cloud and fog. We eventually 'crashed out' by following a logging road to Baiyangping and hitching a ride on a truck back to Muli.

(The green line shows the approximate route we took from Wachang to Mitzuga. The red line is the sealed highway that now runs to Muli monastery from Yongning (Lugu Lake) and Wujiao).

This time, Zhu Dan was better prepared, but we still hit a few snags. I'd seen on Google Earth that there appear to be a few tracks criss-crossing the summit plateau of Mitzuga, but it's hard to follow them and many seem to peter out into nowhere. But with two local guides on board, we set off from Wachang on an overcast September day to try access the summit tracks. In hindsight we should have tackled the approach from the western side, via the new highway that runs via Guzheng, Maoniuping and Baiyangping to the Shuiluo valley. 

Instead, we took the advice of our guides, who thought our priority was to see the best of Mt Mitzuga scenery rather than one specific part of the summit plateau. Their route took us back over the road towards Wujiao (now sealed), over the pass and to a very well hidden turnoff at a corner of a zig-zag above Wujiao,  near a collection of huts. The 'road' was not even a dirt track, but a faint trail riven by ruts, boggy puddles and eroded sides. Even our Toyota Landcruiser (Prado) had difficulty navigating the bumps and tight corners. 

 

We probably started at around 10am on the track, which initially consisted of a switch back mud track up in the fog to a small alpine lake. We stopped their for a route planning discussion, at which Zhu Dan realised the guides had brought us the 'long way' and insisted we head back to wards the priority area rather than stopping for sightseeing.

Without giving a blow-by-blow account of the road trip, suffice to says it was extremely challenging and also supremely beautiful. Credit must go to our skilful driver, Jiang Rong, from Chengdu, who was able to get the jeep through some appalling track conditions while making it look easy - and keeping us entertained with his witty conversation in the process.

In some sections it was a reasonable gravel track, in other places it deteriorated into just a couple of faint lines in the grass or mud. We crossed over open moorland and scrub, past huge limestone crags, and sometimes plunged back into thick spruce or larch forest.

 Occasionally we saw log cabins or small farm settlements, but nobody appeared to be living in them.

A couple of hours in, at a bleak pass strewn with prayer flags we had to stop to change tyres on two of the jeeps, which had suffered punctures. Is this a world record for a tyre change at an altitude of 4500m? 

As we milled around I quickly regretted not bringing my fleece - the wind was bitingly cold, but thankfully Zhu Dan had a spare down jacket that he lent me. After about 40 minutes delay we continued, following the track that seemed to go down one side of a canyon and then cross over and come up the other side. 

On a few occasions the road forked and we were reliant on the guides to tell us which direction to pick. They also helped when we found the road blocked by log gates, which they were able to open [dissemble] and close again quickly.

Finally, in the late afternoon around 4pm we drove uphill to a line of crags that looked similar to the ones in Rock's photo. The guides told us this was the place, and we excitedly piled out of the jeeps to take a closer look. We had to hike uphill for about ten or fifteen minutes to reach a suitable viewing spot, and then it was clear that this WAS the spot - these were the crags that appeared in Rock's photo. 

But the foreground looked different - there was no small tarn or lake evident. At first we assumed that it had dried up, perhaps because it was seasonal and required some rainfall to fill it. But Zhu Dan and his team kept on moving up the hill for a few more minutes and finally they came across the small round patch of water exactly as it looked in Rock's photo. On close scrutiny we could see that the rocks around the water were exactly the same as the ones in Rock's photo - and even a small rock protruding from the water in the middle of the pond was still just as shown in Rock's photo.

To say I was thrilled was an understatement. It felt uncanny to be in exactly the same spot as where Rock had taken to photo 100 years ago, especially as the scene was completely unchanged. I must admit there is some uncertainty over the date of the original photo. Rock first visited Muli in 1924, and may have taken the photo in that year. But he also revisited Muli in 1928 on his way to Konkaling (Yading), during which trip he crossed the Mitzuga twice, so the photo may only be 96 years old!

We milled around the area, of course taking many photos and videos, and also conducting some interviews for the TV crew that Zhu Dan had invited along to record the journey. I did my interview in a hailstorm!

I could have spent a whole day up there, exploring, but agonisingly after such as long trip, it was late in the days and we had to depart after about half an hour so that we could get back to Muli during daylight. I wouldn't want to try navigate those mountain tracks in the dark. I really didn't want to leave, but time was against us - it really felt like a magical place. The guides later told us that this was a sacred spot for the Muli people - they believed that if the lake and crags were disturbed by human sounds, it would trigger hail and snow storms - just as we had experienced!

So reluctantly we set off, to complete our traverse of the summit plateau. The ordeal wasn't over yet - it was no easy downhill retreat. There were still many miles of poor track, uphill and downhill sections and more gates to open and close. We still didn't encounter a single soul, until at dusk we finally reached the 'main highway', the sealed road that now crosses the watershed from Muli to the Shuiluo valley.

We made it just in time: it was dark by the time we started the long zig-zag switchback road back down in to the Muli valley. Phones started pinging and buzzing - we had a signal again after being off the grid all day.

Suffice to say we were in a celebratory mood by the time we got back to Wachang - justification for a big meal with plenty of baijiu and toasts.