Hiking the Old Tibetan Village and Potato Picking - the Chinese Way
I continue my efforts to get caught up on older content. This photo essay is a repost of a Twitter thread original posted on October 12, 2024. It has been edited lightly for long-essay format. You can check out my first and second essays from Jiuzhaigou at the links.
"Hey, American! Come take pictures of this. See how our women pick potatoes!"
Early in the morning after checking into my guesthouse in Jiuzhaigou, I decided to explore the dirt path up the mountain behind the Tibetan village - the route to the old hamlet I'd heard about the night before.
It was breezy and the sky was blue with wispy white clouds. The air still held a touch of the night’s chill, which yielded as the sun rose and lit up golden corn in the fields. I cannot imagine or describe a more perfect late summer/early autumn morning.
After 15 minutes of hiking, I heard a babble of voices from a field somewhere above me, but there was a steep soil embankment blocking my vision, with a wooden ladder leading over the embankment. As I made my way past the ladder, a woman’s head popped up over the embankment...
"Hey, there's a foreigner!" she called out. Like a cartoon sketch, three more heads popped up over the embankment to gawk at me as I passed, wheezing slightly, thanks to the 2000m of altitude). I smiled and waved at them, but kept moving Up ahead, I rounded a bend in the path and spotted weather-beaten grey houses.
There were only about 15 houses in the hamlet and most of them were already in pretty bad shape. These are the houses that are left behind after poverty relocation efforts see the former residents moved to more modern accommodations.
The buildings were very simple, with stone foundations and walls, wooden doorframes, and an enclosed courtyard space.
A few of them were in better shape though, showing evidence of some recent renovation work done during Covid, as I had found out while talking to the desk attendant the day before. If I owned a property here, I'd definitely want to keep it in decent shape too. To enjoy the views at least…
I circled through the hamlet and found myself back on the fields again, but this time I'm had emerged above the group of locals, whom I could now see were digging potatoes. It might have been the most aesthetically attractive potato patch I've ever seen.
They sat to take a break and one guy spotting me standing there waved me over.
"Hey, where are you from?"
"I'm from the USA. I'm traveling here. Is it okay if I hike in your village?"
"Yes of course, no problem. Do you want to pick some potatoes?"
"Pick potatoes...? No thanks..."
“Do you have potatoes in America?”
“Yes of course. Actually I grew up on a farm, picking potatoes. I think I already picked enough potatoes for my lifetime!”
“How do you pick potatoes? With a rake like this?”
“Yes, we use a similar rake. I also used my hands to dig potatoes.”
“Your hands? The dirt is too hard!”
“We pile the dirt up into mounds before planting the potatoes, so the dirt is looser and easier to move in the fall, when the potatoes are ready. We are worried about piercing the potatoes when using the rake too aggressively.”
“Oh I understand. We’re going to start work again now. Hey American. Come take pictures of this. See how our women pick potatoes.”
Break time was over and everyone got back to their task. Younger women swung two-pronged rakes to pull up the hard dirt, revealing long root systems and plump yellow potatoes. The older woman packed them into canvas bags, while the men took turns hoisting full bags of potatoes onto their backs and slowly staggering uphill to where I assumed their storehouse was. They told me they’d been out here since 6am, right after the sun rose.
I heard a mix of Tibetan and southwest (Sichuan) dialected Mandarin, so I guessed it was both ethnic Tibetan and Han people out, here digging potatoes on the slope of the mountain today.
I left them to their work and continued on the uphill path through the hamlet as their voices faded out behind me. Within a few minutes, I had passed the last house and was looking down at the hamlet, the valley below, and the mountains across the valley.
While most of the houses seemed abandoned, there were still a few signs of life. This house had chili peppers drying in the open air. The cuisine in Jiuzhaigou is Sichuan Tibetan, and it features a lot more heat than the Tibetan cuisine in Gansu Province, from where we had just arrived the day prior.
Despite the awkward location, the hamlet still WAS connected to power, and I could see the power lines continuing even higher up the mountain as well, perhaps connecting to even more-remote hamlets.
The mountains on the other side of the valley were also covered with power lines, suggesting more small villages hidden in those hills as well, probably populated only by a few elderly stragglers at this point.
Up behind the village was a small religious area, a grove of trees covered with prayer flags flapping in the morning breeze with a small Buddhist shrine (chorten) made of rock. I continued hiking uphill another 30 minutes, with frequent pauses to catch my breath...
I had heard that much higher up the mountain was another old village site that is now completely abandoned and I wanted to explore it. I was planning to climb up as long as it took to see the old houses, but then I met some locals who told me yak herders had pulled down the abandoned houses to create more grazing area...
Denied the opportunity to see the old houses, and with hunger and caffeine cravings starting to catch up to me I decided to head back down for breakfast.
On the way down, I found the group of potato pickers en-route to another field, gathered around an tree in the hamlet, trying to knock down apples for a snack.
I offered my 1.85 meters to assist, and successfully snagged a few apples for everyone - and myself too. The guy chatting from earlier pressed something into my hand.
“Have you ever had fresh raw walnuts? Try them...they’re good. You can use a rock to open them.”
Walnuts and apples become my morning hike’s bounty:
My short peaceful morning hamlet excursion with the potato pickers ended up being a highlight of my time in Jiuzhaigou. Jiuzhaigou is undoubtedly touristy and commercial, but if you're looking for something a little more untouched, just ask, and you can surely still find what you seek.
Thanks for reading.