Qualla: Batang, Sichuan

Batang, Sichuan: Introduction

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Astari28, CC BY-SA 4.0. The name comes from the sound sheep make. In Tibetan, "ba" is the bleating of sheep and "tang" means a plain or steppe -- Batang, a vast grassland where sheep can be heard everywhere. The town sits at 2,700 meters in a fertile valley just east of the Jinsha River, which is what the Yangtze is called before it becomes the Yangtze. For centuries, this was the last stop in Tibet on the road to Chengdu, the place where the Dalai Lama's temporal authority ended and China's began. French missionaries in the 1840s called it large, populous, and wealthy. A British consul in 1904 found 400 Tibetan houses, a small lamasery, and an economy built on black leather and barley beer. Gold dust turned up in every river. Two hereditary princes claimed descent from chiefs in Yunnan. Batang was, and in many ways remains, a frontier town in the truest sense -- a place defined by what lies on either side of it.

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Image: Astari28 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Batang, Sichuan: The Fertile Anomaly

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mutikonka, CC BY-SA 4.0. Most of eastern Tibet is vertical -- gorges, ridgelines, passes that test lungs and animals alike. Batang is the exception. Its plain runs east to west, roughly a mile wide and several miles long, sheltered by high mountains pierced by three valley openings. Through these gaps, t...

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Image: Mutikonka | CC BY-SA 4.0

Batang, Sichuan: Where Tibet Ended

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Teichman, Public domain. French Lazarist priests Evariste Regis Huc and Joseph Gabet passed through in the 1840s and left one of the clearest descriptions of the old Tibetan frontier. "The temporal power of the Supreme Lama ends at Bathang," they wrote. The border between Tibet and China had been fixed i...

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Image: Eric Teichman | Public domain

Batang, Sichuan: Destruction and Domination

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit unbekannt, scan by sidonius 15:08, 7 November 2006 (UTC), Public domain. Batang's position at the edge of empires made it a target. An earthquake destroyed the town completely in 1870. Recovery had barely begun when geopolitics intervened. Britain's 1904 invasion of Tibet under Francis Younghusband alarmed the Qing court, which sent an imperial offici...

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Image: unbekannt, scan by sidonius 15:08, 7 November 2006 (UTC) | Public domain

Batang, Sichuan: Monks, Mule Trains, and Memory

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chen Zhao from Edinburgh, CC BY 2.0. In the southwest corner of Batang stands Chode Gaden Pendeling Monastery, a Gelugpa institution now home to some 500 monks. Each year on the 26th day of the ninth Tibetan month, colorful cham dances are performed outside the town -- masked figures enacting Buddhist teachings thro...

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Image: Chen Zhao from Edinburgh | CC BY 2.0