Pictures of Sichuan

Tiaoping 5
Originally uploaded by Carpe David

Last fall I took a hike to Sichuan in Wenchuan, the area that was the epicenter of yeterday's earthquake. We switched buses in the county seat of Wenchuan. In the pics you can see many examples of the Qiang (羌族) ethnic minority. The Qiang are a small group of 200,000 that live in just this area of Sichuan. They are distinct from the Han and Tibetan culturally and linguistically. Our Tibetan guides, even though they lived a couple dozen miles apart, had to use standard Mandarin to communicate with the Qiang people we encountered as opposed to Tibetan or the Sichuan dialect of Mandarin.

I took lots of pictures of the native Qiang architecture. I only hope that much of it was spared by the earthquake.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chinadavid/sets/72157602570681182/