Hiking 318 | Walking to Tibet DAY24: Modo Township-Batang County

2021.04.13

Today’s destination is Batang County. The total journey is 25 kilometers and will pass through: villages, river valleys, tunnels, and cities. From Modo Township to before entering the tunnel, there are beautiful small villages along the way. The specialty products here are snow chrysanthemums and apples, as well as many walnut trees. There are several trees in the yard of each house. The white flowers and green leaves stand out against the red house, which is particularly eye-catching.

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There are no villages in the narrow valley, only mountains on both sides, and the river and road in the middle. After passing through two tunnels, we immediately arrived at the edge of the county. At the beginning, all I saw were military areas, and then there were hotels, inns, and hotels all the way.

After passing through two tunnels

When I first entered Batang County, I felt like it was a big construction site. Excavations were being made along the river for several kilometers. The wind blowing by and the dust flying into the air felt very much like the dusty weather in Lanzhou.

Batang is also called Pengcheng. The county town is very well constructed. There are two main roads in the county town: Ankang Avenue (G318) and Jinxianzi Avenue. All the houses facing the road have been renovated by the government to have their facades renovated in the style of Tibetan buildings. The elements look very distinctive at first glance, but the entire county is like this, and after seeing too many of them, they feel a bit samey. In fact, cultural products with diversity and differentiation are the most distinctive and thought-provoking things.

Climbed the stairs and took some photos

I remember when I first entered Batang from Muye Village, it was written on the mountain "Plateau Jiangnan, the hometown of Xianzi". At that time, Shagou and I were still guessing, what does Xianzi’s hometown mean? He said Xianzi was a person, and I thought: The singer who sang "Drunken Breeze"? Her status in the world is not enough to put her name on the mountain. So I said, Xianzi may be a musical instrument. It turned out that we both guessed wrong. Xianzi is a kind of dance.

Words on the mountain of animal husbandry village

In the Zhongshan Square next to the Batang County Government, residents will come to dance Xianzi dance every night starting at eight o'clock in the evening. Shagou and I came here to join in the fun. He said: This looks more difficult than Guozhuang dance. The residents here should be able to dance it, right? I said: Not necessarily, aren’t there a lot of people watching here?

As soon as he finished speaking, a young man who was playing basketball immediately threw away the basketball in his hand and joined the Xianzi dance team, dancing vigorously.

So we began to imitate their footsteps and upper body movements, looked at each other, and found that the two of us were twisting like zombies after being attacked by a pea shooter🤣

When walking on the street, I see Tibetan people, especially young people, with many facial expressions that are a bit cool or, to put it mildly, a bit diao. But when they are dancing the Xianzi dance, both men and women, young and old, will have happy smiles on their faces.

Now I think I understand why Xianzi Dance deserves to be written on the mountain and can become one of Batang’s business cards.

Xianzi dance in Zhongshan Square

Altitude changes:

2714-2573

Transportation:

25km hike

Accommodation recommendations:

Ganzi New Youth Hostel, the bed rooms have private bathrooms, as well as standard rooms, double bed rooms, etc. The sanitary conditions are not bad. Compared with some hotels with high prices and unclear cleaning, the price/performance ratio is very high, but the hot water is solar energy , no temperature at all.

Dining locally:

"Breakfast" noodles cooked by the owner of Jixiang Store, "lunch" road meal - Guokui, "night" Batang - Dayi Laobiao BBQ - the taste is good, but the price is high.

Generate garbage:

Cigarette butts*4, disposable tableware*1, ice cream packaging*1, lottery tickets*2