Kangding ( zh, c=康定), also known as Dartsedo (), is a

county-level city A county-level city () is a County-level divisions of China, county-level administrative division of the China, People's Republic of China. County-level cities have judiciary, judicial but no legislature, legislative rights over their own local or ...

and the seat of

Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, often shortened to Ganzi Prefecture, is an autonomous prefecture in the western arm of Sichuan province, China bordering Yunnan to the south, the Tibet Autonomous Region to the west, and Gansu to the north ...

Sichuan Sichuan is a province in Southwestern China, occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau—between the Jinsha River to the west, the Daba Mountains to the north, and the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau to the south. Its capital city is Cheng ...

province of

Southwest China Southwestern China () is a region in the People's Republic of China. It consists of five provincial administrative regions, namely Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, and Xizang. Geography Southwestern China is a rugged and mountainous region, ...

. Kangding is on the bank of the

Dadu River The Dadu River (, ), known in Tibetan as the Gyelmo Ngul Chu (), is a major river located primarily in Sichuan province, southwestern China. The Dadu flows from the eastern Tibetan Plateau into the Sichuan Basin where it joins with the Min Rive ...

and has been considered the historical border between the

Kham Kham (; ) is one of the three traditional Tibet, Tibetan regions, the others being Domey also known as Amdo in the northeast, and Ü-Tsang in central Tibet. The official name of this Tibetan region/province is Dotoe (). The original residents of ...

region of Tibet and the Sichuan region. Kangding's urban center is called Lucheng, which has around 134,000 inhabitants.

Names

Historically, the urban center was known in Chinese as ''Dajianlu'' ( zh, c=打箭炉, also transliterated ''Tachienlu'' or ''Tatsienlu'') from the Chinese transliteration of the Tibetan name ''Dartsedo'' or ''Darzêdo''.

History

Kangding was on the historical border between Tibet and China. From Kangding to the west lies Tibetan civilization, whereas to the east are Han cultural areas. It was the capital of the

Kingdom of Chakla Kingdom of Chakla (; ) or Chala was a kingdom in the Tibetan region of Kham. Chakla along with Bathang, Lithang, and Derge were called the "Four Great Native Chiefdoms in Kham" (康區四大土司). During the Qing dynasty it was a Tusi under ...

. During its history, Kangding has witnessed many conflicts between Tibetan and Han polities. Kangding was for many centuries an important trading city where Han

brick tea Compressed tea, called tea bricks, tea cakes or tea lumps, and tea nuggets according to the shape and size, are blocks of whole or finely ground black tea, green tea, or post-fermented tea leaves that have been packed in molds and pressed ...

was carried by porters from

Chengdu Chengdu; Sichuanese dialects, Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: ; Chinese postal romanization, previously Romanization of Chinese, romanized as Chengtu. is the capital city of the Chinese province of Sichuan. With a ...

and other centres to trade for Tibetan wool. A dispute involving the sovereignty over the city between Tibet and the Qing was resolved when the Manchu forces took the city by storm in the Battle of Dartsedo in 1701. On July 1, 1786 an earthquake of 7.75 on the

Moment magnitude scale The moment magnitude scale (MMS; denoted explicitly with or Mwg, and generally implied with use of a single M for magnitude) is a measure of an earthquake's magnitude ("size" or strength) based on its seismic moment. was defined in a 1979 paper ...

ruined nearly the entire city. :"Tachienlu is surely sui generis; there can be no other town quite like it. Situated eight thousand four hundred feet above the sea, it seems to lie at the bottom of a well, the surrounding snow-capped mountains towering perhaps fifteen thousand feet in the air above the little town which, small as it is, has hardly room to stand, while outside the wall there is scarcely a foot of level ground. It is wedged into the angle where three valleys come together, the Tar and the Chen rivers meeting just below the town to form the Tarchendo, and our first view of the place as we turned the cliff corner that here bars the gorge, was very striking, grey walls and curly roofs standing out sharply from the flanking hillsides." The city was renamed 'Kangding' in 1904. The American author

Dorris Shelton Still Dorris Evangeline Shelton Still (25 August 1904 – 29 April 1997Pioneer ...

, author of ''Sue in Tibet'', was born here. During the time of the

Republic of China Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

administration, Kangding was the capital of the now-defunct province of

Xikang Xikang (formerly romanized as Sikang or Hsikang, or 'Kham to the west f Sichuan) was a nominal province formed by the Republic of China (1912–1949)">Republic of China in 1939 on the initiative of prominent Sichuan warlord Liu Wenhui and re ...

. Dartsedo had a "reform through labor" prison or

laogai ''Laogai'' (), short for ''laodong gaizao'' (), which means reform through labor, is a criminal justice system involving the use of penal labor and prison farms in the People's Republic of China (PRC). ''Láogǎi'' is different from ''láo ...

after 1959.

Jasper Becker Jasper Martin Becker (born 19 May 1956) is a British author, commentator, and journalist who has spent two decades as a foreign correspondent, mostly in China. Journalism In 1995, he joined the staff of the Hong Kong–based ''South China Mor ...

in '' Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine'' wrote, "The highest death rate was probably experienced by the Tibetans imprisoned after the abortive revolt of 1959. One survivor, Ama Adhe, describes in ''A Strange Liberation: Tibetan Lives in Chinese Hands'' what happened at the

Dartsedo Kangding ( zh, c=康定), also known as Dartsedo (), is a county-level city and the seat of Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan province of Southwest China. Kangding is on the bank of the Dadu River and has been considered the histor ...

camp bordering

. By the roadside the authorities opened a

mass grave A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may Unidentified decedent, not be identified prior to burial. The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of exec ...

which was filled with corpses and gave off a terrible stench. 'Every day,' she recalls, 'they would deliver nine or ten truck loads of bodies to put there...' Of the 300 women arrested with her, only 100 survived."

Climate

Kangding City has a highland climate, with cold winters and cool summers. Affected by the monsoon, it is rainy in summer and dry in winter. Kangding has a

monsoon A monsoon () is traditionally a seasonal reversing wind accompanied by corresponding changes in precipitation but is now used to describe seasonal changes in Atmosphere of Earth, atmospheric circulation and precipitation associated with annu ...

-influenced climate, lying in the transition between a

humid continental Humidity is the concentration of water vapor present in the air. Water vapor, the gaseous state of water, is generally invisible to the human eye. Humidity indicates the likelihood for precipitation, dew, or fog to be present. Humidity depe ...

(''Dwb'') and a

subtropical highland climate An oceanic climate, also known as a marine climate or maritime climate, is the temperate climate sub-type in Köppen classification represented as ''Cfb'', typical of west coasts in higher middle latitudes of continents, generally featuring c ...

(''Cwb'') on the Köppen system. Despite the elevation of , the

diurnal temperature variation In meteorology, diurnal temperature variation is the variation between a high air temperature and a low temperature that occurs during the same day. Temperature lag Temperature lag, also known as thermal inertia, is an important factor in diur ...

averages at most in any month. From April to September, rain is a very common occurrence, with around two-thirds of the days receiving some rainfall; in addition, 77% of the annual precipitation is delivered from May to September. Monthly daily average temperatures range from in January to in July; the annual mean is . Over the course of the year, the frost-free period lasts 177 days and there are 1,738 hours of sunshine. The highest temperature ever recorded in Kangding was a high temperature record of measured on March 30, 2007.

Administrative divisions

Kangding is divided into 2

subdistricts A subdistrict or sub-district is an administrative division that is generally smaller than a district. Equivalents * Administrative posts of East Timor, formerly Portuguese-language * Kelurahan, in Indonesia * Mukim, a township in Brunei, Indon ...

, 8

towns A town is a type of a human settlement, generally larger than a village but smaller than a city. The criteria for distinguishing a town vary globally, often depending on factors such as population size, economic character, administrative stat ...

and 7

townships A township is a form of human settlement or administrative subdivision. Its exact definition varies among countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, this tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, Canad ...

Description

Kangding is located in a valley of the

Tibetan Plateau The Tibetan Plateau, also known as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau or Qingzang Plateau, is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central Asia, Central, South Asia, South, and East Asia. Geographically, it is located to the north of H ...

about west-southwest of

, the provincial capital, and west of

Ya'an Ya'an ( zh, s=雅安, p=Yǎ'ān, w=Ya-an) is a prefecture-level city in the western part of Sichuan province, China, located just below the Tibetan Plateau. The city is home to Sichuan Agricultural University, the only Project 211, 211 Project ...

. It is a city populated by significant proportions of both Tibetans and Han, and is part of the historical

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ), or Greater Tibet, is a region in the western part of East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are other ethnic groups s ...

an region of

. The raging

Zheduo River Zheduo River ( zh, 折多河), also known as Kangding River ( zh, 康定河), Wasi Creek ( zh, 瓦斯沟). It is located in the eastern part of Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, People's Republic of China, and is a right-ba ...

flows through the city, thus the constant sound of water reverberates throughout much of the city. At the north end of Kangding near the bus station the

converges with the Yala River. The city features a sizable square, People's Square, where young and old alike gather in the early hours of the morning to do Tai Chi, play badminton, or socialise. This square comes alive on the weekends as well, when families tend to fill it. Traditional Tibetan and Sichuanese restaurants are easily found throughout the city. Dentok, a Tibetan Buddhist monastery sits on the Paoma Mountain overlooking the city, and is accessible by cable car. As of October 2006, a stone amphitheatre is under construction at the upper monastery. It is a fast-growing city, with a rapidly developing tourist infrastructure, including a scenic cable car imported from Germany. In 2008 the PRC government opened an airport at Kangding in the province of Sichuan, with a runway. At the time this was the second-highest in the world, at above sea level, with the highest position held by Qamdo Bamda Airport at 4,400m. Since 2013, with the opening of the

Daocheng Yading Airport Daocheng Yading Airport is an airport serving Daocheng County in the Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan province, China. It is located in Sangdui Township, north of the county seat and from the Yading Nature Reserve. At abov ...

at an elevation 4,411m, Kangding Airport is the third highest in the world. The folk song '' Kangding Qingge'' enjoys popularity throughout China. Since Kangding city was a major town for trading of cloth and tea between Tibetans and Han people. With the increase of trade in Kangding it also attracted more traders with different nationalities creating this culturally diverse city today. Therefore, singers also incorporate the music style of Tibet to acknowledge the diversity.WANG, BO. “A Study of Folk Songs in Kangding City, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.” DEStech Transactions on Social Science, Education and Human Science, no. icpcs, 3 Mar. 2020, 10.12783/dtssehs/icpcs2020/33885. Accessed 8 Aug. 2020. Kangding contains some notable Buddhist monasteries, including Nanwu Si Monastery, Anjue Monastery and Jinggang Monastery. It was from 1857 the see of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kangding, administered by

Paris Foreign Missions Society The Society of Foreign Missions of Paris (, , MEP) is a Catholic Missionary order, missionary organization. It is not a religious institute, but an organization of secular clergy, secular priests and Laity, lay persons dedicated to missionary wo ...

. The Catholic church was destroyed during the

Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a Social movement, sociopolitical movement in the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until his de ...

and rebuilt in the 1980s. Today it is no longer in use and has been converted to shops and a hotel.

Transport

* Ganzi Kangding Airport *

China National Highway 318 China National Highway 318 (G318) is a trunk road in China that runs east-west from Shanghai in East China to Zhangmu on the China-Nepal border. It is the longest of the China National Highways at in length and runs west from Huangpu District ...

* () Ya'an–Kangding Section

References

Notes

Bibliography

*Dorje, Gyurme (1999). ''Footprint Tibet Handbook with Bhutan''. 2nd Edition. Footprint Handbooks, Bath, England. . * Forbes, Andrew ; Henley, David (2011). ''China's Ancient Tea Horse Road''. Chiang Mai: Cognoscenti Books. ASIN: B005DQV7Q2 *Kendall, Elizabeth (1913). ''A Wayfarer in China: Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia''. The Riverside Press, Cambridge. Boston and New York. *Leffman, David, et al. (2005). ''The Rough Guide to China''. 4th Edition. Rough Guides, New York, London, Delhi. .

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kangding (City) Populated places in the Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture County-level cities in Sichuan