Kangding, mountain gateway where Chinese and Tibetan cultures meet, is a melting pot of ethnicities
- The city in Sichuan province has a mixture of Han Chinese, Tibetans, and other ethnic minorities, and a correspondingly eclectic dining scene
- On the historical border between China and Tibet, it is a centre for trekking in the summer and offers traditional and modern accommodation
In the Lechao Bar in Kangding, capital of the Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan province, western China, the bar's owner is educating me about the city’s diverse demographics. “There are so many ethnicities here. Han, Tibetan, Hui, Yi,” says 28-year-old Tibetan Luo Song Dengren, policeman by day, bar proprietor and performer by night.
With the city’s urban centre situated at around 2,500 metres altitude in a deep gorge in the Hengduan Mountains, Kangding has the feel of a gateway to the far more rustic and smaller settlements further up the range. Locals are clad in traditional clothing – riding boots, knee-length black coats and cowboy hats for men, ornate headdresses, wooden bead necklaces and long skirts for women.
But the city of over 100,000 has in recent years been subjected to China’s trademark rapid development and attempted Han homogenisation; high-rise hotels and office buildings have sprung up where more primitive dwellings once sat next to the white waters of the Zheduo and Yala rivers.
The diverse cultures of China’s minority populations that call this mountain city home persist, however, and Luo Song Dengren is an eager guide to this former border post between Tibet and China, a centre of trade and stage for warfare in centuries past.
Lechao is the centre of the nascent modern music scene in Kangding, he tells me. He took over the bar in 2017 and renovated it in the style of an American roadhouse, decking the walls out in motorcycle parts and number plates.