Recently I visited Gangca Tibetan Primary School (elevation 3292 meters, 10, 800 feet) to view a local style of stone architecture called rDo sBis (in the local Tibetan dialect it is pronounced do we, as in “Do we know where we are?” – accent on the we. This is one of the three styles characteristic of Amdo (Northeast Tibetan cultural region of Gansu and Qinghai provinces). This school in Gangca was built in 2002 by the builder Kasang Jigme from the village of Mahong. The project was the pursued by Kevin Stuart and Klurgyal, who currently heads his own NGO focusing on rural development in Qinghai , though this was his first school he built. Since then he has built several other schools on the plateau, including the most recent one in a Chinese village east of the county seat of Xunhua County. The Gangca project was funded by the Netherlands Embassy. A pdf file of the final report of the Gangca project is available here, which is a good look at what some folks are doing in order to bring opportunities to their areas.
The building of this school for the children of nomads was the first time that the builder is aware of that this style of Tibetan stone architecture was used in a secular setting. Prior to this school construction this style of Amdo (Northeast Tibet) architecture was exclusive to the building of stupas, temples and other monastic buildings. Unfortunately, the rDo sBis style is in danger of disappearing altogether for a variety of reasons, mostly due to the loss of the labor force to more lucrative and physically less demanding work: the digging of caterpillar fungus on the high grasslands in spring/summer, road construction projects throughout the plateau, and the lure of work in the cities. rDo sBis Township (Ch: Daowei) in Xunhua County is home to the only remaining builders of this eponymous style. Currently the number of master builders has fallen to 15, all of whom are over 50 years old. The purpose of this trip was to begin to understand the problem in hopes of turning this into an architectural preservation project with the ultimate goal of expanding this style by making it a commercially viable as well as environmentally and economically responsible style of vernacular building.
Here are a few photos from November 14th when I visited the school.
For more photos of this project have a look here.
Oddly, the the recent global economic downturn, which has seen the price of caterpillar fungus drop by nearly half over the last five months, along with the drying up of employment opportunities in the massively overbuilt construction markets in the Chinese cities, may offer opportunities for helping this dying building art survive if Tibetan migrant workers have less choices of places to work. But then again, what do I know. My understanding of macroeconomics and construction markets is about equal to my comprehension of the ritualistic hanging of dead roosters’ heads (or is it claws?) over the entrances of bedroom doors where sexual dysfunction and/or infertility are issues, as well as the heavy chewing of cattle knee tendons in order to improve the beauty of one’s skin. (I actually believe that the latter is more of a facial fitness issue: all that mastication vigorously works local muscle groups that rarely gets such deep, deep workouts. Eat enough of them and any fat on your jawline will begin to disappear. It’s one of those things that probably won’t fly in pill form, but not that that will stop anyone from hawking cattle tendons tablets in times of bad skin or flabby jowls. Maybe I’m on to something here.)
2 responses so far ↓
1 bhb // Nov 25, 2008 at 2:04 pm
How well does this architecture stand up to earthquakes?
2 jg // Nov 25, 2008 at 5:54 pm
This is something that I am trying to get up to speed on. The stone wall is actually a double wall with a space in between the walls that is filled with a natural mud-and-small-stone slurry, which I believe allows for more ‘elastic’ behavior than would a cement-based mix. The wooden post-and-beam interior that is characteristic of this style – though which was not used in these small buildings -is independent of the walls, the load of the roof carried by the interior wood construction. Though I have no statistics – and I doubt that there are any available – I suspect that the Tibetans have adapted to living in a quite active earthquake zone. The question I would like to see answered is how many Tibetan buildings built in this fashion came down during the May 12, 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province; much of the effected area was in the Tibetan cultural region. But that is probably a question that will not be asked, and if, by chance it were, I would guess that it would not be answered.
If you notice in the top two photos above there is a glass porch that runs along the south wall of all three buildings, a passive solar retrofit after the buildings were erected. The local education bureau contracted this job, and the work went to a non-Tibetan official’s relative. The work is poor, and in the top right photo (click for a larger copy) you can see a crack that runs from the top of the window across the corner. All the slabs that were poured between the original building and the raised footer are also cracked and the footers are in the process of sinking. In the summer of 2006 there was a flood at this school and the foundations were covered in water, though I am not sure for how long. As you can see, the plumb corners on the stone buildings attest to the integrity of the construction. The quick-money-to-buddy work is what was most negatively impacted. No surprise, really.
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