A tale of three qiang villages

The rocky mountain area in the east of the Aba Tibet and Qiang autonomous prefecture, in West China's Sichuan province, which is located between the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the Sichuan Basin, has been a crossroads for trade and civilization for about 3,000 years.

During this period, the interaction between Tibetans, Manchurians, Mongolians, Muslims, the Han and the Qiang people - violent and peaceful at various times - has left us with hundreds of villages of historical interest and picturesque scenery, on high mountains, deep valleys, and along the tributaries of the Yangtze River.

After the Manchurian-dominated Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), Tibetans and the Qiang people became the main residents of the Aba region, roughly as big as Scotland.