The source of building ancient blockhouses

The history of the ancient watchtower in Danba can be traced back to the Qin and Han Dynasties, and it is called "Qionglong". During the Qin and Han Dynasties, the builder of Qionglong, Ranmalong tribe, mainly lived in Aba Prefecture and Ganzi Prefecture of Sichuan, and distributed in the upper reaches of Minjiang River, which is now Maoxian, Wenchuan and Lixian. By the Sui and Tang Dynasties, this kind of watchtower was popular in western Sichuan and the whole eastern Tibet. Danba's watchtower also originated from Qiang's watchtower, but its grand scale, extraordinary momentum and various forms are far from being comparable to Qiang's watchtower.

The watchtower buildings in Danba can be divided into four corners, five corners, six corners and eight corners. The height gradually develops from 1m and 2m to 3m and 35m. The watchtower has many functions, and it is built next to the main roads of villages, and is called "military defense watchtower" in places such as traffic passes and checkpoints. Specially built for the chieftain's garrison, it is called "Guanzhai Diaozhai"; In the center of the village, the octagonal tower used to kill demons is called "Feng Shui Tower". Here, there are also police towers, boundary towers, house towers and so on. According to Tibetan scriptures, there are only three 13-corner towers in Jiarong Tibetan area hundreds of kilometers away in Fiona Fang, including two in Danba. So far, they still stand between Tibetan towers, imposing and rock-solid. Although they have been baptized for thousands of years, they still look the same. The main building materials of the watchtower are rocks, mud, hemp, wood and so on. Hemp tendon is made of kenaf stalk or highland barley stalk and wheat straw. The hemp stalk is cut into inches, and the hemp tendon is made by punching, and it is very sticky in mud. The watchtower is composed of stones of different sizes, up and down, left and right, staggered and repaired, with sharp edges and corners and smooth surface, such as chopping with a knife and axe. For thousands of years, the ancient towers have withstood the erosion of war and wind and rain and the test of earthquake, but they stand tall. Some of them have been leaning for a long time, and some have bent into bows and become their own wonders. Their architectural art is ingenious and exquisite. Every corner, every stone and every shovel of mud in the ancient tower was cast by the blood and sweat of Tibetan ancestors, and it also wrote a glorious page in the history of Tibetan architecture.