There are no major temples or landmarks of any sort in Jiaju; one of the largest buildings in towns is the curing house of the Jiaju Yak Meat Company. What Jiaju is best known for is its “model houses” (shifan jiating), where visitors can walk through a Jiarong dwelling and sample local food. The section of dwellings immediately bordering on the road feels a little sterile, but venture a few feet further and you discover that the village is very much alive. Young ladies carry basket loads of herbs down from the mountaintops on their backs, and old are at work maintaining footpaths to local shrines.

Several people had warned us that the winter was not a popular time to visit Danba or Jiaju, but that is all the more reason to visit at this time of year – there are no tour groups, no crowds, and it is possible to truly lose yourself in Tibetan hamlets like this one. At night winter temperatures can be frigid, but during the day they rise to about ten degrees even in January.

[Mark Frank/China.org.cn]

I had not hired a professional tour guide, but I didn't need one; two ten-year-old boys playing on the side of the road offered to show me around their favorite spots, including the lookout points above the main road. As I gazed down at Jiaju from the first lookout spot, it was no longer hard to believe that I had found one of the most attractive villages in China.