• TRAVEL
• MAY 27, 2011

Saving the Secret Towers

By MITCH MOXLEY

The ride from Chengdu to Danba Valley is one to be endured, not enjoyed. The journey is by a smoke-filled bus with tiny seats that barrels deep into the mountains of western Sichuan province, shaking and rattling on a single-lane road that is often strewn with fallen rocks. A hair-raising view out the window is of the Dadu River below.

This is the route to one of China's most enduring architectural mysteries. Ten hours and 400 kilometers into the journey, the valley opens to reveal green mountains topped with snowy peaks. On a ridge above stand a half-dozen rock towers, like ancient smokestacks.

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A prayer flag flying on one of the few towers whose top can be reached by visitors -- at least, by visitors willing to scale a series of wooden ladders

Across the remote, earthquake-prone regions of western Sichuan and Tibet, there are hundreds of these structures. They are built of cut stone, brick and timber, date back as far as 1,700 years and stand up to 50 meters tall. No one is sure of their purpose, though theories abound: They were watchtowers, way stations, status symbols. Some say they have religious meaning.

Striving to save the towers from the forces of neglect, earthquake and a planned hydropower dam are a small number of preservationists, including Frédérique Darragon, a 61-year-old global adventurer—sailor, dancer, trekker, polo player— turned amateur archaeologist by her love for these mysterious structures.

The daughter of a wealthy Parisian inventor and machine maker who died when she was 4 years old, Ms. Darragon spent childhood summers riding horses in England and winter breaks skiing in the Alps. She worked on a kibbutz in Israel and in 1971 sailed across the Atlantic in the first race from Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro. She returned to Paris, graduated from university there and then did some work as a model—"Not high fashion," she says, "just for extra money"—played polo in Paris and Buenos Aires and became a lauded samba dancer in Rio.

During the early '90s, Ms. Darragon spent several months a year traveling alone through China, often by foot in areas that are still rarely visited by Westerners. It once came close to killing her: In 1993, while searching for endangered snow leopards in Tibet, she suffered a stroke when a fire she built in a cave consumed too much of its oxygen supply. She lay for three days before being rescued by Tibetan shepherds.

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Qiang women preparing to dance in Suopuo village

Three years later, Ms. Darragon saw her first towers, while traveling near Danba. A year after that she saw similar towers in Tibet—800 kilometers away—and was hooked. "When I learned that neither Westerners nor Chinese had researched them and that practically nothing was known about them, I could not resist trying to crack their mystery," Ms. Darragon says of her long affair with the ancient towers.

The Danba Valley, home to ethnic Tibetan and Qiang villages, is one of the best—and most accessible—places to explore the towers. Five kilometers from Danba city (danba means "town of rocks") a series of sprawling villages collectively called Suopo has about 80, some in ruins but many still standing, and some of them more than 30 meters high.

Until recently, nobody knew the towers' age with any real degree of certainty. There are references in texts from the Han Dynasty, which lasted for about 400 years starting in 206 B.C., but the peoples who historically populated the tribal corridor of Sichuan and Tibet lacked a written language, so there was no documentary evidence of the towers' origin. Chinese archeologists had taken scant interest in the riddle.

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Chiles hang outside a window in Danba County.

It was a linguist who wrote one of the first papers on the subject, in 1989. Sun Hongkai, now retired from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, had first seen the towers during a 1956 visit to Sichuan to investigate the Qiang language. "People in the area did not pay attention to the towers," Mr. Sun says. "Many were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. People used the stones for building materials."

In the 15 years since Ms. Darragon was drawn to the mystery, she has devoted much of her life to cataloging, dating and fighting to preserve hundreds of the enigmatic stone skyscrapers.

In 2001, with funding from U.S. media mogul Ted Turner, a fellow sailing enthusiast she's known for decades, she created the nonprofit Unicorn Foundation, dedicated to education and humanitarian projects.

"I'm very proud of Frederique and the work she's done in China," Mr. Turner says. "Her amazing discoveries are astounding, and her commitment and dedication to the preservation of some of China's great artifacts and structures will always be admired and respected."

Three years later Ms. Darragon co-founded the Sichuan University Unicorn Heritage Institute to research, document and record local cultures. She wrote a book, "Secret Towers of the Himalayas," and filmed a documentary of the same name, which aired in the U.S. on the Discovery Channel. (Profits from the distribution of the film went to her organization.) In 2004, she presented a photo exhibit at the United Nations in New York.

Tower scholar Frederique Darragon with a Jiarong woman

"She inspired people to protect our cultural heritage," says Li Chunxia, an anthropologist at Sichuan University in Chengdu. "Frederique asked three questions: who, when, why. Before that nobody had researched the towers in such a way."

Her work has revealed that the towers rose in four regions—Qiangtang, rGyalrong, Miniak and Kongpo—that correspond with the lands of ancient tribes and in all cover an area of about 170,000 square kilometers.

The masonry techniques and architecture of the towers point to kingdoms much more sophisticated than previously imagined. Some of the towers are star-shaped with between five and 13 points – an anti-earthquake feature also found on structures in India, Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan.

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One of the many star-shaped towers in Suopuo

Having identified nearly 1,000 towers of all shapes and sizes, both intact and in ruins, Ms. Darragon tackled the mystery of their age. She has sent more than 100 wood samples, taken from more than 80 towers, to Beta Analytic, a Florida radiocarbon-dating firm. The results suggest the towers from which the samples were taken were likely built between 300 and 1,700 years ago.

There is one big question that remained: Why were they built?

In Zhong Lu village, a 15-minute drive from Danba city, a young woman with a tower in her backyard (she charges visitors a small fee to climb it) has a three-part theory: The structures were used for protection, storage and to honor the birth of a son.

Ms. Darragon believes different towers served different purposes. Some look like defensive structures and feature narrow slits that could be used for shooting arrows. Others, such as those on mountaintops or at valley entrances, could have marked or guarded a frontier or served as beacon stations. Some particularly lavish towers might have been status symbols for the wealthy. Others possibly served as way stations along the southern Silk Road where merchants could have stored tea, silk, salt, musk and pelts, safe from thieves.

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Two young women from Zhonglu returning home with loads of corn

A "living Buddha" who presides over a temple near Danba says the towers are linked with the Bon religion, a Tibetan belief system that predates Buddhism in the region. (Ms. Darragon, having found no mention of the towers in Bon or Buddhist texts, disagrees with this theory.)

These days, Ms. Darragon is focused on protecting the structures that still stand. One current threat is a planned dam, the second in the region, that would flood an area in the rGyalrong area, near Danba. It would put at least a dozen towers, including the tallest in Sichuan, underwater.

In 2006, the World Monument Fund put the towers on its Watch List and Sichuan province listed the towers as cultural relics. The State Administration of Cultural Heritage of China has been expected to nominate some of the most impressive structures to Unesco's World Heritage list, though nobody knows when. If the towers are listed, it could actually create a fresh threat for their preservation and for the future of the local culture by drawing more tourists than the area can handle.

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Qiang men dancing in Suopuo's town square

"Tourism would be beneficial as long as it is organized in a sustainable way," Ms. Darragon says.

Today, the fate of the towers—and the regional cultures that inspired them—is in the hands of locals and Chinese authorities. She's proud to have served as messenger, she says, but when she's finished her new book on the secret stone towers, now in the works, she'll put the mystery to rest.

"For all of their fascinating aspects," Ms. Darragon now says, "these towers have kept me tied down for too long. As soon as I have finished my second book, I'll be off to other adventures."

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The view from a Suopuo roof: drying corn and ancient towers