Moxi ( zh, t=磨西鎮, s=磨西镇, p=Móxī Zhèn;
Sichuanese romanization: ''Mo-si Chen''; also known as Mosimien or Mosymien []), or Boxab (), is a town in Luding County in the Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan, China. As of 2000 it had 6,794 inhabitants. Moxi Town stands at the gateway to the
Hailuogou Glacier Forest Park, south of
Kangding and east of
Mount Konka. The town also featured in the
Battle of Luding Bridge in 1935 when some of those who fought in the battle including
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong pronounced ; traditionally Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Mao Tse-tung. (26December 18939September 1976) was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and political theorist who founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in ...
met in Moxi and stayed the night when the army marched through before heading north.
Moxi lies at roughly 1,600 meters above sea level, and the population are mainly ethnic
Han Chinese
The Han Chinese, alternatively the Han people, are an East Asian people, East Asian ethnic group native to Greater China. With a global population of over 1.4 billion, the Han Chinese are the list of contemporary ethnic groups, world's la ...
,
Yi and
Tibetan with other minorities.
The main crossroads at the park entrance has hotels, restaurants and souvenir stalls. About 150 metres below is the original street of the village. It has a
small Catholic church built at the end of the 19th century by missionaries of the
Paris Foreign Missions Society
The Society of Foreign Missions of Paris (, , MEP) is a Catholic Missionary order, missionary organization. It is not a religious institute, but an organization of secular clergy, secular priests and Laity, lay persons dedicated to missionary wo ...
, with a colourful bell tower and a number of wooden shops. During the 1930s, European missionaries maintained a
leper colony
A leper colony, also known by many other names, is an isolated community for the quarantining and treatment of lepers, people suffering from leprosy.
'' M. leprae'', the bacterium responsible for leprosy, is believed to have spread from East ...
near the church, which was ransacked by communist troops in 1935. Following this event, two missionaries, and Epifanio Pegoraro, were taken prisoner and beheaded by communist soldiers.
The surrounding township is mainly pastoral land, and agriculture employs much of the population.
History
On September 5, 2022,
a magnitude 6.6 earthquake struck the town. At least 66 people were killed, 253 were injured, and 18 went missing. Numerous houses collapsed and landslides occurred in Moxi, where about 37 of the 66 fatalities occurred and 150 others were injured.
See also
*
Catholic Church in Sichuan
*
Catholic Church in Tibet
Footnotes
References
*Leffman, David, et al. (2005). ''The Rough Guide to China''. 4th Edition. Rough Guides, New York, London, Delhi. .
External links
Dreams Travel.com
Populated places in the Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture
Towns in Sichuan
Roman Catholic Diocese of Kangding
Catholic Church in Tibet
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