Visit Cizhong Catholic Church

Among the farmhouses of Cizhong Village stands a Gothic building crowned with Chinese eaves — the Cizhong Catholic Church, founded by French missionaries and rebuilt in 1905. The missionaries brought with them grape vines and traditional winemaking, and the church still preserves old equipment once used to ferment sweet wine, a craft the village keeps alive today. Remarkably, it remains a living Catholic parish set deep in a Tibetan Buddhist region, where villagers gather for Sunday worship and light bonfires before the church on feast days. Visit from Songtsam Lodge Cizhong to trace the rare story that binds faith, architecture and wine in this valley shared by seven ethnic groups.