June 8th: Yushu: Rubble and a Sea of Blue Tents

Compared to the reality-show-level overland trips of the past 23 years from Xining to Yushu, today’s plane ride was a lay-up. However somewhere over the Yangtse River valley, we hit heavy turbulence and a total cloud cover. I was just praying that the pilot could see he way clear of some of Yushu Prefecture’s 900 peaks over 5000 m (16,400 ft). Once we got below the cloud cover we were beginning our approach to Batang and spent a bit of time lower than the multitudes of snow covered mountains. We were the only people on the plane who were not with the government, that was clear. Once we hit the ground it was also clear that we were the only foreigners in Yushu.

It was also snowing.

Senior Surmang physician Phuntsok was there, at the airport to greet us, looking thinner and a little older than last year. It was really good to see him again, as he was happy to see us –he said hello to Sara, the creator of the Surmang community health worker project back in 2006, and Beibei my assistant, he knew from last year.

The 20-minute ride to Yushu took us past Thrangu Monastery, an important monastery of the Kagyu Buddhist lineage, where we stopped, mouths agape. I’d been there a few times over the years and even met Thrangu Rinpoche there on one of his infrequent visits from Kathmandu. Now, there’s only one building left. Apparently the first quake hit at about 5 am, a small one and the monks, in the middle of a ceremony, rushed out. After waiting a while they decided that it was no biggie and filed back in. Minutes later the big one came and destroyed everything, killing over 40 monks. Now, from my vantage point, it was basically some broken stupas amidst fields of rubble.

We were taken to one of twenty or so tent cities in Yushu created by the government. One was assigned to each of us –all blue, all government-issue, and all quite study, waterproof, windproof and insulated. It was great to be here and to feel that we were there to help.

Phunstok had been living in a two-storey house, visiting his in-laws, at the time of the earthquake. The whole family was downstairs and the roof collapsed on the second floor. It seems that he, his wife and their two small sons were trapped in the wreckage for over 5 hours before they were dug out. In the process he endured some internal injuries including a slight fracture to his pelvis.

However as bad as it was, he made out better than others. His wife lost two sisters, including one who was 8 months pregnant. After a while I got the picture: either everybody had the same story or knew someone who had the same story.

After settling in, we went on a tour of Yushu. It isn’t a place I remember at all: all my reference points, so carefully collected and archived over the years, (the place where I got amazingly drunk, the place that had the only showers in town, the place we used to stay at until the good hotel opened, the market I used to shop at, blahblahblah) all gone, replaced by rubble and a sea of blue tents. The few buildings left standing are all unoccupied –some looking okay, others like they are on their last legs and in danger of collapsing. Everyone is either living and or doing business in blue tents.

The crowds, the marketplaces –the hordes buying and selling cordyceps sinesis, yoghurt, deer antler—are still there, but surrounded by a cordon of blue tents and that by another cordon of condemned buildings. A monk was buying shoes.


We went to a place that had a 3 storey school that collapsed, killing 60 students. Rubble. We went to the Horserace Festival Grounds, now a blue tent city. And there was an odd vibe about the place too – a kind of no-big-deal quality in the air, and absence of ashes and sack cloth. It seemed from a human point of view oddly uplifted.


I asked Sara about this, since she’d worked in Darfur, Somalia, in the vast refugee tent cities there. She had a similar impression. Could the Tibetans really be that strong?