June 1st, 2010: my city was gone

I went back to Ohio
But my city was gone

With 90% of the buildings down and the remaining 10% slated to come down, this is the song that runs through my head for me on our trip to Yushu. I went to Yushu for the first time in 1987, beginning my long anomalous love affair with the city.

At 3500 meters or 11, 500 ft., and 90% Tibetan, back in 1987 it was also strictly off limits to foreigners and I arrived like a thief in the night, knowing that if I surfaced, my passport would be confiscated and I would be put on the next bus to Chengdu. But that was not my fate.

The three streets in town were funky, dusty, unpaved, with crowds of monks or black-chuba-ed Khampas everywhere as was the blare of folk music from shop's street-level speakers set on tweeter-busting high gain. Yet, having apparently just alighted from a space ship everyone seemed happy to see me; everyone except the government that is. I was the only foreigner in the town back then, as the Religious Affairs Bureau Director Gozi Along reminded me on several occasions.

There was only one hotel in town, the Yushu Binguan, and climbing its bare cement 4 floors to my room was like ascending Everest -- in fact due to my frequent stops to catch my breath at the second floor landing, I christened it Surmang Base Camp.