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It has been 19 days since the earthquake in Yushu… the media attention to this region has died down to almost nothing, but my thoughts are still with the people there. Today I read an article written by a Chinese, Ai Mo, that really touched me. The writer was in Yushu during the first few days of the earthquake crisis – and during that critical period, seems to have understood the state of mind of the Tibetans.

She writes, “Many people like to ask, ‘What was the difference between the Sichuan earthquake and the Yushu earthquake?’ Nobody yet knows how to compare the scale of the earthquake. One hundred thousand people died in Sichuan, perhaps not as many as 10,000 died in Yushu. Yet that comparison isn’t meaningful and shouldn’t be made.”

For us Tibetans, the Yushu earthquake represents more than just numbers and deaths. It represents the devastation of one of the last towns in Tibet that the Chinese have yet to infiltrate and change. Much of the world, including the Chinese themselves, reacted with surprise when they heard that the population is mostly Tibetan (Yushu is 97% Tibetan). Yushu is just too remote and isolated for most Chinese to want to go there but now my fear is that Beijing’s promises of repair and restoration will take this beautiful Tibetan land away from the Tibetans.

The town of Kyegudo is the heart of the Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, a historical town and a cultural hub for Tibetans in the region. A Tibetan intellectual Jamyang Norbu has written an elegant and well researched article, “Kyegu, on my mind,” in which he says, “Kyegudo has traditionally been one of the most important centers and crossroads for trade and commerce in Tibet. It is the hub of many important routes.” He writes that huge caravans, sometimes consisting of as many as 3000 yaks, would traverse through the region, and even while it wasn’t such a large town, many merchants had permanent homes there and that the town of Kyegudo was rich and prosperous in the decade before the invasion. Surrounded by grasslands, nomads kept herds of yak that lived off the pasture and even though summers were short-lived at that high altitude, barley, beans and various crops grew plentiful.

Another Tibetan poet and writer, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa who traveled extensively in Kham in 2009 researching for her new book, says that she found in Kyegudo people that have really retained their unique Khampa characteristics untouched in every sense – the way people dressed, spoke, and in their daily habits. Her new book for which she is looking for a publisher, has 4 or 5 chapters about life in Kyegu.

And most of all, Kyegudo is known for its annual Horse festival, when thousands of nomads from all across the region gather for a spectacular week-long gathering. Barthang, the wide plain where people camped in sumptuous tents and held races, is now sadly filled with make-shift shelters and survivors of the earthquake. One particular comment made by the Chinese writer in Yushu comes to mind as I think of the survivors on the Barthang plains today. She wrote, “As a journalist in the Yushu disaster area, I and my colleagues‘ strongest impression is that in Yushu you don’t see the wailing and pounding on the earth, and even rarely see weeping.  If it were not for the sight of many collapsed buildings and the many homeless on the streets, you wouldn’t guess that many people had died here.  People who have lost their relatives wear solemn and respectful faces. They read scriptures. They take the corpse to the monastery. They ask the monks and Living Buddhas to help them pass to the next world, and pray that they escape the cycle of suffering and rebirth and enter blissful happiness.”

A portrait of His Holiness the Dalai Lama on a truck removing the bodies of people who died in the April 14 earthquake in Kham.

My friend, Rinchen, who grew up in Kyegu calls it Kyegu ‘Dhondup Lungpa’ which means the place which has the finest of everything. For Rinchen, this is the case – he spent the happiest time of his life there, growing up, going to school – every street and every corner is full of memories. But now, its become nothing but ruins. He says, Tibetan Buddhist tradition is the center of life in Yushu. As we all know, His Holiness’s pictures are banned in Tibet but from the ruins in Yushu emerged so many pictures of His Holiness. And as the dead were being cremated, you could hear so many people chanting, praying to His Holiness.  So this really shows what people truly think and need in this difficult time.

The majority of Tibetans are simple folks; they ask for nothing much but they would like to live their lives as Tibetans. They would like to see the Dalai Lama once in their lifetime, most especially in moments of crisis and tragedy like now. They would like to lead lives of their own choice. They would like to have their monks and monasteries left intact and be accessible to them. They just want to be Tibetans. But they are now caught up in something beyond their control – the politics of greed and power are threatening to shift their ground again even as they mourn their losses. And in the midst of this, I wonder what kind of a new Kyegu will emerge from these ruins? Will there be some resemblance of the charming Tibetan town that was Kyegu, or will it become another faceless pre-fab Chinese town built on the ruins of a Tibetan gem?