In the wake of the devastating Yushu earthquake, the people of the small town of Jiegu are beginning the slow and fragile process of rebuilding.
By Chai Chunya and Wang Yan in Jiegu
Jiegu town once attracted intrepid travelers from throughout the world, drawn by the town’s annual horse racing festival and its array of unique Mani Stones (stones inscribed with Tibetan Buddhist mantras). It will be some time before those same groups of travelers return to Jiegu. As night falls on this small ethnically-Tibetan enclave, high up in the Qinghai plateau, its most noticeable characteristic is its apparent emptiness.
All for the Dead
Early on the morning of April 17, three days after Jiegu was struck by the worst earthquake to hit the region in recent memory, a shroud of mist and dust envelopes the plateau.
The eerie veil is broken only by a solemn procession of trucks; their slow choking engine sounds doing little to betray their gruesome load. It’s only on closer inspection that it becomes apparent that the trucks are laden with corpses.
The trucks, like many of those in the surrounding areas, are on route to a nearby village where two parallel hundred-meter (328 feet) long pits have been hastily dug and covered with iron bars. Monks and locals unload the trucks one by one and carry the bodies to the pits, whereupon they are respectfully undressed and placed on the bars.
After the piles of bodies are sprayed with yak oil, 28-year-old Dampa Rinpoche from the local Jiegu Monastery carries a torch to the pits, setting fire to sacks of kindling, wood and old tires.
Around 7,000 monks in crimson robes from over 100 different temples sit overlooking the funeral pyre on a nearby hillside, chanting aloud in near perfect unison. Rising smoke attracts dozens of vultures, who circle tirelessly above. According to Dampa Rinpoche, vultures are regarded as the guardians of the afterlife in Tibetan culture, and will help carry the souls of the dead to the next world.
“When they were alive, they lived with dignity,” said Nyima Gyatse, a teacher at the local Yushu Vocational Technological School. “When they died, they died with dignity.”
After the quake, thousands of monks flooded into Jiegu town from various parts of the region, helping to search through the rubble for survivors. The monks’ quick and effective cremation of thousands of dead bodies within Yushu has prevented the enviromental pollution and disease encountered by locals after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan Province.
Palden Dripa Rinpoche from Guoluo, over a 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) away from Yushu, led 30 monks and two trucks full of donations to the town two days after the earthquake. “Our mission is to give help to both the survivors and the dead,” said Palden. “We as locals are more adaptive to the environment and the climate, and so can assist in conducting rescue work effectively.” In Jiegu Temple, monks lit yak-butter lamps and maintained a constant vigil, reciting prayers and offering condolences to the families of the dead.
Surviving family members spoke openly of their relief, and the reassurance they felt at the presence of the monks. Tibetans, like many Buddhists, firmly believe in reincarnation. As such, death is regarded not as the end of life, but as merely the next stage in the life cycle. The arrival of several thousand monks, an unprecedented occurrence within the region, helped strengthen this belief.
Farewell, a Place of Sorrow
Forty-year-old Pugkel rides his shattered motorbike along a bumpy dirt road, stirring up a whirl of dust behind his back wheel. His brown trilby and dark-red jacket are covered with thick dust; a pair of leather shoes hang from his feet. The motorbike stops beside his “home,” a small tent, erected cautiously between a pile of bricks, wooden slates and other household debris.