Strong whiff of ethnic culture

A glimpse of downtown area of Yushu city. Photos by Yang Feiyue / China Daily

It was destroyed by an earthquake, but the disaster has brought new attention to the once obscure outpost, which unwittingly finds itself attracting curious visitors.

It's a city built amid mountain ranges. Tucked away from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the city grabbed the world's attention when a massive earthquake convulsed it in 2010.

I did not notice any devastation caused by the earthquake during my trip there in late July.

Brown-brick buildings, mostly two or three stories high, stand near each other stretching all the way to the base of reclining green mountains behind them.

"The region took the brunt of the earthquake and almost everything was rebuilt," a tour guide tells us.

But the earthquake put Yushu on the map. "Now, one section of visitors are those who contributed to Yushu's post-earthquake reconstruction, who want to see how it is faring," the guide says.

"The rest are pilgrims or those who visit simply to savor the grasslands, the blue sky, the white clouds, and its Tibetan culture," he tells us.

A large section of the local residents are from the Tibetan, Hui and Mongolian ethnic groups, giving the place an exotic flavor.

Prayer flags flutter next to a Buddhist tower with a sky burial platform near the Princess Wencheng Temple.

A few red-robed monks sit on a slope a little away from the tower.

"Locals still perform sky burials," says Yixi Songbao, who opened a summer resort nearby.