01 · The ground
All four sit inside one prefecture
This page covers Yushu as a whole, and all four booklets share it. Yushu is not a sight; it is an entire autonomous prefecture in the southwest corner of Qinghai, larger than many countries. What follows here is one place inside it.
| Which way | What it meets |
|---|
| North | Haixi — the Qaidam basin side |
| Northwest | Bayingolin, Xinjiang |
| East | Golog |
| Southeast | Ganzi, Sichuan |
| Southwest | Chamdo and Nagqu, Tibet |
267,000
km² · the whole prefecture
6,860
m · Bukadaban, the high point
3,335
m · Niangla, Nangqian, the low point
Four provinces meet here
Qinghai, Sichuan, Tibet, Xinjiang. Yushu sits on the seam: one step southeast is Sichuan, one step southwest is Tibet, one step northwest is Xinjiang.
Also the seam of three Tibetan worlds. Yushu is Kham — speech, dress and monastic lineage all lean towards Chamdo and Ganzi. North over the Bayan Har range is Amdo; further west is Ü-Tsang.
Four hundred thousand, one city and five counties
About ninety-eight per cent Tibetan, eleven ethnic groups in all. One city and five counties; the seat is Jiegu — the town guests sleep in, and the largest piece of flat ground in the prefecture.
The Tang–Tibet road enters Tibet this way. Chang'an, Xining, Riyue Shan, the source of the Yellow River, Jiegu, then west to Lhasa. Jiegu is the stop on that road you cannot skip, and its name means "where goods are gathered".
64,000 of those 267,000 square kilometres are not run from here. The Tanggula township in the northwest is administered by Haixi, though it still counts inside Yushu's official area. That is why you will meet two figures for the same prefecture, one above 260,000 and one just over 200,000 — not a mistake, two accounting bases.
Under two people a square kilometre. Four hundred thousand spread across 267,000 square kilometres is a very thin spread. The oxygen in the air is only sixty to seventy per cent of what it is at sea level — stairs here make you stop and sentences get shorter, and it has nothing to do with your fitness. The town looking new is the other side of the same coin: at dawn on 14 April 2010 an earthquake of magnitude 7.1 brought nearly every house down, and three years of rebuilding followed.
02 · Monastery
One monastery, watching a whole town
Jiegu Monastery stands on Mutameima hill north of town, at about 3,700 m. You can see it from the street — white walls, red walls, gilded roofs, stepping up the slope.
Names
Tibetan. Jiegu Dondrub Ling — "the island where Jiegu is accomplished".
Chinese. Jiegu Monastery, after the town.
School. Sakya. Sakya means "grey earth", after the ground the mother monastery was built on; the place name became the school's name.
Affiliation. Historically the house of the Zhawo tribe, and the principal Sakya monastery in northern Yushu.
The main hall
Assembly hall. It is called Duwen Sangzhou Gyatso and holds a thousand monks at chant.
Designers. Khenpo Pade of Sabian monastery and the First Jiana Lama; built with Dêgê Dzogchen's support, supervised by Zhawo Mikhen Rinpoche.
At its height. 780 ordained monks, and over 400 novices.
Form. Built along the slope, halls and quarters stacked, so that from below it reads as a multi-storey building.
Why the Sakya are called the "flower school"
Sakya monastery walls carry three bands — red, white, grey — for Manjushri, Avalokiteshvara and Vajrapani. Hence the folk name "flower school". It is a folk name, not what the school calls itself — the school calls itself Sakya.
Monastery, stone pile, town: one system
The First Jiana Lama belonged to Jiegu Monastery; the stone city he founded lies east of it, at Xinzhaai; the site had earlier held the Zhawo chief's red palace; the town lies south of the hill, north of the river. One hill–slope–river line ties the three together: the monastery holds the hill, the stones hold the village, the town holds the road.
Former holdings — what the monastery once held says more about its position than its buildings do: a Shakyamuni thangka given by Phagpa, a protective mask, a sandalwood Tara, an Indian bell and vajra; cymbals said to have been Gesar's; a sword the Zhawo brought from their old Zhangzhung homeland. Also nearly ten thousand volumes of the Kangyur and Tengyur.
These are holdings recorded in the literature. What is visible today is the restored monastery and the Ninth Panchen memorial hall. The list shows the order of what this place was, not what is on view now.
The shape of a hill monastery has its reasons: walls batter inward, windows recess, each court sits higher than the last. On a slope like this, that is the only way to keep the wind out, save ground, and let the main hall look down over everything.
03 · Monastery
This hillside has changed hands three times
The monastery was not built in one act. On the same ground there was first a Bön site, then two small Kagyu houses, and only then a Sakya monastery.
| EarlyBön | In the Tibetan imperial period this country was a centre of Bön. There was a Bön monastery on the hill. |
| Late YuanKagyu | The Bön house was gone; on the site stood two small Karma Kagyu houses, one of them a nunnery, and the Zhawo chief's red palace. |
| Yuanturning | Phagpa passed this way and taught, and the local religious landscape turned towards Sakya. One common account; the formal establishment of Sakya here is usually dated to 1398. |
| 1398built | The thirty-first year of Hongwu, Ming. The Sakya lama Damchenwa Jamyang Sherab Gyaltsen, backed by the Zhawo chief Namkha Wangchuk, built the monastery on the existing foundations. The Kagyu monks and nuns moved elsewhere. |
| 1937Ninth Panchen | The Ninth Panchen, Thubten Choekyi Nyima, reached Yushu on his way back to Tibet and died at the monastery in December. |
| 1980 / 2010 | Approved for reopening in 1980, among the first in Qinghai. On 14 April 2010 a magnitude 7.1 earthquake damaged it badly; it was rebuilt, and a memorial hall to the Ninth Panchen added. |
The Ninth Panchen and this monastery
The Ninth Panchen (1883–1937) left Tibet in 1923 and spent the following years in China proper, Mongolia and Qinghai. In 1937, on his way back, he reached Yushu and died at Jiegu in December. It gives the monastery a place in modern history that cannot be walked around: the last stretch of a great lama's road stopped here.
The history of a monastery is rarely a single line of founders. It is the same ground chosen again and again — good slope, good junction, someone to support it.
The position of Jiegu explains it: it faces the Jiegu junction, sees the traffic, and sees the whole valley.
04 · Monastery
A valley monastery, not a junction
Jiegu stands on the hill north of town and watches the junction. Sixty-five kilometres southeast, in Batang township, another monastery sits in a side valley: Xianggu. It is a hundred years older than Jiegu, and it is not Sakya.
65
km · southeast of the seat
The name and the ground
The name. The hills above it are said to look like cloud held still in the air, and that is where it comes from.
Where. Xianggu village, Batang township, on the slope of Dabo hill; about sixty-five kilometres southeast of the prefecture seat, at roughly 3,450 metres.
What it is called. This corner is known as Yushu's "little Jiangnan" — a valley with water and trees, nothing like the bare slopes along the Tongtian He.
The school and the size
School. Karma Kagyu. Its mother monastery is Tsurphu, in Tibet — the seat of the Karmapas.
Size. Before 1958 it had one twenty-pillar assembly hall and about sixty monks.
Today. Three assembly halls, one retreat house, one monastic college; reopened in 1985.
| 1300founded | The fifth rabjung. Gaton Shaza Gendzongpa, a disciple of the third Karmapa, Rangjung Dorje, built it on Dabo hill at his teacher's instruction. |
| 15th c.enlarged | The seventh Karmapa, Chodrak Gyatso, taught here, helped extend the monastery, and gave scriptures and ritual objects. |
| 1958to Yushu | Administered from Chamdo until 1958, when it was transferred to Yushu. Neither the school nor the mother monastery changed. |
Three lines of reincarnation
There were once four. One, the Aning Rinpoche, was dropped for not residing at the monastery. Three remain: the Ngepa Rinpoche, now in his tenth incarnation; the Xiangpa Rinpoche, in his fifth (some sources say thirteenth — both figures circulate); and the Azhuo Rinpoche, in his fifteenth, who holds the throne.
Two monastic histories running opposite ways. The hillside at Jiegu was chosen over and over — Bön, then Kagyu, then Sakya, three changes of hand. Xianggu has been Karma Kagyu since 1300, with its mother monastery at Tsurphu the whole time. A monastery on a junction changes school when the junction changes hands; a monastery in a side valley, which nobody contests, keeps one line for seven hundred years — position decides direction: the junction follows power, the side valley follows lineage.
05 · Monastery
The stupa across the river, and the neighbours
Xianggu stands on one slope; the Xianggu river runs past it. On the far bank, on a flat called Bangtong, there is a stupa, and its name is Geze Choding.
Who put the stupa there
Local tradition holds that Princess Wencheng built it on her way to Tibet. The upper part was destroyed in the Cultural Revolution; the base is still standing. Pilgrims used to come and circumambulate it from Jiegu, from Dengke and from Chamdo — three directions, one small valley. A stupa that pulls people that far has weight in local memory.
First, what kind of source this is
The recorded journey runs along the main road: Chang'an, Xining, Riyue Shan, the source of the Yellow River, Jiegu, Lhasa. Which side valleys she may also have taken is not recorded. The stupa's origin rests on local tradition, and this page says so. Tradition is the commonest material a place like this has; it is not proof, and it is not nothing.
| Where they came from | What that place is |
|---|
| Jiegu | The prefecture seat, northwest of the stupa. Pilgrims came from here, crossed the river, and were on the Bangtong flats. |
| Dengke | On the east bank of the Jinsha Jiang, today part of Dêgê county in Sichuan. Follow the river upstream and you are in Yushu. |
| Chamdo | Eastern Tibet, where the Za and Ngo rivers meet to become the Lancang. East of it, over the passes, is Sichuan. |
Other residents. A reporter left Yushu before dawn, went south, crossed a pass and dropped into the gorge, then waited behind the monastery until dark. A mother bear came down with two cubs and headed for the corner where the monastery keeps its slop buckets. She walked in front; the cubs held back until she signalled, then followed. On the same trip he ran into musk deer three times. Musk deer, Tibetan bunting and snow leopard have all been recorded in this valley.
That is one reporter's trip, not a nightly show. Wildlife keeps no timetable; meeting any of it is season and luck.
The princess left two things along this road, and left them in two different ways: nine figures cut into the cliff at Beina, a stupa built up out of earth and stone on the Bangtong flats. One cuts into the mountain; one stands up by the river. The fourth booklet is about the nine figures. This one ends at the stupa.
06 · One of four
Of the four, this one is measured in a town
The town is down by the river, the stone city is at the village edge, and this one is up the hill: three things on three levels, each with its own job.
1Water is the measure. A river changes name twice here, and what that reports is terrain changing: plateau, gorge, pasture, farmland, all lined up along one channel. Understand that and the town's position explains itself.
2Stone is time. Stone does not rot; tens of billions of stones over three centuries. This is the only one of the four where time is visible, because it grew stone by stone instead of being built at once.
3Monastery and figures are people. A monastery put on a hill to watch a junction; nine figures cut into a cliff in a gorge. One governs traffic, one governs faith. The distance between them is a day's road — and the distance between the worldly and the renounced.
Choosing among the four
Half a day: water and stone, both at the edge of town.
A full day: add Jiegu itself; the view explains the town and the valley.
Xianggu is sixty-five kilometres southeast and not on the same road — it wants a trip of its own.
The temple is twenty kilometres out — an easy road, but allow for the return. You do not need all four. Two understood beat four visited.
What is unusual about Yushu is not any one place but that four things this different sit this close. In one day, from a great river to a heap of stones to a monastery on a hill to nine figures in a gorge — that density is rare.
| Sanjiangyuan 190,700 km² Not a sight but a range: the sources of the Yangtze, Yellow River and Lancang all lie here. |
Jiana Mani founded 1715 Tens of billions of carved stones piled into a city over three centuries, still growing. |
| Jiegu Monasterythis book built 1398 A Sakya house on the hill north of town; the Ninth Panchen died here in 1937. |
Princess Temple nine Tang reliefs Vairocana is worshipped inside, not the princess. The figures are cut into the cliff at Beina. |
| Juela Monastery Juela, Nangqian · Kagyu A place outside the four, further south in Nangqian: the morning kora, the mani walls, old prayer flags on the far slope. |
October 2026 · Yushu
Samantha
Compiled from public sources: papers from the China Tibetology Research Centre and the Qinghai Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology; public tourism material from Yushu prefecture and city; the Xianggu section also draws on reporting in Chinese National Geography and the monastery's own public introduction. Where dates and figures are disputed, the text says so. Tickets, opening hours, driving times and durations are deliberately omitted.