Gyêgu

Gyêgu is the modern town which developed from the old Tibetan trade mart called Jyekundo ("skye dgu mdo", "skye rgu mdo") in Tibetan and most Western sources. It is the heart of both Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and Yushu county. The present name Gyêgu (Chin. 结古(多)镇, "Jiegu(duo) zhen") is derived from "Jyekundo". The town is most commonly called by the name of the prefecture or county, Yushu, of which it is the administrative seat.

Name

The Tibetan designation "skye dgu mdo" indicates that it is a place where one valley opens into another one ("mdo"), here formed by two tributaries of the Jyegu river, Dza Chu ("rdza chu") and Pel Chu ("dpal chu"). Since "skye dgu" also means men, mankind or all beings, the name could be interpreted as the ‘dwelling place of men at a valley junction’. [H.A. Jäschke, "A Tibetan-English Dictionary", Richmond 1998, pp. 29, 84; and Sarat Chandra Das, "A Tibetan-English Dictionary with Sanskrit Synonyms", Calcutta 1902a, Reprint New Delhi and Madras 1989, p. 105. 'all beings'. This is still correct even if we consider the alternative, mostly older, spelling skye rgu, for rgu is sometimes used instead of dgu. (Das, ibid.; Jäschke 1998, p. 103)]

Geographical situation

The town is reached by a two day car ride on a good, mostly metalled road leading all the way from Xining (820 km), the provincial capital, via the Sun and Moon Pass, Gonghe-Chabcha of Hainan prefecture and Madoi in Golog across the Bayankara Mountains. 25 km before arriving at Gyêgu, the Dri Chu (Yangtse river) is crossed. In 2007 the construction of an airstrip was begun.

Given the fact that almost the entire area of the Yushu region is a realm of nomadic pastoralists, Gyêgu is one of the few places in this part of the vast Tibetan highlands where permanent settlement proved to provide a livelihood for Tibetan farmers and traders. Here, at an elevation of 3,700 m above sea level, peasants grow barley on riverside fields. [A. Gruschke: "The Cultural Monuments of Tibet’s Outer Provinces: Kham, vol. 2: The Qinghai Part of Kham". Bangkok 2004, p. 35.]

ignificance as major east Tibetan trade mart

The significance of Gyêgu developed from its being an old trade hub, situated at the crossroads of important trade routes between Ya’an (formerly "Yazhou") in China’s Sichuan province and Xining in Amdo’s heartland, as well as between Xining and Lhasa. In 1893 W.W. Rockhill stressed the strategic and commercial importance of the town::..."fairly good roads (for Tibet) radiate from it all over the country. [2] Commercially considered it is a distributing point for the Chinese trade in the northeastern part of K’amdo, and is the only town in that region where Chinese merchants are allowed to reside." (...): "The most important road starting from this point is that leading to Ta-chien-lu in Ssû-ch’uan, which I followed. Another leads across the steppes on the west to Nag ch’u-k’a, where it meets the ‘northern route’ (chang lam) from Hsi-ning, and thence reaches Lh’asa in nine days. Another leads to Ch’amdo, in about ten days. Still another passes by Tumbumdo and Tendo, and going through the Golok country comes to Sung-p’an t’ing in northwestern Ssû-ch’uan. The capital of Dérgé is reached from Jyékundo in six days, and from that town Bat’ang is only eight days farther south." [Op. cit. W.W. Rockhill, "Diary of a Journey through Mongolia and Tibet in 1891 and 1892", Washington 1894, p. 206 and note 2 on the same page.]

At that time, from one of the main tea trade centres in China’s southwest, Ya'an in Sichuan, some 90,000 loads of tea bricks were carried annually to Gyêgu. More than half of those, 50,000 loads, continued to be transported to Lhasa and central Tibet. The better qualities of tea were ordinarily taken on this "Janglam", i.e. the northern route of the China trade route to Lhasa leading from Kangding via Dawu and Kardse to Gyêgu. Hence it is not surprising that the caravans doing trade here were led by well-dressed and well-mounted merchants. In the early 20th century, when trade was at its peak in Gyêgu, the town had a native population of about 100 Tibetan families—400 persons—plus 300 to 400 monks in Döndrub Ling monastery. [For long Jyekundo town was but a small community. This is how Frenand Grenard described it still in 1904: ‘...we saw before us, planted on the top of a rock, the square buildings of a monastery, ... and, lower down, clinging to the slope of the mountain, the white houses of a little Tibetan village. This was Jyerkundo.’ (Op. cit. F. Grenard, "Tibet. The country and its inhabitants", London 1904 Reprint Delhi 1974 , pp. 139f.)] The population doubled periodically with the advent of several hundred merchants. They were from central and eastern Tibet, Han Chinese, Hui Muslims and a few Mongolians of China’s northwestern provinces of Shaanxi and Gansu, as well as some Chinese from Sichuan. [Gruschke, op. cit., p. 36.]

History and Traditional Culture

Monasticism

Gyêgu, like most parts of Yushu prefecture, is moreover rich in Buddhist monasteries. Being a constituent of the late Nangchen kingdom, the area was, for most of the time, not under domination by the Dalai Lama’s Gelugpa order in Lhasa. The different balance of power in this part of Kham enabled the older Tibetan Buddhist orders to prevail in Yushu, and thus Gyêgu. [Gruschke, op. cit., p. 36.] The main lamasery in town is the Sakyapa monastery Doendrub Ling, commonly just called Yushu Gompa. Like at the beginning of the 20th century [Acc. to P.K. Kozlow, ("Through Eastern Tibet and Kam" in: "The Geographical Journal", vol. 31, London 1908, p. 660) there were 500 monks in the lamasery, thus at least balancing, if not exceeding the town's lay inhabitants at that time.]

Other nearby monastic sites include the important Karma-Kagyupa lamaseries Domkar Gompa and Thrangu Gompa, the famous Mahavairocana Temple (often called Wencheng Temple) and the popular religious site of Gyanamani with its billions of mani stones.

Prior to collectivization in 1958, the entire monastic population of present-day Yushu TAP amounted to more than 25,000 Buddhist monks and nuns, with approximately 300 incarnate lamas among them. On the average about three to five per cent of the population were monastic, with a strikingly higher share in Nangqên county, where monks and nuns made up between 12 and 20 % of the community.

Gyêgu Tibetan Khampa Festival

Since many different kinds of goods for trade and barter were brought in from all directions, the town became the residence of many of the richest families in the entire Tibetan highland. This wealth was and is demonstrated on two major occasions: the Tibetan New Year Festival and Gyêgu Horse Festival. [Gruschke, op. cit., p. 36.] The Horse Festival, on the other hand, starts on each 25th of July and lasts for several days. Then, the colorful appliqué tents so typical for Tibetan summer outings cover the grasslands of the Barthang plain or the horse race grounds in the west of the town, with Khampas from all over Yushu prefecture, and even farther, showing off in between time and watching picturesque folk dances.

References

Bibliography

*David-Néel, Alexandra, "Grand Tibet; Au pays des brigands-gentilshommes" (1933)
* W.W. Rockhill, "Diary of a Journey through Mongolia and Tibet in 1891 and 1892", Washington 1894

Links

* [http://www.pbase.com/kevinmeyer/horse_festival Gyêgu Horse Festival]
* [http://www.xzqh.org/quhua/63qh/2721ys.htm Official Website of Yushu county (in Chinese)]