Yushu

Yushu is a high-altitude Tibetan city in southern Qinghai, sitting above 3,700 meters near the source waters of the Yangtze, Yellow and Mekong rivers, a region known as Sanjiangyuan, the 'Source of Three Rivers.' Its economy is built around yak and sheep herding, the harvesting of caterpillar fungus (cordyceps), a prized traditional medicine ingredient that dominates the local cash economy, and reconstruction-driven construction work that has continued since the devastating 2010 earthquake. Yushu has no major university, though it hosts a vocational and technical school training local Tibetan students in nursing, tourism and Tibetan medicine. The city is best known for the hilltop Jiegu Monastery and the vast Gyanak Mani wall, said to hold more prayer stones than any other site in Tibetan Buddhism, as well as for its remarkable recovery: after the 2010 quake killed roughly 2,000 people, Yushu was almost entirely rebuilt within a few years into a modern Tibetan town.