Things To Do in Yushu

At the market (shangchang) on the southwest corner of the main T-junction, you can enjoy some of the sights, gestures, and attitudes described by Dutch missionary Susie Rijnhart, one of Tibet's earliest and most astute observers: "The men are mainly dressed in pulu, or colored drilling, have their hair mainly done in a great queue about which they adorn with bright rings and twist about their heads. . . . The women often wear a large disk of silver on their forehead and sometimes on the back of their head, and both sexes carry from their girdles silver needle cases, flint and steel boxes and occasionally an embroidered cloth case for their tsamba bowl . . ."

Religious paraphernalia -- including bells, prayer wheels, incense, and chanting tapes -- is sold alongside knives, snuff from India, and bundles of tea wrapped in bamboo. Prayer flags (tar-choks) handmade by printers from Dege, and tailor-made chubas (Tibetan jackets) make excellent purchases. Kham is renowned for its richly colored carpets, but many are inferior weaves from Sichuan. Better carpets are usually Nepalese imports, but the craft is being revived locally.