The New York Times, Yarchen Gar Journal, 8 November 2016
A Buddhist monk looking out on the Yarchen Gar nunnery in China, where thousands of nuns live in makeshift huts.
YARCHEN GAR, China — Even by the standards of the phenomenal sights of Tibet, Yarchen Gar is a wonder on the high plateau: thousands of ramshackle homes clustered on a remote peninsula at the bend of a river, each one the domicile of a nun who has come here to study Tibetan Buddhism.
Nuns gathered for a meal before a prayer and study session.
Residents estimate there are 10,000 people here, almost all Tibetan with a handful of Han, the dominant ethnicity in China. The vast majority being women, this is one of the largest communities of nuns in the world — certainly the largest nun shantytown.
A hut under construction in Yarchen Gar.
In cramped buildings, many built by the residents, the nuns pray, meditate and sleep. On the higher west bank of the river are the homes of monks. Narrow wooden bridges connect the two areas.
The cramped living conditions in the Yarchen Gar nunnery.
As with much of the region, Yarchen Gar is above 13,000 feet. Winters are brutal here, but the days were still warm in October.
Anyone can move freely along the edge of the settlement, where there are convenience stores run by nuns. One austere restaurant has large metal steamers of both bread and vegetarian dumplings sitting outside. People here do not eat meat.
The monastery at the heart of Yarchen Gar, also called Yachen Gar, was founded in 1985 by Achuk Rinpoche, who followed the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. The monastery’s focus was on meditation. At first, there were only a dozen disciples, but the number grew as his teachings spread.
A communal water tap on a street in Yarchen Gar.
The homes are patchworks of boards and thin metal sheets, with the occasional piece of plastic tarp covering a part of the roof or walls. Narrow lanes wind among them. Depending on the wind, the air can be thick with the smell of undrained sewage.
The Yarchen Gar nunnery as seen from a shop’s window.
This is the second-largest “gar,” which means monastic encampment in Tibetan. The largest, Larung Gar, in a valley to the northeast, has more monks than nuns. Workers there are now demolishing individual homes, on the orders of Chinese officials. Some clergy members are being forced to leave.
Nuns chatting near a giant statue of Padmasambhava, an Indian Buddhist master.
At the top of the hill is a towering golden statue of Padmasambhava, also known as Guru Rinpoche, the Indian Buddhist master. To the north, eight white stupas and a wall marked a distant sky burial site, where human corpses are cut up in a funeral ritual and vultures feast on the remains.
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