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It has been a year since an earthquake devastated Yushu prefecture in the south of Qinghai. Five national-level and 23 provincial-level cultural relic sites in Qinghai and neighbouring Sichuan were shattered, officials said.
They still are.
Although the government rushed to the scene right after the 7.1-magnitude quake on April 14 and pledged to invest 14 million yuan (HK$16.63 million) last year and a further 500 million yuan this year for repairs, work on nearly all of those relics has still not begun. 
Jiegu Monastery's  living Buddha, Angwen Danbarenqing, said that the monastery had found a Shenzhen design company to help with the restoration, and that the government was sponsoring the work. However, he seemed unsure about further details.
'We are not sure how long restoration will take, or when our monks can move back into proper housing. We hope a basic structure can be built by October,' he said. 
Monks are mostly still living in tents, some in prefabricated houses. Two of the biggest monasteries said reconstruction would begin on Friday, the day after the first anniversary of the quake, but it appears that not even the design blueprints have been finalised. 
Situated along the main thoroughfare between central China and Tibet, Yushu has long been a holy ground for Tibetan Buddhists and boasts numerous precious monasteries and cultural relics, many of which also suffered severe damage from the quake, which killed about 2,700 people. 
Throughout its history, it saw the flourishing of all the sects in Tibetan Buddhism and was home to 192 monasteries and 23,000 monks before the quake. Jiegu Monastery, or Gyegu Monastery, of the Sakya  sect is not only the largest one in Jiegu town, but also the resting place of the Ninth Panchan Lama, who died there in 1937 during the war of resistance against Japanese aggression. 
First built in the late 1300s, the monastery sits on a mountaintop, where it used to boast rows of colourful traditional houses for its 700 monks, a grand Buddhism Institute and the beautiful architecture of a scripture hall, which sports red walls and a golden roof.
The scripture hall is still closed and its interior collapsed. It stands with the now-slanted Buddhism Institute on a bare mountain, where all the monks' damaged houses have been cleared, and only a few pieces of grey, crimson and white wall bear witness that they ever existed.
Many local residents holding prayer wheels walked around the impressive 300-year-old Jiamu Mani Scripture Stone Pile, which contains over 2.5 billion pieces of scripted stones laid down by devout Tibetan Buddhists over the years. Eight white stupas sat atop the pile before the quake; only four are visible now. 
A few kilometres outside Jiegu is the 700-year-old Changu Monastery, or Thrangu Monastery. It was the hardest-hit monastery in the quake, and 23 monks died there. Today the facade is half destroyed and a smashed bronze Buddha statue lies in front of the scripture hall - most other buildings were reduced to rubble. About 90 per cent of the monastery's Buddhist statues, tangka and scriptures and paintings were either damaged or are still buried,  and its living Buddha, Luozhuo Nima says that although the monastery has found another site on flatter land, rebuilding it is likely to cost about 200 billion yuan.
 'The government said it would give about 40 million, but we still need to come up with the rest. We need all kinds of support,' he said. Monastery leaders eager to restore the original scripture hall as a heritage site were still awaiting instructions from the government on how to do that to meet official rules, he said.
 One architect who visited Yushu recently said he was surprised how chaotic the reconstruction had been, and the apparent lack of communication between the government and the monasteries. 'We were asked by the government to come and help with reconstruction but the monasteries seemed to have found their own designers already,' said the expert. 'Perhaps it's poor communication; perhaps it's a lack of trust between the two.'
Either way, reconstruction of the cultural relics must take place with more expertise involved, he said, to make sure the new buildings preserved tradition on the one hand, but also followed contemporary architectural requirements such as the ability to withstand earthquakes. 
'We could also make more use of local Tibetan craftsmen and experience in the reconstruction, as they know the area best,' he said.
Although the Temple of Princess Wencheng, built in AD641, escaped damage in the quake, mainland media reported that rocks above the monastery were loosened, prompting some experts to call for urgent measures to prevent unnecessary secondary damage.
A 1,000-year-old Tibetan version of the Tripitaka, a Buddhist canon of scriptures written in golden and silver sand paint, was also rescued from the rubble last year and now sits in a museum, the first building to be restored since the quake, according to the local government. 
However, Yisi Cuomao, a member of the family that owns the Tripitaka, said the local government had not yet sorted out the property rights of the museum with the family, leaving it prone to land ownership disputes. 
How the Tripitaka will be preserved in the future and whether it will be made available for public viewing is another unresolved issue.
We are not sure how long restoration will take or when monks can move back into proper housing
Angwen Danbarenqing, Jiegu Monastery's living Buddha
Prayer site
The 300-year-old Jiamu Mani Scripture Stone Pile at Jiegu Monastery contained this many pieces of scripted stones: 2.5b



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Tibet

A year after quake, cultural relics remain shattered