{"id":70520,"date":"2010-09-08T11:41:16","date_gmt":"2010-09-08T11:41:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seangallagher.wpengine.com\/blog\/?p=2444"},"modified":"2010-09-08T11:41:16","modified_gmt":"2010-09-08T11:41:16","slug":"qinghais-troubled-soul-pulitzer-center-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gallagher-photo.com\/qinghais-troubled-soul-pulitzer-center-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Qinghai\u2019s Troubled Soul \u2013 Pulitzer Center #7"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A teenager with his yak on the shores of Qinghai Lake. 2010<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SEAN GALLAGHER, FOR THE PULITZER CENTER<\/a>, QINGHAI PROVINCE, CHINA<\/p>\n

Tenzin’s green eyes bored into me as I looked at his sunburnt face. “Qinghai Lake is a very holy place for us. We regard it as the ‘soul’ of Qinghai.”<\/p>\n

He was sitting by the side of a road running parallel to the lake shore. The sound of cars rushing past filled the air as Tenzin’s kneepads, torn and grazed, fluttered in the wind generated just a meter or two away. Tenzin was taking a momentary break from prostrating his way around the 360km circumference of the lake, in a stark and vivid act demonstrating the importance of this lake to Tibetans, who make up 80 percent of people in the region.<\/p>\n

Located at 3200 meters above sea-level on the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau in the northwest of China, Qinghai Lake is the country’s largest inland body of saltwater at 4318 square kilometers in area. Over the past century, however, the lake has found itself in a worrying downward trend as 700 square kilometers of its area have been lost and its surface level has dropped by 13 meters.<\/p>\n

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