This video showcases the remaining ruins of the Yellow Monastery in Khar Us. In the 1930s, Chagaan Gegeen, a Buddhist figure in Gansu, came to Khür Khar Us and established two Buddhist monasteries during his visits, one of them being the famous Yellow Temple which local Torghuts call Ar Zuu (Northern monastery, as a counterpart to the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa, which is known as Ömnö Zuu (Southern monastery in Mongolian)). As local Mongols say, the temple was founded by Chagaan Gegeen as a memorial to his mother and once gathered more than 500 lamas in its heyday, but the monk population had been reduced to about 130 in 1958 when the temple was completely destroyed by the CCP. The destruction story goes like this: In 1957, seven or eight CCP cadres came here to advocate the creation of a people’s commune and promote the Great Leap Forward movement. Some high-ranking lamas were reluctant to hand over their property to the commune, so they tied those cadres up in a small room in the temple. Coincidentally, two Tibetan lamas had also come to this Yellow Temple to practice some time before, so the movement was immediately denounced by the Chinese authorities as a religious riot in support of the 14th Dalai Lama. The military came in and destroyed all the temples, arresting all the lamas between 18 and 60 years old.