冬虫夏草: The Economist

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Caterpillar fungus | The Emperor’s Mighty Brother; Demand for an aphrodisiac has brought unprecedented wealth to rural Tibet—and trouble in its wake. Economist, Dec 19, 2015.
http://www.economist.com/news/ch ... al-tibetand-trouble
("It is odd, however, that the fungus has become quite the TCM star that it is today. There is no known mention of it in Chinese medicinal works before the 17th century—by the standards of TCM [traditional Chinese medicine], that is relatively recent")

Note:
(a) "Yushu, Qinghai Priovince * * * Yushu prefecture * * * Yushu is a vast area of mountains and alpine pasture, larger than Syria but with a population of fewer than 400,000 people (see map below). About 95% are Tibetans, who call the area Yulshul."

Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture 玉树藏族自治州

(b) "In summer the airborne spores of a fungus known as cordyceps (or ophiocordyceps) sinensis invade the caterpillars of various species of ghost moth, a large pale insect that flits over the pastures at dusk. After grubs thus infected bury themselves in the soil to hibernate, they die; when winter comes they freeze. The warmth of spring activates the fungus, which grows to fill the caterpillar’s entire body, leaving only the outer skin. A spindly brown shoot of it emerges from the caterpillar’s head and pushes its way through the soil into daylight [germinating to produce spores]"
(i) Of course, The Economist is wrong. In the "cordyceps (or ophiocordyceps) sinensis," the first letter of genus names (cordyceps, ophiocordyceps) needs to be capitalized.
(ii) ghost moth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_moth
(Hepialus humuli; The ghost moth gets its name from the display flight of the male, which hovers, sometimes slowly rising and falling, over open ground to attract females)

(c) "The children’s good eyesight and short stature make them the best spotters of the fungus among blades of grass and stalks of ground-hugging cinquefoil shrubs that soon, as the weather warms, will dot the slopes with bright yellow flowers. It is not a job for those unused to the plateau’s thin air. Caterpillar fungus, as yartsa gunbu is usually called in English, is generally found at altitudes above 4,000 metres (13,100 feet). That is higher than Lhasa"
(i) For cinquefoil, see Potentilla
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentilla
(genus; They [species in this genus] are usually called cinquefoils in English)
(ii) Lhasa  (at an altitude of 3,490 metres (11,450 ft), Lhasa is one of the highest cities in the world)  Wikipedia

(d) "As your (ill-acclimatised) correspondent found, ascending the steep slopes of Yaseeda ridge in Yushu’s Chindu county 称多县 requires nimble limbs as well as the genetic advantage Tibetans enjoy at such elevations, where there is 40% less oxygen than at sea level. His agile guides were sporting enough to let him rest as his heart pounded in a desperate quest for atmospheric sustenance. * * * [A fungus hunter] says a diet of dried yak-meat and instant noodles (a product of China’s spreading culinary influence: balls of roast barley flour, known as tsampa, are the cultural norm) keeps him going from dawn to dusk. * * * Later, at his house in Xiewu township 称多县歇武镇 * * * Herders [of yaks in Tibet] live hand to mouth, or at least they did until the 1990s when the price of yartsa gunbu began to soar. Since then an explosion of demand, almost entirely from non-Tibetan parts of China, has transformed the economy of large swathes of the Tibetan plateau. Daniel Winkler, a fungus expert who runs Mushroaming, a Seattle-based travel agency, and who has done extensive research on this, says caterpillar fungus has entwined the plateau’s economy with that of the rest of China in a way that few other products have—there is little else made in Tibetan areas that is in such high demand elsewhere.  It is all the more remarkable for having remained largely a Tibetan preserve: despite much effort, no one has yet succeeded in producing commercially viable quantities of good-quality yartsa gunbu in artificial conditions. This means colossal dividends for Tibetans. In the TAR the retail value of the more than 50 tonnes of yartsa gunbu harvested there in 2013 was around 7.5 billion yuan ($1.2 billion), equivalent to nearly half its earnings from tourism. Total annual production on and around the plateau, most in China but also in Nepal and Bhutan, is worth several times more. * * * Over large areas of the Tibetan plateau, about 40% of rural residents’ annual cash incomes have been generated by the fungus in recent years."
(i) sporting (adj): "done or behaving in a way that treats the other people in a sport or competition fairly * * * marked by or calling for sportsmanship"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sporting
(ii) tsampa  糌粑
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsampa
(roasted barley flour; Tsampa is quite simple to prepare; indeed, it is known as a convenience food)

choi

(e) "The Chinese often appear not to share Westerners’ embarrassment about such medicaments; a good sex life is seen as evidence of overall health. One high-class restaurant in Beijing specialises in animal penises, the eating of which is supposed to boost virility. Westerners visit for a titter, Chinese businessmen [visit] to impress their clients. (Yak penis, says the eatery’s website, is a 'luxury gift for close friends.')"

titter (vi, n): "to laugh in a nervous, affected, or partly suppressed manner : GIGGLE, SNICKER"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/titter

(f) "Caterpillar fungus may even have been the salvation of Tibet’s pastoral way of life (or what remains of it after the forcible settlement of many nomads by the government). In the rest of China, less than half the population now works on farms. On the Tibetan plateau, which is home to around 6m people, the share [of (Tibetan) people] raising animals or growing crops fell only slightly between 2000 and 2010, from 87% to 83%. Andreas Gruschke of the University of Leipzig says yartsa gunbu has provided some herders with enough extra income to make yak-rearing viable. It certainly helped in Yushu after an earthquake in 2010, which flattened much of the main town of Gyegu (or Yushu city) and killed more than 2,600 people. To aid the area’s battered economy, the government launched an annual 'caterpillar-fungus culture festival'—a trade fair, in effect, attracting buyers from across the plateau (prices are often decided by a coded touch of hands [of a buyer and a seller] under a cloth, to keep rivals in the dark). * * * Wholesalers—most of them in Qinghai are Hui, a Muslim ethnic group—were surprisingly candid in expressing doubt about how much the fungus by itself could really help to boost libido. * * * In parts of the plateau, the annual rush for fungus is Klondike-like. In a report by the Communist Party committee of Nangqian county in Yushu, a village official says: ‘Caterpillar fungus has turned people bad.’ "
(i) Yushu City 玉树市, Qinghai
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yushu_City,_Qinghai
(The city seat is the town of Gyêgu 结古镇 (also known as Yushu and Jiegu in Chinese))
(ii) Klondike, Yukon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klondike,_Yukon
(It lies around the Klondike River, a small [100-mile] river that enters the Yukon River from the east at Dawson City [qv])

I can not find a map showing Klondike region or river, but click “Dawson City” and you will find a map to give you an idea where Klondike region approximately is.
(iii) 囊谦县 (pinyin: Nangqian; ZYPY 藏语拼音: Nangchen)