History of the Dalai Lama in Government Work

The Dalai Lama ruled Tibet for prolonged period of time, but this was not the situation in the beginning when the title was created. The religious leader first received the honorific title in the second half of the 16th century, some 100 years later after the death of Gendain Zhuba (later confirmed posthumously as the 1 st Dalai     

TENGCHEN COUNTY GOES FROM POVERTY TO WEALTH

<正>Although one month is just a fraction of a year,people did spend an entire month helping a village develop its economy and giving the town of Sheshung in Tengchen County a complete overhaul.At this"hometown of big rocks",the locals are on their way to realize their dream of getting rid of poverty through the establishment of major industrial projects Norbu was the team leader dispatched from the Information and Publicity Department of Chamdo with the aim of providing services to Langthong Village     

Gyalse Regime Contribution to the Maintenance of Communications Between China and the Western Regions

The Gyalse (rgyal-sras) regime of the Tubo tribesrose at the beginning of the 11th century.Its founder,Gyalse,was a Tubo chieftain of the He-Huang area,between the Yellow and the Huangshui Rivers in EastQinghai and West Gansu.A descendant of the TuboTsenpo royal family,and a leader of great talent andbold vision,he enjoyed the unwavering support of allhis tribesmen.Gyalse set out to conquer other tribesand bring the He-Huang area under his control,andsuccessfully subdued his enemies.He set up his regime,     

REFERENCE MATERIALS

Potala PalaceConstruction of the Potala Palace began in the mid-7th century for the Tubo King Songtsan Gambo to greet his Han wife, Princess Wencheng. It comprised 999 rooms then, plus one built atop the Red Hill, which, said to have 1,000 rooms, was later destroyed by thunderbolts and wars. What we see today is a structure built during the 17th century.In the mid-17th century, the White House was added to the Potala Palace, which spread along the Red Hill in Lhasa.The palace is a structure of clay, wood and stone. The palace was the residence of the Dalai Lama of various generations. Beginning with the period of the 5th Dalai Lama, major religious and political ceremonies were held there.The palace covers a total area of 360,000 square meters, with major building rising 117 meters high in 13 floors, and extends some 360 meters from east to west.From 1989 to 1994, the State earmarked some 55 million Yuan and large quantities of gold and silver to repair the palace.In December 1994, the palace found its w     

Chairman Jiang Zemin Encouraged Me to Cultivate More Land

After the peaceful liberation of Tibet（in particular the opening up）,Nyima Ngodrup,by maintaining his genuinely diligent and honest disposition,immediately played a significant role in local grain production and his family became one of the biggest grain-growing households.He was even cited as the national labor model.In 1990,when Chairman Jiang Zemin visited Shigatse,he met Nyima Ngodrup and encouraged him to cultivate more land.Up to this time the former serf who could never previously dare to look his master of the Shika in the face,was for the first time experiencing the feeling of ownership before the State leader.     

New Books

<正>Moinyul,the Hiding Paradise This is the first book produced in China concerning the Moinyul area in Tibet.Consisting of a total of 23 chapters and 13 invaluable historical attached files,the book is written by Pasang Norbu and narrates the history and culture of Moinpa and the people living there all the way from the ninth to nineteenth century.The book was published     

Story of the Tibetan New Year in 2001

TIBET NEW YEAR CELEBRATED IN VARIOUS TIBETAN LOCALITIESAround 100 BC, the Tibetans developed theirown calendar on the basis of changes in the shapeof the moon. In the mid-13th century, when Tibetbecame a part of China, it introduced the Chineseway to work out a calendar As China was under therule of the Mongolians then, some Mongolian methods were also adopted in Tibet.This year's Tibetan New Year fell on February24, but was celebrated differently in various localities…     

WU YUCHU AND THE YAK MUSEUM OFTIBET

<正>It was the spring of 2011,in Beijing Capital International Airport,when Wu Yuchu was about to fly to Lhasa again.This marked his full-time return to Tibet after working in Beijing for 20 years.His mission this time was to establish a state-level museum dedicated to yaks to express his love and respect for the Tibetan Plateau and its people.Ever Thankful to Yaks On March 13 and 19,Wu Yuchu,curator of the Yak Museum of Tibet,gave     

Marsone, Pierre, The Steppe and the Empire: The Formation of the Khitan [Liao] dynasty-4th-10th Centuries [History]

Conventional treatments of Chinese history include a "Liao/Khitan dynasty" existing on the northern frontier from 907 to 1125,ruled by the ethnically distinctive Khitan (Qidan) people.As Pierre Marsone points out in the foreword to La Steppe et l'Empire,in many histories discussion of this polity is absent or perfunctory.Indeed the work to which Marsone's title alludes,the classic 1938 L'Empire des steppes by René Grousset,presented a comprehensive history of steppe empires yet spared only a few pages of its bulk for the Khitan state.Such neglect obstructs historians' understanding of long-term trends.The Chinese world had seen powerful empires with some degree of "foreignness" before,but this was a new kind of entity that proved immune to the accustomed methods of Chinese policy.Too powerful to play off against other states,with an administration too systematized to succumb to personal politics,the Liao/Khitan empire became such a fixation of Northern Song (960-1127) policymakers that the political history of the latter cannot be effectively told without frequent reference to the former,and it is no coincidence that the two Asian superpowers collapsed nearly simultaneously.In turn,the Liao/Khitan empire set the precedent for the stable hybrid bureaucratic states that were so important in later Chinese history.Marsone's work makes the valuable contribution of clarifying how this empire came into being.The resulting account is an invaluable corrective to dynastically delimited narratives in which the Liao empire appears in the tenth century as an abrupt and novel development,epitomizing the Great Man model of history in the form of its founder,Yelü Abaoji.     

Fourteen Years of Glory——An Interview With NPC Vice-Chairman Radi

Editor‘s Note: Radi, a Tibetan, was born in August 1938 in Biru County, Tibet. He is a vice-chairman of the NPC Standing Committee.A serf in old Tibet, he was a Tibetan leader from 1975 to 2003. We interviewed him at the end of 2003,and he talked about changes that have taken place in Tibet in the past 14 years.     

Chinese Socialism as Vernacular Cosmopolitanism

This paper follows the life of an idea, a fundamental concept in modern Chinese intellectual life： socialism. It explores this idea as an alternative form of Chinese cosmopolitanism, drawing from Pheng Cheah＇s identification of two kinds of Chinese cosmopolitanism： mercantile and revolutionary. If part of what we mean by cosmopolitanism is the local use of an external, or international, or otherwise ＂independent＂ （relative to local power and practice） ideology or discourse to promote an agent＇s sense of social good at home and connection to the world, then the ways that socialist thought, ideology and praxis have been employed in China in the twentieth century constitute one such strain of cosmopolitanism. Shehuizhuyi （socialism） meant related but significantly different things to Chinese in the twentieth century. This essay argues that Chinese socialism can be viewed as a version of vernacular cosmopolitanism through two examples： Wang Shiwei in the 1940s and Deng Tuo in the 1960s, as well as the discourse of Pan-Asianism before and after the Mao era. Chinese socialism was as much a terrain of debate and contestation about what it means to be ＂Chinese and modern＂ as it was a shared vocabulary and set of aspirations. All along it has been able to play the role of cosmopolitan thought for some influential Chinese thinkers and doers--connecting China to the world in order to pursue universal values.     

Henriot,Christian.Scythe and the City.A Social History of Death in Shanghai

Much has been written on Chinese death and funerary culture by anthropologists—far less by historians.This book is therefore a much-welcome attempt to fill this gap in the field of Chinese modem history.Its chronological scope encompasses one century:from the 1860s to the eve of the Cultural Revolution,but it is clearly more focused on the twentieth century due to the availability of a much greater amount of source materials from that period.     

A Golden Bridge (Ⅰ)——Construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway

The world knows China is building a railway from Qinghai to Tibet, a project that began in the early days of this new century. The Tibetans hail it as a golden bridge. How much progress has been made in this regard? Beginning with this issue, we will devote some space to this subject.     

Hand in Hand,and Heart to Heart

The new century has dawned and our work in the past year has drawn to a successful conclusion through the care and concern from our readers. I thank you fromthe bottom of my heart!I came to China 's Tibet in May 1991. when I finished my graduate study in theBeijing Teachers' University, majoring in folklore. I worked for the Chinese andTibetan editions of the magazine, and was transferred to the English edition in 1997.With more readers demanding a better English edition, I was appointed …     

PRIVATE COLLECTION OF CUNEIFORM TABLETS IN JERUSALEM

Cuneiform texts presented in this article are part of the Av collection of cuneiform tablets belonging to a private collector in Jerusalem. I was introduced to this collection almost a couple of years ago by a chance through a mutual friend. The collection was     

On the Relationship between the Central Government and the Local Government of Tibet in the Late Qing Dynasty

After the Opium War in 1840, China was more and more semi-colonized. Around the turn of the 20th century, the national strength of the Qing Empire was quickly weakening. As a result, the Qing Court exercised a weaker rule over Tibet, and its political relationship with Tibet was consequently affected. On the problems of how to resist foreign invasions and how to handle Tibet's internal affairs, the Qing Court and     

MAIN CONTENTS

Study on Tax Ingots in Ming Dynasty
Silver used as currency started in Ming dynasty. The official policy for silver using was at the beginning suppressive then gradually encouraging. The turning point was the use of silver as a substitution for actual paying of crops for land tax. This study shows although only few samples were found during last century, through the study of these specimens there still remain some traces of the transformation of silver as currency in China＇s. monetary system. Those land tax ingots are the evidence of this process.     

TAKING THANGKA-PAINTING ART BACK TO MANTANG

<正>Whoever pays attention to Tibetan Thangkapainting art knows the name Manlha Dondrup,which belongs to the great painting master who brought forth many creative ideas with Thangka-painting during the 15th century.He was born in today's Mantang Village of the town of Karpo at Lhozhag in Lhoka Prefecture.Even today,thevillage still keeps the great master's remains in a special pagoda.In line     

A RECORD OF THE ENTHRONEMENT OF THE SOUL BOY OF DETRUL REINCARNATION

<正>July 4th,2010,which was also May 23rd of the irontiger year according to the Tibetan calendar,was a most auspicious day.Tibetan Buddhism welcomed this very important event,drawing lots from the golden urn to search for the soul boy of the Fifth Detrul reincarnation. Over 150 representatives from all walks of life and adherents witnessed this great event in Tibetan Buddhism in front of the statue of Sakyamuni in the Jokhang Temple.