Case Studies. The following are examples of the way 3 young people in the UK have advanced their career opportunities through apprenticeships in different ways.

DT male, aged 25 completed an advanced apprenticeship in Business Administration, whilst working for a large Corporation in northern England. He is now doing similar studies in Customer Services working as a Customer & Information Addministrator. He says that his studies had been tailored around his job, and hopes to go on to do a degee. 'I like the mix of work and study,' he said.

EE female, aged 26 is a Weapons Technician with the Royal Air Force. She took an advanced apprenticeship in Aerosystems Engineering. Her studies have taken 3 years, and she is now qualified to work on operations and abroad.

JN male, 19 was very well qualified at 16 when he left school. His school assumed that he would progress to university, but, 'I wanted to something more practical,' he said, 'and start earning money, without getting into student debt.' By next August, he will have compled a number of courses with an International Chemical Company. He says, 'Apprenticeships give you a real chance to show employers whaat you can do.'

In conclusion. There are clearly other roads to career success, other than through university. Large companies offer opportunities, although there may be an obligation to remain with the company for 2 or 3 years after graduation. Internationally, The Armed Forces of a country, offer ways of obtaining skills, whilst offering a salary, accommodation and comradeship.

Explore all your opportunities, and choose the one which best suits your circumstances.

Compiled from various sources including: Edge, Government & Education information, apprenticeships.org, Linda Whitney (Journalist) and agencies. AC. 2009.02.28.

Special Feature - Jobs - Getting Help.

At the risk of repeating myself and going over old ground again, I am returning to the task of Job Hunting because of its importance to student's future careers. In the UK all schools have a specially trained Careers teacher and a CareErs department. The government runs Job Shops offering help with job searches and advertising vacancies across the job market including skilled,unskilled and pvofessional posts. Industry, business and all agencies, as well as schools, co-operate with the exchange of information, visits, seminars and presentations.

Job Hunting is a serious business, and one which can be very confusing, at least I think, because students are busy studying and don't give much forward thought as to what careers they want to follow. If the do know and have planned a career path carefully, the competition is ferocious; too many people for not enough Jobs.

I have written many articles on this Blog, aimed at helping students find jobs, fill in application forms, prepare resumes / c.v's, and other advice. From the feedback we receive, it seems to work and is helpful.

The importance of this feature is to stress the importance of using every means possible to secure a foothold on the career ladder, providing you are comfortable with the situation. There are many sources of help, so use them to your advantage.

Parents can help, advise and sometimes open doors to opportunities through their own contacts in business. Sometimes young people feel under pressure from their parents, many of whom have made huge financial sacrifices to put their children through college. The friction it sometimes causes in relationships is understandable; students want freedom to go their own way but parents want the best for their sons and daughters. Ideas and personalities, clash.

Teachers may be able to help and guide you with problems through their professional and personal contacts. The situation will almost certainly be helped if you show an interest in your studies and discuss problems with them. It offers you the opportunity to show off your personality and demonstrate skills and abilities.

In my view, this is part of a good teacher's wider responsibilities. It is also personally rewarding when my students achieve their goals. I have a great feeling of satisfaction when a successful students takes the trouble to send a 'Thank you' message or card.

Teachers are also a key element in providing recommendations and references. Of course they emphasise the positive points of a student. To be able to do that, a teacher needs to know more about the student than simply their academic success and ability. There are three types of enquiries from or to an employer.

References: This is a confidential recommendation, usually from your college or employer about your background, academic record and suitability for the advertised job.

Letter of Recommendation or Testimonial: is similar and more general in its terms of reference. It is usually 'open' and provided for you to photo-copy for inclusion with an application or letter to a prospective employer.

Letter of Request: is a request from an employer for specific information from your college or university. Present your request for your application, to your college, tutor or teacher at least 4 weeks before it is required. Tell your school exactly what the prospective employer wants to know and why they want the information. Also tell them when the Letter of Recommendation has to be received by the employer. The reply is usually sent by e-mail.

Here is the standard format:

Dear Professor Li

Include your personal information: Name, Class. contact address, mobile phone number.

I am writing to ask if you would please write a Letter of Recommendation for me. I am applying to ??? which requires information concerning my academic ability. They have asked specifically for information on the following points:

List each point in the same order which the company asks for it.

The letter has to returned to the following e-mail address ???? by 2008.09.30. If you need information please call me on 1358 1234567.

Kind regards

Alan Cooper.

Use all the sources of help that are available to you; visit Job Fairs, scan notice boards and advertisements in news papers, use agencies, search the Internet and circulate relevant information to potential employers whose business you may be interested in.

Don't give up. Try to avoid traps - some unscrupulous organisations will ask for a fee to help you. Generally speaking, a reputable organisation will will help you for Free, recovering their costs from the employer or other agencies.

As I said at the beginning, there is a considerable amount of information and help available. My advice is to examine your situation and go for it!

Special feature: The hoppiest days of our lives: Recalling the summers spent in the fields.
By Melanie Mcgrath
I included this article because, when I was a teemeager, I used to pick fruit during the holidays for pocket money. My job on the hop farm was to pack the product ready for the Hop Market Auctions in The Old Kent Road in London. Near my home the most famous farms were owned by Guiness a strong dark traditional Irish beer.
It was their great escape - thousands of families fleeing the poverty of the East End to go hop-picking in Kent and EastSusex. As an enchanting new book reveals, they weren't just there for the beer...Pic: Three generations of the Ayres family of Titchfield in a hops field at Petersfield, Hampshire in September 1954

When summer gets under way in a few months around 12,000 migrants will arrive in Dover. Most will be from Eastern Europe, in particular Romania and Poland, and the former countries of the Soviet Union, especially the Ukraine.

Living in caravans and makeshift huts, they will pass the summer months in the Kent countryside picking the blackcurrants and redcurrants, strawberries and raspberries that will fill our supermarkets. Some will stay on through the autumn, working in the Garden of England's cherry, apple and pear orchards and in its famous hop gardens.

The work is low paid and conditions are tough, but the migrants come because Kentish farmers can't get Brits to do the job.

It wasn't always thus. For centuries, the work was done by Londoners who flooded into Kent at the end of every summer to pick the hops, prized by brewers, which were then the county's most important crop. As Charles Dickens wrote: 'Kent, sir - everybody knows Kent - apples, cherries, hops and women.'

At its height, from the Twenties to the Fifties, about 200,000 East Enders from London - mostly women and children - made the annual pilgrimage down into the Kentish hop gardens, filling the 'hopper's specials' trains which left from London Bridge station in the early hours of the morning.

Those who couldn't afford the train ticket would walk the 36 miles to the hop gardens at Paddock Wood, Maidstone and Faversham, sleeping by the road when they got tired.

So popular was the annual hop that it was known as the 'Londoner's holiday', and for many East Enders it was the nearest to a holiday they ever got.

It's a way of life that has largely disappeared but is most certainly not forgotten. Even today, it's rare to find an elderly East Ender who doesn't remember the annual 'hop' as the best time of their lives - which is how it first came to my attention. A few years ago, I wrote a book on a little known and even less regarded part of East London called Silvertown, where my grandparents had owned a greasy spoon, known as the Cosy Cafe, beside the vast Tate & Lyle sugar refinery.

I attempted to recreate the wonderful bustle of the area and, at the same time, to paint a portrait of the lives of a working-class London family living in its midst. But one colourful aspect of East End life I didn't touch on in Silvertown was hopping.

My mother's generation still speak of the thrilling clatter of hop cards through the letterboxes of tiny two-up, two-down terraces in early August. Each card allocated a place for a family on a particular hop farm and they were so fiercely fought over that a black market developed in stolen and forged cards - an early form of identity theft.

Most farmers would invite the same families each year and whole streets would decamp en masse and set themselves up in rows of 'hop huts' in the same configuration as in their London terraces.

Preparations carried on through August, as women saved cans of corned beef and soup, shopped in jumble sales for warm clothes and set aside the old cooking pots and blankets. All this would be stuffed into the rickety contraptions stuck together by their men from old prams and tea chests which passed for their hop carts.

A group of hop-pickers at the start of the season in Kent in 1948

When the day came, usually in the first week of September, thousands of women and children made their way along the great London dock thoroughfares - Commercial Road and East India Dock Road - towards London Bridge, singing hopping songs as they went:

Oh, they say hopping's lousy, I don't believe it's true, We only go down hopping, To earn a bob or two.

Conditions at the hop farms were often rudimentary. Hoppers lived in unheated sheds and slept on straw-stuffed mattresses piled on twigs. They cooked over fires outdoors or in huge concrete cookhouses and washed their clothes in local streams.

Farmers often provided vegetables and fruit, and the hoppers saved up to buy meat once a week. When their menfolk came down at the weekends they would poach rabbits, pheasants and fish. It was not unknown for local chickens to go missing, too.

The hoppers had a reputation for bringing their urban habits with them, and despite the presence of London police brought down specially, many of the local pubs, protective of their tankards, substituted jam jars for hoppers to drink from. London's children suffered the same kinds of prejudice that those Eastern European pickers sometimes encounter today.

Nicknamed 'bug crushers' because it was said they were full of fleas, they were banned from village shops and the locals forbade their own children from playing with them in case they caught diseases.

It is certainly true that the East End's children were probably healthier in the hop gardens than they were at home. For many of them, packed into the slums of the East End, the hop was their only opportunity to run about, breathe air uncontaminated by factory waste and smoke, and watch the sun go down.

Volunteer doctors and nurses paid regular visits to the hop gardens administering nit combs, anti-worming tablets and vitamin pills.

An afternoon scene from the hop-pickers' camp near Goudhurst, Kent, in 1949

Hopping meant that many London children missed the first few weeks of the autumn term at school but their parents were glad to see them out of the smoke and stink of the East End, and many began a love affair with Kent which lasted the remainder of their lives.

Even so, this was no idle break. Hoppicking was hard and dirty work. The hop plant, a relative of cannabis, is a climbing bine, the stalks clinging to wire frames with tiny hairs, which can irritate. The hop cones leak an acidic tar, which clings to the skin. Children often came down with chills caught on the cold, damp mornings, or with 'hop eye', a vicious inflammation caused by sulphurbased insecticides, which sometimes led to permanent sight loss.

The hoppers were paid by the bushel (eight gallons in volume). In the Thirties and Forties, a family working hard for four weeks could earn £40 - the equivalent of ten weeks' pay for an average man. One of the children's jobs was to shake or 'hover up' the baskets of hops to increase their volume by fluffing them out.

A family would typically start work at seven or eight in the morning and pick through to lunchtime. Lunch would be cheese-and-pickle or egg sandwiches washed down with cold sweet tea.

At five, the farm manager would come round shouting 'Pick no more bines!' - at which point picking ceased immediately. Any woman caught scratching, or trying to squeeze a few more cones into her basket after time was called would be set upon by the others and, if she offended more than once, expelled from the gardens altogether.

Though everyone needed money, it was the unspoken rule of the gardens that no one had the right to earn it at another family's expense. At a time when many women were financially dependent on husbands who often drank away a good proportion of the week's wages, the money they made hopping formed a vital part of the household finances.

At hopping time, not only were they able to afford to treat their kids to a piece of cherry cake or an ice cream or two from one of the traders making the daily rounds, but if they budgeted carefully, at the end of the season many women would have saved enough from the hop to buy boots or coats to see their children through the winter. There might even be enough left over for a pair of winter bloomers for themselves.

The hoppers shrugged off the hard work of the day with nightly singsongs around camp fires. They would roast apples and potatoes and swap gossip.

There was always a great spirit of camaraderie in the gardens, a strong, neighbourly solidarity. At the end of the picking season, each farm would hold a hop feast, with a spit-roast pig and copious quantities of rough local cider.

C Charles Kimber of Mereworth demonstrates hop stilt-stringing at a stringing competition in Kent in April 1951. Crowds of pickers travelled down from London to work the fields

The husbands would come down from London, join in the singing and elect an annual hop queen. It was a sort of cockney Glastonbury, with songs, like this one, in rhyming slang:

What could be better than this, A nice old cuddle and kiss, All beneath the pale moonlight., Then some Tommy Tucker [supper] and off to Uncle Ned [bed]., Oh what a luvverly night tonight.

Not all the hoppers' pleasures were quite as innocent. Women often took 'hop husbands', usually local farm workers. The wedding consisted of jumping hand in hand over a hop bine. After the hop, the women would go back to their London husbands, no harm done . . . or so they thought, until the 'Hop babies' that often resulted from these encounters started to show.

An East Ender born in June, nine months after the hopping season, would have every reason to wonder who their father really was. Backstreet abortions were common. In Kent, these were performed by local women and, sometimes, by gipsies.

Not all were successful and some women paid for their dalliances with their lives. Hop husbands were less well tolerated if they were foreign. During World War II, Italian and German prisoners of war worked in the Kentish hop gardens alongside East End women. Romances were frowned upon - Kent was the frontier county, the first in line if Hitler's army were to invade.

Thus distrust of the enemy was especially strong - but romances happened all the same.

The war hit Kent particularly hard, but many East End women preferred to take their chances in the hop gardens with their children than go back to London and face the Blitz. After the hop pick of 1939, many stayed on as agricultural workers or joined the Land Army.

As well as the usual farm work, their duties included heaping up sandbags around farm buildings, scattering farm detritus across the fields to prevent German planes landing, and digging trenches in the hop gardens and apple orchards to act as fox holes for pickers in the event of an air-raid.

Air-raid drill was simple: duck low and keep still. Mothers would often overturn their prams and hide their children underneath. Bombs regularly exploded and German planes would occasionally strafe the hop gardens with machine guns.

In late May 1940, the evacuation from Dunkirk began. Women lined up at the railway stations en route to hand exhausted soldiers bags of sandwiches and cups of tea. All through that summer the Luftwaffe staged daily raids on RAF stations around the Kent coast and on July 31, Messerschmitts finally succeeded in dislodging the Dover barrage balloons and the skies of Kent filled with the huge silver orbs as they drifted inland.

From then on, every day brought new dogfights - terrible and spectacular events that would sometimes go on for hours before one or other plane was finally shot down.

On September 1, night raids began. All over Kent, country roads were closed and road bridges demolished. On the afternoon of Saturday, September 7, the hoppers saw the terrifying sight of hundreds of German bombers heading over Kent on their way to London to begin the Blitz.

Even though Kent was frequently peppered with bombs discharged by enemy planes (not to mention artillery fire from German guns stationed on the Cap Gris Nez near Calais that reached as far into Kent as Maidstone) many London children hiding out in the Kentish countryside looked on their evacuation as a glorious adventure.

School was confined to mornings only. In the afternoons they did farm work and collected firewood. In the evenings, they were recruited to fire and bomb-watching duty. At a time when their fathers were risking their lives abroad, their duties gave them self-esteem and a sense of purpose they'd often lacked in the mean streets of London.

Teen romances blossomed and the countryside provided thrilling opportunities for trysts that would have been impossible in the crowded slums. For many East End children living around the hop gardens, the war was a price worth paying for their newfound freedoms and the excitingly adult responsibilities that went with them.

After the war, hopping, like so much else, began to change. After 400 years of supporting local hop growers, British brewers began importing hops from America. At the same time, a virulent viral disease hit the Kentish hop crop, and farmers were soon forced to reduce their hop acreage. A decade after the war, hop-picking machines, another American import, were introduced into Kent.

A single machine staffed by two men, six to ten women and four to six hopbine cutters could strip and sort as many hops as 160 to 200 hand-pickers. By the end of the Sixties, a time that coincided with the closing of the docks in the East End of London, the annual exodus of cockneys to Kent was almost over.

Those 12,000 immigrant workers picking strawberries, apples and hops in Kent this year will probably know nothing about the 'Londoner's holiday' - but the old ways haven't quite died yet. At Gushmere Court Farm in Selling, farmer Julian Berry and his family have been growing hops since 1720.

These days, they grow a very few specialist varieties for microbreweries. Like most Kentish farmers, Julian Berry now employs East Europeans to man his hop-picking machines but every year two or three East Enders still come down to stay in the hop gardens to reminisce.

They don't do much in the way of work these days and most are elderly, but Mr Berry sees them as part of the living history of the place. Sometimes they bring their children with them, to show them how the old times were.

'The children take one look at the huts,' says Mr Berry, 'and they're amazed. No running water, no TV. They can hardly imagine it.' It's not just the East End hop pickers who have vanished. It's a whole way of life.

• Hopping by Melanie McGrath (HarperCollins, £15.99).° 2009 Melanie McGrath. To order a copy for £14.39 (p&p free) call 0845 155 0720

I included this article because, when I was a teemeager, I used to pick fruit during the holidays for pocket money. My job on the hop farm was to pack the product ready for the Hop Market Auctions in The Old Kent Road in London. Near my home the most famous farms were owned by Guiness a strong dark traditional Irish beer.

Directory of Chinese Art. + 90 links

Art type	Main art	Major category	Start era
Chinese folk art	Papercutting	Chinese paper cutting	Eastern Han Dynasty
	Papercutting	Chinese paper folding	Eastern Han Dynasty
	Puppetry	Glove puppetry	-
	Puppetry	Chinese shadow theatre	Han Dynasty
	Handicraft	Chinese knot	Tang Dynasty
Literature	Chinese literature	Chinese classic texts	Spring and Autumn Period
		Chinese poetry	Spring and Autumn Period
		Chinese historiography	Spring and Autumn Period
		Chinese dictionary	Zhou Dynasty
Visual art
	Pottery	Chinese ceramics	Palaeolithic
	Embroidery	Chinese embroidery	Neolithic
	Chinese painting	Ming Dynasty painting	Ming Dynasty
		Tang Dynasty painting	Tang Dynasty
		Ink and wash painting	Tang Dynasty
		Shan Shui painting	Song Dynasty
	East Asian calligraphy	Oracle bone script	Shang Dynasty
		Cursive script	Han Dynasty
		Drawing Daoist Talismans	Tang Dynasty
	Comics	Lianhuanhua	1880s
	Comics	Manhua	1880s, termed in 1920s
	Film	Cinema of China	1890s
Chinese animation	Film	1920s
Chinese music
	Traditional	Instrumental	Zhou Dynasty
	Traditional	Yayue	Western Zhou Dynasty
	Modern	National music	1910s
		C-pop	1920s
		Chinese rock	1980s
Performing arts	Variety art	Chinese variety art	Han Dynasty
	Chinese opera	Beijing opera	-
		Kunqu	-
		Cantonese opera	-
	Theatre	Xiangsheng	Ming Dynasty
	Shuochang narrative	Quyi	Dynastic times, termed in 1940s
	Dances	Dragon Dance	-
	Dances	Lion Dance	-
Architecture	Landscape architecture	Chinese architecture	-
Gardening	Chinese Garden	Scholar's Garden	Zhou Dynasty
Gardening	Bonsai	Penjing

Instead he chose not to patent his creation ion 1990 as he was determined that it would be free for all. He works for an academic's salary at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, and until recently drove a 20-year-old Volkswagen.

It was 14 years after he received a £ 40,000 grant from a Swiss research centre to develop his big idea to allow us to share information through the network of cabling and computers that already spanned the Earth, that he was knighted by the Queen.

A modest man he is also a member of the Order of Merit, which was founded in 1902 by Edward VII, as a special mark of honour from the Sovereign for people who have made outstanding achievements in their field. "I am very proud to be in the Order," he said.

He was one of four children born to computer mathematician parents and raised in East Sheen, southwest London. The young Berners-Lee occupied himself by building computers out of cardboard. He studied Physics at Oxford. He is married to an American, Nancy Carlson, who is a computer programmer. They have two children.

"I feel like quite an ordinary person, " Sir Tim said. "So, the good news is that it does happen to ordinary people who work on things that happen to work out, like the Web."

Time magazine named him as one of the 100 greatest thinkers of the 20th Century.

See: www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee

TIBET ~ A PROFILE



	Tibet Autonomous Region within the People's Republic of China
	Historic Tibet as claimed by Tibetan exile groups
	Tibetan areas as designated by the People's Republic of China
	Chinese-controlled areas claimed by India as part of Aksai Chin
	Indian-controlled areas claimed by China as part of Tibet
	Other areas historically within Tibetan cultural sphere

Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north of the Himalayas, and the home to the indigenous Tibetan people. With an average elevation of 4,900 metres (16,000 ft), it is the highest region on Earth and has in recent decades increasingly been referred to as the "Roof of the World".

Before Tibet got into the limelight, the term Roof of the World was applied to the Pamirs.

In the history of Tibet, it has been an independent country divided into different kingdoms, and a part of China each for a certain amount of time. Today it is part of the People's Republic of China.

A unified Tibet first came into being under Songtsän Gampo in the seventh century. A government headed by the Dalai Lamas, a line of spiritual leaders, nominally ruled a large portion of the Tibetan region at various times from the 1640s until its incorporation into the government of PRC in the 1950s. During most of this period, the Tibetan administration was subordinate to the Chinese empire of the Qing China. After the fall of Qing, the Dalai Lama proclaimed Tibet independent in 1913, however, Tibet was not recognized as an independent nation by any country. The statues of Tibet is dispute during the period of the Republic of China from 1911 until 1950. As a measure of the power that regents must have wielded, it is important to note that only three of the fourteen Dalai Lamas have actually ruled Tibet; regents ruled during 77 percent of the period from 1751 until 1960.The Communist Chinese gained control of Central and Western Tibet (Tibetan area ruled by the Dalai Lama) after a decisive military victory at Chamdo in 1950. The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 and the Tibet Autonomous Region was established in 1965.

Tibetan plateau

The English word Tibet or Thibet dates back to 1827. While historical linguists generally agree that "Tibet" names in European languages are loanwords from Arabic Tibat or Tobatt, they disagree over the original etymology. Many sources propose Tibetan Stod-bod (pronounced tö-bhöt) "Upper Tibet",some suggest Turkic Töbäd "The Heights" (plural of töbän),and a few favor Chinese Tǔbō or Tǔfān.

Language

The Tibetan language is generally classified as a Tibeto-Burman language of the Sino-Tibetan language family although the boundaries between 'Tibetan' and certain other Himalayan languages can be unclear. According to Matthew Kapstein:

From the perspective of historical linguistics, Tibetan most closely resembles Burmese among the major languages of Asia. Grouping these two together with other apparently related languages spoken in the Himalayan lands, as well as in the highlands of Southeast Asia and the Sino-Tibetan frontier regions, linguists have generally concluded that there exists a Tibeto-Burman family of languages. More controversial is the theory that the Tibeto-Burman family is itself part of a larger language family, called Sino-Tibetan, and that through it Tibetan and Burmese are distant cousins of Chinese.

The language is spoken in numerous regional dialects which, although sometimes mutually intelligible, generally cannot be understood by the speakers of the different oral forms of Tibetan. It is employed throughout the Tibetan plateau and Bhutan and is also spoken in parts of Nepal and northern India, such as Sikkim. In general, the dialects of central Tibet (including Lhasa), Kham, Amdo and some smaller nearby areas are considered Tibetan dialects. Other forms, particularly Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Sherpa, and Ladakhi, are considered by their speakers, largely for political reasons, to be separate languages. However, if the latter group of Tibetan-type languages are included in the calculation then 'greater Tibetan' is spoken by approximately 6 million people across the Tibetan Plateau. Tibetan is also spoken by approximately 150,000 exile speakers who have fled from modern-day Tibet to India and other countries.

Although spoken Tibetan varies according to the region, the written language, based on Classical Tibetan, is consistent throughout. This is probably due to the long-standing influence of the Tibetan empire, whose rule embraced (and extended at times far beyond) the present Tibetan linguistic area, which runs from northern Pakistan in the west to Yunnan and Sichuan in the east, and from north of the Kokonor lake (Qinghai) south as far as Bhutan. The Tibetan language has its own script that it shares with Ladakhi and Dzongkha, which is derived from the ancient Indian Brahmi script.

History

Further information: History of European exploration in Tibet, Foreign relations of Tibet, and Tibet during the Ming Dynasty

King Songtsen Gampo

The general history of Tibet begins with the rule of Songtsän Gampo (604–50 CE) who united parts of the Yarlung River Valley and ruled Tibet as a kingdom. He also brought in many reforms and Tibetan power spread rapidly creating a large and powerful empire. In 640 he married Princess Wencheng, the niece of the powerful Chinese emperor Emperor Taizong of Tang China.

Under the next few kings who followed Songsten Gampo, Buddhism became established as the state religion and Tibetan power increased even further over large areas of Central Asia while major inroads were made into Chinese territory, even reaching the Tang's capital Chang'an (modern Xi'an) in late 763. However, Tibetan troops' occupation of Chang'an only lasted for fifteen days after they were defeated by Tang and its ally, the Turkic empire Uyghur Khaganate.

Nanzhao (in Yunnan and neighbouring regions) remained under Tibetan control from 750 to 794, when they turned on their Tibetan overlords and helped the Chinese inflict a serious defeat on the Tibetans.

In 747, the hold of Tibet was loosened by the campaign of general Gao Xianzhi, who tried to re-open the direct communications between Central Asia and Kashmir. By 750 the Tibetans had lost almost all of their central Asian possessions to the Chinese. However, after Gao Xianzhi's defeat by the Arabs and Qarluqs at the Battle of Talas river (751), Chinese influence decreased rapidly and Tibetan influence resumed. In 821/822 CE Tibet and China signed a remarkable peace treaty. A bilingual account of this treaty including details of the borders between the two countries are inscribed on a stone pillar which stands outside the Jokhang temple in Lhasa. Tibet continued as a Central Asian empire until the mid-9th century.

13th, 14th and 15th centuries

At the end of the 1230s, the Mongols turned their attention to Tibet. At that time, Mongol armies had already conquered Northern China, much of Central Asia, and as far as Russia and modern Ukraine. The Tibetan nobility, however, was fragmented and mainly occupied with internal strife. Göden, a brother of Güyük, entered the country in 1240. A second invasion led to the submission of almost all Tibetan states. In 1244, Göden summoned the Sakya Pandita to his court, and in 1247 appointed Sakya the Mongolian viceroy for Central Tibet, though the eastern provinces of Kham and Amdo remained "under direct Mongol rule". When Kublai Khan founded the Yuan Dynasty in 1271, Tibet became a part of the Yuan Dynasty.

Tibet in 820 in relation to the other powers

Kublai Khan

Between 1346 and 1354, towards the end of the Yuan Dynasty, the Pagmodru myriarch, Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen (1302–1364) toppled the Sakya. The following 80 years were a period of relative stability. They also saw the birth of the Gelugpa school (also known as Yellow Hats) by the disciples of Tsongkhapa Lobsang Dragpa, and the founding of the important Ganden, Drepung, and Sera monasteries near Lhasa. After the 1430s, the country entered another period of internal power struggles.

16th and 17th centuries

In 1578, Altan Khan of the Tümed Mongols invited Sonam Gyatso, a high lama of the Gelugpa school. They met near Khökh Nuur, where Altan Khan first referred to Sönam Gyatso as the Dalai Lama; Dalai being the Mongolian translation of the Tibetan name Gyatso, or "Ocean".

The first Europeans to arrive in Tibet were Portuguese missionaries in 1624 and were welcomed by the Tibetans who allowed them to build a church.

In the 1630s, Tibet became entangled in the power struggles between the rising Manchu and various Mongol and Oirad factions. Ligden Khan of the Mongolian Chakhar tribe, retreating from the Manchu forces, set out to destroy the Yellow Hat Gelug school in Tibet but died on the way near Kokonor, in 1634.His vassal Tsogt Taij continued the fight but was defeated and killed by Güshi Khan of the Khoshud in 1637, who, in turn, became the overlord over Tibet, and acted as a "Protector of the Yellow Church" Güshi helped the Fifth Dalai Lama to establish himself as the highest spiritual and political authority in Tibet and destroyed any potential rivals.

18th century

In 1705, Lobzang Khan of the Khoshud used the 6th Dalai Lama's refusal of the role of a monk (although the incumbent did not reject his political role as Dalai Lama) as an excuse to take control of Tibet. The regent was murdered, and the Dalai Lama sent to Beijing. He died on the way, also near Kokonor, ostensibly from illness. Lobzang Khan appointed a new Dalai Lama, who, however, was not accepted by the Gelugpa school.

A rival reincarnation was found in the region of Kokonor. The Dzungars invaded Tibet in 1717, deposed and killed a pretender to the position of Dalai Lama (who had been promoted by Lhabzang), which met with widespread approval. However, the Dzungars soon began to loot the holy places of Lhasa which brought a swift response from Emperor Kangxi in 1718, but his military expedition was annihilated by the Dzungars not far from Lhasa.

Emperor Kangxi finally expelled the Dzungars from Tibet in 1720 and the troops were hailed as liberators. They brought Kelzang Gyatso with them from Kumbum to Lhasa and he was installed as the Seventh Dalai Lama in 1721, though they did not make Tibet a province, allowed it to maintain its own officials and legal and administrative systems, and levied no taxes.^[20]^[22] However, the Manchu Qing put Amdo under their control in 1724, and incorporated eastern Kham into neighbouring Chinese provinces in 1728.The Qing government sent a resident commissioner, namely Amban, to Lhasa. In 1751, Emperor Qianlong installed the Dalai Lama as both the spiritual leader and political leader of Tibet leading the government, namely Kashag.

While the ancient relations between Tibet and China are more complex, there is generally little doubt regarding the subordination of Tibet to Qing China following first decades of the 18th century. In 1788, Gurkha forces sent by Bahadur Shah, the Regent of Nepal, invaded Tibet, occupying a number of frontier districts. The young Panchen Lama fled to Lhasa and Qing Emperor Qianlong sent troops to Lhasa, upon which the Nepalese withdrew agreeing to pay a large annual sum. In 1791 the Nepalese Gurkhas invaded Tibet a second time, seizing Shigatse and destroyed, plundered, and desecrated the great Tashilhunpo Monastery. The Panchen Lama was forced to flee to Lhasa once again. Emperor Qianlong then sent an army of 17,000 men to Tibet. In 1793, with the assistance of Tibetan troops, they managed to drive the Nepalese troops to within about 30 km of Kathmandu.

The 18th century brought Jesuits and Capuchins from Europe who gradually met opposition from Tibetan lamas who finally expelled them from Tibet in 1745. However, at the time not all Europeans were banned from the country — in 1774 a Scottish nobleman, George Bogle, came to Shigatse to investigate trade for the British East India Company, introducing the first potatoes into Tibet.

19th century

However, by the 19th century the situation of foreigners in Tibet grew more tenuous. The British Empire was encroaching from northern India into the Himalayas and Afghanistan and the Russian Empire of the tsars was expanding south into Central Asia and each power became suspicious of intent in Tibet. Sándor Kőrösi Csoma, the Hungarian scientist spent 20 years in British India (4 years in Ladakh) trying to visit Tibet. He created the first Tibetan-English dictionary.

By the 1850s Tibet had banned all foreigners from Tibet and shut its borders to all outsiders.

In 1865 Great Britain began secretly mapping Tibet. Trained Indian surveyor-spies disguised as pilgrims or traders counted their strides on their travels across Tibet and took readings at night.

20th century

Francis Younghusband

In 1904, a British expedition to Tibet under the command of Colonel Francis Younghusband, accompanied by a large military escort, invaded Tibet and reached Lhasa. The principal reason for the British invasion was a fear, which proved to be unfounded, that Russia was extending its power into Tibet and possibly even giving military aid to the local Tibetan government. But on his way to Lhasa, Younghusband slaughtered many Tibetan troops in Gyangzê who tried to stop the British advance.

Sera Monastery, Lhasa, Tibet (2006)

When the mission reached Lhasa, the Dalai Lama had already fled to Urga in Mongolia, but Younghusband found the option of returning to India empty-handed untenable. He proceeded to draft a treaty unilaterally, and have it signed in the Potala by the regent, Ganden Tri Rinpoche, and any other local officials he could gather together as an ad hoc government. The treaty made provisions for the frontier between Sikkim and Tibet to be respected, for free trade between British and Tibetan subjects, and for an indemnity to be paid from the Qing court to the British Government for its expenses in dispatching armed troops to Lhasa. The provisions of this 1904 treaty were confirmed in a 1906 treaty Anglo-Chinese Convention signed between Britain and China. The British, for a fee from the Qing court, also agreed "not to annex Tibetan territory or to interfere in the administration of Tibet", while China engaged "not to permit any other foreign state to interfere with the territory or internal administration of Tibet".

The position of British Trade Agent at Gyangzê was occupied from 1904 until 1944. It was not until 1937, with the creation of the position of "Head of British Mission Lhasa", that a British officer had a permanent posting in Lhasa itself.

André Migot, a French doctor who travelled for many months in Tibet in 1947 described the complex border arrangements between Tibet and China, and how they had developed:

"In order to offset the damage done to their interests by the [1906] treaty between England and Tibet, the Chinese set up about extending westwards the sphere of their direct control and began to colonize the country round Batang. The Tibetans reacted vigorously. The Chinese governor was killed on his way to Chamdo and his army put to flight after an action near Batang; several missionaries were also murdered, and Chinese fortunes were at a low ebb when a special commissioner called Chao Yu-fong appeared on the scene.

Acting with a savagery which earned him the sobriquet of "The Butcher of Monks," he swept down on Batang, sacked the lamasery, pushed on to Chamdo, and in a series of victorious campaigns which brought his army to the gates of Lhasa, re-established order and reasserted Chinese domination over Tibet. In 1909 he recommended that Sikang should be constituted a separate province comprising thirty-six subprefectures with Batang as the capital. This project was not carried out until later, and then in modified form, for the Chinese Revolution of 1911 brought Chao's career to an end and he was shortly afterwards assassinated by his compatriots.

The troubled early years of the Chinese Republic saw the rebellion of most of the tributary chieftains, a number of pitched battles between Chinese and Tibetans, and many strange happenings in which tragedy, comedy, and (of course) religion all had a part to play. In 1914 Great Britain, China, and Tibet met at the conference table to try to restore peace, but this conclave broke up after failing to reach agreement on the fundamental question of the Sino-Tibetan frontier. This, since about 1918, has been recognized for practical purposes as following the course of the Upper Yangtze. In these years the Chinese had too many other preoccupations to bother about reconquering Tibet. However, things gradually quieted down, and in 1927 the province of Sikang was brought into being, but it consisted of only twenty-seven subprefectures instead of the thirty-six visualized by the man who conceived the idea. China had lost, in the course of a decade, all the territory which the Butcher had overrun.

Since then Sikang has been relatively peaceful, but this short synopsis of the province's history makes it easy to understand how precarious this state of affairs is bound to be. Chinese control was little more than nominal; I was often to have first-hand experience of its ineffectiveness. In order to govern a territory of this kind it is not enough to station, in isolated villages separated from each other by many days' journey, a few unimpressive officials and a handful of ragged soldiers. The Tibetans completely disregarded the Chinese administration and obeyed only their own chiefs. One very simple fact illustrates the true status of Sikang's Chinese rulers: nobody in the province would accept Chinese currency, and the officials, unable to buy anything with their money, were forced to subsist by a process of barter."

In 1910, the Qing government sent a military expedition of its own to establish direct Chinese rule and deposed the Dalai Lama in an imperial edict. The Dalai Lama once again fled, this time to British India, in February 1910. The Dalai Lama returned to Tibet from India in July 1912, and by the end of the year the Chinese troops in Tibet had returned, via India, to China Proper.

Independence proclaimed

The 14th and current Dalai Lama of Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso.

Upon the Dalai Lama's return to Tibet, Chinese President Yuan Shikai sent a telegram offering to restore his earlier titles. The Dalai Lama replied that he "intended to exercise both temporal and ecclesiastical rule in Tibet."^[In 1913, the Dalai Lama issued a proclamation that stated that relationship between the Chinese emperor and Tibet "had been that of patron and priest and had not been based on the subordination of one to the other." "We are a small, religious, and independent nation," the proclamation stated.

In early 1913, Agvan Dorzhiev and two other Tibetan representativessigned a treaty between Tibet and Mongolia in Urga, proclaiming mutual recognition and their independence from China. The 13th Dalai Lama later told a British diplomat that he had not authorized Agvan Dorzhiev to conclude any treaties on behalf of Tibet.Because the text was not published, some initially doubted the existence of the treaty,but the Mongolian text was published by the Mongolian Academy of Sciences in 1982.

In 1914, representatives of Tibet, Britain, and China attended the Simla Convention which was convoked by Britain to discuss the issue of Tibet's status. The convention included a map delineating a boundary between Tibet and India later called the McMahon Line. It provided that the Tibetan Government at Lhasa would administer "Outer Tibet," roughly the same area as the modern Tibet Autonomous Region. The convention also affirmed Chinese suzerainty and stated that Tibet was "part of Chinese territory". When the Chinese government refused to ratify, Tibet and Britain concluded the treaty as a bilateral agreement and attached a note denying China any privileges under it.

The subsequent outbreak of World War I and the division of China into military cliques ruled by warlords caused the Western powers and the infighting factions within China to either lose interest or too busy and fragile to interfere in Tibet. Some believe the 13th Dalai Lama ruled undisturbed until his death in 1933.

"Thus, from 1913 when the last Qing officials and troops left Tibet to the death of the thirteenth Dalai Lama in 1933, no Chinese officials or troops were permitted to reside in Tibet, and the Tibetan government accepted no interference from Beijing. Chinese fortunes in Tibet improved slightly after the death of the thirteenth Dalai Lama when Tibet allowed a "condolence mission" sent by the Guomingdang government of Chiang Kaishek to visit Lhasa, and then permitted it to open an office to facilitate negotiations aimed at resolving the Tibet Question. These talks proved futile, but Tibet allowed the office to remain.

The Japanese invasion of China in 1937 saved Tibet from having to defend its de facto independence from China, and Tibet continued to operate without interference from Chiang Kaishek. China did not, however, abandon its claims over Tibet. To the contrary, it effectively reinforced its position throughout the world (and in China itself) with a propaganda campaign that actively sought to create the impression that Tibet was in fact part of China. Tibet, with virtually no officials who understood the West or spoke English, blithely ignored this ominous development, much as it had earlier closed its eyes to reality and returned British governmental correspondence unopened."

By 1933, the government of Tibet controlled all of Ü-Tsang (Dbus-gtsang) and western Kham (Khams), somewhat larger than the Tibet Autonomous Region today. Eastern Kham, separated by the Yangtze River, was under the control of Chinese warlord Liu Wenhui. Southern Kham (nowadays Tibetan autonomous region of Yunnan), along with other parts of Yunnan belong to the Yunnan clique from 1915 till 1927, then to Governor and warlord Long (Lung) Yun until near the end of Chinese Civil War when Du Yuming removed him under the order of Chiang Kai-shek. Amdo was under the control of the family of Muslim warlords Ma clique, who ruled the present day of Qinghai, Gansu and Ningxia from the 1910's until 1949.

Nepalese envoy, Major Bista, with Secretary. Lhasa, 1938.

In 1935 the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso was born in Amdo in eastern Tibet and was recognized as the latest reincarnation. He was taken to Lhasa in 1937 where he was later given an official ceremony in 1939. In 1944, during World War II, two Austrian mountaineers, Heinrich Harrer and Peter Aufschnaiter came to Lhasa, where Harrer became a tutor and friend to the young Dalai Lama giving him a sound knowledge of western culture and modern society, until he was forced to leave in 1959.

Supporters of the PRC have characterized the socio-economy of Tibet prior to Communism as 'feudal serfdom'. However, supporters of an independent Tibet objected to this assessment. For a discussion of the debate see Serfdom in Tibet controversy. For a description of the traditional social structure see Social classes of Tibet.

China claims the Republic of China (1912-1949) established an administrative body in Tibet, together with the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission's representative office in Tibet, direct communication was kept between Tibet and the Central government of China.

Tsering Shakya, a Tibet born professor who teaches at the University of British Columbia in Vancouvar, Canada, also wrote in his book that that the Chinese government managed to establish a permanent office in Lhasa, and installed a direct radio communication with Nanjing, the capital city of the Republic of China at that time. China also argues that official documents showed that the National Assembly of China and both chambers of parliament had Tibetan members, whose names had been preserved all along.

Furthermore, China claims that the Kuomintang Government ratified the current 14th Dalai Lama, and Central Government's representative General Wu Zhongxin (Wu Chung-hsin) presided over the sitting in ceremony, both the ratification order of February 1940 and the documentary film of the ceremony still exist intact.^[44]

Tibet under The People's Republic of China

The Chairman of the Cabinet of the CTA, Samdhong Rinpoche

In 1950 the PRC asserted control over Tibet.

A rebellion against the Chinese occupation was led by noblemen and monasteries and broke out in Amdo and eastern Kham in June 1956. The insurrection, supported by the American CIA, eventually spread to Lhasa. It was crushed by 1959. During this campaign, tens of thousands of Tibetans were killed and the 14th Dalai Lama and other government principals fled to exile in India.

Chinese sources generally claim progress towards a prosperous and free society in Tibet, with its pillars being economic development, legal advancement, and peasant emancipation. These claims, however, have been refuted by the Tibet Government-in-Exile and some indigenous Tibetans, who claim of genocide in Tibet from the Chinese government, comparing it to Nazi Germany.

The official doctrine of the PRC classifies Tibetans as one of its 56 recognized ethnic groups and part of the greater Zhonghua Minzu or multi-ethnic Chinese nation. Warren Smith, an independent scholar and a broadcaster with the Tibetan Service of Radio Free Asia, whose work became focused on Tibetan history and politics after spending five months in Tibet in 1982, portrays the Chinese as chauvinists who believe they are superior to the Tibetans, and claims that the Chinese use torture, coercion and starvation to control the Tibetans.

Mao's Great Leap Forward (1959-62) led to famine in Tibet. "In some places, whole families have perished and the death rate is very high," according to a confidential report by the Panchen Lama sent to Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in 1962. "In the past Tibet lived in a dark barbaric feudalism but there was never such a shortage of food, especially after Buddhism had spread....In Tibet from 1959-1961, for two years almost all animal husbandry and farming stopped. The nomads have no grain to eat and the farmers have no meat, butter or salt," the report said.

The following Cultural Revolution and the damage it wrought upon Tibet and, indeed, the entire PRC is generally condemned as a nationwide catastrophe. In the PRC government's view, the main instigators were the Gang of Four, who have since been brought to justice. Large numbers of Tibetans died violent deaths due to the Cultural Revolution, and the number of intact monasteries in Tibet was reduced from thousands, to less than ten.

Tibetan resentment towards the Chinese deepened.Tibetans participated in the destruction, but it is not clear how many of them actually embraced the Communist ideology, and how many participated out of fear of becoming targets themselves.

Projects that the PRC government claims to have benefited Tibet as part of the China Western Development economic plan, the Qinghai-Tibet Railway for example.There is still ethnic imbalance in appointments and promotions to the civil and judicial services in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, with disproportionately few ethnic Tibetans appointed to these posts.

The PRC government's rule over Tibet is an unalloyed improvement, and the China Western Development plan is a massive, benevolent, and patriotic undertaking by the wealthier eastern coast to help the western parts of China, including Tibet, catch up in prosperity and living standards.

Some foreign organizations continue to make occasional protests about aspects of CCP rule in Tibet because of frequent reports of human rights violation in Tibet.

The government of the PRC maintains that the Tibetan Government did almost nothing to improve the Tibetans' material and political standard of life during its rule from 1913–59, and that they opposed any reforms proposed by the Chinese government. According to the Chinese government, this is the reason for the tension that grew between some central government officials and the local Tibetan government in 1959.

The government of the PRC also rejects claims that the lives of Tibetans have deteriorated, and states that the lives of Tibetans have been improved immensely compared to self rule before 1950.Belying these claims, some 3,000 Tibetans brave hardship and danger to flee into exile every year.

The Tibetan Parliament in Exile in Dharamsala, India.

These claims are, however, disputed by many Tibetans. In 1989, the Panchen Lama, finally allowed to return to Shigatse, addressed a crowd of 30,000 and described what he saw as the suffering of Tibet and the harm being done to his country in the name of socialist reform under the rule of the PRC in terms reminiscent of the petition he had presented to Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in 1962.

Gedhun Choekyi Nyima 11th Panchen Lama claimed by exiled Tibetan

In 1995, the Dalai Lama named 6 year old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the 11th Panchen Lama without the approval of the government of China, while the PRC named another child, Gyancain Norbu in conflict. Gyancain Norbu was raised in Beijing and has appeared occasionally on state media. The PRC-selected Panchen Lama is rejected by exiled Tibetans and anti-China groups who commonly refer to him as the "Panchen Zuma" (literally "fake Panchen Lama").

The Dalai Lama has stated his willingness to negotiate with the PRC government for genuine autonomy, but according to the government in exile and Tibetan independence groups, most Tibetans still call for full Tibetan independence.

In 2005, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao offered to hold talks with the 14th Dalai Lama on the Tibet issue, provided he dropped the demand for independence. The Dalai Lama said in an interview with the South China Morning Post "We are willing to be part of the People's Republic of China, to have it govern and guarantee to preserve our Tibetan culture, spirituality and our environment." This statement was seen as a renewed diplomatic initiative by the Tibetan government-in-exile. He had already said he would accept Chinese sovereignty over Tibet but insisted on real autonomy over its religious and cultural life.

In January 2007 the Dalai Lama, in an interview on a private television channel, said, "what we demand from the Chinese authority is more autonomy for Tibetans to protect their culture". He added that he had told the Tibetan people not to think in terms of history and to accept Tibet as a part of China.

Talks between representatives of the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government began again in May 2008 and again in July, but with little results. The two sides agreed to meet again in October.

Geography

Tibet is located on the Tibetan Plateau, the world's highest region.

Snow mountains in Tibet

Traditionally, Western (European and American) sources have regarded Tibet as part of Central Asia;today's maps show a trend toward considering all of modern China, including Tibet, to be part of East Asia. Some academics also include Tibet in South Asiia. Tibet is west of China proper, and within China, Tibet is regarded as part of (Xībù), a term usually translated by Chinese media as "the Western section", meaning "Western China".

Yamdrok tso lake

Several major rivers have their source in the Tibetan Plateau (mostly in present-day Qinghai Province). These includeYangtze, Yellow River, Indus River, Mekong, Brahmaputra River, Ganges, Salween and the Yarlung Tsangpo River^[88]. The Indus, Brahmaputra rivers originate from a lake (Tib: Tso Mapham) in Western Tibet, near Mount Kailash. The mountain is a holy pilgrimage for both Hindus and Tibetans. The Hindus consider the mountain to be the abode of Lord Shiva. The Tibetan name for Mt. Kailash is Khang Rinpoche. Tibet has numerous high-altitude lakes referred to in Tibetan as tso or co. These include Lake Manasarovar, Namtso, Pangong Tso, Yamdrok Lake, Siling Co, Lhamo La-tso, Lumajangdong Co, Lake Puma Yumco, Lake Paiku, Lake Rakshastal, Dagze Co and Dong Co.

Yarlung Tsangpo River

The atmosphere is severely dry nine months of the year, and average annual snowfall is only 18 inches, due to the rain shadow effect whereby mountain ranges prevent moisture from the ocean from reaching the plateaus. Western passes receive small amounts of fresh snow each year but remain traversable all year round. Low temperatures are prevalent throughout these western regions, where bleak desolation is unrelieved by any vegetation beyond the size of low bushes, and where wind sweeps unchecked across vast expanses of arid plain. The Indian monsoon exerts some influence on eastern Tibet. Northern Tibet is subject to high temperatures in the summer and intense cold in the winter.

Cultural Tibet consists of several regions. These include Amdo (A mdo) in the northeast, which is under the administration as part of the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan. Kham (Khams) in the southeast, divided between western Sichuan, northern Yunnan, southern Qinghai and the eastern part of the Tibet Autonomous Region. Ü-Tsang (dBus gTsang) (Ü in the center, Tsang in the center-west, and Ngari (mNga' ris) in the far west) covered the central and western portion of Tibet Autonomous Region.

South of the border between China and India, the region popularly known in China as South Tibet, is claimed by People's Republic of China and the Republic of China as part of the Tibet Autonomous Region. It is currently administered by India as the majority part of the state of Arunachal Pradesh. Tibet Government in Lhasa altered its position on the McMahon Line in late 1947 when the local Tibetan government wrote a note presented to the newly independent Indian Ministry of External Affairs laying claims to the Tawang (inhabited by mostly ethnic Tibetans) south of the McMahon Line.

Tibetan cultural influences extend to the neighboring states of Bhutan, Nepal, regions of India such as Sikkim, Ladakh, Lahaul, and Spiti, and adjacent provinces of China where Tibetan Buddhism is the predominant religion.

Cities, towns and villages

Shigatse

Looking across the square at Jokhang temple, Lhasa

There are over 800 settlements in Tibet, Lhasa is Tibet's traditional capital and the capital of Tibet Autonomous Region. Lhasa contains the world heritage site the Potala Palace and Norbulingka, the residences of the Dalai Lama. Lhasa contains a number of significant temples and monasteries which are deeply engrained in its history including Jokhang and Ramoche Temple.

Shigatse is the country's second largest city, west of Lhasa. Gyantse, Chamdo are also amongst the largest.

Other cities in Historic Tibet include, Nagchu, Nyingchi, Nedong, Barkam, Sakya, Gartse, Pelbar, Lhatse, and Tingri; in Sichuan, Kangding (Dartsedo); in Qinghai, Jyekundo or Yushu, Machen, and Golmud. There is also a large Tibetan settlement in South India near Kushalanagara. India created this settlement for Tibetan refugees which had fled to India.

Economy

The Tibetan yak is an integral part of Tibetan life.

According to Chinese sources, Tibet's GDP in 2001 was 13.9 billion yuan (USD1.8billion)The Central government exempts Tibet from all taxation and provides 90% of Tibet's government expenditures. The Tibetan economy is dominated by subsistence agriculture. Due to limited arable land, livestock raising is the primary occupation mainly on the Tibetan Plateau, among them are sheep, cattle, goats, camels, yaks, dzo, and horses. However, the main crops grown are barley, wheat, buckwheat, rye, potatoes and assorted fruits and vegetables. As a result of being a subsistence agricultural society Tibet is ranked the lowest among China’s 31 provinces,on the Human Development Index according to UN Development Programme data.

In recent years, due to the increased interest in Tibetan Buddhism, tourism has become an increasingly important sector, and is actively promoted by the authorities.The Tibetan economy is heavily subsidized by the Central government and government cadres receive the second-highest salaries in China.

Tourism brings in the most income from the sale of handicrafts. These include Tibetan hats, jewelry (silver and gold), wooden items, clothing, quilts, fabrics, Tibetan rugs and carpets. The Qinghai-Tibet Railway which links the region to Qinghai in China proper was opened in 2006.The Chinese government claims that the line will promote the development of impoverished Tibet.But opponents argue the railway will harm Tibet. For instance, Tibetan opponents contend that it would only draw more Han Chinese residents, the country's dominant ethnic group, who have been migrating steadily to Tibet over the last decade, bringing with them their popular culture. Opponents believe that the large influx of Han Chinese will ultimately extinguish the local culture.

Other opponents argue that the railway will damage Tibet's fragile ecology and that most of its economic benefits will go to migrant Han Chinese. As activists call for a boycott of the railway, the Dalai Lama has urged Tibetans to "wait and see" what benefits the new line might bring to them. According to the Government-in-exile's spokesmen, the Dalai Lama welcomes the building of the railway, "conditioned on the fact that the railroad will bring benefit to the majority of Tibetans."

In January 2007, the Chinese government issued a report outlining the discovery of a large mineral deposit under the Tibetan Plateau. The deposit has an estimated value of $128 billion and may double Chinese reserves of zinc, copper, and lead. The Chinese government sees this as a way to alleviate the nation's dependence on foreign mineral imports for its growing economy. However, critics worry that mining these vast resources will harm Tibet's fragile ecosystem and undermine Tibetan culture.

On January 15, 2009, China announced the construction of Tibet’s first expressway, a 37.9-kilometre stretch of road in southwestern Lhasa. The project will cost 1.55 billion yuan ($227 million).

Demographics

An elderly Tibetan woman

Ethnolinguistic Groups of Tibetan language, 1967 (See entire map, which includes a key)

Ethnic Tibetan autonomous entities set up by the People's Republic of China. Opponents to the PRC dispute the actual level of autonomy.

Historically, the population of Tibet consisted of primarily ethnic Tibetans and their related ethnic groups. Other ethnic groups in Tibet Autonomous Region include Menba (Monpa), Lhoba, Mongols and Hui Chinese. Ethinc groups in other parts of Tibet (excluding dispute area with India) with significant population or with the majority of the ethnic group reside in Tibet include Han, Qiang, Mosuo, Nakhi, Monguor (Tu people), Blang, Salar, Dongxiang and Bonan. According to tradition the original ancestors of the Tibetan people, as represented by the six red bands in the Tibetan flag, are: the Se, Mu, Dong, Tong, Dru and Ra.

The issue of the proportion of the Han Chinese population in Tibet is a politically sensitive one. The Central Tibetan Administration, an exile group, says that the PRC has actively swamped Tibet with Han Chinese migrants in order to alter Tibet's demographic makeup

Culture

The 1st Dalai Lama

A young monk at Labrang

Religion

Tibetan Buddhism

Religion and spirituality is extremely important to the Tibetans and has a strong influence over all aspects of lives; ingrained deeply into their cultural heritage. Bön is the ancient traditional religion of Tibet, but following the introduction of Tantric Buddhism into Tibet by Padmasambhava this became eclipsed by Tibetan Buddhism, a distinctive form of Vajrayana. Tibetan Buddhism is practiced not only in Tibet but also in Mongolia, parts of northern India, the Buryat Republic, the Tuva Republic, and in the Republic of Kalmykia and some other areas in China besides the Tibet region. As every where in China was undergoing Cultural Revolution, there were over 6,000 monasteries and convents in Tibet, and nearly all but a handful were ransacked and destroyed by the Red Guards.^[134] Some of the monasteries has begun to rebuild by the Chinese government since the 1980s and greater religious freedom also granted - although it is still limited. Monks returned to monasteries cross Tibet and monastic eduction resumed even though the number of monks imposed is strictly limited.

Tibetan Buddhism has four main traditions (the suffix pa is comparable to "er" in English):

Gelug(pa), Way of Virtue, also known casually as Yellow Hat, whose spiritual head is the Ganden Tripa and whose temporal, the Dalai Lama. Successive Dalai Lamas ruled Tibet from the mid-17th to mid-20th centuries. This order was founded in the 14th to 15th century by Je Tsongkhapa, based on the foundations of the Kadampa tradition. Tsongkhapa was renowned for both his scholasticism and his virtue. The Dalai Lama belongs to the Gelugpa school, and is regarded as the embodiment of the Bodhisattva of Compassion^[138].

Kagyu(pa), Oral Lineage. This contains one major subsect and one minor subsect. The first, the Dagpo Kagyu, encompasses those Kagyu schools that trace back to Gampopa. In turn, the Dagpo Kagyu consists of four major sub-sects: the Karma Kagyu, headed by a Karmapa, the Tsalpa Kagyu, the Barom Kagyu, and Pagtru Kagyu. There are further eight minor sub-sects, all of which trace their root to Pagtru Kagyu. Among the eight sub-sects the most notable of are the Drikung Kagyu and the Drukpa Kagyu. The once-obscure Shangpa Kagyu, which was famously represented by the 20th century teacher Kalu Rinpoche, traces its history back to the Indian master Niguma, sister of Kagyu lineage holder Naropa. This is an oral tradition which is very much concerned with the experiential dimension of meditation. Its most famous exponent was Milarepa, an eleventh century mystic.

Nyingma(pa), The Ancient Ones. This is the oldest, the original order founded by Padmasambhava.

Sakya(pa), Grey Earth, headed by the Sakya Trizin, founded by Khon Konchog Gyalpo, a disciple of the great translator Drokmi Lotsawa. Sakya Pandita 1182–1251CE was the great grandson of Khon Konchog Gyalpo. This school very much represents the scholarly tradition.

Islam

Muslims have been living in Tibet since as early as the eighth or ninth century. In Tibetan cities, there are small communities of Muslims, known as Kachee (Kache), who trace their origin to immigrants from three main regions: Kashmir (Kachee Yul in ancient Tibetan), Ladakh and the Central Asian Turkic countries. Islamic influence in Tibet also came from Persia. After 1959 a group of Tibetan Muslims made a case for Indian nationality based on their historic roots to Kashmir and the Indian government declared all Tibetan Muslims Indian citizens later on that year.^[139] Other Muslim ethnic groups who have long inhabited Tibet include Hui, Salar, Dongxiang and Bonan. There is also a well established Chinese Muslim community (gya kachee), which traces its ancestry back to the Hui ethnic group of China. It is said that Muslim migrants from Kashmir and Ladakh first entered Tibet around the 12th century. Marriages and social interaction gradually led to an increase in the population until a sizable community grew up around Lhasa.^{[citation needed]}

Buddhist monasteries in Tibet

Tashilhunpo

Tibetan art

A thangka painting in Sikkim

Tibetan representations of art are intrinsically bound with Tibetan Buddhism and commonly depict deities or variations of Buddha in various forms from bronze Buddhist statues and shrines, to highly colorful thangka paintings and mandalas.

Architecture

Tibetan architecture contains Oriental and Indian influences, and reflects a deeply Buddhist approach. The Buddhist wheel, along with two dragons, can be seen on nearly every Gompa in Tibet. The design of the Tibetan Chörtens can vary, from roundish walls in Kham to squarish, four-sided walls in Ladakh.

The most distinctive feature of Tibetan architecture is that many of the houses and monasteries are built on elevated, sunny sites facing the south, and are often made out of a mixture of rocks, wood, cement and earth. Little fuel is available for heat or lighting, so flat roofs are built to conserve heat, and multiple windows are constructed to let in sunlight. Walls are usually sloped inwards at 10 degrees as a precaution against frequent earthquakes in the mountainous area.

The Potala Palace

Standing at 117 meters in height and 360 meters in width, the Potala Palace is considered as the most important example of Tibetan architecture. Formerly the residence of the Dalai Lama, it contains over one thousand rooms within thirteen stories, and houses portraits of the past Dalai Lamas and statues of the Buddha. It is divided between the outer White Palace, which serves as the administrative quarters, and the inner Red Quarters, which houses the assembly hall of the Lamas, chapels, 10,000 shrines, and a vast library of Buddhist scriptures.

Music

Boudhanath, Nepal. 1973

The music of Tibet reflects the cultural heritage of the trans-Himalayan region, centered in Tibet but also known wherever ethnic Tibetan groups are found in India, Bhutan, Nepal and further abroad. First and foremost Tibetan music is religious music, reflecting the profound influence of Tibetan Buddhism on the culture.

Tibetan music often involves chanting in Tibetan or Sanskrit, as an integral part of the religion. These chants are complex, often recitations of sacred texts or in celebration of various festivals. Yang chanting, performed without metrical timing, is accompanied by resonant drums and low, sustained syllables. Other styles include those unique to the various schools of Tibetan Buddhism, such as the classical music of the popular Gelugpa school, and the romantic music of the Nyingmapa, Sakyapa and Kagyupa schools.

Nangma dance music is especially popular in the karaoke bars of the urban center of Tibet, Lhasa. Another form of popular music is the classical gar style, which is performed at rituals and ceremonies. Lu are a type of songs that feature glottal vibrations and high pitches. There are also epic bards who sing of Tibet's national hero Gesar.

Festivals

The Monlam Prayer Festival

Tibetan sand mandala

Tibet has various festivals which commonly are performed to worship the Buddha throughout the year. Losar is the Tibetan New Year Festival. Preparations for the festive event are manifested by special offerings to family shrine deities, painted doors with religious symbols, and other painstaking jobs done to prepare for the event. Tibetans eat Guthuk (barley crumb food with filling) on New Year's Eve with their families. The Monlam Prayer Festival follows it in the first month of the Tibetan calendar, falling on the fourth up to the eleventh day of the first Tibetan month. which involves many Tibetans dancing and participating in sports events and sharing picnics. The event was established in 1049 by Tsong Khapa, the founder of the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama's order.

Other

The Potala Palace, former residence of the Dalai Lamas, is a World Heritage Site, as is Norbulingka, former summer residence of the Dalai Lama.

Since 2002, Tibetans in exile have allowed a Miss Tibet beauty contest in spite of concerns that this event is considered a Western influence. The beauty contest is condemned by the Tibetan government in exile.

Cuisine

The most important crop in Tibet is barley, and dough made from barley flour called tsampa, is the staple food of Tibet. This is either rolled into noodles or made into steamed dumplings called momos. Meat dishes are likely to be yak, goat, or mutton, often dried, or cooked into a spicy stew with potatoes. Mustard seed is cultivated in Tibet, and therefore features heavily in its cuisine. Yak yoghurt, butter and cheese are frequently eaten, and well-prepared yoghurt is considered something of a prestige item. Butter tea is very popular to drink.

The Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) explained...

Local people and visitors celebrate the Chinese New Year in Chinatown, London - 2008

Fish The Koi fish is usually seen in paintings. Decorated food depicting the fish can also be found. It symbolizes surplus or having additional savings so as to have more than enough to live throughout the remaining year. It coheres with the Chinese idiom (Pinyin: niánnián yŏuyú)
Yuanbao ingots The gold yuanbao; (jīn yuánbǎo) symbolizes money and/or wealth. Yuanbao shaped ingots were the standard medium of exchange in ancient China.
Lanterns These lanterns differ from those of Mid Autumn Festival in general. They will be red in colour and tend to be oval in shape. These are the traditional Chinese paper lanterns. Those lanterns, used on the fifteenth day of the Chinese New Year for the Lantern Festival, are bright, colourful, and in many different sizes and shapes.
Decorations Decorations generally convey a New Year greeting. They are not advertisements. Chinese calligraphy posters show Chinese idioms. Other decorations include a New year picture, Chinese knots, and papercutting and couplets.
Dragon dance and Lion dance Dragon and lion dances are common during Chinese New Year. It is believed that the loud beats of the drum and the deafening sounds of the cymbals together with the face of the dragon or lion dancing aggressively can evict bad or evil spirits. Lion dances are also popular for opening of businesses in Hong Kong.
Fortune gods Cai Shen Ye, Che Kung,etc.

Festivities

“ Red couplets and red lanterns are displayed on the door frames and light up the atmosphere. The air is filled with strong Chinese emotions. In stores in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, and other cities, products of traditional Chinese style have started to lead fashion trend[s]. Buy yourself a Chinese-style coat, get your kids tiger-head hats and shoes, and decorate your home with some beautiful red Chinese knots, then you will have an authentic Chinese-style Spring Festival. ”

—Xinwen Lianbo, January 2001, quoted by Li Ren, Imagining China in the Era of Global Consumerism and Local Consciousness^[3]

The Chinese New Year celebrations are marked by visits to kin, relatives and friends, a practice known as "new-year visits" (Chinese; pinyin: bàinián). New clothings are usually worn to signify a new year. The colour red is liberally used in all decorations. Red packets are given to juniors and children by the married and elders. See Symbolism below for more explanation.

All these festivities may vary from region to region and from family to family.

Days before the new year

On the days before the New Year celebration Chinese families give their home a thorough cleaning. There is a Cantonese saying "Wash away the dirt on ninyabaat" (年廿八，洗邋遢), but the practice is not usually restricted on nin'ya'baat (年廿八, the 28th day of month 12). It is believed the cleaning sweeps away the bad luck of the preceding year and makes their homes ready for good luck. Brooms and dust pans are put away on the first day so that luck cannot be swept away. Some people give their homes, doors and window-frames a new coat of red paint. Homes are often decorated with paper cutouts of Chinese auspicious phrases and couplets. Purchasing new clothing, shoes and receiving a hair-cut also symbolize a fresh start .

In many households where Buddhism or Taoism is prevalent, home altars and statues are cleaned thoroughly, and altars that were adorned with decorations from the previous year are also taken down and burned a week before the new year starts, and replaced with new decorations. Taoists (and Buddhists to a lesser extent) will also "send gods" (送神), an example would be burning a paper effigy of the Kitchen God, the recorder of family functions. This is done so that the kitchen god can report to the Jade Emperor of the family household's transgressions and good deeds.

Chinese New Year lion dance at The Pavilion, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The biggest event of any Chinese New Year's Eve is the dinner every family will have. A dish consisting of fish will appear on the tables of Chinese families. It is for display for the New Year's Eve dinner. This meal is comparable to Christmas dinner in the West. In northern China, it is customary to make dumplings (jiaozi) after dinner and have it around midnight. Dumplings symbolize wealth because their shape is like a Chinese tael. By contrast, in the South, it is customary to make a new year cake (Niangao) after dinner and send pieces of it as gifts to relatives and friends in the coming days of the new year. Niangao literally means increasingly prosperous year in year out. After the dinner, some families go to local temples, hours before the new year begins to pray for a prosperous new year; however in modern practice, many households hold parties and even hold a countdown to the new lunar year. Beginning in the 1980s, the CCTV New Year's Gala was broadcast minutes before the start of the New Year.

Chinese New Year fireworks in Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong

First day of the new year

The first day is for the welcoming of the deities of the heavens and earth, officially beginning at midnight. Many people, especially Buddhists, abstain from meat consumption on the first day because it is believed that this will ensure longevity for them. Some consider lighting fires and using knives to be bad luck on New Year's Day, so all food to be consumed is cooked the day before.

Most importantly, the first day of Chinese New Year is a time when families visit the oldest and most senior members of their extended family, usually their parents, grandparents or great-grandparents.

Some families may invite a lion dance troupe as a symbolic ritual to usher in the Lunar New Year as well as to evict bad spirits from the premises. Members of the family who are married also give red packets containing cash to junior members of the family, mostly children and teenagers.

While fireworks and firecrackers are traditionally very popular, some regions have banned them due to concerns over fire hazards, which have resulted in increased number of fires around New Years and challenged municipal fire departments' work capacity. For this reason, various city governments (e.g., Hong Kong, and Beijing, for a number of years) issued bans over fireworks and firecrackers in certain premises of the city. As a substitute, large-scale fireworks have been launched by governments in cities like Hong Kong to offer citizens the experience.

Second day of the new year

Incense is burned at the graves of ancestors as part of the offering and prayer ritual.

The second day of the Chinese New Year is for married daughters to visit their birth parents. Traditionally, daughters who have been married may not have the opportunity to visit their birth families frequently.

On the second day, the Chinese pray to their ancestors as well as to all the gods. They are extra kind to dogs and feed them well as it is believed that the second day is the birthday of all dogs.

Business people of the Cantonese dialect group will hold a 'Hoi Nin' prayer to start their business on the 2nd day of Chinese New Year. The prayer is done to pray that they will be blessed with good luck and prosperity in their business for the year.

Third and fourth days of the new year

The third and fourth day of the Chinese New Year are generally accepted as inappropriate days to visit relatives and friends due to the following schools of thought. People may subscribe to one or both thoughts.

1) It is known as "chì kǒu" , meaning that it is easy to get into arguments. It is suggested that the cause could be the fried food and visiting during the first two days of the New Year celebration.

2) Families who had an immediate kin deceased in the past 3 years will not go house-visiting as a form of respect to the dead, but people may visit them on this day. Some people then conclude that it is inauspicious to do any house visiting at all. The third day of the New Year is allocated to grave-visiting instead.

Fifth day of the new year

In northern China, people eat Jiǎozi (dumplings) on the morning of Po Wu . This is also the birthday of the Chinese god of wealth. In Taiwan, businesses traditionally re-open on this day, accompanied by firecrackers.

Seventh day of the new year

The seventh day, traditionally known as renri , the common man's birthday, the day when everyone grows one year older.

It is the day when tossed raw fish salad, yusheng, is eaten. This is a custom primarily among the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, such as Malaysia and Singapore. People get together to toss the colourful salad and make wishes for continued wealth and prosperity.

For many Chinese Buddhists, this is another day to avoid meat.

Chinese New Year's celebrations, on the eighth day, in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond, British Columbia, Canada.

Ninth day of the new year

The ninth day of the New Year is a day for Chinese to offer prayers to the Jade Emperor of Heaven (天公) in the Taoist Pantheon. The ninth day is traditionally the birthday of the Jade Emperor.

This day is especially important to Hokkiens and Teochews (Min Nan speakers). Come midnight of the eighth day of the new year, Hokkiens will offer thanks giving prayers to the Emperor of Heaven. Offerings will include sugarcane as it was the sugarcane that had protected the Hokkiens from certain extermination generations ago. Tea is served as a customary protocol for paying respect to an honored person.

Fifteenth day of the new year

The fifteenth day of the new year is celebrated as Yuánxiāo jié, otherwise known as Chap Goh Mei in Fujian dialect. Rice dumplingsTangyuan a sweet glutinous rice ball brewed in a soup, is eaten this day. Candles are lit outside houses as a way to guide wayward spirits home. This day is celebrated as the Lantern Festival, and families walk the street carrying lighted lanterns.

This day often marks the end of the Chinese New Year festivities.

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Growing up in the country

(chinadaily.com.cn)Updated: 2010-05-28 11:32

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