During the Tomb-sweeping Day holiday, a large number of tourists and Buddhist followers visited the Kumbum Monastery. As a key tourist attraction of Qinghai, the monastery boasts of three artistic specialties including butter sculptures, mural paintings and embroidery.
Samdrup, the only tomb keeper in Lhasa Martyrs Cemetery, has devoted his life to grave keeping. Dated back to 24 years ago, twenty-year-old Samdrup began his career after serving the army.
Samdrup looks after the graves every day by cleaning the cemetery and telling the heroic stories of martyrs to tomb sweepers.
“I am an ordinary Tibetan. But I know the happy life we are living is gained by the sacrifice of the martyrs. Only by taking good care of the cemetery will I let the martyrs rest in peace,” said Samdrup.
Lhasa Martyrs Cemetery buries near 1,500 martyrs who have lost their lives in big events of Tibet, including the construction of Sichuan-Tibet and Qinghai-Tibet railways, the brief border war between China and India in 1962 and the social constructions in Tibet.
The Tomb-sweeping Day, or Qingming festival,which fell on Apr.5 this year, is the most important period for Chinese to remember the deceased.
Azerbaijani climbers Israfil Ashurlu and Firuz Dadashov will leave for Tibet Autonomous Region of China to scale 8,027-meter high Shishapangma peak of Himalayas, the Azerbaijan Mountaineering Federation said on Thursday.
The expedition will run more than a month.
Shishapangma is the fourteenth-highest mountain in the world and, at 8,013 m, the lowest of the eight thousands meters.
Shishapangma is located in south-central Tibet of China, five kilometers from the Chinese border with Nepal. It is the highest peak in the Jugal Himal which is contiguous with and often considered part of Langtang Himal.
Ashurlu is the first representative of Azerbaijan who has conquered the most northern mountain over 7,000 meters high. He is the first among Azerbaijani sportsmen who has a title ‘Snow Leopard.’ In 2007 Ashurlu conquered the highest point of the planet.
Tibet Airlines has launched regular flights between Tibet and Qinghai Province in the northwest.
The new route, which links the regional capital Lhasa and Qinghai’s Gelmud City, went into service on Monday, according to Lin Mingjing, deputy manager of the marketing department with Tibet Airlines.
Using Airbus A319, there will be three round trips each week, with each single trip lasting one hour and 20 minutes.
“I believe that the new route will give a big boost to regional tourism,” Lin said.
Tibet opened 13 new air routes in 2013, bringing the total number in the region to 48 and the number of cities linked with Tibet to 29.
The region received a record 2.76 million air passengers in 2013, up 24.4 percent from the previous year, according to the regional civil aviation authorities.
At 7:00 am on March 31, 2014, as complications of diabetes set in, the heart of China’s first woman mountaineer reaching the summit of Mt. Qomolangma stopped beating at Wuxi Hospital in Jiangsu Province of China.
Her name was Pan Duo, 75 years old. She was also world’s first woman ever reached the summit from the north slope of Mt. Qomolangma.
Her loss was felt not only across China but also throughout the international mountaineering circle. Her glory remains, on the page of Chinese and global mountaineering history.
On May 27, 1975, Pan Duo and eight male mountaineers from China Mountaineering Team reached the summit of Mt. Qomolangma by way of its north slope, leaving world’s first women mountaineers’ footprint on that summit.
Monks debate on the sutra of Tibetan Buddhism at the Sera Monastery in Lhasa, capital of southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, March 27, 2014. The Sera Monastery, one of the three leading monasteries in Lhasa, holds Tibetan Buddhism sutra debate every afternoon except Sunday.
There are three 100-year-old dwellings in the Conggo Village of Gongbo gyamda County of Nyingchi Prefecture, southeast Tibet Autonomous Region. The village is the only place in the Gongbo district that completely preserved traditional Tibetan village layout, residential architectural style, custom, culture and faith. The old buildings are living fossils, providing outsiders a window to understand Gongbo Tibetans.
Drolma Lhamo, hostess of one of the old houses, introduced: “Our house has over two hundred years history, and our elders have been living in this house from generation to generation. Now my family and I are also living in the house. We have a deep feeling with it.”
The house has two floors with the first floor stacked forage and sundry. It was mainly built of wood.
Located in west Tibet, Ngari Prefecture borders India, Nepal and Kashmir. As world’s least populous prefecture, it covers 300,000 square kilometers at an average of 4,500 meters above sea- level. Intersection for Gangdise Mountains and Karakoran Mountains, Ngari is also the birthplace of a couple of major domestic and international rivers. It is therefore dubbed “ancestry of all rivers” and “origin of all springs” Rolling mountain peaks and meandering rivers overlook myriads of lakes unfold themselves through boundless prairie.
Among the numerous majestic mountains in Ngari, Mt. Kailash in Purang County is the best known holy mountain to the world as recognized as the center of this planet in Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism and Bonism (the original religion in Tibet). The highest peak in Gangdise Mountain range, Mt. Kailash zigzags into a pyramid shape, averaging 6,656 meters above sea-level. In Tibetan language, Kailash means “mountain of gods and goddesses”.
Twenty kilometers onwards from Mt. Kangrinpoche lies another engaging spot-Lake Manassarovar. A freshwater lake averages 4,588 meters above sea-level with 412 square kilometers of coverage and 70 meters of depth. It is world’s highest fresh water lake. When the day clears up, the water appears transparently blue with ripples on the lake surface and reflected images of the clouds and the sky.
The Yamdroktso Lake in southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region has recently been listed into the State’s pilot project on ecological environmental protection of 100 good lakes.
The Yamdroktso Lake is the second holy lake in Tibet to be listed in the project after the Namtso Lake. And related preliminary work was conducted last year.
Boasting beautiful and charming natural landscapes, the lakes in Tibet including Yamdroktso Lake attract a great number of tourists at home and abroad every year.
In order to resolve the hidden danger of household garbage brought by tourism development, the environmental department of Tibet has taken measures to strengthen the management and ecotourism tourism publicity at key scenic spots.
According to the Forest Department of Tibet, there appears a recovery growth in the number of protected animals in the region.
The number of Tibetan antelopes under state first class protection has increased from some 160,000 in 2007 to 70,000 in 1995, while that of the black-necked crane has soared from some 7,000 to 1,000 before 1995.
At present, 45 out of 141 kinds of protected animals are under national first class protection level.