Yangbajing

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Yangpachen Tibetan: ཡངས་པ་ཅན། Wylie: Yangs-pa-can ZWPY: Yangbajain Chinese: 羊八井 Pinyin: Yángbājǐng

Yangbajing is a Tibetan town approximately 87 kilometers (54 miles) north-west of Lhasa, halfway to Damxung in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. The town lies in an upland lush green valley surrounded by the tents of Nomads with grazing yak and sheep populating the hillside. The area is famous for the Yangbajing hot springs, which have been harnessed to produce much of the electricity for the capital Lhasa. There is a thermoelectric power plant on the edge of the Yangbajing hot springs field covering 16 sq/kilometer (6 sq/miles).^[1] The thermoelectric power plant was established in 1976, and the first development of geothermal power not only in Tibet but in the whole of China.

The Yangbajing hot springs field is at an altitude of 4290–4500 m^[2] which makes it the highest altitude set of hot springs in China, and possibly the world.^[3] The water emerges at 30 degrees C-84 degrees C, which is above the boiling point at that altitude.

There is a remarkable Tibetan myth about Yangpachen. Thousands of years ago, before the sky and the earth was separated, the whole world was in total darkness and people living at the foot of Mount Nyainqentanglha were in despair. However, one morning, a golden phoenix flew to Yangpachen, determined to create brightness by sacrificing itself. It supposedly threw one of its bright eyes into the hands of a fairy which released a blanket of light through a lamp into the air as a blessing to the place. The snow capped peaks of nearby Mount Nyainqentanglha appeared; meadows that resembled a giant green carpet emerged; and happiness and prosperity came to the Tibetan people. However, a wicked man near Yangpachen coveted the lamp. He was possessed by an evil witch man to sharpen his hatred into an arrow to shoot the lamp. The lamp was broken into many different pieces, and as the pieces of the lamp fell onto the ground, they turned into hot springs and burned the wicked man to death. People believed that the hot springs were the angry tears of the fairy.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ The Chinese embassy states that this field is 20-30 square kilometers in size. [1]
2. ^ Forecast and evaluation of hot dry rock geothermal resource in China, Zhijun Wan, Yangsheng Zhao and Jianrong Kang, Renewable Energy, Volume 30, Issue 12 , October 2005, Pages 1831-1846.
3. ^ Chinese cultural organization site making claim that these are the highest altitude hot springs in the world