Tongren County
Tongren County (Standard Tibetan: ཐུང་རེན་རྫོང་, Wylie: thung ren rdzong; Chinese: 同仁县; pinyin: Tóngrén Xiàn) known to Tibetans as Rebgong (Standard Tibetan: རེབ་གོང་, or Standard Tibetan: རེབ་ཀོང་, རེབ་སྐོང་)[1] in the region previously known as Amdo is the capital and second smallest administrative subdivision by area within Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai Province, China. The county has an area of 3465 square kilometers and a population of ~80,000 (2002), 75% Tibetan. The economy of the county includes agriculture and aluminum mining.
The county has a number of Tibetan Buddhist temples, including the large and significant Longwu Temple of the Gelupa (Yellow Hat) sect. It is known as a center of Tibetan thangka painting. Rebkong arts where named to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009.
In October, 2010 there were reports of large demonstrations in Tongren by Tibetan students who reportedly shouted the slogans, “equality of ethnic groups” and “freedom of language." [2]
Demographics and languages
The Tibetan language is the lingua franca of Tongren County and the surrounding region, which is populated by Tibetans and Hui people, as well as some Han Chinese and Mongols. [3]
Wutun, a Chinese-Bonan-Tibetan mixed language, is spoken by some 2,000 people in the two villages of Upper and Lower Wutun, located on the eastern bank of the Rongwo River.[3]
See also
References
- ↑ "China Adds to Security Forces in Tibet Amid Calls for a Boycott" article by Edward Wong in The New York Times Feb. 18, 2009, accessed October 21, 2010
- ↑ "China: Tibetan Students March To Protest Education Policies" article by Edward Wong in The New York Times October 21, 2010, accessed October 21, 2010
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Lee-Smith, Mei W.; Wurm, Stephen A. (1996), "The Wutun language", in Wurm, Stephen A.; Mühlhäusler, Peter; Tyron, Darrell T., Atlas of languages of intercultural communication in the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas, Volume 2, Part 1. (Volume 13 of Trends in Linguistics, Documentation Series)., Walter de Gruyter, p. 883, ISBN 3-11-013417-9, "International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies"
External links
- A Century in Rebkong, Amdo, an Amdo primer
- Video about Tongren - the city of Tongren and its most important monasteries with famous Buddhist art schools for Thangka painting
- Travel Videos from mickspatz at www.spatz-darmstadt.de - travel videos about Buddhist Monasteries and Tibetan Art of the Tongren-Rebkong valley and Xiahe
- Videos about a great festival in Tongren-Rebkong, July 2006 By Italian writer Mario Biondi, in Italian
- Photographs of Tongren/Repkong Shaman Festival
Coordinates: 35°24′36.97″N 102°04′52.50″E / 35.4102694°N 102.0812500°E
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