Quite a lot of people care about China's "Tibet issues", there is always a "Shangri-La" with oriental mystery, shadowiness and idealism flashing in their minds.
Tibet indeed has such mystery: spectacular scene of snow land plateau, unique language culture, long aged Tibetan Buddhism…however, sometimes it's easy to ignore a basic fact if let the imagination spread freely beyond the practice, that is, the story of "Shangri-La" still took place in the earth, and it happens following basic axiom.
A Canadian historian A. Tom Grunfeld wrote in his book "The making of modern Tibet" that Tibet is "a land so wrapped in obscurity that almost any fantastic tales about it, or allegedly from it, are received with awe and believed, unquestioningly, by countless individuals the world over. A land whose society and history have been so romantically homogenized that many call themselves "experts" after reading a mere handful of texts, assuming that the uniformity of these accounts indicates their accuracy".
However, history records the old Tibet with irrefutable facts that it was not the "Shangri-La" as people imagined. There were one million people living in Lhasa in 1950s, 900,000 of whom were homeless. There were only 20,000 people living in urban areas in Lhasa. More than 1,000 needy people and baggers were seen on streets. An elder Tibetan told "At that time, there were many people fighting with dogs for food on streets in Lugu in the southwest of Jokhang Temple". Nowadays, Tibetan people have much longer life expectancy with current 67 years old from 35.5 years old in the old Tibet. The economy keeps fast development for the past 7 years with double digits increase rate above 12%.
Compared the old Tibet with the one after peaceful liberation, which is the truly "Shangri-La", it is not so hard to make the conclusion.
Protecting the unique culture of "Shangri-La" never means to protect wildness and backwardness. The culture protection in Tibet must adapt to the development, progress, union and happiness of the whole Tibetan people. Only the Tibetan culture can be better protected at the same time of economic development and life improvement, not going back to the darkness of caesaropapism and feudal serfdom system.
As a matter of fact, to better protect Tibetan culture, Chinese central government has put significant fund on the maintenance of the Potala Palace, Norbu Lingka and Sagya Monastery. A more than ever maintenance project for 22 monasteries and ancient culture constructions will be implemented from this year. China also sets up department specifically for correction and publication of different versions of Tibetan Tripitaka… For protecting the blue sky and clean water in Tibet, Chinese government will allocate 22 billion yuan from now to build more than 160 ecological environmental protection project.
Today's Tibet takes much care on its invaluable culture features, which is the unchanged "Shangri-La". Today's Tibet also puts great efforts on moving forward and getting rid of backwards and unwisdom, which is the changed "Shangri-La".
"Change" is a well sounded slogan in today's world, no matter in America or in Europe, people often hear the words: We need change. For Tibet, "Shangri-La" is inheriting the traditions in the unchanged, embracing the future in the change.
*Based on article written by Ye Xiaowen, director of State Administration for Religious Affairs of China.
Source: China Tibet Information Center
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