On the conference week-end, we were able to choose between several activities. I decided for two one-day tours. The first one was a tour of the Qinghai province situated on the West side of Lanzhou. We took the bus at 7am direction Xining. It took us about 4 hours to get there and we arrived for lunch. We then went to visit the Ta'er Lamasery. The Ta'er Lamasery is situated in the mountains and the monks belongs to in the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" school of Tibetan Buddhism. During the road trip to get there, the guide explained us that the architecture and formation is traditionally Chinese and give us some Chinese propaganda about the war between China and Tibet and how China took Tibet out of a dark age of slavery.
So I decided to do some research about the place to "file in the blanks". The monastery is classified secondary to Lhasa and is the birth place of the founder of the Gelug, while the architecture might be Chinese, the art work is called Barbola which is a uniquely Tibetan art of colored silk and fabric preservation. Most of the inscription in the temple are made in Tibetain and Mongolian. The monastery also contain university faculties such as debate, logic, astronomy and medicine. Despite being a school of the Dalai Lama, his picture is forbidden in China also in the temple.
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| The colored fabrics represent element of nature (yellow-earth, green–water, red-fire, white-air, blue-space) |
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| People wearing traditional clothes |
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| Prayer Mill |
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| Golden pagoda |
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| Gold roof |
Nice post, great blog, following :)
ReplyDeleteGood Luck :)