The Gangjong Sherig Norbu School has long been a source of pride for ethnic Tibetans in China’s Qinghai province. Known for its rigorous curriculum, the school counted leading Tibetan scholars as members of its faculty; its graduates have gone on to excel in fields like engineering, education, medicine and religion.
In a bid to help preserve Tibet’s language and culture, a nonprofit organization in northern India is transforming one of its facilities into a boarding school where children of Tibetans living overseas can go to live and study.
For several years now, Tibetan Calligraphy Day has been a way for Tibetans to keep their language and heritage alive amid China imposing restrictions and bans on use of the language.
The younger sister of the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has received a prestigious university award for her lifelong dedication to educating Tibetan children who live in exile.
Rising tourism brings economic prosperity to many in the region of India’s scenic Himalayan slopes. But it has also brought hazards, with mountains of solid trash littered across the hillsides. Scores of volunteers have organised cleanup campaigns as a result of that.
Periodically prostrating himself, a Tibetan Buddhist monk pulling a cart with food and bedding has completed a pilgrimage of more than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) over eight months to Dharamsala, India.
Chinese authorities in Tibet are randomly searching monasteries and forcing monks to sign documents renouncing all ties to the “separatist” Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism’s foremost spiritual leader, Tibetan sources living in exile told Radio Free Asia.
A Tibetan Buddhist monk serving a jail sentence for “sending money for prayer offerings” to the Dalai Lama and to the abbot of his monastery has been released from jail and has returned to the monastery, people in Tibet who are familiar with the situation said.
Tibetans heading to the capital of Lhasa for pilgrimages or for other reasons must obtain a permission letter from a local official assuring that the traveler will not instigate or participate in any protests that would disrupt social order, Tibetans inside the region said.
A Chinese official who approved the destruction of a huge Buddha statue in a Tibetan-majority area has been assigned to another position in the same prefecture, Tibetans inside and outside the region said.