TIBETAN
Excerpts from Wikipedia.org
The Tibetan people are a people indigenous to Tibet and surrounding areas stretching from Central Asia in the West to Myanmar and and China Proper in the East.
The Government of Tibet in Exile claims that the number of Tibetans has fallen from 6,330,567 to 5.4 million since 1959, while the government of the People's Republic of China claims that the number of Tibetans has risen from 2.7 million to 5.4 million since 1954. The SIL Ethnologue documents an additional 125,000 Tibetan exiles living in India, 60,000 in Nepal, and 4,000 in Bhutan.
Tibetan exile groups estimate the death toll in Tibet since the invasion of the People's Liberation Army in 1950 to be 1,200,000.
Tibet Autonomous Region
The Tibet Autonomous Region (西藏自治区), is a province-level autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC).
Within the PRC, the TAR is identified with Tibet, the TAR includes about half of historic Tibet, including the traditional provinces of Ü-Tsang and Kham (western half). Its borders coincide roughly with the actual zone of control of the government of Tibet before 1959.
Unlike other autonomous regions, the vast majority of Tibetans are of the local ethnicity. As a result, there is debate surrounding the extent of actual autonomy in the TAR. The opinion of the PRC is that the TAR has ample autonomy, as guaranteed under Articles 111-122 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China as well as the Law on Regional Ethnic Autonomy of the People's Republic of China. However, many human rights organizations around the world accuse the Chinese government of persecuting and oppressing the local population
Before 1959, the present extent of the TAR was governed by the government of Tibet headed by the Dalai Lama. The Government of Tibet in Exile characterizes the area as an independent and sovereign nation . Other parts of historic Tibet (eastern Kham and Amdo) were not under the administration of the Tibetan government during the twentieth century; today they are distributed among the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan.
In 1950, the Chinese Army claimed the Tibetan area of Chamdo, crushing minimal resistance. In 1951, the Tibetan representatives, under PLA military pressure, signed a seventeen-point agreement with the PRC's Central People's Government affirming China's sovereignty over Tibet. The agreement was ratified in Lhasa a few months later. Government forces clashed with CIA-supported ethnic dissidents in 1959 during the celebration of the Tibetan New Year, after which the 14th Dalai Lama, with CIA help, went into political exile in India. After 1959, the CIA trained Tibetan guerrillas and provided funds for the fight against China. However, the effort stopped when Richard Nixon decided to seek rapprochement with China in the early 1970s.
Origins
Chinese and "proto-Tibeto-Burman" may have split sometime before 4000 BC, when the Chinese began growing millet in the Yellow River valley while the Tibeto-Burmans remained nomads; Tibet split from Burma circa 500. The Tibetan language is a member of the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Very little is known about the origins of the Tibetan people. Some argue that Tibetans share a genetic background with Mongols, although it is clear that other main influences do exist. Some anthropologists have suggested an Central Asian or Indo-Scythian component, and others a Southeast Asian component; both are credible given Tibet's geographic location. The romantic claim that American Hopi and Tibetans are close cousins is not likely to find support in genetic studies, although strong cultural similarities may be found between the two groups. Some light has been shed on their origins, however, by one genetic study: Su, Bing, et al. (2000), in which it was indicated that Tibetan Y-chromosomes had multiple origins, one from Central Asia while the other from East Asia.
Language
The Tibetan language is spoken primarily by the Tibetan people. Several forms of Tibetan are also spoken by various peoples of northern Pakistan and India in areas like Baltistan and Ladakh, which are both in or around Kashmir. Tibetan is typically classified as a Tibeto-Burman language.
The Tibeto-Burman family of languages is spoken in various central and south Asian countries, including Myanmar (Burma), Tibet, northern Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, parts of central China (Guizhou, Hunan), northern parts of Nepal, North-eastern parts of Bangladesh, Bhutan, western Pakistan (Baltistan), and various regions of India (Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, and both the Ladakh and Kargil regions of Jammu and Kashmir).
Divisions
The Tibetan nation can be divided into several groups. These include the Ando, Nachan, and Hor, who are further divided into fifty-one sub-tribes, each of them maintaining a distinct yet related cultural identity.
The Hor, who are further sub-divided into thirty-nine sub-tribes, are of Mongolian and Turkic descent. The Tibetans in Kham are also known as the Khampa, while those in the Central Tibet are known as the Pöba. Descendants of the Karjia are known as the Ando. Although the Tangut are now extinct as a distinct people, their descendants can be found among the Tibetans and Salar of Gansu.
Central Tibetans (those living in the vast area around Lhasa, Ü-Tsang) obviously share a strong Mongolian component in their ancestry. The tent-dwelling nomads of the high Tibetan plateau—known as Drokpa, meaning "steppe-dwellers"—and the "Khampas" in Kham are, by comparison, taller and longer-limbed, with sharper features and more aquiline noses. Some have suggested they are of Scythian descent. The Eastern Tibetans are not as mixed as the Central Tibetans in the sedentary areas. In Western Tibet, notably around Ladakh and Kashmir, people are closer to those of Indo-Aryan descent.
Notable Features
Since the late nineteenth century, the Chinese presence in Eastern Tibet has increased, and often the Khambas there are bilingual. Still, mixed marriages between Tibetans and Chinese are not very common.
Tibetans typically have light brown skin, black, somewhat wavy or even curly hair, moderately high cheekbones, and brown eyes, although some have very light hazel or green eyes, due to their Mongol heritage. The men typically have full moustaches but sparse beards; traditionally, they pluck out their beards with tweezers. Nomads have long braided hair, and the women usually braid their hair in 108 braids.
Tibetans have a legendary ability to survive extremes of altitude and cold, an ability no doubt conditioned by the extreme environment of the Tibetan plateau. Recently, scientists have sought to isolate the cultural and genetic factors behind this adaptability. Among their findings was a gene which improves oxygen saturation in hemoglobin and the fact that Tibetan children grow faster than other children to the age of five (presumably as a defense against heat loss since larger bodies have a more favorable volume to surface ratio). The Tibet Paleolithic Project is studying the Stone Age colonization of the plateau, hoping to gain insight into human adaptability in general and the cultural strategies the Tibetans developed as they learned to survive in this harsh environment.
Physical Adaptation to High Altitudes
The ability of Tibetans to function normally in the oxygen-deficient atmosphere at high altitudes - frequently above 4,400 metres (14,000 ft), has often puzzled observers. Recent research shows that, although Tibetans living at high altitudes have no more oxygen in their blood than other people, they have 10 times more nitric oxide (NO) and double the forearm blood flow of low-altitude dwellers. Nitric oxide causes dilation of blood vessels allowing blood to flow more freely to the extremities and aids the release of oxygen to tissues. This may also help explain the typical rosy cheeks of high-altitude dwellers. What is not yet known is whether the high levels of nitric oxide are due to a genetic mutation or whether people from lower altitudes would gradually adapt similarly after living for prolonged periods at high altitudes.
Han Chinese in Tibet
Han Chinese has been moved to the area in recent years by the PRC government. The issue of the proportion of the Han Chinese population in Tibet is a politically sensitive one. The Central Tibetan Administration says that the People's Republic of China has actively swamped Tibet with Han Chinese migrants in order to alter Tibet's demographic makeup thanks to settlement policy.
In the years between the conquering of Tibet in the 1950's up until the 1980's, the native Tibetan language was strictly repressed and teaching of Chinese dialects was instituted. Today, many Tibetans do not speak their native language, only the Chinese they were taught. The massive settling of Tibet by Chinese workers and the necessity of knowing Chinese for anyone wanting to participate in higher positions in society has caused a still greater increase in Chinese speaking Tibetans while their native language becomes a thing of the past.
Han settlers now outnumber Tibetans by multiple millions in the Tibet Autonomous Region, and in the cities Tibetans are a minority group. This has created a scenario in which Chinese cultural goods are replacing Tibetan ones and the overwhelming feel of many Tibetan cities is now that of a Chinese one. The Chinese government is currently working on resettling hundreds of thousands of Tibetans from their ancestral homes and move them into or closer to cities. This move destroys the small communities in which Tibetan culture was still predominant.
Under the Chinese rule of Tibet, many lamas fled the country along with other refugees. The absence of many of these highly trained lamas reduces the quality and influence of Buddhism in Tibet. While most of the country are still devout followers of Buddhism, the continuing suppression of expression by the remaining monks means that there is a greater increase of superficial or only basic teaching of Tibetan Buddhism available. These lamas have spread Tibetan Buddhism to other areas of the world, with many gaining followings. These new practitioners, however, come from many modernized countries that are skeptical of the cultural background of shamanism and Tantric practices in their teachings. This leads to an increased marketing of Tibetan symbols without the knowledge of their meaning.
Another drastic change in Tibetan culture will come with the death of the fourteenth Dalai Lama. As the official spiritual and secular leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama is the highest lama with the Panchan Lama seen as the penultimate lama. Currently, the last officially recognized Panchan Lama has disappeared at the hands of the Chinese, who replaced him with a person of their choosing from amidst the atheist Communist Party. Normally, the Panchen Lama heads the finding of the reincarnated Dalai Lama. Recognizing that the fifteenth one will probably be chosen again by the Communist Party, the Dalai Lama has questioned the continuation of his spiritual lineage, saying that he may not choose to reincarnate. Such a decision, clearly influenced by the Chinese occupation, would destroy one of the oldest and most sacred Tibetan traditions.
