Amdo (Tibetan: ཨ༌མདོ , Chinese transliteration: 安多, Pinyin: Ānduō) is one of the three traditional provinces of Tibet, the other two being Ü-Tsang and Kham; it is also the birth place of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. Amdo encompasses a large area from the Machu River (Yellow River) to the Drichu river (Yangtse). While culturally and ethnically a Tibetan area, Amdo has been administered by a series of local rulers in recent centuries. Since the Chinese Communist party invasion in the 1950s, Amdo has been annexed into Gansu, Sichuan and Qinghai. Amdo was and is the home of many important Tibetan Buddhist monks (or lamas), scholars who had a major influence on both politics and religious development of Tibet like the 14th Dalai Lama, the 10th Panchen Lama, and the great reformer Je Tsongkhapa. It was traditionally a place of great learning and scholarship and contains many great monasteries including Kumbum Jampa Ling (Chin. Ta'er Si) near Xining, Labrang Tashi Khyil south of Lanzhou, and the Kirti Monasteries of Ngaba and Tewo (Taktsang Lhamo). There are many dialects of the Tibetan language spoke in Amdo due to the traditional geographical isolation of many tribal groups, however the written Tibetan language is the same throughout Tibet. The Tibetan inhabitants of Amdo are referred to as Amdowa (amdo pa) as a regional distinction from the Tibetans of Kham (Khampa) and U-Tsang (Central Tibet), however, they are all considered ethnically Tibetan. The region of Amdo is distributed mainly among the Chinese provinces of Qinghai, with smaller parts in Gansu and Sichuan. While identically named, the sparsely-populated Amdo County in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) is not part of the Amdo cultural province. It was directly administered by the Dalai Lama from Lhasa and is today a part of the Changthang region administered by Nagqu in the northern part of the TAR. (more)
Genres: politics, biology, science, buddhism, religious
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Kumbum Monastery:
Kumbum Monastery (sKu-‘bum Byams-pa gling) (also known as Ta'er) located in a narrow valley about seventeen miles southwest of Xining is a Buddhist monastery in Qinghai, China part of the Tibetan "province", or rather cultural region of Amdo. It was
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Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama:
Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso (born Lhamo Döndrub ( ) 6 July 1935 in Qinghai ), is the 14th and current Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama is a revered spiritual leader among Tibetans and exerts a powerful influence over the Gelug School
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Labrang Monastery:
Labrang Monastery (Tibetan: བླ་བྲང་བཀྲ་ཤིས་འཁྱིལ་ Wylie: bla-brang bkra-shis-'khyil; Chinese: 拉卜楞寺 Pinyin: lābǔlèng sì) is one of the six great monasteries of the Geluk (Yellow Hat) school of Tibetan Buddhism, of which the Dalai Lama is a member. Lab
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Kirti Monastery:
The first Kirti Monastery founded by Kirti Rinpoche was in Gyelrang. These days the two main Kirti Monasteries are in Taktsang Lhamo and Nagba prefecture, in Amdo. Taktsang Lhamo was destroyed during the Chinese invasion in the 1950's, it has now bee
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Tibet:
Tibet ( ) is a plateau region in Central Asia and the home to the indigenous Tibetan people. With an average elevation of 4,900 metres (16,000 ft), it is the highest region on Earth and is commonly referred to as the "Roof of the World." Geographical
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Tibet Autonomous Region:
The Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), also called Xizang Autonomous Region (Tibetan: བོད་རང་སྐྱོང་ལྗོངས་; Wylie: Bod-rang-skyong-ljongs; ), is a province-level autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Within the People's Republic of Ch
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Gansu:
( ) is a province located in the northwest of the People's Republic of China. It lies between Qinghai, Inner Mongolia, and the Huangtu Plateaus, and borders Mongolia to the north and Xinjiang to the west. The Yellow River passes the southern part of
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Dalai Lama:
The Dalai Lama is the spiritual and political leader of the Tibetan people. Often referred to simply as "His Holiness" (HH), or "His Holiness The Dalai Lama", Tibetans usually call the Dalai Lama by the epithets Gyalwa Rinpoche, meaning "Precious Vic
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Je Tsongkhapa:
Tsongkhapa ( ) (1357 - 1419), whose name means "The Man from Onion Valley", was a famous teacher of Tibetan Buddhism whose activities led later to the formation of the Geluk (Dge-lugs) school. He is also known by his ordained name Lobsang Drakpa (Blo
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Qinghai Lake:
Qinghai Lake, historically known as Kokonor (from the Mongolian name), is a salt lake situated in the province of Qinghai, and is the largest lake in China. It is located about 100 km west of the provincial capital of Xining at 3,205 m (10,515 feet)
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