In Photos | Tibetan traditions threatened by politics, progress

The title Tibet conjures up photos of snowy peaks, vermillion temples and prayer flags snapping within the Himalayan wind. Those options stay, however the non secular and cultural foundations underpinning them look like coming unstuck.

Long outlined by its Buddhist tradition, the area is dealing with a push for assimilation and political orthodoxy below China’s ruling Communist Party. Tibetans and different minorities are seeing using their languages downgraded in faculties and outdated methods of residing eroded for the promise of higher high quality of life by cellphones, on-line purchasing, greater training and improved well being care.Political conformity is enforced by relentless surveillance of individuals’s social interactions in precise life and on-line. Religious practices that after dominated the area have been excised from every day residing and the getting older Dalai Lama, the non secular chief of Tibet who has lived in exile since 1959, is portrayed as a determine of scorn, when he’s even acknowledged in any respect. Over the centuries, Tibet developed from a group of kingdoms to one thing like a unified state that accepted suzerainty below successive Chinese imperial dynasties that dominated till 1912. (AP)Chinese vacationers have flocked to Lhasa, the capital, and it’s environs, regardless of the excessive altitude that requires many to depend on canned oxygen. They combine with Tibetans making uncommon pilgrimages that embody devotional laps round Jokhang Temple, the cathedral of Tibetan Buddhism.A must-go spot for guests is the stone-paved sq. on the base of the Potala Palace, the previous house of the Dalai Lama and his predecessors that’s now a museum. As vacationers pose and faculty graduates use it as a backdrop for sophistication photographs, its inert standing serves as a reminder of the political points enveloping Tibet. A category of monks do stretching workouts on an athletic discipline on the Tibetan Buddhist College close to Lhasa in western China’s Tibet Autonomous Region. (AP)Over the centuries, Tibet developed from a group of kingdoms to one thing like a unified state that accepted suzerainty below successive Chinese imperial dynasties that dominated till 1912. Full Chinese management got here after the Communist Party took energy in 1949 and despatched troops to beat Tibet’s feeble defenses in 1951.The authorities says it has introduced growth to a area lengthy left behind. Critics say the exploitation of Tibet’s pure sources, environmental degradation and an inflow of migrants from China’s majority Han ethnic group can’t be sustained. Members of the Tibetan Buddhist trustworthy pay their respects at a holy website on the base of the Potala Palace in Lhasa in western China’s Tibet Autonomous Region. (AP)Lhasa has seen a burst of latest building, nomads have been settled in mannequin villages and the navy’s presence has been boosted to claim China’s declare to territory held by India, with whom China final 12 months got here to blows over their disputed frontier on Tibet’s southern border.On a uncommon government-led tour of Tibet, Associated Press journalists noticed modernization of highways and a railway to the Chinese heartland, faculties that educate in Chinese below portraits of Chinese chief Xi Jinping and indicators of an rising city center class together with each Tibetans and Han Chinese.Under myriad pressures, Tibet’s identification faces probably the best risk in its historical past. Like the flapping prayer flags, its destiny lies within the wind.