As a member in the big family of the Chinese nation, the Tibetan people have created and developed their brilliant and distinctive culture during a long history of continuous exchanges and contacts with other brother ethnic groups. In the long process of cultural development of the Tibetan people, their architecture, music, dance, spoken and written language, medicine and pharmacology, astronomy and calendar have all reached very high levels.

There is not a kind of culture that can be separated from its historical context in the world. In the 7th century B.C of the Tang Dynasty, Princess Wencheng, carrying with her the advanced culture of the Hans, married Songtsan Gambo, king of the Tubo Kingdom (later developed into Tibet), which had directly promoted the development of economy and culture in Tibet.

"Fine culture heritage deeply rooted among the people will not perish," said Huang, though the correlative economic and political system has changed. The ethnical Tibetan culture is the soul of Tibet. It has been continuously inherited and developed by the Tibetan people over the past thousand years. History proves that all views about "the extinction" of Tibetan culture are totally fallacious.

Like feudalism, feudal serfdom through a combination of political and ecclesiastic powers had once promoted the development of Tibetan culture back in history. However, toward the end of the 18th century, serfdom had become an entirely corruptive, unenlightened and backward system, which prevented economic and social development. The Dalai lamas, as rulers of Tibet, had all become ecstatic with a luxurious life in the splendid Norbu Lingka Palace. Sutra study was made privilege of the nobility while the ordinary people, as genuine creators of wisdom and wealth, were deprived of all human rights and had to work years' round as beast of burden.

In 1951, democratic reform was launched in Tibet. This had liberated the serfs and slaves accounting for a 95% of the Tibetan population, stimulated a rapid growth of economy and brought a dramatic change in the human rights situation of Tibet. Ordinary Tibetans have since been treated as masters of their own and universally given the rights to receiving education throughout Tibet.

A fine culture will find an outstanding long lease of life in the course of social and economic development. With the abolition of serfdom, the monopolistic side of Tibetan culture by the Tibetan nobility was eliminated, to be developed and carried forward instead is naturally a fine culture representing the history of Tibet and wisdom of ordinary Tibetans, with essential assimilated while dross is discarded.

Zhasha, a Tibetan research fellow in the Ethnic Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that the existent Tibetan folk songs and dance arts, Tibetan pharmacology and existent traditional festivals have all showed the vitality of Tibetan culture. The Tibetan people, as the main body carrying forward the fine heritage of Tibetan culture, enjoying full freedom of religion, are leading a life in tune with other ethnic peoples throughout the world.

(from People's Daily)