The epic folk tale of the ethnic Tibetan group in China, was created between the 10th and 16th centuries, and tells the story of the ancient Tibetan King Gesar who conquered other Tibetan tribes and brought stability to Tibet.

For a thousand years, the tale has been passed down through singing or recitation by ballad singers or lyricists among Tibetans, Mongolians, and Tu and Naxi people living on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

Jonba Dongchu, director of the Gesar Institute of Qinghai, said that as experts make verbatim recordings of the balladeers' singing, they are finding a lot of new content of the masterpiece.

So far, it has been generally accepted that the epic comprises more than 200 volumes, with 500,000 lines.

"But that is just what has been compiled and the epic is far more than that," Jonba said.

Meanwhile, more balladeers have been found and the content they sing is not always the same, showing that the epic is being constantly developed.

Qinghai now boasts about 100 Gesar ballad singers, mostly from ethnic Tibetan or Mongolian groups in outlying areas with poor access to traffic or modern communications.

"Without them, the longest epic would have been forgotten during the long process of history," Jonba said.

The Life of King Gesar is regarded as a brilliant literary work as valuable as those of ancient Greece or India and it enjoys unfading popularity in the world.

In October 2001, at its 31st conference, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) listed the millennium of "King Gesar" as one of the anniversaries to be marked by its member countries in 2002 and 2003, the director noted.

(Xinhua News Agency April 2, 2003)