Governments at all levels in Tibet have set up special organs for salvaging, sorting out and studying the ethnic culture. So far, they have edited and published China Opera Annals Tibet Volume and Chinese Ballads Tibet Volume, as well as other collections of folk dance, proverbs, folk songs and folk stories. These efforts have effectively saved and protected Tibet's ethnic culture.
King Gesar, the world's longest epic created by the Tibetan people, has been passed on for generations orally. The Tibet Autonomous Region set up a special agency in 1979 to salvage and collate the gem of world epics. The attempt was listed as a key national research project. Through efforts of more than 20 years, over 3,000 tapes have been recorded and close to 300 Tibetan manuscripts and woodblocks have been collected. Altogether 62 Tibetan versions have been collated and published with 3 million copies. More than 20 Chinese versions of the epic have also been published, some of which have been translated into English, Japanese and French.
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