Tongren County (Tibetan: ཐུན་རིན་རྫོང་, Wylie: thung ren rdzong; Chinese: 同仁县; pinyin: Tóngrén Xiàn), known to Tibetans as Rebgong (Tibetan: རེབ་གོང་, རེབ་ཀོང་, or རེབ་སྐོང་) in the historic region of Amdo is the capital and second smallest administrative subdivision by area within Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai, China. The county has an area of 3465 square kilometers and a population of ~80,000 (2002), 75% Tibetan. The economy of the county includes agriculture and aluminium mining. The county has a number of Tibetan Buddhist temples and gompas, including the large and significant Rongwo Monastery of the Gelug school. It is known as a center of thangka painting. Rebgong arts were named to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists in 2009. In October, 2010 there were reports of large demonstrations in Tongren by Tibetan students who reportedly shouted the slogans, “equality of ethnic groups” and “freedom of language."
Tashi Lhunpo Monastery (Tibetan: བཀྲ་ཤིས་ལྷུན་པོ་), founded in 1447 by the 1st Dalai Lama, is a historic and culturally important monastery in Shigatse, the second-largest city in Tibet. The monastery was sacked when the Gorkha Kingdom invaded Tibet and captured Shigatse in 1791 before a combined Tibetan and Chinese army drove them back as far as the outskirts of Kathmandu, when they were forced to agree to keep the peace in the future, pay tribute every five years, and return what they had looted from Tashi Lhunpo. The monastery is the traditional seat of successive Panchen Lamas, the second highest ranking tulku lineage in the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. The "Tashi" or Panchen Lama had temporal power over three small districts, though not over the town of Shigatse itself, which was administered by a dzongpön (prefect) appointed from Lhasa. Located on a hill in the center of the city, the full name in Tibetan of the monastery means "all fortune and happiness gathered here" or "heap of glory". Captain Samuel Turner, a British officer with the East India Company who visited the monastery in the late 18th century, described it in the following terms: Monks hurrying to services, Tashi Lhunpo, 1993 "If the magnificence of the place was to be increased by any external cause, none could more superbly have adorned its numerous gilded canopies and turrets than the sun rising in full splendour directly opposite. It presented a view wonderfully beautiful and brilliant; the effect was little short of magic, and it made an impression which no time will ever efface from my mind." Pilgrims circumambulate the monastery on the lingkhor (sacred path) outside the walls.
