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."
Drepung Monastery (Wylie: 'bras spungs dgon pa, "Rice Heap Monastery"), located at the foot of Mount Gephel, is one of the "great three" Gelug university gompas (monasteries) of Tibet. The other two are Ganden Monastery and Sera Monastery. Drepung is the largest of all Tibetan monasteries and is located on the Gambo Utse mountain, five kilometers from the western suburb of Lhasa. Freddie Spencer Chapman reported, after his 1936-37 trip to Tibet, that Drepung was at that time the largest monastery in the world, and housed 7,700 monks, "but sometimes as many as 10,000 monks." "What we don't hear about Tibet", The Guardian (Comment is Free). (Wednesday 11 February 2009 22.00 GMT) Since the 1950s, Drepung Monastery, along with its peers Ganden and Sera, have lost much of their independence and spiritual credibility in the eyes of Tibetans since they operate under the close watch of the Chinese security services. All three were reestablished in exile in the 1950s in Karnataka state in south India. Drepung and Ganden are in Mundgod and Sera is in Bylakuppe.
