People and Land of Tibet

Land
Tibet covers an area of 1,222,000 sq km (471,800 sq mi). It is bounded on the north by Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Qinghai Province; on the east by Sichuan and Yunnan provinces; on the south by Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), India, Bhutan, and Nepal; and on the west by India. Lhasa is the Tibet capital and largest city. Some Tibetans contend that Tibet includes parts of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan, and Yunnan provinces where ethnic Tibetans live.

Almost completely surrounded by mountain ranges (including the Himalayas in the south and the Kunlun in the north), Tibet is largely a plateau averaging c.16,000 ft (4,880 m) in height. Many of the mightiest rivers of E Asia, especially the Chang (Yangtze), the Mekong, and the Thanlwin, rise in Tibet; the most important is the navigable Yarlung Zangbo (the Brahmaputra), which follows an easterly course through S Tibet. North of the Yarlung Zangbo are many salt lakes, the largest being Nam Co (Tengri Nor) in the east.

Among the 14 peaks above 8,000 meters on earth,5 are in Tibet. Besides Mt. Everst, peaks like Luozi, Makalu,Zhuoayou, Xixiabangma and Nanjiabawa are all competing to stand up higher than other peaks on earth.Huge rocks are piercing into the sky.Endless ice and snow are depicting a silver world.White ice towners,stalagmites and stalactites,the serene looking ice sheep against the ferocious looking ice are master pieces of ice carving by the great nature.

People in Tibet
The population of the Tibet was 2,620,000 in 2000, yielding an average population density of about 2 persons per sq km (5.2 per sq mi), the lowest of any region in China. Because the 1990 census was the first properly conducted count, population figures for Tibet prior to that date were largely imprecise estimates.

The vast majority of Tibet’s people live in rural areas, and a large but diminishing part of the population is nomadic (having no fixed residence) or seminomadic. Lhasa, the capital and largest city, is Tibet’s principal center of trade, tourism, commerce, education, and government, and the headquarters of the region’s major religious institutions. Shigatse, the second largest city, is also an important trade and commercial center and the home of the Panchen Lama, the second most important leader in Tibetan Buddhism after the Dalai Lama.

Most people in Tibet speak Tibetan, a language of the Tibeto-Burman subfamily of Sino-Tibetan languages. Various dialects of Tibetan are spoken in different regions. Putonghua (Mandarin) Chinese, China’s official language, is also used, particularly by Han Chinese, government agencies, and most commercial enterprises. People can request the use of Tibetan within the legal system. Little Chinese is heard in Tibet’s rural areas.