Featured Images

Loading the Tree
Loading the Tree
Preparing the Second Tube
Preparing the Second...
My Aunt
My Aunt
Shoe Liners
Shoe Liners

The Project

PlateauCulture.org presents an archive of images, writings, and place information about areas on and surrounding the Tibetan Plateau. read more...

Contributors are mainly students, members/managers of local media projects, and local and foreign teachers and scholars.

The images here are mainly from Plateau Photographers, a participatory photography project that supports young photographers, bu other local and outside photographers' work is here too.

We are also the online publisher for the Asian Highlands Perspectives journal. Most but not all of the writings are published journal articles.

Place Citations are discreet snippets about a place. Sometimes, these are analyses of sources, but often just quotes.

Featured Writings

May All Good Things Gather Here - Life, Religion, and Marriage in a Mi nyag Tibetan Village
Bkra shis bzang po
17 weeks 6 days ago
This work documents marriage customs and related oral traditions in Bang smad Village, Bang smad Township, Nyag rong County, Dkar mdzes Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China. Villagers speak the poorly documented Mi nyag language. This study provides novel linguistic and ethnographic data, including a Mi nyag-English word list, maps showing the distribution of Mi nyag-speaking communities, and numerous full-color photographs of village life and wedding festivities. Of...

Silence in the Valley of Songs - Work Songs from the Sman shod Valley
Zla ba sgrol ma
18 weeks 19 hours ago
The text and more than one hundred full-page color plates document Tibetan folk music (particularly work songs), and local life in the Sman shod Valley, Sde dge County, Dkar mdzes Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China. Bo nyed, a local elder, describes the situation that motivated this timely documentation, "In the past we sang constantly, but now people don't sing no matter where they are or what they are doing. Now everyone is silent." The text includes richly contextualized...

Warming Your Hands With Moonlight: Lavrung Tibetan Oral Traditions and Culture
G.yu lha
18 weeks 19 hours ago
Lavrung is a little studied Qiangic language spoken by a small group of Tibetans in Rangtang County, Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China. This work provides the first monographic introduction to Lavrung Tibetans and their language and culture, focusing on the use of trilingual (Lavrung, Chinese, and Tibetan) figurative speech in villagers' everyday discourse. Background on local oral traditions, including folktales, riddles, work songs, and secret curative...

Passions and Colored Sleeves: Mongghul Lives in Eastern Tibet
Limusishiden, and Jugui
32 weeks 6 days ago
This genre-bending work takes the novel down paths not often walked for it documents a dying culture by a couple of this cultural group, provides elaborate footnotes sure to interest the anthropologically-minded reader, has portions that are biography and history, and more. Its richly detailed description of folk and religious practices, family interactions and breadth in the number and types of scenes and vignettes provide valuable records of what was, or might have been.    ...

"I, Ya ri a bsod, Am a Dog": The Life and Music of a Tibetan Mendicant Singer
Skal dbang skyid, Sha bo don sgrub rdo rje, Sgrol ma mtsho, Gerald Roche, Eric Schweickert, and Dpa' rtse rgyal
32 weeks 6 days ago
The life and music of Ya ri A bsod, a Tibetan composer and singer who lived in the early twentieth century, is described. Ya ri A bsod wandered through Tibetan nomad areas where contemporary Qinghai, Gansu, and Sichuan provinces meet in China. Texts and transcribed melodies of Ya ri A bsod songs are presented. These songs are contextualized in terms of their contemporary transmission, and the historical and autobiographical circumstances of their composition. 

Fuel and Solar Cooker Impact in Ya na gdung Village, Gcan tsha County, Mtsho sngon (Qinghai) Province

Rdo rje don 'grub
32 weeks 6 days ago
Eight accounts and discussion detail challenges faced by Ya na gdung (Yanadong) Tibetan and Muslim fellow villagers in acquiring fossil fuels, related concerns, and provide historical perspective on local fuel collection. Solar cookers have alleviated certain challenges of fuel collection, reduced exposure to smoke-filled kitchens, and provided other benefits; however, solar cooking technology needs to be further developed to increase cooker portability and decrease heating time.