Talk:Tibet

Archived discussions Talk:Tibet/Archive 2003-2012

History section

The section currently starts with:

In the mid-7th century, Songtsan Gampo established the unified Tibetan Empire, and married two princesses, one from China and one from Nepal. Tibet and Tang China fought repeatedly for control over the Silk Road during this time. Although the country was unified, it was seldom peaceful and between the 9th century and the mid-17th century it was often embroiled in turmoil. This period finally drew to a close when the Dalai Lama invited a tribe of Mongols to intervene. They gained military control of the region, but decided to stay, with the leader declaring himself king. However, the Dalai Lama actually administered the country.

In the early 18th century, Tibet was again in turmoil, and seeking to replicate the success of the earlier means of restoring peace, the Dalai Lama invited another tribe of Mongols to take control. However, the emperor of Qing China was unhappy with this arrangement, and ordered an invasion. The Mongols were expelled, and the Chinese and Tibetans began a special relationship which was maintained until the end of the Qing dynasty. Tibet was a tributary state, nominally under Chinese control, until the end of the Qing Dynasty. The British invaded Tibet in 1904, while the Qing emperor carved out states from areas under Tibetan control in the North and East.

I think that is much more detail than travellers are likely to need, especially since we have a WP link where they can get much more if they do want it. I would cut it to just:

Tibet has a long and complicated history, at times an Empire, at times warring with China, and at times a tributary of China or the Mongols.

Other opinions? Pashley (talk) 02:34, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

No comment in over six months, so I went ahead & made the change.

I've also moved some things from intro to this section & added new material. Comment solicited.Pashley (talk) 14:21, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

UUNREALIABLE INFORMATION SOURCE; the content created on TIBET here

This Tibet page might have created by someone who is stuffed with knowledge by himself or not by common knowledge and sense that others understand. If it is deceiving someone knowing nothing about the topic gives worth darkly into the smart way of a perspective self promoter. So far, what i have understand here is somehow he miss use WIKI VOYAGE and i am regretted that there isn't a stuff checking the contents before publishing. The source page WIKI VOYAGE is for what is real but nor for writing skills and unreal contents!! —The preceding comment was added by Adventuresintibet (talk • contribs)

I don't think you understand what a Wiki is. There is no staff being paid to fact-check. Instead of casting aspersions, what you should do is if you see something you know to be wrong, edit it yourself! Just make sure you have no axe to grind and aren't motivated by monetary gain in your edits, but are acting in the service of travellers. Welcome, and I look forward to more constructive contributions from you. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:10, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Tangula luxury trains?

I just removed this text:

If you're not up to rubbing shoulders with the hoi polloi, Tangula runs roughly weekly luxury trains (Apr-Dec only) from Beijing to Lhasa and back. The 4-day journey costs USD5,500 (twin sharing), including all meals, drinks and excursions.

The link goes to a page in a script I don't recognise (Korean?) with no pictures of trains.

Searching the web, I find several stories about the Tangula service "coming soon" or "has been postponed", dated 2007 to to 2012, but nothing indicating it is actually running. However, I'm in China and without a VPN, so many Tibet sites are blocked. It is possible it is running but I cannot see the info.

If anyone has better recent info, please update the article. Pashley (talk) 13:24, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Link above now looks dead. Web search turns up a story saying the train is "still not in service" as of Sept 2015. Pashley (talk) 17:50, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Hitchhiking

Does the section Tibet#Hitchhike violate Wikivoyage:Illegal activities policy? Pashley (talk) 17:46, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Addressing Tibetan soveriegnty

As per my long running distaste for political agendas being pursued (intentionally or not) on Wikivoyage, I was concerned to see the edit wars and the following statement in the 'History' section:

+++++++++++++++++++++

The question of Tibetan sovereignty is a hot-button issue in China. The Party Line is that Tibet has always been part of China and foreigners have no business "meddling" in "internal Chinese affairs". There was no "invasion" in 1950 as they felt Tibet was already their own territory and that a country can not logically invade itself. Also it claims that as the central government, it was asserting its authority over a province to "liberate" it from a severely oppressive serfdom system, a corrupt medieval theocracy with slavery. (That part makes a lot of sense to Chinese, liberated from their own feudal system in 1911.) Chinese would state that Western powers are being extremely hypocritical since they roundly condemn theocracy (rule by priests) in Iran and simultaneously support it in Tibet. To the Chinese government, separatists are equivalent to terrorists, with no aspirations legitimate enough to even be considered; no discussions with them could possibly start until they recognise the basic principle that Tibet is part of China. Quite a few Chinese accept this line without question, and some of those will ask foreigners about it then firmly "correct" their "errors". Avoiding such discussions is a good policy.

+++++++++++++++++++++

I would like to replace the whole paragraph with something shorter, accurate and less opinionated. How about this:

"Tibetan sovereignty is a disputed issue both in China and internationally. The Chinese government maintains that the region has always been part of Chinese territory and that they helped liberate the population from an oppressive feudal regime. Many Tibetans believe that they were invaded by another country with their culture being eradicated. This article makes no judgements on either side of the dispute."

Andrewssi2 (talk) 22:11, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps too detailed, but I thought the text that was there before 122.whatever started editing was just fine:

The question of Tibetan sovereignty is a hot-button issue in China. The Party Line is that Tibet has always been part of China and foreigners have no business "meddling" in "internal Chinese affairs". There was no "invasion" in 1950, only the central government asserting its authority over a province to "liberate" it from a severely oppressive feudal system, a corrupt medieval theocracy with slavery. (That part makes a lot of sense to Chinese, liberated from their own feudal system in 1911.) Western powers are being extremely hypocritical since they roundly condemn theocracy (rule by priests) in Iran and simultaneously support it in Tibet. To the Chinese government, separatists are equivalent to terrorists, with no aspirations legitimate enough to even be considered; no discussions with them could possibly start until they recognise the basic principle that Tibet is part of China. Quite a few Chinese accept this line without question, and some of those will ask foreigners about it then firmly "correct" their "errors". Avoiding such discussions is a good policy.

Should we revert to that? Pashley (talk) 22:30, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

I like Andrewssi2's shorter version. It says enough. Ikan Kekek (talk) 00:26, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

I think the longer one is more helpful, with its warning to travelers about the reactions of modern-day Chinese to discussions on the subject. We could probably do without the scare quotes, though. ARR8 (talk) 00:46, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

I think we should keep the fact that many (I think most) people in China agree with the government position, and keep the advice about avoiding discussions. I don't think we need the legalistic "This article makes no judgements" sentence, which doesn't add much and is already effectively indicated in the disclaimer box. The other parts of Andrewssi2's suggestion are fine with me. (The version Pashley quoted is fine with me too, though I agree we don't need the scare quotes.) —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:01, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

This, I agree with completely. ARR8 (talk) 02:11, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

One of the things I dislike about the longer text is the tacit assumption that our readers are all from "the West". They are not. Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:19, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

I prefer the longer version but I think it would be better without "To the Chinese government, separatists are equivalent to terrorists, with no aspirations legitimate enough to even be considered; no discussions with them could possibly start until they recognise the basic principle that Tibet is part of China." I think that is true, but it is highly controversial & not very relevant for travel. Pashley (talk) 04:02, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Edit war

Please can those who want to shape political opinion on the Tibet article come here and discuss their edits. I've temporary locked the article until a proper and respectful discussion can be had. Andrewssi2 (talk) 22:18, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Respect section

I think the last point in the Respect section needs re-writing. Whether or not Tibetan culture is being eroded is highly controversial, and I don't think we should take a stand on this issue. If most Tibetans feel that way, we can certainly write that that is what most Tibetans feel, but we should neither acknowledge nor deny those claims unless there is solid and uncontroversial evidence backing it. The dog2 (talk) 04:50, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

I don't think Wikivoyage:Be fair means that we have to give equal weight to propaganda by a brutal dictatorship and people reporting on its depredations. I don't agree that it's "controversial" that Tibetan culture is being eroded any more than it's "controversial" that the Rohingya people were raped en masse by the army of Myanmar with their villages burned down, and forced to run to Bangladesh for refuge. Genocidal or otherwise oppressive regimes almost always deny what they're doing. That doesn't make reports of it "controversial". Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:52, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with the situation on the ground in Tibet, so I shall not comment on that, but I think we already acknowledge in the Understand section what the Chinese government is doing to the Tibetans. I'm not proposing that we change that. Speaking of which, are you OK then with being honest about how U.S. imperialism has caused many of the problems in Latin America and the Middle East? The dog2 (talk) 06:39, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Of course! Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:50, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Why did you remove my link and leave all the other travel agencies?

Tibettour.org is indeed operated by the CITS, and a good travel agency which if is listed here too will make the article better, isn't it obvious? If this kind of listing is promotional, you should remove all of the travel agencies there. Why just mine? The website is tibettour.org, if I use "Tibet tour" as the anchor, it may look promotional, so I changed it to the subordinate's name: Tibet Vista

One reason might be that you put it in the wrong place, first on the list. There is a note, visible when editing, asking editors to keep the list in alphabetical order. You apparently either did not see that or ignored it.

another might be that CITS is Chinese government owned & some travellers to Tibet prefer to deal with Tibetans instead, whenever possible. Pashley (talk) 20:08, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

• speaking for myself, who has done it, it was about the "alphabetic order", oh yes. It's fixed now. Please DO NOT EDIT WAR. Thank you Ibaman (talk) 20:40, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Simplifying

I am about to delete a lot of text which I consider far too detailed & encyclopedic:

A British expedition to Tibet, in fact a temporary invasion by British Indian forces, led by Colonel Francis Younghusband, took place between December 1903 and September 1904, with the purported mission of establishing diplomatic relations and resolving the dispute over the border between Tibet and British Indian Sikkim. The expedition fought its way into Lhasa and reached it in August 1904. A treaty was signed, and the British forces withdrew to Sikkim in September, but nevertheless continued the physical occupation of Chumbi Valley until February 8, 1908, even after having received the full payment from China. Actually, the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, where Britain and Russia signed an agreement to regulate their economic and political interests, widely seen as the official end to the Great Game, stipulated that neither country would interfere in Tibet, which lies in China's sphere of influence. In early 1910, Qing China sent a military expedition of its own to Tibet for direct rule.

See Tibet#History for my version. Pashley (talk) 19:37, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Update?

Tibet#Get_in starts with "As of 2018," then explains about permits & guides. Has anything changed? Should this be altered to "As of mid-2021", or just deleted? Pashley (talk) 23:26, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Dalai Lama encourages travel to Tibet

Hi, I was wondering if anyone had a reliable source for this statement:

>Travellers who disagree with the current political situation may think they have an ethical dilemma because if they go to Tibet they feel they are implicitly supporting the Chinese regime, with some of their money going to the Chinese authorities. However the Dalai Lama encourages foreigners to go, so that they can see the situation for themselves and because Tibetans welcome their presence.

I wasn't able to find any direct statement or account of this. The closest that I found was a Tibetan travel operator echoing the same thing, so I could not verify the veracity of this claim and the following readouts:

• " So that is why the inside policy is still very, very tight.

Now, I'm in exile already 13 years. So when I hear that the situation is getting worse in the monasteries, my concern or recommendation is not really a clear one. But I guess if access to the media opened up so it can go there and freely report or find information from inside Tibet, it would be a very helpful thing." from https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-112jhrg70941/html/CHRG-112jhrg70941.htm

Cyali (talk) 20:46, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

It seems to be this statement from 2009 from the office of the Dalai Lama: https://www.dalailama.com/news/2009/dalai-lama-in-ny-urges-americans-to-visit-tibet Cyali (talk) 02:02, 26 January 2024 (UTC)