Talk:Tibet/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Tibet. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

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Archive 5

North-east of Tibet

I distinctly remember reading somewhere that a part of the north-east of Tibet had been split off into other P.R.China provinces, so it's probably true. Btw, could someone shrink that map image? It takes forever to load :)

Yeah. TAR is mere the former domain of the Dalai Lama, half of whole Tibet. See [1]. -- Nanshu 12:27 Mar 18, 2003 (UTC)

Multingual translations

The various names, spellings, and transliterations of "Tibet" need to be tidied up a bit. It looks like there's at least one typo there too. I've split the names from the first paragraph because it was getting too hard to read. Hippietrail 12:08, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yes, that multingual list is a bit unreadable, but it looks worse to have two bolded titles, bolded titles. I have made it into a list (~ Yanbian). Fix it if there's any mistakes. --Menchi (Talk)â 12:54, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The map on the page seems not to have the government-in-exile's borders. --Jia ng

Methinks the borders of the government-in-exile are pre-1950 Tibet's borders. At least, their claimed borders. (They don't actually claim any territory in Dharamsala) -- Xiaopo 18:42, Jan 22, 2004 (PDT)

Tibet v. TAR

This should be merged with Tibetan Autonomous Region. The claim that exiled populations can be called part of Tibet is bogus. We'll recognize this claim, but there's no need to create 2 separate articles on the same land. (The part of "Tibet" not in the autonomous region can be mentioned too. It's too negligible to deserve a separate article.) --Jia ng 23:55, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Discussion of a larger region should belong in Tibetan Plateau. --Jia ng

No. Many scholars use Tibet in Tibetans' sense. --Nanshu 02:40, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

What is the "Tibetans" sense? The listing of the regions refer to the entire Plateau. All other prominent encyclopedias and common usage refers to the the AR. --Jia ng 02:44, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

"Tibet" and "Tibetan Plateau" aren't synonymous. --Jia ng

Of course they are, what should it be then? Historic Tibet is on the "Tibetan Plateau" like you can see on old maps! The "TAR" is only the southern part of the plateau, because the northern and western parts have been entirely encorporated into "PRC". No part of China or Mongolia or East Turkestan were on the plateau. Umrao

When scholars (espacially historians) refer use "Tibet", it does not refer to the TAR but Tibet as the Tibetans refer to. I wonder why you are sensitive about the PRC-ROC issue but not about the Tibet-TAR one. --Nanshu 03:07, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Britannica, Encarta, Columbia, and the World Book must all not be written by historians then. WB states, "The Tibet Autonomous Region of China has an area of 471,662 square miles (1,221,600 square kilometers). Prior to the Chinese take-over, Tibet covered about 965,000 square miles (2,500,000 square kilometers). Much of this area now falls in neighboring provinces."

We only need to acknowledge the historical region of Tibet; we don't need an entirely separate article. There's no point in having history, geography, and culture sections in both articles. They are the same thing for both. All we have to do is to state:

Historically, Tibet consisted of the provinces of Amdo, Kham, and U-Tsang. Amdo is now composes the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu & Sichuan. Kham has been largely incorporated into the provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan and Qinghai. The Tibet Autonomous Region occupies U-Tsang and Western Kham.

When the media refers to Tibet, it refers only to the AR. When we talk about transport in Tibet or economy of Tibet, we also refer to the AR. The entire region is only referred to for historical purposes. We don't say we visited Tibet when we visited Sichuan. People would get confused.

If we merge, we don't have to ignore the greater region entirely. The geography article (copied from the 1911 EB) discusses the entire region. Our summary of the various sections on this page can talk about both. --Jia ng 05:47, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I agree that Tibet should be merged into Tibet Autonomous Region. Hawaii doesn't have an article separate from Hawaii, the state, but the Hawaii article obviously refers to the modern US state as its main subject and talks about Hawaii, the former kingdom. --Xiaopo's Talk 07:45, Jan 18, 2004 (UTC)

What I called "historians" are those who are also knowledgeable about Tibet before the last stage of the Qing Dynasty. It's very regretful that Westerners are overinfluenced by the image of "China" at that time.

Politically, there are some groups who oppose to call the TAR just "Tibet". See http://www.tibet.com/glance.html

"Tibetan Automonous Region" is the formal (English) name for that entity and some use "Tibet" as the short form of TAR. But "Tibet" is Tibet; there is no longer or shorter name. "Tibetan Plateau" is absurd because "Tibet" is not only a geographical term but also a political, historical, cultural one. Therefore, it is the best solution to put the content of Tibet on "Tibet" and the information about the TAR on "Tibetan Automonous Region". --Nanshu 00:34, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It's pointless to have two culture sections, two history sections, two geography sections, etc. when they basically say the same thing. I am not asking that the AR article override this one. The article will start of "Tibet in the region in central Asia consisting of..." Only after the first sentence will we mention the AR. We will acknowledge the government-in-exile's view on Tibet, but that doesn't require an entirely new article. The AR can be a compontent of this article. --Jia ng 01:43, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The only reason that two pages overlap is the stubness of the article Tibet. The history section of Tibet will describe the overall history of Tibet while that of the TAR will treat the Chinese domination (Yah, we have to fix the awful article History of Tibet). Geography. The Tibetan geographical conception is different from Chinese's. These are sufficient reasons to separate Tibet from the TAR. The merging implies: "We acknowledge the government-in-exile's view but we are in side of the PRC." That's not a NPOV. --Nanshu 18:59, 24 Jan 2004 (PST)

Not really - this article will not start out with a definition of the autonomous region and the description of the history, land, etc. will not be limited to the autonomous region. It's all up to where we put the phrases. This is not internet-encyclopedia.org. For controversial topics, we are to put conflicting positive and negative on the same page; we don't sweep them into separate pages. I don't see why we cant have two separate paragraphs on the same page in the same section acknowledging the different viewpoints. To have this article talk about all of former Tibet would be to endorese the government-in-exile's position. --Jia ng 19:08, 24 Jan 2004 (PST)

No. The Tibetan's view does not correspond one-to-one with the Chinese's. Each section will have two blocks? It will be really hard to see. The merging will throw this article into chaos. The status quo (with notes on top) is nicer than that. --Nanshu 19:31, 24 Jan 2004 (PST)

So if it does not correspond one-to-one it is in agreement? Not necessarily two blocks...there are many ways to align the prose. We can also interweave. We should treat this article like we treat any other controversial topic - acknowledge both positions. I don't see what's wrong. --Jia ng 03:38, 25 Jan 2004 (UTC)

There is a fundamental difference between Tibet and other controversial topics. Every other controversy is about different views toward the same thing. But for Tibet, the same term refers to different things. It's similar to disambiguation. --Nanshu 02:07, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Nanshu, please state what is your issue with the current text. The Tibet view has been addressed, has it not? The text before my merge only addressed the Tibetan view and not the Chinese view. And what is wrong with my history section, my geography section? Why did you rever that too?--Jia ng 02:23, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I've already expressed my opinion. I don't know what to do with the "spaghetti" article. Should I mix "China", "PRC" and "ROC"? And sorry for the history and geographic sections. It was careless of me not to check the content. --Nanshu 02:34, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It wouldn't be ridiculous to have the PRC article at "China" and the ROC article at "Taiwan" due to common usage. Most of the content at China is historical in nature and would be better suited for an article on Imperial China. "Tibet" almost always refers to the TAR. Click on "what links here".

By making this article on the greater region, wikipedia endorses the Tibetan government in exile's position. The flag put on this page is banned in the mainland and used be pro-tibetan protestors. This is POV. By putting them together, we endorse neither position. Are we going to put in the Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries template here too?

As I said before, there's no point in having 2 geography, 2 economy, 2 demographics, etc. sections on the same thing. What is especially ridiculous is having 2 culture sections - what's the difference? If we have a TAR article, it should be on the administration, just like there's a Taiwan Province article apart from Taiwan (though I wouldn't oppose merging the two). If you and I can't agree on this, then this should be put to a vote. --Jia ng 04:44, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

If you think describing the greater region on Tibet is POV, then I don't mind renaming this article and turning Tibet into a disambig. page. (And I spare no time to disambiguate "Tibet" as you've done with "China".) Still I oppose merging the two articles. --Nanshu 03:01, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Turning this into a disambiguation is unnacceptable, given how commonly the term "Tibet" is used and how many links direct here. As I said before, "Tibetan Autonomous Region" can remain an article on the administrative division, but it may not have the same sections this article had.

"China" is not a disambiguation page. If you read its talk page, you will see that making it one was shot down. You will also see that I took absolutely no part in arranging the two articles as they are now.

What do you want this article to be renamed? Getting a map of greater Tibet would also help. You should be complaining about the map posted on this page. --Jia ng 03:48, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

no answer? I'll revert. --Jia ng

You don't allow me to leave Wikipedia for a couple of days...

I don't like to repeat discussion. Are you seeking common ground?

So do you want to put the TAR article on "Tibet" by any means? As I said, the greater region has no name other than just "Tibet" while the TAR can be put on "Tibetan Autonomous Region." But I proposed the compromise of moving the GT article to something like "Tibet (greater region)." What's wrong with me? --Nanshu 02:21, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No, I don't. You either respond or get reverted.

You have not addressed my concerns - moving the page won't solve the problem. I said it's pointless to duplicate culture sections. What do you say? If we don't duplicate sections, what will an article on the region consist of that the AR does not? If there is something substantial, how about moving the AR here and linking the region on top, like is done for Mongolia. --Jia ng 04:01, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

So, should I repeat my argument? The only reason that two pages overlap is the stubness of the article Tibet. Culture of Tibet would be put at "Tibet" because Tibet is cultural, political, and geographical term and the TAR is purely a political division. If there is a cultural thing that is unique to the TAR, then it should be put at the "Tibetan Autonomous Region." Any problem with that?

Putting the TAR article here is non-NPOV so that I can never approve it.

--Nanshu 02:51, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I said I would not object to having an article on the TAR focusing solely on the administrative division like how one exists at Taiwan Province. But currently, it is not an article on the administration; it has stuff that belongs here. Please don't blanket revert my edits. What's wrong with my flag caption? Description that the map only points out the TAR? That the TAR comprises less than half of historic Tibet? If you can't accept the temporary compromise, then I will revert TAR too. --Jia ng 03:00, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Then put the TAR article on "Tibetan Autonomous Region" and edit it as you want! --Nanshu 03:26, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Did Tibetan history stop in 1906? Why do you want to siphon off large portions of the text? What's wrong with my introductory paragraph explaining the dispute in meaning? What's wrong with the marketplace image? Since when have we had separate sections on "Transport"? --Jia ng 03:20, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I've reverted TAR too since you don't want to compromise and don't want to answer my claims above that the old version is inferior and that my text was legitimate, whether TAR would be kept or not. --Jia ng

I moved your content as far as I noticed. You can move it by yourself. --Nanshu 03:38, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Did Tibetan history stop in 1906? You never answered. My first paragraph was not moved. --Jia ng

It was moved to the TAR article. --Nanshu 03:43, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

No it wasn't. Where does it say "Historically, Tibet consisted of the provinces of Amdo, Kham, and U-Tsang. Amdo is now composes the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, and Sichuan. Kham has been largely incorporated into the provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan and Qinghai. The Tibet Autonomous Region, comprising less than half of historic Tibet, occupies U-Tsang and Western Kham."? It wouldn't belong there anyways. You never answered my first question. --Jia ng 03:55, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It was the geography section ot "Tibet" (Menchi's original version). And what's your "first question"? If it is about history after 1906, again, it was moved to the TAR article. --Nanshu 04:02, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Okay, but it's better to state the controversy up front, than to endorse a certain position. Why should the history after 1906 be moved to TAR? Is it not relevant here? TAR was not established until 1965. This fact was apparently deleted.

I listed this page at Requests for comment. I hope some other parties will discuss. --Jia ng 05:44, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Shouldn't this article cover the area historically known as Tibet, and the TAR article cover what today forms the TAR? As such, shouldn't there be room for simultaneous articles in areas such as history? In any case, if the TAR wasn't created until 1965, shouldn't History of Tibet cover that much? Ambivalenthysteria 07:03, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The TAR is part of Tibet and therefore, history of the TAR after its creation would be relevant here. Repeating the same info here would be redundant. It's innappropriate to stop Tibetan history at 1965 (or in Nanshu's version, 1906). --Jia ng 21:45, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Xizang & Tibet?

Xizang=Tibet in Chinese. I don't see why it should be redirected to the AR. Does another name exist for the greater region? I haven't heard of one. --Jia ng 04:07, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

As it is Wargi Dzang in Manchu, Xizang literally means Western Tsang (western part of Tsang or Tsang [which is located] to the west [of China]). On the other hand, Tubet refers to Tibet in Manchu and was transcribed as 土伯特 in Chinese. Xizang is an inherently inappropriate term for Tibet. Xizang can refer to the TAR or Tibet but I think Xizang usually refers to the TAR in Chinese context. It is similar to "China." --Nanshu 02:51, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

土伯特 is almost never used in Chinese so when Chinese refer to Tibet (TAR or not) they use "Xizang". China has its own article, so that parellel doesn't work. It's not up to us to criticise the Chinese people for wanting to call a certain place by an "inherently inappropriate term". We simply relect the truth. --Jia ng

Yah, it's an historical term (that's why I used "was"). And I mean China can refers to "China proper" or the greater region but there is no single words to distinguish them. --Nanshu 03:26, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

There was a word 吐蕃(tu3 bo1) which I suspect is the same as 土伯特. --Liuyao 04:19, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The inherently inappropriate term can refer to both, but more often to the TAR. Will I turn "Xizang" into a disambig. page? --Nanshu 03:53, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

"Tibet" includes the TAR. The fact that it commonly refers to TAR is also because "Tibet" in English also refers to the TAR. Under the same logic, this page should redirect to TAR. That would be ridiculous. --Jia ng 05:46, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Response to RFC

Tibet and TAR definitely should _not_ be merged. Tibet has a history separate from its status as the TAR. In English, Tibet refers to a general place, _not_ the TAR. Whenever the information coincides for the two, it can go on the Tibet page.

-- Walt Pohl 21:19, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Show me an instance where we refer to part of Tibet outside the TAR as "Tibet." When we visit the part of Tibet in Sichuan we say we went to Sichuan, not Tibet. The acronym "TAR" is sparingly used and the news media uses simply "Tibet."

Yes, Tibet has a history separate from its status as the TAR. So? TAR is being merged here, not the other way around. --Jia ng 21:45, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Would you then also agree we should merge the Taiwan and Republic of China articles?

Here's a thought experiment. Suppose tomorrow the government of China decided that Lhasa was not part of the TAR. Would English speakers cease to describe Lhasa as part of Tibet? No. Now imagine that tomorrow the US decided that Philadelphia was no longer part of Pennsylvania. Would we stop describing Philadelphia as part of Pennsylvania? Probably. -- Walt Pohl 22:13, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I would agree to merge Taiwan and Republic of China articles, provided that they are merged and one redirected to the other. If we redirect ROC to Taiwan, then we make the statement that Taiwan is conventional short form for ROC, and that is true. However, we fail to make that statement if we leave ROC as a historical article (as it once was). We only run into problems when (assuming ROC redirects to Taiwan and not the other way around) we refer to the ROC in a historical context and confuse people by leading them to an article on Taiwan.

I fail to see your point again. No one here is claiming that TAR is synonmous with Tibet. I intend this article to discuss both the greater region and the TAR. Lhasa would be mentioned here regardless of whether it is part of the TAR. I don't see why an article on Tibet should be stripped of references to the TAR. Wouldn't you agree that the TAR is part of Tibet? --Jia ng 02:32, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I understand your point of view better now. Clearly the Tibet article should talk about TAR as part of talking about Tibet. I would say that the stuff that's unique to TAR as a bureaucratic entity -- stuff like the big infobox, the name of the province in Chinese, neighboring provinces, etc. should go on the TAR page. Cultural info would go on the Tibet page. For most purposes, if I go to the Tibet page, I'm looking for information about Tibet as a cultural entity. The province information is just a distraction. -- Walt Pohl 08:43, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The province info is relevant, just as a box exist at Beijing, but I don't object to an article on the administrative entity. However, splitting the history pre-1950 to this one and post-1950 to that one, then duplicating most of the rest, is unnacceptable. --Jia ng 06:21, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

There are incompatible gaps between Tibetan and Chinese conceptions. The Chinese name "Xizang" demonstrates it. And Tibet's regions of Ambo, Kham, U-Tsang, Ngari etc, have complicated correspondence with PRC's divisions. Jiang's "spaghetti" article makes it difficult to explain Tibetan conceptions cleary and prevents further expansion. Of course, my rough-and-ready partition leaves many things to be fixed, but that's not important for now. --Nanshu 04:19, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

My version explains it better than yours. Yours endorsed the Tibetan viewpoint, and used bullet points and arrows to show the correspondence. Let's try writing in complete sentences. If you have more text to add, show it. Try demonstrating that you have so much to add that it won't fit this page. Also state what's missing in my version. It currently fits fine. Tibetan history did not end in 1906 so partition is inappropriate.--Jia ng 06:21, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Believe it or not, I think a compromise is in sight. Do the two of you mind if I try a compromise edit? I would edit along these principles:

TAR covers the administrative entity, and facts specific to the entity.
Tibet covers the broader area.
History, culture etc. goes with Tibet. (Most of history should be on the History of Tibet page, anyway.)

Reactions? -- Walt Pohl 23:24, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Yes, go ahead. The history section here was largely drawn from the history of Tibet article. It need not be any longer, but I don't see much trimming is needed. --Jia ng 01:48, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Nanshu, I'm waiting to hear from you before I edit it. Are you willing to wait while I try to make a compromise edit?. No need to revert to a particular version. I'll look at both of your recent versions while I make the edit . -- Walt Pohl 04:05, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Maybe I jumped the gun. I'm looking forward to your edit. --Nanshu 04:18, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Jiang is another guy who cannot wait... --Nanshu

I checked in a preliminary version of Tibet and Tibet Autonomous Region. I'm not done: after spending a couple of hours on it, it's now past my bedtime. :-) I'll work on it some more tomorrow.

I also checked in a stub for Tibetan Plateau, and expanded on Government of Tibet in Exile. -- Walt Pohl 07:44, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I had a question. What is the source of the division of Tibet into provinces, like Ando? Is it traditional? If so, at what point in Tibetan history do they arise? -- Walt Pohl 15:35, 13 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I made some final few tweaks. I'd like to hear any feedback you have about the current versions of the pages before I do anything else. -- Walt Pohl

There's still considerable overlap in the economics and sections. We should limit TAR to a discussion of the political entity. That means the history starts in 1965. If we're going to put the banned Tibetan flag and coat of arms here, I don't see why we shouldn't put up a province table too. --Jia ng 02:24, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The Tibetan flag has been banned by an totalitarian and racist Regime. Why do you stick to that? Umrao

Ummmmmm.... TAR and Tibet are different things. -Dagestan

The current box with the coat of arms, etc., is not appropriate for this page. It is appropriate for the Government of Tibet in Exile page. -- Walt Pohl 08:41, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Technopilgrim here with comments on the edits I just made on this very sensitive page.

"Tibet" can refer to the TAR or to historic Tibet so I took out the wording that the "most common" meaning is TAR. If you look at the "what links here" links to Tibet I find the most common meaning is historic Tibet but the real problem is not which is the most common usage but the very phrase "most common" which is inappropriate here. So the present version refers to both.
Since we talk about TAR vs historic Tibet at the top of the page I've pulled the map graphic up to the top of the page also to be adjacent to the discussion
I weeded out some of the external links at the bottom. I threw out the ones that were in French or covered material already in the article. I tried to be evenhanded with regards to PRC/exile government viewpoints, but was hampered somewhat by the fact that the free Tibet folks put up vastly better websites than the PRC.
editorial choice -- I dropped the photo of the Ngari woman mainly because I don't find it representative or a particularly good photo, and also because it appears to be an undocumented lift from the http://www.tibet-hiking.com/registration.html website.
minor edit fixes throughout the page, including a cleaner way to link to Tibetan Buddhism

BTW, I support the concensus that we don't merge the TAR and Tibet pages but keep them separate and partitioned as agreed above. Of course the Goverment in Exile flag belongs on the Government in Exile page, not here. Tashi dalek. technopilgrim 18:11, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Sorry Technopilgrim, but the flag of Tibet does not just represent the government in exile, but it is what represents their culture and religion, and it is currently banned by the Chinese government. Dagestan

As I understand it, that flag specifically represents the former government of Tibet and only indirectly, at best, a set of cultural values. A prayer flag would be a more apt cultural symbol, if you insist on flag-waiving. Note that the flags of former governments rarely fly in their former lands, and when they do the atmosphere is unlikely to be nuetral. If you'd like a demonstration of this effect, try swapping the current flag on the Virginia page with the Confederate Flag (you might wisely refrain from explicitly mentioning the traditional cultural practices which are actively suppressed by the present government). Or take any European country and hoist the flag of the (present regime - 1) to see why this approach doesn't engender a NPOV. technopilgrim 23:38, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I've changed the map back to the previous version, since we didn't have copyright permission for the one that replaced it ( Image:Tibet_borders_over_time.jpg ). "No copyright claimed" does not equal "no copyright". Markalexander100 22:59, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Missing word

History section, 4th paragraph "The independence claim was a term used by revolutionaries the Qing dynasty." I think it needs a 'during' or perhaps an 'in' before 'the Qing dynasty'

I've no idea what any of that sentence means. What revolutionaries? Markalexander100 03:32, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Nanshu,you wonder why jiang are sensitive about the PRC-ROC issue but not about the Tibet-TAR one ,and I can tell you why. this is because jiang's country had succesfully controlled Tibet by military forces but still has not succesfully controlled taiwan by military forces now(However they are planing to),and that's difference which makes jiang are sensitive about the PRC-ROC issue but not about the Tibet-TAR one.

Some new work

I'm going to be working some on this article but mainly on History of Tibet and Foreign relations of Tibet as well as on a Tibetan resistance movement article over the next few weeks. At times what I have done on one article will not necessarily match what I have done on the others. This is complicated by the fact that edits will also be occuring on Wikinfo. Foreign relations of Tibet will mainly concern Tibetan attempts to achieve international recognition. Tibetan resistance movement will deal with Tibetan rebellions and CIA assistance to them. I'll mainly be working from the following books. Fred Bauder 20:05, Jul 30, 2004 (UTC)

Recent POV edits

I find it hard to believe that this needs to be said, but any edit which includes sentences such as As a result, the Tibetans once again acknowledged themselves as subjects of the Great Empire of China is hardly likely to be NPOV, and has no place here.

Perhaps removing "Great" would serve? Fred Bauder 10:15, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)

The origins of Xizang could conceivably be a useful scrap of information, but since Anon has already gone through two unsourced versions, I don't see any basis for including either in the article. Markalexander100 07:16, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It removes the onus on the Chinese of simply imposing a "made-up" name. I don't think any more sourcing than fluency in Chinese is required to establish that it is a transliteration. Fred Bauder 10:19, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)

I rm'd the following: It is a well known and understood practice that Chinese characters used for phonetic transliteration of place names and people names are never meant to be interpreted literally and are used solely for the sound of the characters.

This is not true. For almost any transliteration multiple characters could be selected; particular characters are often chosen for their connotations (indeed, there is no other basis on which the selection could be made!). For reference, [2] (care must be taken by the translator to ensure that the characters selected, each of which has its own meaning, do not result in the transliteration ... into a word which is either silly or negative in its meaning). (While we're at it, this illustrates the difficulty of identifying and stripping out POV from unsourced, POV contributions; we can afford to be a little more rigorous). Markalexander100 03:24, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC

Okay yes, in commercial applications such as brand names and such, charaters are chosen for connotation in addition to the sound. But it is definitely true for place names and people names. You should not be so quick to say it is not true. Study the transliteration of every place name and person name and the characters used. I doubt you will find more than a small number where "connotation" was a consideration. Remember I said "PLACE NAMES AND PERSON NAMES". I did NOT say, "BRAND NAMES"! Perhaps saying "all" was going overboard but it is certainly true of "most", especially for place names and person names.

Annexation of Tibet

I have a question concerning the international status of Tibet: Is Tibet's annexation by China recognized by the international community? 62.47.73.113 16:20, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It is not considered an annexation, merely assertion of control over a region which was considered part of China. However there has been concern over human rights and how Chinese occupation has affected them. See [3], [4], [5], The Tibetan position Fred Bauder 19:10, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for your answer. But I still wonder if the annexation/occupation/assertion of control over Tibet is deemed to be illegal under international law by the international community? Do some nations refute Chinas claim over tibet? Gugganij 22:39, 5 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There is general disgust and at times the United States has considered recognizing Tibet but never made the decision. Britain had Hong Kong to worry about. However see The Tibetan position Fred Bauder 23:55, Sep 5, 2004 (UTC)

Excerpt from Dalai Lamas statement

the following is an excerpt from Dalai Lamas statement regarding the status in international law of Tibet (obviously the Chinese government has a different POV):

"At the time of its invasion by troops of the People's Liberation Army of China in 1949, Tibet was an independent state in fact and law. The military invasion constituted an aggression on a sovereign state and a violation of international law. Today's continued occupation of Tibet by China, with the help of several hundred thousand troops, represents an ongoing violation of international law and of the fundamental rights of the Tibetan people to independence.

The Chinese Communist Government claims it has a right to "ownership" of Tibet. It does not claim this right on the basis of its military conquest in 1949 or alleged effective control over Tibet since then or since 1959. The Chinese Government also does not base its claim to "ownership" on the so-called "Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet" which it forced upon Tibet in 1951. Instead, China's alleged legal claim is based on historical relationships primarily of Mongol or Manchu rulers with Tibetan lamas and, to a lesser extent, of Chinese rulers and Tibetan lamas. The main events relied on by the Chinese Government occurred hundreds of years ago: during the height of Mongol imperial expansion, when the Mongol Emperors extended their political supremacy throughout most of Asia and large parts of Eastern Europe; and when Manchu Emperors ruled China and expanded their influence throughout East and Central Asia, including Tibet, particularly in the 18th century."

Misunderstanding over the Chinese character 藏 for transliteration of U-Tsang for Tibet

Some people have maintained that the use of the zang (藏) character is offensive because one of the meanings of this character is "storehouse". Thus, if interpretated "literally", the two characters for Xizang is "western storehouse". (Xi means west, typically), which some maintain has a perjorative connotation (because they believe it describes Tibet as a "western storehouse".

Generally speaking, characters used in Chinese transliteration are never meant to be interpretated literally. A reader of the transliterated phrase sees the transliterated phrase as an entirely new word with little relation to the meaning of the individual characters. By way of example, "Denmark" is not decomposed into "Den" and "Mark" for an English reader. The same is also true for multiple-character words in Chinese, but especially in transliterated words. And in most cases, when transliterated characters are used, the "literal" meaning is typically silly nonsense. Some examples of transliterated place names.

古巴 (Cuba) - if interpreted based on the meaning of the individual characters, it means "ancient", "wish"

墨西哥 (Mexico) - "ink stick", "west", "brother"

蘇格蘭 (Scotland) - "Revive", "Frame", "Orchid"

波蘭 (Poland) - "Storm", "Orchid"

葡萄牙 (Portugal) - "Grape-stained Teeth"

希臘 (Greece) - "rare", "preserved meat"

etc, etc, etc. (many, many more examples available)

Generally speaking, transliteration of place names and person's names are done regardless of how silly or nonsensical its literally characters mean. When transliterating brand names or phrases for commercial use, however, much more care is typically used to avoid "silly nonsense" and to use words with some meaningful, positive connotation in order to better advertise the brand or product name.

However, again, it must be noted that for a Chinese reader, a transliterated phrase is never parsed but is treated as one new phrase. (Note "Denmark" vs "Den" "Mark" or "Germany" vs "Germ" "Many" in English).

Therefore, it is abundantly clear that in almost all cases, characters used in transliterated phrases for place names are not meant to be interpretated literally back into English. Therefore to say that a translated phrase means something "literally" when it has no such connotation in Chinese is simply wrong.

Now, the next questions that comes up are? Is "western storage" negative? This is an individual judgement of course. Is it any more negative than "ink", "west", "brother" (Mexico), "grape-stained teeth" (Portugal) or "rare" "preserved meat" (Greece) and any of the other silly "literal" translations?

But the issue is not fully examined because we should also examine the meaning of the zang character 藏 itself. According to this online dictionary [2] (http://chinese.primezero.com/pzcdz/o.html) this is what it says:

寶藏 - (An Zang) precious (mineral) deposits;

西藏 - (Xi Zang) Tibet; Xizang; Xizang autonomous region; (as we well know now, when used with Xi, it means Tibet)

藏 - (Zang) storehouse; depository; Buddhist or Taoist scripture; Zang; Tibet;

藏文 - (Zang Wen) Tibetan language;

藏族 - (Zang Zu) Tibetan nationality;

藏 - (Cang) to hide away; to conceal; to harbor; store; accumulate (this is the same character but pronounced cang)

Thus if one insists on using a "literal" translation of the character "Zang", apart from "Tibet", then the following are possible:

Xizang - (1) "West" "Mineral" (2) "West" "Storage" (3) "West" "scripture" (4) "West" "Conceal"

Zangwen - (1) "Mineral" "Language" (2) "Storage" "Language" (3) "scripture" "Language" (4) Conceal Language

Zangzu - (1) "Mineral" "People" (2) "Storage" "People" (3) "scripture" "people" (4) Conceal People

since "zang" has the meaning of "mineral", "storehouse", "depository", "buddhist/taoist scripture".

It must be noted, however, that in the Chinese language, a character does not have a single meaning attached to it as the example of "zang" illustrates. It is not known when the character "zang" was first used to describe Tibetans but evidence exists that "zang" has been used for centuries for this purpose. Thus the meaning of "zang" changed to include "Tibet/Tibetans" in additional and apart from all its other possible meanings. Thus a "literal translation" based on the other possible meanings of the character is incorrect. "Zang" when used to describe the land, language or people, means Tibet/Tibetans PERIOD (not "mineral", not "storage", not "depository", not "scripture", not "conceal").

Saying that "Xizang" mean Tibet but "literally" means "Western Storage" is like saying Turkey means the country Turkey but "literally" means some kind of bird. Both are nonsense statements.

But the issue can be examined even further. Do websites and documents of the PRC allude to the possibility that perhaps the "zang" character was chosen because of connotations with "storage" (or "mineral", or "depository" or "scripture", etc) In searching PRC govt websites, there is nothing written to indicate that the use of the character "zang" was chosen due to its connotations with "storehouse" (or "mineral" or "depository" or "scripture") and a few mention simply that it comes from U-Tsang. In any case, it was chosen not by the PRC but was in use for centuries, so whatever the reason "zang" was chosen, it has in these years taken on the meaning of "Tibet/Tibetan" literally and apart from the characters other meanings. It now means "Tibet/Tibetan" in its own right just like Turkey has a meaning of the country Turkey in its own right despite having the same spelling as the bird.

Finally, another issue to examine is who, how many, and why are people "offended" by the term Xizang?

It is doubtlessly the case that some individual Tibetans and their supporters are offended. However, in reviewing the Tibetan government in exile sites as well as the major pro-Tibetan independence sites there is no mention that the word "xizang" is considered offensive and objectionable and there are no demands that some other term or character be used in Chinese. There is no publication indicating that "xizang" is objectionable. Nor do any of these sites mention that Xizang is supposed to mean "Western Storage". By all accounts, the word "xizang" is accepted as meaning "Tibet" in its own right and has no other meaning by both the PRC and Tibet-in-exile governments. Therefore while some individuals may be offended for whatever reason, there is no evidence to indicate that it is generally considered offensive and undesirable as the Tibet-in-exile government websites and all the major pro-Tibetan independence sites make no issue of it at all.

As to why some people are offended, there are many possibilities. It is certainly possible and probable that "ignorance" causes it. Another possibility is that it was concocted to generate hostility against China.

However, in making the simple claim that the term "Xizang is offensive", the following facts needs to be considered and presented as well:

- there is no evidence that it was chosen because Tibet/Tibetans were considered "Western Storage"

- Zang has other meanings besides "storage" thus the "literal" meaning could be "Western Minerals", "Western Scriptures", etc etc

- it is used to mean "Tibet/Tibetan" period as the same character is used to describe Tibetans and their language

- in general, all Chinese place names used in transliterations are not intrepreted and parsed into their multiple possible individual meanings in Chinese thus translating back in to English the "literal" meaning is nonsense. To understand, imagine that in the Chinese language, it is written, "Turkey is the spelling for the country located in SW Asia. However, the "literal meaning" is this slow fat ugly bird you eat for dinner. It is meant as a negative connotation of Turkey thus they used the same "character" as the bird". Wouldn't that be a nonsense statement?

- it is not even evident that it is generally considered offensive, no Tibetan websites make it an issue whatsoever and here in wikipedia land only TWO people have said it is "offensive".

Thus the claim should either be withdrawn or explained as a misunderstanding and also it should be mentioned that Tibetan sites don't consider it offensive despite some individuals considering it offensive. It should also be mentioned that "Western Storage" is an English "literal" interpretation not a Chinese "literal" interpretation. No Chinese govt website says it means "Western Storage". It is thus inaccurate to say it "literally" means "Western Storage" because in Chinese in LITERALLY means Tibet PERIOD.

Or if people insist it is "offensive" despite all this evidence to suggest otherwise then ALL of this evidence should be presented to explain why it probably shouldn't be considered offensive and let people decide for themselves whether it is reasonable for "Xizang" to be considered offensive or not.

(End of temporary "Is Xizang offensive?" section)

I assume that was added to the article by accident? Markalexander100 09:45, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yes and no. I originally wanted to expand and explain with proof and details why it is not meant to be offensive and shouldn't be considered offensive. But to do it rigorously makes it unsuitable for the main article so I posted it here. But I decided to leave it in, hoping the info would be used to make a better, less POV statement. I don't consider my argument a "rant" as you call it. It's pretty detailed explanation as to why it shouldn't be considered offensive because it is not supposed to mean "Western Storage" at all and it is unfair to state so as a fact and is definite POV to just leave the article the way it is.

To leave it the way it is at the moment, which is

"The literal meaning of the two characters of Xizang is "western storehouse", which some Tibetans and their supporters find offensive. Others maintain that the meaning of the particular characters is irrelevant."

is simply insufficient IMHO. It fails to show that "Western Storehouse" is not the only possible "literal" meaning. It could "literally" mean "Western Scriptures", "Western Minerals". There is no basis to assert this particularly "literal" meaning in place of other "literal" meanings. It fails to show that there is no evidence to support that China intended it to have the connotation "Western Storehouse" (or any other connotations for that matter) It fails to show that it is common practice, as I have demonstrated with many examples, that in many cases (okay not all) with transliterations, the connotations are unintended and not considered to have these meanings. It also fails to show that instead of having a connotation at all, it is correctly a character that means Tibet/Tibetan in its own right. It is used as the character for Tibetan language

It is also blatatly not NPOV. If a reader sees it and has no idea of all the facts surrounding it sounds quite negative to me like China is being insensitive or intentionally trying to call it "Western Storehouse".

The point is that the evidence doesn't really support it. I have spent a lot of time making my case. So I can't let it go and have it reverted unless you can make a stronger case as to why your more negative POV statement should stand in place of a less negative POV one. To assert that it is "offensive" without all the facts taints the article. It also leads to my suspicions, unfair or not, that you want to bias the article by implying that China is intentionally causing an offense to a significant number of Tibetans thus biasing the reader right away. It's not right to do it.

144.189.40.223 has made his point. Fred Bauder 11:35, Sep 6, 2004 (UTC)

Markalexander100, please find at least one reference that anyone other than a Wikipedia editor finds the transliteration offensive. Fred Bauder 02:24, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

[6] . For the Tibetans' preferred usage see [7]; for offensive place names imposed by the Chinese generally see [8] (page 8 onwards}. Markalexander100 06:46, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

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Okay let's, ONCE AGAIN look at all the issues involved. 1. First let's look at the statements:

The two characters of Xizang can literally mean "western storehouse", which some Tibetans and their supporters find offensive. Others maintain that the meaning of the particular characters used is irrelevant.

Regardless of the veracity of the statement, it is clearly not NPOV by wikipedia standard when all facts and POV are considered. I have already given ample strong argument as to why any assertion that "The two characters of Xizang can literally mean "western storehouse" is very flimsy even though as narrowly constructed using the new "can literally mean" (notice the sneaky way of adding "can" to the new version of the statement) is not patently false. The problem though is that it gives this view far more validity than careful examination and research suggests to any casual reader. Its very inclusion also suggests that there is widespread opposition to the term so much so that it merits inclusion rather than being a very peripheral "issue" (if it could be called that). It fails to consider all the facts and contexts and suggests it is intentional, or insensitive rather than coincidental or possibly contrived by opponents. A NPOV would have to at least address these views. If it is insisted that we included statements saying it is offensive, then all relevant facts and arguments should be made available to discuss whether this "offense" is valid and reasonable or not. The possibility that it is a smear tactic should also be stated (as well as denials I'm sure). Then let readers decide for themselves.

The follow-up statement, "Others maintain that the meaning of the particular characters used is irrelevant." gives the impression that despite that this "literal interpretion" is valid, others dismiss it, thus subtly implying some deliberate attitude of indifference and insensitivity. It implies Tibetans consistently raise the issue but it is rejected as being "irrelevant" which is not the case.

To claim that this is a "concise statement of the two positions" is far off the mark and is patently disingenuous because this "conciseness" obviously is meant to give a mistaken impression and fails to give the reader the full context. But that is the point of having these statements, isn't it, to mislead and obfuscate the full facts.

By analogy, consider the following statements, if used in a Chinese encyclopedia. "In English, the word for Turkey the country can literally mean the domesticated bird used for food, which some find offensive. Others maintain that the same word used for both is irrelevant".

"In English, the word for Germany the country can be decomposed into the words "Germ" and "Many", which some find offensive. Others maintain that the the resemblence is irrelevant".

Both statements are actually factually true if we deconstructed the statements through the use of the "can" qualifier and also the use of "some find offensive". However, based on NPOV as well as full factual context, relevance and scope both are also obviously unworthy statements to include into any Chinese encyclopedia, same as the "Xizang = western storehouse" statement.

There is of course also the question of its relevancy and whether the intended content of the statement is important enough to include despite it obviously tainting the article and introducing a strong anti-Chinese bias. Thus regardless of the merits of the statements, as presently constructed it clearly violates NPOV and should not be included. Basically, people with axes to grind found something that "could" be considered "offensive" despite flimsy support and evidence to the countrary, assert "they" are offended, and then claiming this "fact" should be included in a blatant attempt to bias the article.

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2. Okay, so now let's look at the merits and so-called "evidence" supporting the statement. Three links are provided, so let's examine each one in turn:

A. http://www.tibetjustice.org/reports/un/unint9.html

On the very top it says that it was "A written intervention submitted by the Transnational Radical Party, a non-governmental organization in general consultative status." It is an advocate organization and thus is hardly trying to be objective or impartial. It is thus not any kind of authoritative, official declaration for either Tibetans in general or the PRC.

But furthermore, let's actually look at the relevant text of the document itself. It says, "It is no accident, for instance, that China refers to Tibet as Xizang, which means 'Western Treasure House.' Beijing's central planners view Tibet as a wealth of resources to be extracted for China's benefit."

There are two obvious problems with this statement. The most obvious is that it doesn't support the assertion that, "The two characters of Xizang can literally mean "western storehouse", which some Tibetans and their supporters find offensive." It claims "western treasure house" not "western storehouse". It is also obviously, as the general tone of the POV article, a smear meant to generate hostility to China. But again, it asserts "western treasure house" not "western storehouse". The article also makes no assertion that it is an offensive term for Tibetans.

But a thorough analysis of the character "zang", I can find ZERO justification that "zang" in any usage means "treasure house". In looking up the character "zang", I find nothing resembling "treasure house". So not only is this article attempting to smear China unfairly, it is using "Xizang = Western Treasure House" which has zero justification. But EVEN FURTHERMORE, Xizang was used for centuries since the Qing dynasty and not a recent term coined by the PRC. So if it was "no accident that China calls Xizang as Western Treasure House" then somehow the Qing had some future prediction and foresight that at some point the PRC govt would take over and want to exploit this "treasure house". That is absurd.

For these many reasons, the use of such article to defend the factual merits of the (xizang "can" be interpreted as "western storage") is dubious.

Now of course, there is no doubt that there are other articles which makes assertions of how "xizang means western treasure house" (curiously I found none about "western storage") because they want to make the smear that "China views Tibet as a place to be exploited" The problem with that of course is that there is no justication for "zang=treasure house" whatsoever even very flimsy ones. What is also curious is that either through "ignorance" or deliberation, none reference that fact that it is a transliteration of U-Tsang. Of course including it would weaken and raise doubt about the "Xizang means Western Store/Treaure House" stuff. But it could also imply "ignorance" and if this were known, they would not make this "literal meaning" claim.

Such obviously POV smear articles are "proof" only by circular reasoning not by examining the actual underlying facts. Think about it, a wikipedia smear article says it means "western treasure/store house". As "proof" it lists other smear articles that make the same baseless claim. Then of course I am sure at some point some smear article can reference wikipedia. The point is that if the "proof" consists of articles written by biased, POV writers with a clear agenda to demonize China then there is some question whether the "proof" of Xizang = Wesetern Treasure/Storehouse has real basis or is not instead manufactured to generate hostility.

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B. http://www.angrymonk.ch/texts/meizhuo_sg.pdf

It says, "Nowadays many Tibetans living in Tibet prefer to use this name for Tibet rather than the Chinese name "Xizang" since it only includes central Tibet and leaves Amdo and Kham out."

I have no problem, if it is deemed important and relevant enough, to include this statement. However, it says Tubo is preferred over Xizang because of the scope of Xizang not because of "Xizang = Western Treasure/Storehouse". Furthermore the writer is a Tibetan who lived in Tibet but is fluent in Chinese too and is a critic of Tibetan policies. So if this "Xizang = Western Treasure/Storehouse" was a widespread connotation and a term of offense, you'd think he'd mentione this stronger objection as opposed to this other objection.

In any case, I am sure Tubo must have some so-called "literal interpretations" that might be objectionable if someone what to insist on making such a point. In fact as I have point out in nearly every transliteration of place names, this same claim could be made.

--- C. http://www.smhric.org/E_Bulag.pdf

This article has nothing to do with Xizang and has no bearing on "Xizang=West Store/Treasurehouse" claim. As to the article claiming all these Mongolian transliteration are "offensive", its claims require further scrunity which I have no time for but is irrelevant here.

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In the most recent edit, I have included the following statement to explain zang. IMHO, it is factual and NPOV there is no basis to remove it (other than for deceitful, intellectually dishonest reasons, of course).

The Chinese character (藏, zàng), is also exclusively used to describe things Tibetan such as the Tibetan language (藏文, zàng wén) and the Tibetan people (藏族, zàng zú). ((藏, zàng) is also a homograph containing many other unrelated meanings [9]. However, the unrelated meanings are not meant to be inferred from one another as is the case of all homonyms.)

I've spent enough time on this and I have presented my point as thoroughly and as rigorously as possible so I have nothing more to say. I have no interest in fighting with editors that insist on introducing bias to taint an article and who give every indication of being intellectually dishonest and not trying to deal in good faith. Doubtlessly, my latest edit will not be the final word but I have no desire to engage in endless edit/revert wars. My career as a wikipedian is over based on this experience.

I recommend that some balanced, NPOV interim version should be imposed. I believe Fred Bauder understands my arguments and evidence and I have respect for Fred Bauder and trust him to do it. In the past, he has behaved honorably, fairly and appears to act in good faith. Once some NPOV and balanced version is in place, editted by Fred Baunder, I request that trusted people, perhaps former editors of this page, and other members that might be familiar with the issue to settle this issue once and for all.

Again, wonderful and persuasive research. Please don't give up on Wikipedia over this minor issue. Fred Bauder 01:09, Sep 8, 2004 (UTC)

This is indeed a lengthy dissemination of the character "zang" and its possible connotations, and for that you should be commended, however, I must state that your information is based on the Western understanding of the Chinese language and as such, cannot be held to give complete justice to the topic at hand.

1) The character "zang" refers to Buddhisim in general. PERIOD. You based your argument on the fact that most people construe the character as meaning "storehouse", but in reality, one character may have several obscure meanings apart from what is generally understood. As you are undoubtably aware, Tibet has a very deep-seated Buddhist tradition, so it comes as no surprise that the Chinese name for the region is "Xizang" or "Western Zang" -- "zang" likely refers to the "sanzang", or the Three Cantons of Buddhism.

2) "Zang" does in fact mean "a storehouse of treasure" but only when "prefixed" with "Bao", or treasure. This, however, is irrelevant to the region known as Tibet.

--Taoster 00:43, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Wow, you guys' arguments are so long and extensive. I couldn't read through, but I just want to express my concern here. For a long time, I thought Zang was, and only was, a proper noun. I looked it up in the dictionary, and its original definition is indeed storehouse, but I bet 99.999% of Chinese don't know this--it's so obsolete and rare (The alternative pronounciation is more common, meaning store, hind, etc.) Although the word Baozang (meaning treasure) is very common, there hardly is any other word involving this Zang having this meaning. So basically Zang is a proper noun, and most Chinese would think so (without looking it up in a dictionary). I also doubt if Tibetans would be offended by a definition that only appears few times in some classical texts. Instead, I'm kind of offended:) I suggest someone take that part out. It's definitely misleading, and not NPOV. --Liuyao

That would be a bad idea. Mark ¹ 07:00, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Liuyao: As a Chinese person and and a Chinese speaker, I'm kinda offended too, and I agree with what you're saying. But as long as a view is seriously espoused then we have to present it for NPOV's sake. There's a lot of stuff on Wikipedia (the very existence of the China proper article, for example) that some people would find offensive. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 16:46, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, so I'm too late for the party. But anyhow, here it goes: the name "Xi Zang" actually does have a lot to do with "west storage", but it was not meant in anyway to be offensive. "Xi" here really means west, as Tibet is to the west of traditional Chinese cultural zone. However, "Zang" seems the word really causing trouble here, so I'll try to explain some of the its etymology. This character is indeed "storage," but as early as begining of the Tang Dynasty, it already has a more specific meaning: a collection/library of books from Budda's teachings, "Buddhist Scriptures." An easy proof of this can be seen from the name of the famous monk who travelled to India to obtain a large amount of scriptures: "Tang San Zang," where the first name "Tang" was given by the empire to honor him, and "San" means "three," or "several," which when combined with "Zang" actually means "several libraries' worth of Buddhist books." As you might have guessed, that was not his real name, instead it was an honorable title. For a Chinese with a Buddhist background, "Zang" really could not mean much else under a religous context.

Now about "Xi Zang." No doubtedly it's a transliteration of U-Tsang, for the "Zang" part. But there were a few characters that could have been chosen (same pronunciation), of which only four are commonly used: 脏,葬,赃,藏. A fluent Chinese speaker would probably be laughing hard now upon seeing that list, as they mean, in order, 1) dirty; internal organ. 2) bury; funeral. 3) embezzled/illegal goods. 4) treasure, storage, abundunce, or particullary Buddhist libraries. And it so happened that Tibet was a Buddhist church state--so to speak--that perserved a vast quantity of Buddhist scriptures, it'd be rediculous to not choose the forth character. Thus chosen it was, and it has been used that way for hundreds of years, never been a problem--until the heated debate here, that is.

One more thing: it's not completely correct to say that Chinese transliteration never had anything to do with meanings of individual characters. That is a rather recent thing, as it was the PRC government's proposal to use only a fixed set of neutral Chinese chars to translate proper nouns phonetically, to avoid multiple translations of unique entities. Before that, most often, "good" characters were favored if available. For example, country names: England, 英(Ying), means "handsome" or "hero;" Germany (Deutschland), 德意志(De Yi Zhi), "virtue and will". Had they been transliterated today, we'd probably end up with "因格兰” and "多依士兰", which doesn't make any literal sense, and not nearly as flattering. Those lucky countries.

Ledrug 30 June 2005 03:11 (UTC)

I agree, but I haven't been able to find a source which supports the relevance of the Buddhist scripture zang in this context. If we can find one, then we can mention it in the article. Mark ¹ 30 June 2005 03:22 (UTC)

could there be a NPOV version of this?

September 11th was a tragedy for the American people, but it was a boon for totalitarian regimes around the world. In the pursuit of its so-called “war on terror,” the United States has forged military alliances and inked trade deals with some of the world’s most repressive regimes. On September 13, 2001 China was quietly admitted to the World Trade Organization, and given Most Favored Nation status by U.S., despite the fact the country is one of the world’s worst human rights abusers.

With its economy booming, China has become desperate to exploit Tibet's vast mineral and fuel reserves - and that has meant keeping a tight grip on any moves towards Tibetan autonomy. Arrests, torture and destruction of local culture continue despite the tireless work of Tibetan exiles and their high-profile western allies. In fact, the situation grows more dire by the day. Yet unlike an increasing number of indigenous liberation movements, Tibetans have not resorted to violence to achieve their goals.Pedant 17:25, 2004 Oct 22 (UTC)

And how is this relevant to the writing and NPOV-ization of this article...? -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 22:02, Oct 22, 2004 (UTC)

edit: Oh, if I understand you right, you want to put that above paragraph in, but NPOVized? That shouldn't be that hard — as soon as I have the time, I'll splice what's on Chinese Wikipedia here (and vice versa, of course). Then we'll have both opposing viewpoints on both language versions. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 22:08, Oct 22, 2004 (UTC)

PERFECT thank you Ran ! If you have the time, would you look over Government of Tibet in Exile as well? I have added a 'neutralised' version of the above to the '21st Century' section... if you could add any Chinese POV to that section it would be excellent. Thank you very much for your quick response! If I can be of any help to you please don't hesitate to ask.Pedant 02:46, 2004 Oct 23 (UTC)\

Not remotely neutralized... the first paragraph is completely irrelevant to the topic, the second paragraph almost equally so. The third, fourth, and fifth paragraphs are basically completely POV.

The point of NPOV is not to write something POV and then have others whittle it down for you... it's to write NPOV to start with.

You are welcome to put as much POV writings as you like on the talk pages and sort it out before getting to a final version. You can take a look at our attempt on Talk:People's Republic of China (bottom part of page). -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 02:55, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

Word for word translation from Chinese Wikipedia

I've mentioned above that I eventually intend to splice all of the text related to Tibet, on both English and Chinese Wikipedia, into one big NPOV version. This is a daunting task, so I'll start (for now) by giving a word for word translation of the "Historical background" section of the International Tibet Independence Movement article from Chinese wikipedia. Since my knowledge of Buddhism, etc. is limited some of the translation may be a bit weird. I apologize in advance.

During the Qing Dynasty in China, Tibet accepted the conferment of the titles of Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama from the Emperor of China. These two lamas were disciples of each other (?) and the lines of the living Buddhas continued via reincaration. After the end of the Qing Dynasty, and during the invasion of China by Japan when China was unable to take care of affairs in the west [rough translation], the 13th Dalai Lama and the government of Tibet cooperated in driving the Panchen Lama to Qinghai [that would be Amdo Province]. In 1950 the People's Liberation Army of the People's Republic of China entered and became stationed in Tibet, and only with the approval of the central government was the Panchen Lama able to return to Tibet [Since Qinghai is where he returned from it's clear "Tibet" here = TAR]. Although the central government reached an agreement with the Dalai Lama not to change Tibet's political system, the equitable treatment of Tibetan serfs by the PLA stirred discontent among a number of serf-masters led by the Dalai Lama, resulting eventually in revolt [lit. violent uprising]. The Chinese Communist Government repressed this forcibly, and also a number of serfs refused to cooperate with revolting forces, causing its failure. On March 17 1959 the Dalai Lama, leading about 80000 people, fled to India to seek international help, and established a government in exile in Dharamsala. After Dalai Lama's departure, the Panchen Lama cooperated with the central government, and began reforms targeted at Tibet's traditional serf system, which was welcomed by a number of Tibetans who used to be serfs. But others believe that the Panchen has become a puppet of Beijing's rule over Tibet. The original residence of the Dalai Lama, the Potala Palace, has been maintained, and the central government has devoted funds to its renovation, and in addition the central government has promised the Dalai Lama the right to return at any time, and will not charge him for his acts of treason, but this has not been accepted by the Dalai Lama. Recently he has asked the Chinese Communist Government for Tibetan autonomy under the one country two systems framework.

Clearly POV, (though this is mostly due to the limited selection of facts rather than the explicit expression of opinion, which really happens a lot on Tibet-related articles on English Wikipedia). But after all, we need all the POVs to be there for the article to be NPOV, don't we? Once we've sorted this out somewhat I'll translate a more NPOV version back into the Chinese Wikipedia. -- ran (talk) 03:16, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

Two sides

Latest comment: 18 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I see the Tibetan tragedy as affecting both the Tibetans, who despite having a social and economic system that was remarkably backward and oppressive nevertheless have the right of self-determination on their side. On the other hand, for the Chinese, "No good deed goes unpunished" as they have poured money and cadre into the region and been met with only a grudging acceptance by Tibetans of liberation and international opprobrium. I don't see a barrier, provided NPOV rules are followed, for presenting both points of view. Fred Bauder 11:46, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

Two legitimate points of view: old regime Tibet was "remarkably backward and oppressive" or China has been punished for its good deeds. Let both flowers contend. Gee, I wonder which side your on. Kauffner 16:38, 22 February 2006 (UTC)Kauffner

Western Storehouse

Latest comment: 18 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

"Western Storehouse" is not the way the word is usually analyzed in Chinese. You don't need to ask "most Chinese people" about this; any native speaker of Chinese can tell you that. Have you asked "most English speakers" whether "Canada" reminds you of beer cans, or whether "Germany" reminds you of germs? Do you need to? Any English-speaker knows instinctively that this is not how the English language works when those words are concerned. And "Western Storehouse" is not how "Xizang" works in Chinese.

Frankly I think this entire issue is overblown. The entire "Western Storehouse" thing is ludicrous, on the scale of saying that English speakers call Germany "Germany" because they think Germans are Germs. But we need NPOV, and if some people are seriously putting this subject across we can't do anything about it. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 06:42, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)

I don't think any Chinese person would be surprised by the idea that the connotations of names are relevant when choosing a transcription (note connotations, not meaning). It is not a coincidence that Meiguo, Faguo, Yingguo, Deguo ad nauseam use positive characters. Markalexander100 06:53, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

And yet people type out diatribes against Meiguo, Yingguo etc on online BBS's and use those "positive characters" right along with it. When a Chinese person sees "Meiguo", he/she does NOT see "beautiful country" (no more than you'd see "Germ" in "Germany"); he/she sees "America", and all the connotations that comes with it. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 07:00, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)

That's not quite true. When I travelled around China, I told people I met I was from America and on several occasions Chinese responded, "Oh, beautiful country!" I assume influenced by the transcription. I can't imagine any American saying "Oh, so many germs!" upon meeting a German. But perhaps the people I met were a bit simple-minded -- I don't disagree with your general point that a Chinese transcription is just a way to represent a sound. Chinese characters both represent sound and have meaning in and of themselves, so it's a bit different than English, where the sole purpose of letter combinations is to represent sound (except in the case of homonyms).

The word "Xizang" dates from the 18th century, when the Chinese emperors were Buddhists and Dalai Lamas their honored spiritual advisors. I find it hard to believe that there is anything intentionally insulting about the characters used to represent the name. Kauffner 17:18, 22 February 2006 (UTC)Kauffner

(note connotations, (for those who chose the name) not meaning) Markalexander100 07:40, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Argh!! Why are you asking for a source? I can't provide a source because this is common knowledge to any Chinese speaker. It's like "Germany" does not mean "Many Germs" to an English speaker, it's so ridiculously obvious that it's painful to even have to get into a debate about it. (Would YOU want to get into such a revert war on Germany? And search for a source on why Germany does not connote "many germs" to English speakers?) I doubt the thought of this has ever even crossed the mind of any Chinese speaker, let alone for them to rebutt it, let alone for that rebuttal to survive in any permanent form so that I can provide it as a source.

In any case, stop deleting what I wrote! This is about NPOV right? If you're presenting the arguments of one side, why aren't you presenting it's opposing view, especially if the opposing view thinks that the initial complaint is completely ludicrous?--[[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 17:16, Oct 24, 2004 (UTC)

I will reiterate what I stated above: the character does not mean "storehouse" in this context. Anyone who is familiar with Buddhism should know of the Tripitaka (Threefold Canton) and its significance to Buddhists. Frankly, it should be viewed as offensive that these so-called "supporters" would use contextually-inane translations to tarnish the good name of "Xi Zang". --Taoster 01:00, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Ran: sweeping unsourced generalisations have no place in Wikipedia and will continue to be deleted. The original text of the article mentions both Tibetan and Chinese POVs. If you want to discuss the wording of the text then this is the place to do it; changing a controversial part of a controversial article without attempting to seek consensus is unhelpful.

Taoster: as I mentioned above, personally I agree with you. If you have a source for our interpretation, then we can add it to the text. I haven't found one yet. Markalexander100 01:55, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Excuse me? What you were doing was not deleting "unsourced generalization", you were deleting all of the arguments that the opposing side has. The original text did not give equal weight to the two sides; it explained one side's reasoning and then, out of nowhere, said that "others disagree". Your repeated reverts kept it that way.

In any case, here's my attempt at a rewrite. Please tell me which part of it is a "sweeping unsourced generalization":

The Chinese name for Tibet, 西藏, Xīzàng, is a phonetic transliteration derived from U-Tsang and has been in use since the 18th century. The Chinese character (藏, zàng), is also used to describe things Tibetan such as the Tibetan language (藏文, zàng wén) and the Tibetan people (藏族, zàng zú). The two characters of Xizang can literally mean "western storehouse", which some Tibetans and their supporters find offensive.

However, Chinese transliterations of non-Chinese language names take characters for pronunciation only, as long as the characters hold no negative connotations. For example "Vancouver" is translated as 温哥华, pronounced wēngēhuá, and literally meaning "warm - brother - majesty" (the meaning is always discounted). In addition, the offending character, "藏", primarily refers to Buddhist scripture; its meaning as "storehouse" is archaic. As a result, some people would hold that the meaning of the character is irrelevant, or that it does not connote "storehouse" in any sense.

-- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 02:31, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)

It is not true that the meaning of the characters are irrelevant so long as they are not negative: characters with positive meanings are used to express a positive attitude. The Vancouver material is obviously irrelevant to an article on Tibet, and is original research (so therefore should not be included). As I mentioned above, I have found no source as yet for the relevance of the Buddhist scripture meaning; if you find one, we can add that interpretation to the text. Markalexander100 02:38, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I still can't leave the article dangling like that. As of now it seriously seems to imply that Chinese people call Tibet "Western Storehouse" in the literal sense (and the article implies some sort of "underlying racism" in the process). No one in China thinks of it that way... "zang", when used to refer to Tibet, means "Tibet" and nothing else.

Reminds me of something I saw on the net; someone said that the name for Africa in Chinese, "feizhou", literally means "non-continent", and says that it's "meaningful". But "feizhou" is simply short for "afeilijia zhou", which is a straightforward phonetic transcription of "Africa". To imply things that Chinese people themselves don't realize is, I think, not just POV; it's pushing forward patent falsehoods. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 01:58, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)

I think that if one can't talk about Germany as being related to the word germ, or Germany as related to the word Ale, as seen in its Romance language translations, or Tibet as being like a storehouse in the West, or even the word 'west' in Chinese as looking like a bottle of Cointreau or Triple Sec, then one might be a little aperspectival as regards the use of language to create poetic names and constructs that people enjoy using. We should try to make it easy to discuss the obvious when it comes to translation issues. --McDogm 18:45, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

1.2 million

Fred Bauder:

Thanks for the added information. But is it possible for you to add information on what 1.2 million (or 500,000) Tibetans died of? It seems to me that this information is commonly quoted to prove that there is a racist campaign, on the whole, of "Chinese killing Tibetans", and that the PRC is racist, even though there is little legal difference in rights between ethnic Han Chinese and Tibetans in general (if anything, it is the Han Chinese who are discriminated against, from college admissions to government jobs to the one-child policy). Moreover, it was precisely in the same interval (1953-1964) that the Great Leap Forward happened and managed to kill 20 million people in all of China; this campaign was certainly the result of ideological stupidity, not racism. So I strongly suspect that that famine can account for most of the casualty figures; but I don't have a source for this, which is why I'm asking you help. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 17:54, Oct 31, 2004 (UTC)

Most of the violence involved Tibetans attacking Chinese. Which of course the Chinese with airplanes, machine guns and artillery responded to with devestating effect. On page 126 of Tibet, Tibet is a bit about one group of nomads during the Great Leap forward: "They weren't allowed to make their own food. Twice a day they would be served a thin tsampa soup in a big communal tent." "[The nomads] weren't allowed to keep animals, although some people secretly kept sheep." [The Chinese] tried plowing up grassland, but of course nothing grew." "It was in 1959 and 1960, the worst years of the famine. A lot of people died. Many of my old friends died. My father's brother, my mother's mother, my mother's brother's wife, my paternal cousins--all of these people starved to death" (The speaker, who was captured during a battle, was in prison). This group of nomads had their tents taken away and were forced to live in concrete shelters which Patrick French describes at page 128: "The sheds lay in a long crumbling row about a mile away, in the lee of a hill. Each was about 2 meters high, an arch of rough brick and cement, open at either end to the wind and rain. It was hardly imaginable that people had lived there, ten to a shed in the burning winter cold. The sheds reminded me of the hutches used to keep pigs in England." According to page 278 the exile total includes, "starvation, fighting, torture, execution, suicide and struggle sessions." This is rather like the Ukrainian calculations where everyone who died in the Great Famine is blamed on the Russians. There is a certain justice to this. After all if the Chinese had simply left the status quo alone, probably any famine would not have affected Tibet, but then some other thing might have happened. Fred Bauder 19:24, Oct 31, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks Fred... if you can, can you add the information to the article?

Also, the Ukraine article says: "Soviet Ukraine experienced two famines (1921–22 and 1932–33)—the second of which was deliberate, and termed the "Holodomor"—in which many millions died (scholarly estimates range from 4 to 10 million dead).". Surely the famine of the Great Leap Forward was not deliberate? Or do people have somewhat different definitions of what "deliberate" means? -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 05:00, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)

Some think that the Great Leap Forward famine didn't affect Tibet? That's illogical. About 20 million people starved to death in China from 1958 to 1961 but somehow the Tibet region remained perfectly fine and dandy? Don't be ridiculous.

"Tibet"

A lot is said about the naming of Tibet in Asian languages, but where does "Tibet" come from?

Disambiguate

Simply having the first paragraph explain things isn't enough. If an article talks about just one of two definitions of a given term, we should put the alternate definition as a disambiguation line on top. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 22:45, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

Students for a Free Tibet

Why was the link to Students for a Free Tibet removed? – Quadell ^{(talk) (help)}[[]] 01:35, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

Because the site is not about Tibet, it's about the free tibet movement among students in the UK. If we have an article on such a thing, that's where a link might be appropriate. If we add links to every site dealing with any aspect of Tibet, however tangential, to the main Tibet article, then the page will be 200k and the world will end. Mark ¹ 01:59, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Paragraph about Torture removed!!! WHY?

I would like to know why and who removed my paragraph about torture that Tibetans have to endure even right now while I'm writing. It is neither my invention nor my fantasy. It is FACTS! I mistakenly considered Wikipedia a free expression of free people, considering the First Amendment in its widest form. Freedom of speech can only exist where free information and free colture are available and really free. Obviously I was wrong. Twice I added my lines about torture and twice they were removed. Is Wikipedia controlled by a government that is extremely money-interested in not denouncing china??? Entropia 11:54, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

No, the regular editors of this article have nothing to do with United States policy toward China, however your section on torture was poorly referenced and for some reason placed in the section on culture. My information, from books written by recent travelers, is that the situation has cooled off considerably and that torture, while it undoubtedly exists (as in does in all prison systems) is not the usual thing. It is not possible to search in the book you reference (ISBN 8176210706) and it is a bit expensive for me right now (it is published in India and they want quite a lot for postage). Perhaps you could give us some information about the book and some page numbers and the context this information about torture appears in. The information probably belongs in Tibet Autonomous Region although information about Han and Communist repression of Tibetans especially during the Red Guard era could probably be worked into History of Tibet. Fred Bauder 12:54, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

OK give me a couple of days, and I'll be back. Entropia 16:58, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

Back on Torture

HI!

1. These are my sources (original titles):

Chögyam Trungpa Born In Tibet

Gilles vanGrasdorff Panchen Lama - Otage de Pékin

Ama Ade, Joy Blakeslee The voice that remembers

Tenzin Choedrak, Gilles van Grasdorff Le palais des arc-en-ciel

Laurent Desayes Histoire du Tibet

Gilles van Grasdorff Paroles des Dalai-Lama

Jetsum Pema (Sister of the Dalai Lama) Tibet mon historie, and

Javier Moro Las montañas de Buda (which by the way I got in Italy for just a few bucks)

((these are the data I found in the Webster's on-line dictionary: The mountains of the Buddha Javier Moro Date: 15 April, 2004 Publisher: Full Circle Publishing Ltd Price: $13.95 ))

2. It was not my intention to post my paragraph in the section 'Culture', I just wanted to add at the end of the page about Tibet. I figured that if it was not posted right, some more experienced Wikipedian would have moved it to the right place!

3. I think that it is too easy to dismiss the problem of torture as it exists in any prison system, as you say. And even in that case, my lines about abortion and sterilisation were referred not to inmates (who still have civil rights, don't they?) but the so-called free citizens.

The following is my translation of a brief excerpt from Jetsum Pema: " .... there exists an organisation of Tibetan women, extremely motivated and active, carrying out an extraordinary work. They fight for the independence of Tibet, but another of their undertakings is denouncing sterilisation and forced abortions. For a woman, it is inconceivable not to be able to freely decide the number of children she wants to have. Nothing is worse that being sterilised without knowing it or killing a baby inside the mother's womb."

Independently on being a guy or a woman, pro-abortion, pro-choice, pro-lifeor whatever we are talking about fundamental rights of people, women, in this case, but I don't think the fathers were any happier...

That the abuses by the Chinese are still going on is also proved by the kidnapping (in 1995) of the new Panchen Lama, a six-year old boy who was taken to China and never set free again. In the Mountains of the Buddha (Las montañas de Buda) Javier Moro describes current events . It was 1990 when Kinsom, one of the main characters, was arrested for ... singing songs.

4. Autonomous Region of Tibet is a ridiculous term. First of all it is not 'autonomous'. Second if you choose to use Tibet for the geographical area, that's your problem. I mean, you can't change the name of a (former-)free country to suit your purposes. Besides it only creates confusion. TAR IS Tibet, and what you call Tibet should be called Tibet Plateau, or a similar expression, like somebody suggested

5. In some cases NPOV is not acceptable. Certainly it is not with regard to the genocide carried out by the Nazis. Why should it then be OK with regard to the genocide of the Tibetans systematically performed by the Chinese??? Entropia 08:07, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

In some cases NPOV is not acceptable. Then you have not understood the purpose of NPOV. There are a lot of people who disagree about your claim of "genocide of the Tibetans systematically performed by the Chinese", and a lot of people are going to be seriously offended by your Nazi analogy; so the point of NPOV is that you have to accommodate these views to allow Wikipedia to function as a community and an encyclopedia. This is done regardless of how strongly you feel about your views. -- ran (talk) 13:44, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

I don't care about offending the nazis. History cannot be written, and re-written and re-written like in 1984 to please somebody. Truth is truth, whether you like it or not. The rest is chickenshit. Entropia 14:11, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

And there are plenty of people who will tell you that everything you're saying is chickenshit. There are plenty of people who will tell you that you're spreading lies, and that you're the Nazi. And you all can get into a big merry debate over this, ending with both you and then convinced that the other side is brainwashed beyond hope. And how much does this help Wikipedia? Zero, that's how much. This is why NPOV is non-negotiable. There are no exceptions to the NPOV rule.

What you believe in is your choice but Wikipedia is not where you push it. If you want to participate, then you need to learn to accept other points of view. You need to get used to the fact that half of the info in controversial topics you're interested in is going to look like chickenshit to you. I've learned to accept this. I've learned to accept that when I open up an article about a controversial topic I'm going to be hit in the face repeatedly by what I perceive to be either incredible ignorance or sheer evil. I've learned to accept that as long as I ensure my views are represented too, then that article is fine the way it is. Can you? -- ran (talk) 03:10, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

This talk page is always fun. ;) Perhaps rather than deleting the material it would be more constructive to convert it to something like "X reports in his book Y that there were Z cases of A in Tibet in 2002. The Chinese government has denied that any cases of A have occured". Mark ¹ 03:39, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I knew you would show up eventually, Mark. :P And yes, I would support inserting it like that. -- ran (talk) 03:42, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

in any case, the community would be better served, not by removing references to atrocities committed, and references to them, but by including alternate views, and references to those alternate views. Anyone who denies the systematic genocide occuring up to the present moment should be able to provide some evidence that the genocide has stopped, or should be willing to re-examine their unsubstantiated views... and at any rate, NOT remove factual referenced info from articles.Pedant 06:17, 2005 Feb 25 (UTC)

Yeah, exactly. Thank you! If Wikipedia decides NOT to report facts, and actually removes references to keep its beloved NPOV, it flushes its own purpose down the toilette. An Encyclopaedia to be valid and useful MUST report facts as they are without removing what the admins or readers don't like. Or else what you call NPOV is actually YOUR OWN POV!

And by the way, I don't think I am the nazi. Actually it's probably the other way around. By posting only the Chinese POV, it looks like you are trying to turn Wikipedia into a servant of your regime. Entropia 08:23, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

And this namecalling achieves what purpose? By putting unreferenced and unverified info into the wrong section, hoping that everyone will believe it anyways and allow it to stay, what exactly were you expecting? If I inserted WITH NO REFERENCES: "Tibet is a happy place where Han Chinese and Tibetans live happily together and Tibetan culture and religion are freely and fully practiced," what do you think would happen to this edit?

And I would suggest that you stop and think before calling anyone a "Nazi" or calling him a "servant of [his] regime". If you go through my edits on Wikipedia you will see that I do not toe the party line — more often than not I'm found inserting info that the government would not like to have out there, or removing blatant official-like propaganda. I've done even more of this on the Chinese Wikipedia, which currently has a serious POV slant (wait till you see its Tibet article). Just because I attempt to maintain NPOV in the opposite direction as well does not give you the right to call me a "Nazi". Rather, you should be examining your own understanding of the NPOV policy, which you recently stated to be inapplicable in "some situations".

I would also suggest that you read the current Tibet article over, and tell me whether it's only the "Chinese POV" that's represented. -- ran (talk) 17:04, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

You say, "I think that it is too easy to dismiss the problem of torture as it exists in any prison system, as you say. And even in that case, my lines about abortion and sterilisation were referred not to inmates (who still have civil rights, don't they?) but the so-called free citizens." I don't dismiss it, I just question whether systemic torture of Tibetan citizens is sanctioned by the Chinese government now (past periods of rebellion are a different matter), or whether it is limited to isolated transgressions by poorly trained police who are under pressure to produce results. Likewise when you bring up abortion and sterilization it is at variance with my information that Tibetans are excepted from the population control policies of the state. I am not at all happy with your references, some are dated, most are not in English and you provide no page numbers. The upshot is that although I have quite a few books on Tibet, I can't look up anything. Fred Bauder 12:57, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

I do agree that the often held view that conditions are terrible in Tibet do belong in the article, along with both the official government line and the more realistic reports of visitors and travelers. Fred Bauder 12:57, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

Some of my references are dated but some refer to the nineties. The mountains of the Buddha by Javier Moro was published 2004 by Full Circle Publishing Ltd. I'm sure that you can get it in any bookstore. And so also the books by Jetsum Pema. Otherwise, you might check with a library in your area. Still better could probably be to spend some time with the sites of Human Rights Watch and Amnisty International. Being on-line they can be updated more quickly and their information is always up to the present. More importantly, if my references are not enough authoritative, certainly Amnesty International is. Entropia 14:04, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

A few links to relevant pages on the Amnesty International website would be helpful. -- ran (talk) 17:04, Feb 25, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry! I've just realized I've misspelled AmnEsty. So obviously you couldn't find it! It is Amnesty International and their site is: www.amnesty.org Now you can look it up, can't you? Human Rights Watch is based in NYC, so you probably know it. Their site is: www.hrw.org. I'm sorry I didn't write them before, but I thought that computer experts would have had no problems in finding those sites. Besides Wikipedia itself features articles both about AI and HRW. Entropia 11:49, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

I did put in a link to one lengthy Amnesty International document on conditions in Tibet. Please find additional detail regarding the material you wish to include in the article. Fred Bauder 16:26, Mar 1, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you very much, Fred. I didn't know how to do it. Entropia 08:24, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

I've just seen the Wikipedian article about Michael Moore. The top part reports his opinions and views whereas the bottom gives the opinion of his opponents. What about something like that? Entropia 08:26, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

I'm more inclined towards splicing different views together in each section or paragraph, this way it's easier to give rebuttals, counter-rebuttals, "compromise" views, and the like. (see People's Republic of China#History) But sure, as long as all views are represented. -- ran (talk) 17:35, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

Duplicated sections

How about just adding one paragraph at a time? I reverted back to a non-duplicated version. Good luck with your edits. Ancheta Wis 06:39, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Former countries in Chinese history

Removed, because it achieves the remarkable feat of falling foul of both my and Jiang's POVs. Many would dispute the former, many would dispute the country. Mark ¹ 02:11, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Any compromise falls foul of the extreme POVs. Anyway, look up the other countries in that category – some are as disputable. Lev 20:00, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Your POV may be extreme, but mine isn't. ;) The fact that the category is rubbish is not a good reason to add this article to it. (And the fact that it survived CfD does not mean it should be added to particular articles). Mark ¹ 02:10, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The fact that it survived CfD means just that. That's what categories are for. Lev 11:11, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No it does not. All it means is that the cat should not be deleted. Mark ¹ 02:07, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The community has decided the category has a right to exist. What you are proposing is an absurd status "may exist but may not be added to". -Lev 19:29, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Not at all. The category has already been added to many articles. I don't edit those articles so I have no opinion on whether it was correctly added there. But I do edit this article and the category should not be added here. Mark ¹ 02:24, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I thought the argument on "country" was voted down. Then how does "former" be implicated on this case? Is Tibet currently a sovereignty country?Fastfood 23:35, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand any of those sentences. Mark ¹ 02:07, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Tibet vs. TAR

There should be an article on the historical Tibet, another on the TAR, another on the plateau of Tibet (merely a geographic feature), and another on the Government in Exile.

I agree. The 'TAR' is a puppet government, and is just a territory of the 'People's Republic' of China. Tibet, the historic country, and the TAR are totally different. The Tibetan Plateau also exists where tibetan territory never did, such as in Nepal, India, Etc. Most people think it was formed when the Indian Subcontinent(thought to be a separate tectonic plate)moved north, generating mountains.

New Map

The new map is definitely a big improvement over the old one, but there are a couple of problems. For starters, the timeline given here [10] essentially states that Kham east of the Yangtze was out of the hands of Lhasa from 1918 onwards, and that Amdo was out of the hands of Lhasa since 1935 (if not earlier). Also, the timeline states that in 1965, China sets up Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), which comprises an area equivalent to the pre-1950s Tibetan state (Ü-Tsang and W Kham) which was governed from Lhasa. This is directly contradicted by the map.

We might also want to put in the claimed borders for Historic Tibet that Chinese historical maps (but not Tibet in Exile) usually show... including Arunachal Pradesh (still claimed), Bhutan, Sikkim, and Ladakh.

Last but not least... we don't have the source of the map, and we don't know if it's copyrighted.... -- ran (talk) 22:19, Apr 24, 2005 (UTC)

External links - pro-independence

The websites that are linked to are not all pro-independence. Some are actually pro-freedom and pro-civil liberties. The current Dalai Lama has stated explicitly he is no longer advocating complete independence as a separate sovereign state. — Insta ntnood 17:38, Apr 30, 2005 (UTC)

Removal of two bibliographic items

French's Golden Yoke is a really bad book, and contains basically no facutal or accurate information on the premodern Tibetan legal tradition. Please see Leonard van der Kuijp's review in the Central Asiatic Journal. 1999. "The Yoke is on the Reader: A Recent Study of Tibetan Jurisprudence." Central Asiatic Journal 43/2: 266-292. A better source for the Tibetan legal tradition would be Schuh, D. (1984), "Recht und Gesetz in Tibet," Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, ommemorating the 200th Anniversary of the Birth of Csoma de Koros, ed. L. Ligeti (Budapest: Akademiai Kiado), 291-311. or citations in van der Kuijp's review. I have also removed the Yeshede project for the same reasons, a better study of early Tibetan history is of course Beckwith's The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia, Princeton. I have not however added these to the bibliography, because I think it inappropriate that an encyclopedia article have a long bibliography.

Tibet and the Mongols

I don't know who spread the rumour that Cinngis Qaghan (aka. Gengis Khan) invaded Tibet. He did not. Anyone interested in Tibeto-Mongol relations I commend Luciano Petechs Book Central Tibet and the Mongols to. --Nathan Hill 16:42, 23 May 2005.

History of the Name Tibet

There is nothing quite so frustrating as having many hours of work which is factual and unbiased being deleted by someone who gives no explanation. The section on the name I have cited twice, if someone disagrees with it please tell me why and do not simply delete it. --Nathan hill 14:26, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Origin of the Tibetan Script

I have removed mention to the Tibetan script being invented in order to translate buddist texts, because this is probably not the case. The oldest documents in Tibetan are administrative these include the wood-slips on Turfan, the Old Tibetan Annals, and various stone inscriptions. Most of thse (and all of the oldest) make no mention of Buddhism. The story of Tumi Sambhota is incidentally false. These matters have been well studied by Roy Andrew Miller, Rona-Tas, Geza Uray, and Tsuguhito Takeuchi. --Nathan Hill 16:60, 23 May 2005.

Wylie?

An edit war has started over whether to use Wylie or a more phonetically based system. For example, should it be Bod or Pö? Bod rang skyong ljongs or Pö Rangyongjong？ Dbus-gtsang or U-tsang? Khams or Kham? Gzhi-ka-rtse or Shigatse? Rgyang-rtse or Gyangtse? And so on and so forth.

This is further complicated by the fact that the official system in use in American maps is the pinyin-oid system used by the PRC, where we have Xigazê instead of Shigatse, and so forth. Given the odiousness of the PRC in English-speaking quarters, it might be hard to implement this system consistently on Wikipedia, but nevertheless we should take into account that this is the system used on National Geographic maps and so forth.

So, ideas, comments, suggestions? -- ran (talk) 17:29, May 28, 2005 (UTC)

I beleive that when an area (I avoid saying nation) has its own written tradition, and its own names for things, it is most acurate to write them correctly. I therefore think it should go without saying that personal and place names in Tibetan should be transliterated from Tibetan. I have used the Wylie system because it is most common in English language publications. There are other systems, some of which are better linguistically speaking. Wylie does have the advantage of not needing diacritics.

To use Pinyin would be to transliterate an already inaccurate transcription. I see no reason why this is a good idea. Also, one could criticize it on political grounds. The PRC incidentally fully approves of and even mandates the use of minoritiy languages on signs.

The completely ad hoc of writing e.g. U-tsang because to some American English speaker this is how the Lhasa dialect pronunciation sounds, is of course no system at all, and hardly deserves consideration. There are a few "easy to pronounce" transliteration schemes my favorite that of Nicolas Tournadre, but when we write slavic names we do not find this necessary. Also, when in English we write the french name Jacques no one sees any need to spell it Zhak. So, I suggest Wylie for all Wikipedia pages. --Nathan hill 07:00, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

However, using Wylie means that we would write neither "Shigatse", used by Dharamsala, nor "Xigazê", used by the PRC and National Geographic and Encarta, but "Gzhi-ka-rtse", which essentially looks impossible to pronounce without some knowledge of the Tibetan language. (Though I can't help but admire it for being the most scholarly and least POV way of doing it.) Are you sure you want to abandon commonly used systems in favour of one that's not as common and certainly not as accessible to English speakers? -- ran (talk) 15:01, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

Ran, I quite agree with you on the Chinese bastard terms. ;) I would suggest for article titles and references to the place in other articles (e.g. references to Shigatse in the Tibet article) that we use the most common English transliteration. (Incidentally different languages do use different schemes to transliterate Slavic names, precisely to accomodate them to the relationships between sounds and letters in the receiving language). The lead (or a table, if we have a lot of transliterations) should then include all the other commonly used versions for the article title. Mark ¹ 02:05, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

There is no point using names at all if the correct indigenous spelling is not reconstructable from the tranliteration. The syllable Tsang could represent brtsang, btsang, 'tshang, gtsang, and it is important to keep these seperate. They are seperate words. The other point I want to make is that to write Shigatse is no system at all, because it is not derived systematically from the Tibetan script. This is why one sometimes sees Rgya-mtsho spelled Gyatso or Gyamtso or Jamtso etc. etc. in English. If the indigenous tibetan spellings are so offensive to the eyes of anglophons I suggest the adoption of Tournadre's transliteration scheme (early in his book L'Ergativité en Tibétain). The publisher Wisdom also uses an in house transliteration scheme which people seem to find easier to read. Frankly, I don't see the problem though in Amdo or Ladakh they actually do pronounce all those letters, and so an English speaker can simply "sound it out". To use an easy system or no system at all compromises intelligibility and accurancy for the sake of the linguistic chauvanism of anglophons. Even if we decide on something less than Wylie it would be necessary to have it in parentheses.

Incidentally, to Mr. Mark Alexander. Just as there are different systems for Slavic there are different systems for Tibetan and Wylie is the Anglo-American system. In the french system they write c where we write ts and they write ś where we write sh, etc. The germans have their system too. I beleive there is a discussion of the various systems in Michael Hahn's Lehrbuch der Klassiche Tibetische Schriftsprache for anyone interested. --Nathan hill 07:39, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

ps. Gshi-ka-rtse is I beleive Rigazi in Pinyin.

It should certainly be possible to reconstruct the original Tibetan spelling from information included somewhere in the encyclopedia; that's why I suggest including Wylie transcriptions of article titles in the lead. But that does not mean that it's necessary to use transcriptions which are very misleading to the average English-speaker every time that another article refers to that word. Mark ¹ 08:03, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Please explain what is misleading about spelling something correctly. Is it misleading to write Jacques Chirac instead of Zhak Shirak? Somehow the American public has made the transition from Peking to Beijing, and Mao-tse-tung to Maozedong, why not Shigatse to Gshi-ka-rtse --Nathan hill 08:12, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The "correct" spelling would be in Tibetan script, not in any transliteration. We don't transliterate French because it already uses the Roman script. Pinyin, pronounced according to the usual rules of English pronunciation, better approximates the sounds of Chinese than does Wade-Giles; thank you for providing a good argument for using the phonetic transliterations. ;) Mark ¹ 08:45, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree the correct spelling would be in Tibetan script, and I have no objection to that. I would however argue whether Pinyin is more accurate than Wade-Giles. In particular does the Pinyin R have anything to do with the English r, or x for that matter, or z. For heaven's sake Pinyin is widely inaccurate. Take for instance the difference between b and p in Pinyin and p and ph in Wade-Giles. Madarin Chinese does not have a phonemic contrast of voicing, but does have a phonemic contrast of aspiration, so p (a voiceless unaspirated bilabial stop) is opposed to ph (a voiceless aspirated bilabial stop, although a lot of silly anglophones think it is a bilabial voiceless fricative because of a sound-change in medieval greek). Pinyin falsely represents a voiceless unaspirated bilabial stop as voiced i.e. b.

But any how, then, shall we transliterate Tibetan using the IPA, because that is what we would have to do if we were going to "write it as it is pronounced", and if we were going to do that, which dialect would we base it on. Alright, we arbitrarily choose Lhasa dialect because of its historic importance and its use in Exile, and as a Koiné for the central region. well, some varieties of Lhasa have phonemic voicing and others do not, some variaties of Lhasa have a voiceless r and some do not.

Would it not be better to simply go with the academic transliteration used in Anglo-American scholarship now for fifty years, which accurately transliterates (i.e. letter for letter) the Tibetan script? If people think Tibetan is ugly or hard to pronounce that is there problem.

In addition as I have pointed out before in Ladakh and Amdo the phonemic inventory is basically what is written in the script (i.e. when a Ladakhi says Chos-rgyal he really says it not vowel fonting, with the -s, the r- a sort of trilled rhotic voiceless fricative).

The only argument I have heard so far for not using Wylie is that anglophones don't like the sound of it, some people don't like the sound of the truth. What can I say? --Nathan hill 09:14, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Incidentally, you never said what was "misleading" about Wylie. The only thing I think is misleading is the ' which doesn't look like a consonant in English, other than that you pronouce it just like it looks. --Nathan hill 09:18, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You misunderstand. Most anglophones don't know how to pronounce Wylie transcriptions. If you want to teach the world Tibetan pronunciation that's fine, but Wikipedia is not the place for personal campaigns. Wylie is misleading for most anglophones because pronounced according to the normal rules of English pronunciation the result is less close to the actual Tibetan pronunciation than is a phonetic transcription. Mark ¹ 09:23, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I am afraid it must be you who misunderstand. If you pronouce Srong-brtsan-sgam-po just like it is written with normal English pronunciation you will be very close to pronoucing it a. like the emperor himself would have pronouced it. b. like it is pronouced in Ladakh. c. like it is pronouced in Amdo. You may not be very close to pronouncing how it is currently pronouced in Lhasa, but so what? (writing Songtsengambo would get us no closer, because Lhasa has tones!).

A lot of English people pronouce Goethe not a [gœtə] but as [gɔεθ], rather than crying "it is cabalistic to mislead the anglophone public" one simply laughs at such people fore being Ungebildet. How many English speakers actually know that a z in Pinyin is a voiced alveolar affricate and not a voiced dental fricative (answer: those who have studied Chinese). But do we mind, no you let the poor people mispronouce it, at least they will write it correctly. Is it unreasonable that I ask for a similar indulgence on the part of Tibetan?

You are in essence proposing a) that a widely excepted academic standard be replaced by an entirely ad hoc practice of spelling by intuition. b) that a phonetically and historically accurate system be replaced by a phonetically inaccurate one. c.) that the level of respect shown toward European languages, Japanese etc. not be applied to minority asian languages such as Tibetan. --Nathan hill 09:59, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wait, let me clarify something first: there's a difference between the pinyin transliteration for the Chinese language name of a Tibetan place (e.g. Rikaze), and the pinyin-like Romanization scheme of the Tibetan language (e.g. Xigazê). Xigazê and not Rikaze is the official PRC system.

I might go to the library later just to familiarize myself with the topic (which I'm unfortunately not very familiar with). As I understand it right now "Gzhi-ka-rtse" is the equivalent of romanizing Chinese in accordance with Middle Chinese pronunciation, which is surely neutral compared to romanizing Chinese in accordance to Mandarin, or Cantonese, or Min Nan, or Hakka, or Wu. (Though it is of course not usually done for Chinese, since the Chinese script is not a phonetic one based on Middle Chinese pronunciation.) But as I said, I'm going to read up on the topic and then hopefully be able to contribute more to this discussion. -- ran (talk) 15:43, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

The difference between Xigazê and Rikaze is something I am not familiar with. (It should be pointed out that I don't really know Chinese). Rikaze is what you seen on signs in Tibet. I do want to point out that in academic publications the Chinese have a transliteration scheme (into Roman) which is all their own, but not very different from Wylie. The two differences are that the last letter of the Tibetan alphabet which is written q wheras Wylie suggests not transliterate it at all, and the letter Wylie transliterates as ' is written as v (e.g. Dpal-vbyor instead of Dpal-'byor). Actually I like the Chinese system better, but a lot of Western Tibetologists don't like it simply because it is Chinese.

The comparison with writting in middle Chinese is good, the differences I would point out however are that middle Chinese has remained very controversial, though I guess most people now follow Bill Baxter's system, whereas the spelling of Middle Tibetan (if you will) is clear to anyone who looks at a Tibetan word. The other thing to point out is that English as it is spelled today is in many ways middle English. Look at a word like 'enough' and 'through' the -gh at the end represents an original voiceless velar fricative (I think). To spell these things this way is very inaccurate but that is the spelling. The chinese script also contains phonetic information, just a little out of dat (Zhou dynasty). --Nathan hill 07:15, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Mmm... let me see if I can explain this better. Rikaze is the pinyin transcription of the Chinese name of the city, which in turn is a phonetic transcription of the Tibetan name. Xigazê is a pinyinlike transcription of the Tibetan name of the city (using the Lhasa dialect, presumably). If we assume that roadsign makers (the Bureau of Transport of the TAR, or whoever) are Han Chinese, then it is not hard to imagine that they would use Rikaze rather than Xigazê, even though Xigazê is the official Romanization. (It seems to be a policy in the PRC that names always be transcribed into the Roman alphabet from the original minority language rather than Chinese, e.g. Urumqi rather than Wulumuqi, Hohhot rather than Huhehaote, etc. but this isn't followed consistently.) So that's the difference between Rikaze and Xigazê. This is also why Xigazê is what you see on National Geographic maps.

As for Shigatse, I'm not sure I'm going to call it "ad hoc" per se. It is, after all, the system used by Dharamsala, and by a lot of Tibet-related (but not linguistics-related) literature. Perhaps it can be compared with the Postal System Pinyin system for Chinese, which, until the promulgation of Pinyin, was the de facto correct system for transcribing Chinese place names. -- ran (talk) 17:13, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)

It is used by Dharamasala, but it is not part of any system, in this way it is different from Postal Code Pinyin, which is derived from Wade-Giles. Even if a transliteration scheme does not map all indigenous spellings uniquely into a romanization it should at least always map the same indigenous spelling to the same roman token, otherwise it is no system at all. The only way in which I meant to say that it was ad hoc was to point out that it was not systematic. One does not get from Gzhi-ka-rtse to Shigatse through rules, but rather through tradition. Places that are relatively familiar sort of have there own spelling in English. For example Dalai Lama is actually spelled in Tibetan Tala'i Blama. This particular one is so common that I do not object to it. But I think that while we still can English speakers should do something systematic. For a lot of Tibetan names various non-systematic transliterations are competing e.g. Gyatso, Gyamtso, Jamtso, Jatso. There is no way to say that any of these spellings are any more accurate than any others. I think it clear that anyone who does not want to write Rgya-mtsho, should be able to at least tell me how he does want to write it, and why.

Also, I am still curious whether there is an argument against Rgya-mtsho other than it looks ugly. I have tried at some length to explain above that it is phonetically at least as accurate (if not more) as the non systematic spellings. --Nathan hill 14:35, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It's not just that it looks ugly: it is so uncommon that you can't expect a user to link it with something he/she knows. Take the Tibet Autonomous Region article, for example. The chairman of the TAR is Jampa Phuntsok. I got that right off the English-language version of the People's Daily (or some other official newspaper). Now, you could change that to Wylie, but then what happens? It will look completely different from any other source on the internet. And as such it becomes useless to the reader who doesn't want to know how many consonant clusters got lost on the way from medieval Tibetan to the modern Lhasa dialect, only who the chairman of the TAR is.

Isn't a spelling like "Shigatse" based on the Lhasa dialect, btw? I imagine that the PRC official system that gives Xigazê, and appears to be based on the same pronunciation as Shigatse, is based on the Lhasa dialect.

Also, the Postal System Pinyin system is very ad hoc, especially in the south where it seems to be based on whatever local dialect is spoken. But if we were writing Wikipedia back in the 1940's I would be all for adopting it anyways. -- ran (talk) 15:58, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

I have just stumbled in to the edit war as Nathan hill edited Milarepa so that all references to Milarepa were replaced by Mi-la-ras-pa. Now in this case Milarepa is well known by English speaking buddhists under that name, and a small minority will know anything about the tibetan language. How long is it before I will find Milarepa is lost as a redirect to Mi-la-ras-pa? This is the English wikipedia, and where people and places have a well known English way to write them that should surely be the primary spelling used. By all means give a guide to the correct pronunciation, and tibetan spelling as well. Billlion 23:59, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You seem not to have minded my other changes to the Mi-la-ras-pa article, and indeed appear to have kept all of the Wylie (just moved to parentheses). So perhaps you did not find my edit so obnoxious as you have here implied. I admit I had qualms about Milarepa, because while not as well established as Dalai Lama it is certainly better established than Shigatse. If the encyclopedia had all of the Tibetan articles under the correct spelling, with ad hoc alternative spellings on redirect pages, or in parentheses this would seem far more scientifically acurate and truthful than to do the opposite. Those people who perfer incorrect spellings would still be able to find their articles and although their innocent eyes would be exposed to the preceived infelicity which is the truth of Tibetan phonology, they could also sill see how these words are pronounced by ignorami.

p.s. I should point out that although Milarepa is well known Thöpaga (Thos-pa dga') is not, and how do you expect English speakers, who have no dierises (except in words like naiev where it has a different function) in their language to know what you mean by that diacritic.

p.s. I must be given some credit for not changing Gengis Khan to Činggis Qaɣan which is after all the correct spelling. --Nathan hill 13:45, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Okay, Nathan hill, you're being pedantic in calling the most common and widely accepted spellings "ad hoc" and "incorrect". After all, there are plenty of cases like this in Chinese too, like Hong Kong, Macau, Confucius, Mencius, Sun-tzu, even the name China itself! And I must note that Pinyin was promulgated, first by the PRC, then by other governments and agencies, as a universal system for spelling all Chinese names; it was accepted over time. But there has been no comparable effort made for Wylie.

You say that Milarepa, Thöpaga, even Genghis Khan are "incorrect" and "ad hoc", and that whatever linguistically based systems you're promulgating are "correct". But Milarepa, Genghis Khan etc. are the most commonly used spellings in the English language today. We're trying to communicate with our readers, and as long as Genghis Khan, Milarepa, and China are more common than Činggis Qaɣan, Mi-la-ras-pa and Zhongguo we will stick with these spellings. The systems that you advocate (Wylie, etc.) are only correct in a linguistic context.

So I've decided. I'm not going to support Wylie. Leave Wylie in brackets, it's useful. But replacing all conventional spellings with Wylie is not helpful. -- ran (talk) 17:37, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

I beleive that my own position is being slightly caricaturized. I have never argued that we should spell Gengis Khan as Činggis Qaɣan (in fact I pointed out that I had not argued that), and have specifically pointed out that I have never changed Dalai Lama to Tala'i Blama. I have no objection to your position in principle that well-established Tibetan names be transliterated as they are customarily in English.

This does leave you, and others with the difficult position of determining what is well established and what not. Dalai Lama and maybe even Shigatse are well established, but you must admit that most Tibetan persons, and most Tibetan places do not have well established spellings. How is one to decide in such cases? When there is not yet a well established spelling shouldn't it be better to use Wylie?--Nathan hill 10:05, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I put my position pretty well on the Milarepa page, so I reproduce it here, and by the way, yes most spellings you see floating around like Shigatse are based on Lhasa dialect. But there are of course important differences e.g. Lhasa has no voiced consonants, and has tones.

Doch, all academic papers on history, religion, and philosophy also use Wylie and only Wylie. It just so happens that fewer Anglophones read Tibetan than Chinese. While I agree that words that are well established yak, Dalai Lama, possible Milarepa, should be spelled as they are in English, the number of such words must be admitted to be no more than a dozen. Any one who claims that there is a well established spelling for Sangs-rgyas Rgya-mtsho in English is simply pulling my leg. Is it not better to use the Wylie before an erroneous spelling does in grain itself into English. --Nathan hill 13:52, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

There are many Tibetan words which have well-established English forms. Thinking of place-names alone, off the top of my head there's Lhasa, Shigatse, Gyantse, Sakya, U-Tsang, Amdo, Kailash, Namtso... Mark ¹ 03:55, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

First, I'd like to note that some people tend to missuse the terms transliteration and transcription. Wylie is a transliteration system, i.e., it was deviced to reproduce Tibetan spelling through the Roman alphabet, not it's actual pronunciation. As such, it is not meant to reflex pronunciation. On the other hand, Tournadre is a transliteration scheme, which means it was deviced to represent how words are pronounced, not how they are actually written. My point is that both systems convey different kinds of information, so both serve a different purpose. Using transliteration you can "deduce" the pronunciation (if you know how, but same thing happens if you come across a written French or German word), while a transcription don't allow you to get the spelling in a non-phonetic language.

After all, English is neither a fonetic language, so when someone encounters a new word he/she needs to know how to pronounce it. When I started learning French or English, my dictionaries had both spelling and IPA pronunciation for each word. Now, if you want to give an accurate pronunciation then my personal choice would be IPA: other transcription schemes aren't as "universal" as IPA, in the sense they usually relay on English conventions, or those of the receiving langage. But if you want to reach the layman, then probably you need something easier such as Tournadre transliteration. Any system of transliteration will have the same caveats: the lack of a official/standard Tibetan dialect. In my opinion Wylie transliteration should be given, toghether with some kind of "compromise" pronunciation.

Another issue is what to do with widely "accepted" spellings of places, people etc. Reverting to a "correct" form would be confusing, so I would keep it, but I would add the Wylie info too. --Xavier 14:05, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)

I am against Nathan's system because he, in an effort to spread his method of spelling has been removing the most common way of transliterating Tibetan into English in various articles. He doesn't even bother to put the most common way in parenthesis. People aren't going to know what the hell he's trying to say because he acts like everyone uses his system of transliteration. I suggest we should use both methods, with the "normal" way as the default and have Wylie in parenthesis. It's not really a debate of which way is "right", it is a matter of using the more common method. As you have probably noticed, Wikipedia tends to go with the spelling of things that are more common. The "correct" way to spell Tchaikovsky should be Chaikovsky. We spell it "ch," as in Chekov the author, Chernobyl the nuclear site, Chomsky the linguist, etc. However, people will be confused with that if we change the Tchaikovsky page and start spelling it Chaikovsky. Dbus-gtsang has only 492 Google hits. U-Tsang has 6,280. To everyone: We should try to change as many of Nathan Hill's contributions as we can in which he replaced various spellings with the Wylie system and also the contributions of this IP, which is probably Hill's Please led me know what you all think so we can get started right away. ---User:Hottentot

Certainly the usual English term, where there is one, should be used. I don't have any objection to adding Wylie in parenthesis (though maybe not on all occasions). Mark ¹ 02:54, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

--Nathan hill 08:15, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I tell you what, henceforth when I write or change an article in Wikipedia I will not remove any transliteration that already appear there. However, in new content I will use Wylie because I have no way of knowing how else to spell things. I would like to agree with Xavier and suggest that the Tournadre system be the default 'easy' system when the term in question has not become common enough to have an accepted English transliteration, this would of course require however that others use the Tournadre system and not simply write Tibetan as the spirit moves them. --Nathan hill 15:12, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

p.s. I still feel a need to emphasize that the Wylie system is in no way 'my' system, and in fact it is used in all English language academic publications about Tibet. --Nathan hill 15:12, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Tournadre System

Wait, would an example of the Tournadre system be Ü-Tsang while an example of the Wylie would be Dbus-gtsang? ---User:Hottentot

Usually the Tournadre system gives you what you expect Ü-Tsang for example, but it does have the advantage of being a system and thus being consistent, I suggest you read his presentation in L'Ergativite en Tibetain, pg. 58-63. --Nathan hill 08:15, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Actually, Nathan hill, can you provide us with some examples of the Tournadre system? Perhaps a three-way convention can be devised, the same that's done for Chinese right now (i.e pinyin/W.G./postal). Articles will be located in whichever name is most common, and all other systems will be provided as often and as clearly as is sufficient. What do you think? -- ran (talk) 02:02, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

Here are some examples, left is wylie, right is tournadre, but I have used double vowels instead of macrons to save time

ka kwa dka rka lka brka bska

kaa

kya dkya bkya rkya skya bskya brkya

kyaa

kra dkra bkra bska pra spra dpra

traa

kha khwa mkha 'kha

khaa

khya mkhya 'khya

khyaa

khra mkhra 'khra phra 'phra

thraa

he uses a macron for high tone, and an underline for low, but I think a good argument could be made for using voiced symbols for low tone and voiceless for high tone.

e.g. Rgya-mtsho in Tournadre is Kyatso with a line under the a. --Nathan hill 17:57, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

And now the trouble begins

1. Seizing upon my agreement to relegate Wylie to parentheses my esteemed colleague Mr. Hottentot has taken it upon himself to indiscriminantly revert my edits, whether or not the changes I made had to do with Wylie transcription or not. I can't help but feel picked on.

2. The trouble with History of Tibet, and indeed across Wikipedia now is that there is no consistency as to how a Tibetan word is spelled. Things that I have written are still in Wylie, and probably because no one else knows Tibetan they are not changed, and even when they are they are done incorrectly, e.g. Namri Songsten (Gnam-ri-slon-mtshan). The last two syllables of his name are pronounced (more or less) Löntsen and certainly not Songsten.

3. There is something uniquely irritating about, having found the idea of a free open source encylcopedia appealing, choosing to change it in those areas where I had some knowledge, having each of these changes undone and contested by people who have clearly no knowledge of the Tibetan language or Tibetan history. Indeed, one feels as if he has been slapped in the face for offering a helping hand. Apparently the community of Wikipedia users would rather have pious pontificating and political propoganda than anything resembling academic consensus, let alone the truth. Perhaps it doesn't go without saying, but I have things to do in life besides explain to people why the Tangut empire should be called so and not Western Xia, the fact that the Tanguts speak their own language and not Tibetan, the fact that Genghis Khan was never in Tibet. Is it too much to ask that if I have written something and cited an authority that if someone disagrees they consult the authority and come up with a counter-argument. Well, here is my resignation. --Nathan hill 12:49, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Admittedly, the next day I have shown little restraint, but I will keep trying. --Nathan hill 15:56, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

As I mentioned earlier, this is not the place to further your own campaigns as to what things "should" be called. We're only interested in what they are called. I'm sorry it's such a trial to work with the uneducated rabblement. Mark ¹ 01:44, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

At one time in America Nigger would have gotten more google hits than African American (had google existed). Thus, at that time you would no doubt have suggested that it was the only term to be approved for Wikipedia use, n'est pas. Vis-a-vis the name 'Tangut Empire' you can see my discussion on the relevant page.

As far as your other rather flip comment, there is nothing that stops other contributors to Tibet related subjects from reading, I am sure if I wrote that Genghis Khan invaded Costa Rica on the Costa Rica page, and kept reinserting it even when others had pointed out it wasn't true, that this would be found irritating. --Nathan hill 11:41, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

UN

Was Tibet a member of the United Nations prior to Chinese control? Meursault2004 10:47, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

No, and the People's Republic of China wasn't either until the 1970's. China's membership was held at the time by the Republic of China (i.e. Taiwan today), which claimed at the time Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner & Outer Mongolia, and Tuva. I'm not aware if Western countries accepted, rejected, or ignored the ROC's claims at the time, though here's a Finnish map from 1925 suggesting that the West accepted the ROC's claims. (I'm not trying to make any slanted statement here; after all, the West doesn't recognize Taiwan today either.) Also the ROC did use its veto to block the entry of Mongolia into the UN in 1955.

The ROC hasn't formally rescinded its claims, though those aren't usually taken seriously anymore. Image:&-20013;&-33775;&-27665;&-22283;&-20840;&-22294;.jpg shows the extent of the ROC's claims. -- ran (talk) 18:38, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)

So these facts made the matter more complicated. But a country doesn't need to be a member of the UN to be de facto independent and sovereign. Take Swiss for example. This country has just joined the UN relatively recently. Meursault2004 00:52, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Switzerland may not be the best analogy, because most countries of the world recognize it as a sovereign state, maintain embassies in Switzerland, etc. A better analogy (though probably still not the best one) would be Taiwan. Or how about Somaliland?

Perhaps someone with a better knowledge of recent Tibetan history can provide more information. -- ran (talk) 01:09, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

The only country to have ever officially recognized Tibetan independence was Mongolia, right after 1911. British India more or less treated Tibet as an independent country, but White Hall was always careful not to offend the Chinese, and relations between White Hall and Delhi were not so good on this point. In case any one cares, my own view is that Tibet was a part of the Qing empire, a multi-ethnic multi-national empire, and that the conception of the nation state when dealing with Tibetan history is anachronistic. The only country to really stick up for Tibet at the UN during the Chinese Invasion was (if memory serves) Nicuragua. --Nathan hill 10:13, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but actually, (I know this is not the UN), but during the Chinese invasion, the CIA secretly assisted the Tibetan resistance from 1956 to 1974. They helped train and arm the members of the resistance because is was during the Cold War and all. The operation was codenamed ST CIRCUS. Check out this video ---User:Hottentot

Problems with the first map

200px

Well, for starters, some factual errors / spelling errors, etc.:

The label for Assam isn't where Assam is actually located.
Kathmandu is misspelled.
Qinghai is misspelled.
Burma is labeled in French.
Lhasa is labeled in French.
The Gansu-Qinghai border is inaccurate. Not particularly useful for comparing the various borders in that area.

And now, some other things that I find to be inaccurate (my historical knowledge is probably inadequate, so please correct me if I'm wrong):

Blue marks "Historical Tibet".
This is the Historical Tibet as claimed by Dharamsala, but it's not the only claim. Chinese historical maps routinely include Arunachal Pradesh, Bhutan, Ladakh, and Sikkim as a part of historical Tibet. (No, not all of them were usually controlled directly from Lhasa, but peripheral areas of Amdo and Kham weren't either.) There was a Dalai Lama who came from Tawang, in Arunachal Pradesh. China still claims Arunachal Pradesh as a part of Tibet (and China). The fact that Arunachal was ceded by Tibet to British India in the Simla Conference of 1914 doesn't make it any less a part of "Historical" Tibet.
Red marks "Tibet between 1914 and 1950".
But how is that "Tibet between 1914 and 1950"? The line of control in Kham between Tibetan forces and Han Chinese warlords in Sichuan shifted constantly. It was at the Yangtze River at one point, and east of it at another. (The Haiwei Trails timeline is useful for this: look under the external links in the Tibet article). Sometimes Han Chinese forces exerted military control over regions where Tibetans continued to control the monasteries.

And that's just Kham. This article suggests that most of Amdo was a confusion of local Tibetans, Mongols, Kazakhs, and warlord Ma Bufang trying to impose control from Xining. I don't see how this area can be considered as a part of political Tibet during that period any more than political China, political Mongolia or political Kazakh SSR.
Green marks "Tibet since 1950".
Somewhat of a nitpick, but the area was actually divided between "Xizang Difang" (Tibet region) and "Changdu Diqu" (Chamdo territory) between 1951 and 1965.

-- ran (talk) 21:39, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Disputed areas with India should also be marked. =Nichalp «Talk»= 10:44, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

Actually, since the map's not PD and GFDL, it's not like we can "deface" the map or change it in any way... -- ran (talk) 21:44, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)

Might it be an idea to remove this page from the web at this time, rather than leaving it as it is.

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