"There is no Tibetan without yaks, and wherever there are Tibetans, there are yaks." - Tibetan proverb
Special "Yak" Museum
Yak, known as Yak in Tibetan, has a history of more than 40,000 years, and humans have been domesticating yaks for thousands of years.
It is mainly distributed in the surrounding countries and regions of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, of which China's yak accounts for more than 92% of the total number of yaks in the world, mainly distributed in Qinghai, Tibet, Sichuan, Gansu, Xinjiang, Yunnan and other places.
Yaks are mammals living at the highest altitudes in the world and the most important friend of the Tibetan people for thousands of years.
On the south bank of the Lhasa River, far from the old city of Lhasa, there is a special museum dedicated to yaks, the Tibetan Yak Museum.
It is the only yak-themed museum on the mainland, which opened in 2014 and houses thousands of pieces. It is worth mentioning that half of the collection here is donated by the local people, which is the largest in The country.
The treasure of the town hall is cow dung
The Yak Museum is mainly divided into three main exhibition halls of natural science, history and humanities, and spiritual art, and when you enter the hall on the first floor of the Yak Museum, the first thing that catches your eye is the "Tibetan Yak Museum" inscribed by the Panchen Lama in Chinese, Tibetan and English.
On the ceiling on the first floor is a huge mural depicting Tibetans sharing a face with a yak, implying the inseparable relationship between the yak and the Tibetan people.
For thousands of years, yaks have indeed accompanied the Tibetan people, influencing the Tibetan people's clothing, food, housing, transportation and other aspects.
For example, yak is the most important means of transportation in the plateau; yak is the source of nutrition for the Tibetan people; yak milk is the main ingredient for making ghee; yak hair is the best textile raw material; yak skin is the best leather raw material; yak horn and yak bone, some are made into milking containers, some are made into bone needle tools, and some are carved into religious instruments.
There is also yak dung, you can't imagine, the treasure of the yak museum is cow dung. In the museum, there is a cow dung wall specially built by herders, which is probably the lowest value of all the town museums in the country, but as the most important fuel in Tibetan areas, it has warmed the local people for generations and has the heaviest significance.
In addition, you can enjoy various aesthetic cultures such as carvings, paintings, and poems about yaks in the museum, as well as religious and philosophical cultures about yaks.
Half of the collection was donated by the people
There are many unique thematic museums on the mainland, and the Yak Museum is one of the best.
The Tibetan Yak Museum is an important project of Beijing municipal support for Lhasa, and its founder and first director, Mr. Wu Yuchu, was also a cadre of Beijing aid to Tibet at that time, working and living in Tibet for more than 20 years, and dedicated his life to the snowy plateau.
It is said that when he was working in Tibet, Wu Yuchu was trapped by a blizzard for 5 days and 4 nights, and the rescue car and horse team at that time were caught in the snow, and finally changed into yaks to arrive.
"It was the yak that saved our lives." Mr. Wu Yuchu said that this was the reason for his creation of the Yak Museum.
Since there is no modern word for museum in Tibetan, the Yak Museum was translated as "Yappo Zhang", which means "Yak Palace", and as a result, Tibetans all enthusiastically donated their own "rare treasures" related to yaks.
About 50% of the existing collection of the Tibetan Yak Museum was donated by the local people free of charge, which may be unique among Chinese museums.