In Lhasa, Tibet, in a bookstore near the Potala Palace, a world cultural heritage site, 8-year-old Tashi Wangdan sits quietly in a corner of the children's reading area, flipping through an exquisite Chinese-Tibetan contrast comic strip. On the page, on the beautiful Huaguo Mountain, the clever and brave monkey king Sun Wukong is practicing martial arts with thousands of little monkeys. Tashi Wandan reveled in the wonderful world of Journey to the West.
The "Journey to the West Story" in the hands of Tashi Wangdan is one of the series of books in the Sino-Tibetan Translation and Chinese Excellent Traditional Culture Inheritance and Publishing Project.
Cai Rang Dorje, director of the Education Editorial Office of the Tibet People's Publishing House, introduced that since 2016, in order to enrich the children's book market in Tibet and inherit and develop the excellent traditional Chinese culture, with the support of the special fund for the publication of national characters, the Tibet People's Publishing House and the Shanghai People's Fine Arts Publishing House have jointly published 69 kinds of children's comic strip books, which have been widely praised by Tibetan children and grass-roots farmers and herdsmen readers.
Students in the lower grades of Zhongsha Township Central Primary School in Gongbujiangda County, Nyingchi City, Tibet read books in the school library (photo taken in April 2018). Xinhua News Agency
Since the peaceful liberation of Tibet, the right of the masses of all ethnic groups on the plateau to education has been guaranteed, and the literary creation of Tibetan children has ushered in a new opportunity for development.
According to relevant information, in the early 1960s, excellent books such as "100,000 Whys" were translated into minority languages such as Tibetan. Subsequently, chinese and foreign outstanding children's works such as "Chinese Children's Encyclopedia", "Grimm's Fairy Tales", "Andersen's Fairy Tales" and so on have been translated into Tibetan and published. In addition, Tibetan novels and children's books about the excellent traditional culture of the Tibetan people have also increased year by year.
In the children's reading room of the Tibet Autonomous Region Library, parents and children read picture books together (photo taken in February 2018). Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Jigme Dorjee
Since the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Tibet's public cultural services have made all-round progress, and the press and publication industry has developed rapidly.
It is understood that in the past five years, Tibet has published more than 2,500 kinds of Tibetan books. As of December 2021, a total of 6 155 Tibetan books in Tibet have received more than 15 million yuan in funding from the State Publishing Fund, and 619 Tibetan books in 45 projects have received nearly 50 million yuan from the National Special Fund for Ethnic Character Publishing.
Walk into the bookstores, children's bookstores, libraries in Lhasa, as far as the eye can see, all the Chinese, Tibetan, English and trilingual editions of books, "Hungry Caterpillar", "Harry Potter", "Shakespeare"... A world-renowned picture book has opened the door to the world for highland children.
"Recently, the child is still listening to the complete sherlock Holmes online." Tashi Wangdan's father said that physical bookstores, online bookstores, mobile phone clients tell stories, and the children's book market under the multicultural ecology has greatly enriched the reading of children in the plateau.
Reporters: Chun La, Lü Qiuping, Liu Zhoupeng
Editors: Liao Yi, Luan Ruohui