The photo shows Shideling monastery in 1940s before the ruins
Photo: High Peaks Pure Earth
A 1,200-year-old monastery in Lhasa is to be restored to its original layout and style.
Shideling Monastery was once an important monastery located in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, under the Regent Rating Rinpoche. It was destroyed and looted during the invasion of Tibet in the 1950s and again during the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s. It is now to be repaired and restored by the Chinese government at a cost of $2.28 million (£1.6 million).
Xinhua, the Chinese state-run news agency, has reported that the work will be outsourced to a specialist local architectural company and that the restoration will be based on old photographs. A specialist will be assigned to protect the wall paintings during the repair. An official of the region’s Cultural Relics Bureau is quoted as saying that the work is expected to start at the end of March this year.
The Shideling monastery was founded in the ninth century and later renovated and expanded by the second Reting Rinpoche in the 18th century. It became one of the main residencies of successive Reting Rinpoches in Lhasa until the death of the fifth Reting Reponche in 1947.
Chinese Communist Party propaganda has claimed that the monastery was damaged and burnt down during a political dispute between Reting and Taktra [who took over the Regent’s position in 1941] over political and religious affairs in the wake of the death of the 13th Dalai Lama and before what the Chinese call their “Peaceful liberation of Tibet”.
The photo of Shideling monastery was taken in 2012
Photo:High Peaks Pure Earth
Tsering Woeser, the influential Tibetan activist, blogger, poet and essayist in China, has revealed in her blog [translated by High Peaks Pure Earth] that historical events show how Shideling monastery was turned into a battle ground by the Chinese red guards during the Chinese invasion of Lhasa in 1959. She quotes a well-known ethnologist who is a former student red guard from the 1960’s and who has said that Shideling became a battleground where hand grenades and machine gun bullets reduced the five-storey Buddhist palace to a ruin. He said he saw monks arrested or murdered and empty rooms there occupied by the People’s Liberation Army.
After the Chinese invasion of Tibet Shideling monastery was one of thousands of monasteries destroyed and looted during the Cultural Revolution. Many have been renovated voluntarily by the general public and devotees of Tibetan Buddhism, but many remain destroyed.
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