23 Facts About Amdo

Amdo encompasses a large area from the Machu to the Drichu.

Amdo is mostly coterminous with China's present-day Qinghai province, but includes small portions of Sichuan and Gansu provinces.

Historically, culturally, and ethnically a part of Tibet, Amdo was from the mid-18th century and after administered by a series of local Tibetan rulers.

From 1917 to 1928, much of Amdo was occupied intermittently by the Hui Muslim warlords of the Ma clique.

In 1928, the Ma Clique joined the Kuomintang, and during the period from 1928 to 1949, much of Amdo was gradually assimilated into the Qinghai province of the Kuomintang Republic of China.

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Tibetan guerilla forces in Amdo emerged in 1956 and continued operating through the 1959 Tibetan uprising until 1962, fighting the People's Liberation Army and harsh Chinese land reform policies.

Amdo is the home of many important Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leaders and of lamas, monks, nuns, and scholars, including the 14th Dalai Lama, the 10th Panchen Lama Choekyi Gyaltsen, and the great Gelug school reformer Je Tsongkhapa.

Today, ethnic Tibetans predominate in the western and southern parts of Amdo, which are now administered as various Tibetan, Tibetan-Qiang, or Mongol-Tibetan autonomous prefectures.

Mongols too have been long-term settlers in Amdo, arriving first during the time of Genghis Khan, but particularly in a series of settlement waves during the Ming period.

Amdo has been famous in epic story and in history as a land where splendid horses are raised and run wild.

The original inhabitants of the Amdo region were the forest-dwellers, the mountain-dwellers, the plains-dwellers, the grass-men, and the woodsmen.

Amdo was taught as a child and showed amazing enthusiasm for the religion.

Amdo spent his later years at Sakya Monastery in Central Tibet, which required that he travel through Amdo regularly.

On one of these trips, he encountered armed resistance in Amdo and required escorts from Mongol Princes to travel through Amdo.

Power struggles among various Mongol factions in Tibet and Amdo led to a period alternating between the supremacy of the Dalai Lama and Mongol overlords.

Amdo spent a year resting and learning among other things Sanskrit and poetry.

Amdo saw numerous powerful leaders including both secular and non.

Amdo's forces were praised by foreigners who traveled through Qinghai for their fighting abilities.

From that point until 1949, much of the rest of Amdo was gradually assimilated into the Kuomintang Chinese provincial system, with the major portion of it becoming nominally part of Qinghai province and a smaller portion becoming part of Gansu province.

Tibetan region of Lho-Jang and Gyarong in Kham, and Ngapa and Golok in Amdo, were still independent of Chinese hegemony, despite the creation on paper of Qinghai Province in 1927.

Amdo demanded a ransom of 300,000 dollars, which was paid and then he escorted the young boy to Tibet.

Amdo was traditionally a place of great learning and scholarship and contains many great monasteries including Kumbum Monastery near Xining, Rongwo Monastery in Rebgong, Labrang Monastery south of Lanzhou, and the Kirti Gompas of Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture and Taktsang Lhamo in Dzoge County.

The economy of Amdo of has been constant throughout history and has changed little in the modern time.