Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture (Aba Zangzu Qiangzu Zizhizhou)
The county of Wenchuan in Ngawa is the site of the epicenter of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, in which over 20,000 of its residents died and 40,000 were injured.
During the reign of Tibet's king Trisong Deutsen in the 8th century, the Gyalrong area was visited by the great translator Vairotsana.
In 1410 Je Tsongkhapa's student Tshakho Ngawang Tapa established the first Tibetan Buddhist Gelug school monastery in the area, called "Gyalrong".
In contemporary history, most of Ngawa was under the 16th Administrative Prefecture of Szechwan (四川省第十六行政督察區), which was established by the Republic of China (ROC).
The People's Republic of China defeated ROC troops in this area during Chinese Civil war and subsequently established a Tibetan autonomous prefecture by late 1952. It was renamed Aba Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in 1956 and Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture in 1987.
On May 12, 2008, a major earthquake occurred in Wenchuan County, a county in the southeastern part of this autonomous prefecture. 20,258 people were killed, 45,079 injured, 7,696 missing in the prefecture as of June 6, 2008.
In 2009, the town of Ngaba in Ngawa prefecture became the self-immolation capital of the world. Anne Fadiman, The Chinese Town That Became the Self-Immolation Capital of the World, (28 July 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/books/review/eat-the-buddha-barbara-demick.html ,''"In the 1930s, the Red Army brought famine; the local residents fought back with spears, flintlocks and muskets. In 1958, at the beginning of Mao’s Great Leap Forward, the Chinese government deposed a beloved regional king, forced the local people into collective farms, confiscated livestock, closed markets, requisitioned or destroyed the monasteries and beat or shot those who refused to fall in line. Thousands starved. Demick writes, 'Tibetans of this generation refer to this period simply as ngabgay — ’58. Like 9/11, it is shorthand for a catastrophe so overwhelming that words cannot express it, only the number.'"..."Ten years later, the people of Ngaba rose up in a bloody rebellion that ended with mass arrests and more than 50 deaths. During the late 1980s, Ngaba residents who made or posted fliers supporting the Dalai Lama — their spiritual leader, who had fled Tibet for India in 1959 — were imprisoned. In 2008, in another Ngaba uprising, at least a dozen people were killed."..."The cycle of resistance, crackdown, resistance, crackdown — with the crackdowns serving mainly as goads for further resistance — culminated when locals, most of them current or former monks from Ngaba’s Kirti Monastery, found a new and uniquely public way to protest Chinese rule and call for the return of the Dalai Lama. From 2008-2019, over 60 of Tibet’s 156 self-immolations have taken place in Ngaba. Many of the self-immolators have been the grandchildren of men who bore arms in earlier uprisings. 'The older generation produced the fighters,' Demick writes. 'The younger people, educated during the time of the 14th Dalai Lama, took his teachings about nonviolence to heart. They couldn’t bring themselves to kill anyone but themselves.'"'' From 2009 to 2019, more than 60 of Tibet's total 156 self-immolations occurred in Ngaba. By 2020, the town's entrances were barricaded and surveillance cameras installed, with some 50,000 security personnel for the town's population of 15,000.
In 2008, Aba county was stripped of its internet connections. Internet access in the prefecture remains severely restricted as of 2013.
Map - Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture (Aba Zangzu Qiangzu Zizhizhou)
Map
Country - China
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Modern Chinese trace their origins to a cradle of civilization in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. The semi-legendary Xia dynasty in the 21st century BCE and the well-attested Shang and Zhou dynasties developed a bureaucratic political system to serve hereditary monarchies, or dynasties. Chinese writing, Chinese classic literature, and the Hundred Schools of Thought emerged during this period and influenced China and its neighbors for centuries to come. In the third century BCE, Qin's wars of unification created the first Chinese empire, the short-lived Qin dynasty. The Qin was followed by the more stable Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), which established a model for nearly two millennia in which the Chinese empire was one of the world's foremost economic powers. The empire expanded, fractured, and reunified; was conquered and reestablished; absorbed foreign religions and ideas; and made world-leading scientific advances, such as the Four Great Inventions: gunpowder, paper, the compass, and printing. After centuries of disunity following the fall of the Han, the Sui (581–618) and Tang (618–907) dynasties reunified the empire. The multi-ethnic Tang welcomed foreign trade and culture that came over the Silk Road and adapted Buddhism to Chinese needs. The early modern Song dynasty (960–1279) became increasingly urban and commercial. The civilian scholar-officials or literati used the examination system and the doctrines of Neo-Confucianism to replace the military aristocrats of earlier dynasties. The Mongol invasion established the Yuan dynasty in 1279, but the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) re-established Han Chinese control. The Manchu-led Qing dynasty nearly doubled the empire's territory and established a multi-ethnic state that was the basis of the modern Chinese nation, but suffered heavy losses to foreign imperialism in the 19th century.
Currency / Language
| ISO | Currency | Symbol | Significant figures |
|---|---|---|---|
| CNY | Renminbi | ¥ or 元 | 2 |
| ISO | Language |
|---|---|
| ZH | Chinese language |
| UG | Uighur language |
| ZA | Zhuang language |