Bairi Tibetan Autonomous County (Tibetan: དཔའ་རིས་བོད་རང་སྐྱོང་རྫོང༌།), also known as Tianzhu from its Chinese name (Chinese: 天祝藏族自治县), is in the prefecture-level city of Wuwei in the central part of Gansu province, China, bordering Qinghai province to the south and west. It has an area of 7,147 km2 (2,759 sq mi) and approximately 230,000 inhabitants (2003). Its administrative seat is Rabgyai Town (Huazangsi).
Name
The Chinese name "Tianzhu" was named by a Tibetan lama Luo Haoxue (罗好学) in 1936, deriving from the combination of "Tiantang" (天堂寺, aka Chortentang Monastery) and "Zhugong" (祝贡寺, aka Drigung Monastery), the Chinese translation of the two largest lamaseries in the county.[2]
The Tibetan name Bairi (དཔའ་རིས།) is pronounced Bairi in Standard Tibetan, and pronounced Hwari in the local Amdo Tibetan and Huarui (华锐) in Chinese.[3]
An alternative Tibetan name is Tenzhu (ཐེན་ཀྲུའུ།), which is a transcription of the Chinese name Tianzhu.
History
The county was established as the Tianzhu District of Yongdeng County in 1949, but became an autonomous county of Wuwei in the next year. In 1955, Tianzhu was moved under the administration of Zhangye as the first autonomous county in China.[3] Between 1958 and 1961, Gulang County was part of Tianzhu. In 1961 the county was placed under Wuwei again.[4]
The county is mountainous, being located at the tripoint of the Tibet Plateau, the Loess Plateau and the Inner Mongolia Plateau, with elevations ranging from 2040 m to 4874 m. It is divided into the watersheds of the Shiyang River and the Yellow River and crossed by the Wushao Mountain. South of the Wushao Mountain, the climate is continental and north of it, the climate is semi-arid. The land is mostly covered by grasslands and forests.[4]
Climate
Climate data for Bairi, elevation 2,485 m (8,153 ft), (1991–2020 normals)
Lanzhou–Xinjiang Railway crosses the county, with a station (Tianzhu) in the county seat. With the construction of the Wushaoling Tunnel under the Wushao Mountain Range (Wushaoling), about the half of the section of the main track of this railway within this county is actually underground.
A. Gruschke: The Cultural Monuments of Tibet’s Outer Provinces: Amdo - Volume 2. The Gansu and Sichuan Parts of Amdo, White Lotus Press, Bangkok 2001. ISBN974-480-049-6
Tsering Shakya: The Dragon in the Land of Snows. A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947, London 1999, ISBN0-14-019615-3
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