Taktser

Taktser or Tengtser (Tibetan: སྟག་འཚེར།, ZYPY: Dagcêr; meaning 'Place on the Heights'") or Hongya Village (Chinese: 红崖村; pinyin: Hóngyá Cūn; lit. 'Redcliff Village') is a village in Shihuiyao Township, Ping'an District, Haidong, in the east of Qinghai province, China (also known as Amdo or Kokonor). Tibetan, Han and Hui Chinese people populate the village which is notable as the birthplace of the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso. Taktser was originally an area of pasture land for the larger village of Balangtsa, about two hours walk away in the valley. Cattle were brought to feed on the fertile grazing lands in summer, which caused them to give very rich milk. Later, when people realized that this was also a good place to farm, permanent houses were built, and the village comprised about thirty cottages by the time Tenzin Gyatso was born in 1935. The village is on the route from Xining, which was the seat of local Chinese government administration, to Labrang Tashi Khyi, the largest monastery in the area after the famous Kumbum Monastery. Taktser is the original Tibetan name of Hongya Village (红崖村; Hóngyá Cūn, Hongaizi in the local dialect), together with 13 other villages forming the Shihuiyao Township (石灰窑乡), of Ping'an County, in Haidong Prefecture. The brother of the 14th Dalai Lama Gyalo Thondup said that in 1710, a large part of Amdo had been incorporated into the Manchu empire as part of the region known as Qinghai. He also said that people speak a mixture of Tibetan and Qinghai Chinese language. Tibetan researcher Dr. Wang Xiaolin pointed out that at the end of the Ming Dynasty, most of people already spoke the Qinghai Chinese language, and only a very small amount of Tibetan vocabulary was involved. It was reported that the family of the 14th Dalai Lama spoke Chinese at home, and mother of the 14th Dalai Lama spent 2 years to learn the Tibetan language in Lhasa. Taktser is not, as it is usually taken to be, in the proximity of the Kumbum Monastery, rather it is approximately 27 kilometres (17 mi) east of the monastery, and around 26 kilometres (16 mi) southwest of the town of Ping'an (Chinese: 平安镇, Tibetan: Bayan khar), which is also the seat of the government for the county of the same name.