Chamdo

Chamdo lies in eastern Tibet at the meeting of the Ngom and Dzha rivers, whose waters join to form the upper Mekong. High mountains, narrow valleys and difficult passes divide the surrounding Kham country into separate local worlds. The town commanded one of the principal routes between Sichuan, Yunnan and central Tibet, a natural place for exchange even when authority was split among monasteries, chiefs and larger states.

Above the confluence stands Jampaling Monastery, founded by Shangsheng Sherab Zangpo, a disciple of Tsongkhapa, whose own disciple dated the foundation to 1444, although later writers prefer 1437. It was the first great Gelug monastery in Kham and drew Gelug teaching across the whole region. From 1594 its abbots were a line of incarnate lamas called Phagpalha, and in 1676 the fifth of them set up the ruling office that made the monastery the governor of Chamdo, with dozens of dependent monasteries and thousands of households. Caravans carried tea, medicinal herbs, musk, wool and hides across the high roads.

After the Qing intervened in Tibet, Chamdo became a station on the road from Sichuan to Lhasa. In 1719 the Kangxi Emperor granted the sixth Phagpalha a title and a copper seal, after the monastery helped a survey party sent to the Gangdise range, and in 1725 he again served the Qing army. The seventh Phagpalha built a temple for the eightieth birthday of the Qianlong Emperor, who in 1791 wrote its name board, Zhuli Si, the Temple of Celebration.