Tibetan Yak Tents

Every nomadic family has several yak hair tents with the function of anticorrosion, worm preventing, easily dismantling and removing. The black Yak tents generally have no adornment, but whenever people build a tent, they will hang up the sutra streamers to bless the grassland will be flourishing and beautiful and all the living creatures will be healthy and happy.

In hot weather, every yak tents tends to be loose and soft, letting the plain wind blowing through and keeping fresh and cool inside. While in cold weather, the tent becomes to be tight again, keeping wind and rain out. Those are the major characteristics of the yak Tent.

The black yak tent is just a huge sky mastiff (sky spider) resting in the vast plain. At the top of the tent there is a smoke passage symbolizing the highest mountain’s tallest gate, which is opened to an infinite space. For millions of years, the sun, the moon and stars has been crossing this place in their eternal orbits.

Tibetan Stone House

Village cottages in remote mountains and deep canyons are built up by stone slices that are connected with clay, and the gaps between the slices are filled with the crushed stone pieces. By this way, the stone houses are firm and tidy. Different from Baima Tibetan's tower house, whose shape is like the figure of Chinese character human (人), the tower house here has flat roof and three storeys. The first floor is the Buddha hall and a balcony at the north side.

There is a story about the tower house: Long, long ago, demons, subdued by the war god Gesar, gathered together and transformed to be the wind that carried sand and drove stones sweeping the whole plateau. Herdsmen's cattle and sheep, farmers' crops as well as the tents scattered everywhere always suffered terrible disasters. In order to rescue the common people in misery, the King Gesar sent the "Seven Stars brothers” to dig the soil and move the stones. The brothers constructed a high and firm tower house of three storeys just through the night, and then they told people that the first floor is for livestock, the second floor is the room of people and the third floor is the Buddha hall. From then on, herdsmen are no longer afraid of the terrible storm, and seven stars brother also have built such tower houses in every place of Tibetan area. When the bright Big Dipper gleaming in the clear night sky, the elders will smile and tell the children: look, the seven stars brothers are building houses for people again.