Russian Far East
The Russian Far East comprises the Russian part of the Far East, the eastermost territory of Russia, between Lake Baikal in Eastern Siberia and the Pacific Ocean. The Far Eastern Federal District shares land borders with Mongolia, the People's Republic of China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to its south, shares maritime borders with Japan to its southeast and with the United States to its northeast. Although geographically part of Siberia, the Russian Far East is categorized separately from the Siberian Federal District to its west in Russian geographical schemes. In Russia, the region is referred to as just "Far East". What is known in English as the Far East is referred to as "the Asia-Pacific Region", or "East Asia". Beyenchime-Salaatin crater Klyuchevskaya Sopka volcano Kuril–Kamchatka Trench Lake Baikal Manchurian wapiti Siberian musk deer Amur leopard Amur tiger Asian black bear Brown bear Polar bear Picea obovata Pinus pumila Russia reached the Pacific coast in 1647 with the establishment of Okhotsk, consolidated its control over the Russian Far East in the 19th century, after the annexation of part of Chinese Manchuria.
Primorskaya Oblast was established as a separate administrative division of the Russian Empire in 1856, with its administrative center at Khabarovsk. Several entities with the name "Far East" had existed in the first half of the 20th century, all with rather different boundaries: 1920–1922: the Far Eastern Republic, which included Transbaikal, Amur and Kamchatka Oblasts and northern Sakhalin; until 2000, the Russian Far East lacked defined boundaries. A single term "Siberia and the Far East" was used to refer to Russia's regions east of the Urals without drawing a clear distinction between "Siberia" and "the Far East". In 2000, Russia's federal subjects were grouped into larger federal districts, the Far Eastern Federal District was created, comprising Amur Oblast, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Kamchatka Oblast with Koryak Autonomous Okrug, Khabarovsk Krai, Magadan Oblast, Primorsky Krai, the Sakha Republic, Sakhalin Oblast. In November 2018, Zabaykalsky Krai and the Republic of Buryatia were added being considered part of the Siberian Federal District.
Since 2000, the term "Far East" has been used in Russia to refer to the federal district, though it is also used more loosely. Defined by the boundaries of the federal district, the Far East has an area of 6.2 million square kilometres —over one-third of Russia's total area. Russia in the early 1900s persistently sought a warm water port on the Pacific Ocean for the navy as well as to facilitate maritime trade; the established Pacific seaport of Vladivostok was operational only during the summer season, but Port Arthur in Manchuria was operational all year. After the First Sino-Japanese War and the failure of the 1903 negotiations between Japan and the Tsars's government, Japan chose war to protect its domination of Korea and adjacent territories. Russia, saw war as a means of distracting its populace from government repression and of rallying patriotism in the aftermath of several general strikes. Japan issued a declaration of war on 8 February 1904. However, three hours before Japan's declaration of war was received by the Russian Government, the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the Russian Far East Fleet at Port Arthur.
Eight days Russia declared war on Japan. The war ended in September 1905 with a Japanese victory following the fall of Port Arthur and the failed Russian invasion of Japan through the Korean Peninsula and Northeast China; the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed and both Japan and Russia agreed to evacuate Manchuria and return its sovereignty to China, but Japan was allowed to lease the Liaodong Peninsula, the Russian rail system in southern Manchuria with its access to strategic resources. Japan received the southern half of the Island of Sakhalin from Russia. Russia was forced to confiscate land from Korean settlers who formed the majority of Primorsky Krai's population due to a fear of an invasion of Korea and ousting of Japanese troops by Korean guerrillas. Between 1937 and 1939, the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin deported over 200,000 Koreans to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, fearing that the Koreans might act as spies for Japan. Many Koreans died on the way in cattle trains due to illness, or freezing conditions.
Many community leaders were purged and executed, Koryo-saram were not allowed to travel outside of Central Asia for the next 15 years. Koreans were not allowed to use the Korean language and its use began to become lost with the involvement of Koryo-mar and the use of Russian. Development of numerous remote locations relied on GULAG labour camps during Stalin's rule in the region's northern half. After that, the large-scale use of forced labour waned and was superseded by volunteer employees attracted by high wages. During the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the Soviets occupied Bolshoy Ussuriysky Island, Yinlong Island, several adjacent islets to separate the city of Khabarovsk from the territory controlled by a hostile power. Indeed, Japan turned its military interests to Soviet territories. Conflicts between the Jap
Himalayas
The Himalayas, or Himalaya, form a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has many including the highest, Mount Everest; the Himalayas include over fifty mountains exceeding 7,200 m in elevation, including ten of the fourteen 8,000-metre peaks. By contrast, the highest peak outside Asia is 6,961 m tall. Lifted by the subduction of the Indian tectonic plate under the Eurasian Plate, the Himalayan mountain range runs west-northwest to east-southeast in an arc 2,400 km long, its western anchor, Nanga Parbat, lies just south of the northernmost bend of Indus river. Its eastern anchor, Namcha Barwa, is just west of the great bend of the Yarlung Tsangpo River; the Himalayan range is bordered on the northwest by the Hindu Kush ranges. To the north, the chain is separated from the Tibetan Plateau by a 50–60 km wide tectonic valley called the Indus-Tsangpo Suture. Towards the south the arc of the Himalaya is ringed by the low Indo-Gangetic Plain.
The range varies in width from 350 km in the west to 150 km in the east. The Himalayas are distinct from the other great ranges of central Asia, although sometimes the term'Himalaya' is loosely used to include the Karakoram and some of the other ranges; the Himalayas are inhabited by 52.7 million people, are spread across five countries: Nepal, Bhutan and Pakistan. Some of the world's major rivers – the Indus, the Ganges and the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra – rise in the Himalayas, their combined drainage basin is home to 600 million people; the Himalayas have a profound effect on the climate of the region, helping to keep the monsoon rains on the Indian plain and limiting rainfall on the Tibetan plateau. The Himalayas have profoundly shaped the cultures of the Indian subcontinent; the name of the range derives from himá and ā-laya. They are now known as the "Himalaya Mountains" shortened to the "Himalayas", they were described in the singular as the Himalaya. This was previously transcribed Himmaleh, as in Emily Dickinson's poetry and Henry David Thoreau's essays.
The mountains are known as the Himālaya in Nepali and Hindi, the Himalaya or'The Land of Snow' in Tibetan, the Hamaleh Mountain Range in Urdu and the Ximalaya Mountain Range in Chinese. In the middle of the great curve of the Himalayan mountains lie the 8,000 m peaks of Dhaulagiri and Annapurna in Nepal, separated by the Kali Gandaki Gorge; the gorge splits the Himalayas into Western and Eastern sections both ecologically and orographically – the pass at the head of the Kali Gandaki, the Kora La is the lowest point on the ridgeline between Everest and K2. To the east of Annapurna are the 8,000 m peaks of Manaslu and across the border in Tibet, Shishapangma. To the south of these lies Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal and the largest city in the Himalayas. East of the Kathmandu Valley lies valley of the Bhote/Sun Kosi river which rises in Tibet and provides the main overland route between Nepal and China – the Araniko Highway/China National Highway 318. Further east is the Mahalangur Himal with four of the world's six highest mountains, including the highest: Cho Oyu, Everest and Makalu.
The Khumbu region, popular for trekking, is found here on the south-western approaches to Everest. The Arun river drains the northern slopes of these mountains, before turning south and flowing through the range to the east of Makalu. In the far east of Nepal, the Himalayas rise to the Kanchenjunga massif on the border with India, the third highest mountain in the world, the most easterly 8,000 m summit and the highest point of India; the eastern side of Kanchenjunga is in the Indian state of Sikkim. An independent Kingdom, it lies on the main route from India to Lhasa, which passes over the Nathu La pass into Tibet. East of Sikkim lies the ancient Buddhist Kingdom of Bhutan; the highest mountain in Bhutan is Gangkhar Puensum, a strong candidate for the highest unclimbed mountain in the world. The Himalayas here are becoming rugged with forested steep valleys; the Himalayas continue, turning northeast, through the Indian State of Arunachal Pradesh as well as Tibet, before reaching their easterly conclusion in the peak of Namche Barwa, situated in Tibet inside the great bend of the Yarlang Tsangpo river.
On the other side of the Tsangpo, to the east, are the Kangri Garpo mountains. The high mountains to the north of the Tsangpo including Gyala Peri, are sometimes included in the Himalayas. Going west from Dhaulagiri, Western Nepal is somewhat remote and lacks major high mountains, but is home to Rara Lake, the largest lake in Nepal; the Karnali River cuts through the center of the region. Further west, the border with India follows the Sarda River and provides a trade route into China, where on the Tibetan plateau lies the high peak of Gurla Mandhata. Just across Lake Manasarovar from this lies the sacred Mount Kailash, which stands close to the source of the four main rivers of Himalayas and is revered in Hinduism, Sufism and Bonpo. In the newly created Indian state of Uttarkhand, the Himalayas rise again as the Garhwal Himalayas with the high peaks of Nanda Devi and Kamet; the state is an important pilgrimage destination, with
Ancient Greek
The Ancient Greek language includes the forms of Greek used in Ancient Greece and the ancient world from around the 9th century BCE to the 6th century CE. It is roughly divided into the Archaic period, Classical period, Hellenistic period, it is succeeded by medieval Greek. Koine is regarded as a separate historical stage of its own, although in its earliest form it resembled Attic Greek and in its latest form it approaches Medieval Greek. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classic and earlier periods included several regional dialects. Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians and philosophers, it has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language, divided into many dialects; the main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic, Aeolic and Doric, many of them with several subdivisions.
Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms used in literature, while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are several historical forms. Homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek used in the epic poems, the "Iliad" and "Odyssey", in poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects; the origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period, they differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek, but its relationship to the historical dialects and the historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not than 1120 BCE, at the time of the Dorian invasion—and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BCE.
The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to the historical Dorians. The invasion is known to have displaced population to the Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians; the Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people—Dorians and Ionians, each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, Cypriot, far from the center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-west Greek is the strongest marked and earliest division, with non-west in subsets of Ionic-Attic and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Non-west is called East Greek. Arcadocypriot descended more from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age.
Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect. Thessalian had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek, spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric, Southern Peloponnesus Doric, Northern Peloponnesus Doric; the Lesbian dialect was Aeolic Greek. All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, these colonies developed local characteristics under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects; the dialects outside the Ionic group are known from inscriptions, notable exceptions being: fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos, in Aeolian, the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar and other lyric poets in Doric.
After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BCE, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed based on Attic Greek, but with influence from other dialects. This dialect replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language, spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek. By about the 6th century CE, the Koine had metamorphosized into Medieval Greek. Ancient Macedonian was an Indo-European language at least related to Greek, but its exact relationship is unclear because of insufficient data: a dialect of Greek; the Macedonian dialect (or l
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies off the eastern coast of the Asian continent and stretches from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and the Philippine Sea in the south; the kanji that make up Japan's name mean "sun origin", it is called the "Land of the Rising Sun". Japan is a stratovolcanic archipelago consisting of about 6,852 islands; the four largest are Honshu, Hokkaido and Shikoku, which make up about ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area and are referred to as home islands. The country is divided into 47 prefectures in eight regions, with Hokkaido being the northernmost prefecture and Okinawa being the southernmost one; the population of 127 million is the world's tenth largest. 90.7 % of people live in cities. About 13.8 million people live in the capital of Japan. The Greater Tokyo Area is the most populous metropolitan area in the world with over 38 million people. Archaeological research indicates; the first written mention of Japan is in Chinese history texts from the 1st century AD.
Influence from other regions China, followed by periods of isolation from Western Europe, has characterized Japan's history. From the 12th century until 1868, Japan was ruled by successive feudal military shōguns who ruled in the name of the Emperor. Japan entered into a long period of isolation in the early 17th century, ended in 1853 when a United States fleet pressured Japan to open to the West. After nearly two decades of internal conflict and insurrection, the Imperial Court regained its political power in 1868 through the help of several clans from Chōshū and Satsuma – and the Empire of Japan was established. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, victories in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and World War I allowed Japan to expand its empire during a period of increasing militarism; the Second Sino-Japanese War of 1937 expanded into part of World War II in 1941, which came to an end in 1945 following the Japanese surrender. Since adopting its revised constitution on May 3, 1947, during the occupation led by SCAP, the sovereign state of Japan has maintained a unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy with an Emperor and an elected legislature called the National Diet.
Japan is a member of the ASEAN Plus mechanism, UN, the OECD, the G7, the G8, the G20, is considered a great power. Its economy is the world's third-largest by nominal GDP and the fourth-largest by purchasing power parity, it is the world's fourth-largest exporter and fourth-largest importer. Japan benefits from a skilled and educated workforce. Although it has renounced its right to declare war, Japan maintains a modern military with the world's eighth-largest military budget, used for self-defense and peacekeeping roles. Japan is a developed country with a high standard of living and Human Development Index, its population enjoys the highest life expectancy and third lowest infant mortality rate in the world, but is experiencing issues due to an aging population and low birthrate. Japan is renowned for its historical and extensive cinema, influential music industry, video gaming, rich cuisine and its major contributions to science and modern technology; the Japanese word for Japan is 日本, pronounced Nihon or Nippon and means "the origin of the sun".
The character nichi means "sun" or "day". The compound therefore means "origin of the sun" and is the source of the popular Western epithet "Land of the Rising Sun"; the earliest record of the name Nihon appears in the Chinese historical records of the Tang dynasty, the Old Book of Tang. At the end of the seventh century, a delegation from Japan requested that Nihon be used as the name of their country; this name may have its origin in a letter sent in 607 and recorded in the official history of the Sui dynasty. Prince Shōtoku, the Regent of Japan, sent a mission to China with a letter in which he called himself "the Emperor of the Land where the Sun rises"; the message said: "Here, I, the emperor of the country where the sun rises, send a letter to the emperor of the country where the sun sets. How are you". Prior to the adoption of Nihon, other terms such as Yamato and Wakoku were used; the term Wa is a homophone of Wo 倭, used by the Chinese as a designation for the Japanese as early as the third century Three Kingdoms period.
Another form of Wa, Wei in Chinese) was used for an early state in Japan called Nakoku during the Han dynasty. However, the Japanese disliked some connotation of Wa 倭, it was therefore replaced with the substitute character Wa, meaning "togetherness, harmony"; the English word Japan derives from the historical Chinese pronunciation of 日本. The Old Mandarin or early Wu Chinese pronunciation of Japan was recorded by Marco Polo as Cipangu. In modern Shanghainese, a Wu dialect, the pronunciation of characters 日本; the old Malay word for Japan, Japun or Japang, was borrowed from a southern coastal Chinese dialect Fukienese or Ningpo – and this Malay word was encountered by Portuguese traders in Southeast Asia in the 16th century. These Early Portuguese traders brought the word
Hubei
Hubei is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the Central China region. The name of the province means "north of the lake", referring to its position north of Dongting Lake; the provincial capital is Wuhan, a major transportation thoroughfare and the political and economic hub of Central China. Hubei is abbreviated to "鄂", an ancient name associated with the eastern part of the province since the State of E of the Western Zhou dynasty, while a popular name for Hubei is "楚", after the powerful State of Chu that existed in the area during the Eastern Zhou dynasty, it borders Henan to the north, Anhui to the east, Jiangxi to the southeast, Hunan to the south, Chongqing to the west, Shaanxi to the northwest. The high-profile Three Gorges Dam is located in the west of the province; the Hubei region was home to sophisticated Neolithic cultures. By the Spring and Autumn period, the territory of today's Hubei was part of the powerful State of Chu. Chu was nominally a tributary state of the Zhou dynasty, it was itself an extension of the Chinese civilization that had emerged some centuries before in the north.
During the Warring States period Chu became the major adversary of the upstart State of Qin to the northwest, which began to assert itself by outward expansionism. As wars between Qin and Chu ensued, Chu lost more and more land: first its dominance over the Sichuan Basin its heartland, which correspond to modern Hubei. In 223 BC Qin chased down the remnants of the Chu regime, which had fled eastwards, as part of Qin's bid for the conquest of all China. Qin founded the Qin dynasty in the first unified state in the region. Qin was succeeded by the Han dynasty in 206 BC, which established the province of Jingzhou in what is now Hubei and Hunan; the Qin and Han played an active role in the agricultural colonization of Hubei, maintaining a system of river dikes to protect farmland from summer floods. Towards the end of the Han dynasty in the beginning of the 3rd century, Jingzhou was ruled by regional warlord Liu Biao. After his death, Liu Biao's realm was surrendered by his successors to Cao Cao, a powerful warlord who had conquered nearly all of north China.
Liu Bei took control of Jingzhou. The incursion of northern nomadic peoples into the region at the beginning of the 4th century began nearly three centuries of division into a nomad-ruled north and a Han Chinese-ruled south. Hubei, to the South, remained under southern rule for this entire period, until the unification of China by the Sui dynasty in 589. In 617 the Tang dynasty replaced Sui, on the Tang dynasty placed what is now Hubei under several circuits: Jiangnanxi Circuit in the south. After the Tang dynasty disintegrated in the 10th century, Hubei came under the control of several regional regimes: Jingnan in the center, Wu to the east, the Five Dynasties to the north; the Song dynasty reunified the region in 982 and placed most of Hubei into Jinghubei Circuit, a longer version of Hubei's current name. Mongols conquered the region in 1279, under their rule the province of Huguang was established, covering Hubei and parts of Guangdong and Guangxi. During the Mongol rule, in 1334, Hubei was devastated by an outbreak of the Black Death, striking England and Italy by June 1348, which according to Chinese sources spread during the following three centuries to decimate populations throughout Eurasia.
The Ming dynasty drove out the Mongols in 1368. Their version of Huguang province was smaller, corresponded entirely to the modern provinces of Hubei and Hunan combined. While Hubei was geographically removed from the centers of the Ming power. During the last years of the Ming, today's Hubei was ravaged several times by the rebel armies of Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng; the Manchu Qing dynasty which had much of the region in 1644, soon split Huguang into the modern provinces of Hubei and Hunan. The Qing dynasty, continued to maintain a Viceroy of Huguang, one of the most well-known being Zhang Zhidong, whose modernizing reforms made Hubei into a prosperous center of commerce and industry; the Huangshi/Daye area, south-east of Wuhan, became an important center of metallurgy. In 1911 the Wuchang Uprising took place in modern-day Wuhan, overthrowing the Qing dynasty and establishing the Republic of China. In 1927 Wuhan became the seat of a government established by left-wing elements of the Kuomintang, led by Wang Jingwei.
During World War II the eastern parts of Hubei were conquered and occupied by Japan while the western parts remained under Chinese control. During the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, Wuhan saw fighting between rival Red Guard factions. In July 1967, civil strife struck the city in the Wuhan Incident, an armed conflict between two hostile groups who were fighting for control over the city at the height of the Cultural Revolution; as the fears of a nuclear war increased during the time of Sino-Soviet border conflicts in the late 1960s, t
Erythronium
Erythronium is a genus of Eurasian and North American plants in the lily family, most related to tulips. The name Erythronium derives from Ancient Greek ἐρυθρός "red" in Greek, referring to the red flowers of E. dens-canis. Erythronium includes about 20–30 species of hardy spring-flowering perennial plants with long, tooth-like bulbs. Slender stems carry pendent flowers with recurved tepals in shades of cream, yellow and mauve. Species are native to meadows in temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Photos Two species names were coined using the name Erythronium but have since been reclassified to other taxa. Erythronium carolinianum, now called Uvularia perfoliata Erythronium hyacinthoides, now called Drimia indica The bulb is edible as a root vegetable, cooked or dried, can be ground into flour; the leaves can be cooked as a leaf vegetable. In Japan, Erythronium japonicum is called katakuri, the bulb is processed to produce starch, used for food and other purposes, they are widely grown as ornamental plants, with numerous hybrids and cultivars having been selected for garden use.
Popular cultivars include Erythronium'Pagoda', E.'Sundisc', E.'Joanna', E.'Kondo', E.'Citronella', E. californicum'White Beauty', E.'Rosalind'. Propagation is best by division of bulbs, depending on species; some species propagate vegetatively. The plant is great as a ground cover, as it will spread over several years
Tibet
Tibet is a historical region covering much of the Tibetan Plateau in Inner Asia. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpa, Qiang and Lhoba peoples and is now inhabited by considerable numbers of Han Chinese and Hui people. Tibet is the highest region on Earth, with an average elevation of 5,000 metres; the highest elevation in Tibet is Mount Everest, Earth's highest mountain, rising 8,848 m above sea level. The Tibetan Empire emerged in the 7th century, but with the fall of the empire the region soon divided into a variety of territories; the bulk of western and central Tibet was at least nominally unified under a series of Tibetan governments in Lhasa, Shigatse, or nearby locations. Thus Tibet remained a suzerainty of the Mongol and Chinese rulers in Nanjing and Beijing, with reasonable autonomy given to the Tibetan leaders; the eastern regions of Kham and Amdo maintained a more decentralized indigenous political structure, being divided among a number of small principalities and tribal groups, while often falling more directly under Chinese rule after the Battle of Chamdo.
The current borders of Tibet were established in the 18th century. Following the Xinhai Revolution against the Qing dynasty in 1912, Qing soldiers were disarmed and escorted out of Tibet Area; the region subsequently declared its independence in 1913 without recognition by the subsequent Chinese Republican government. Lhasa took control of the western part of Xikang, China; the region maintained its autonomy until 1951 when, following the Battle of Chamdo, Tibet became incorporated into the People's Republic of China, the previous Tibetan government was abolished in 1959 after a failed uprising. Today, China governs western and central Tibet as the Tibet Autonomous Region while the eastern areas are now ethnic autonomous prefectures within Sichuan and other neighbouring provinces. There are tensions regarding dissident groups that are active in exile. Tibetan activists in Tibet have been arrested or tortured; the economy of Tibet is dominated by subsistence agriculture, though tourism has become a growing industry in recent decades.
The dominant religion in Tibet is Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhism is a primary influence on the art and festivals of the region. Tibetan architecture reflects Indian influences. Staple foods in Tibet are roasted barley, yak meat, butter tea; the Tibetan name for their land, Bod བོད་, means "Tibet" or "Tibetan Plateau", although it meant the central region around Lhasa, now known in Tibetan as Ü. The Standard Tibetan pronunciation of Bod, is transcribed Bhö in Tournadre Phonetic Transcription, Bö in the THL Simplified Phonetic Transcription and Poi in Tibetan pinyin; some scholars believe the first written reference to Bod "Tibet" was the ancient Bautai people recorded in the Egyptian Greek works Periplus of the Erythraean Sea and Geographia, itself from the Sanskrit form Bhauṭṭa of the Indian geographical tradition. The modern Standard Chinese exonym for the ethnic Tibetan region is Zangqu, which derives by metonymy from the Tsang region around Shigatse plus the addition of a Chinese suffix, 区 qū, which means "area, region, ward".
Tibetan people and culture, regardless of where they are from, are referred to as Zang although the geographical term Xīzàng is limited to the Tibet Autonomous Region. The term Xīzàng was coined during the Qing dynasty in the reign of the Jiaqing Emperor through the addition of a prefix meaning "west" to Zang; the best-known medieval Chinese name for Tibet is Tubo. This name first appears in Chinese characters as 土番 in the 7th century and as 吐蕃 in the 10th-century. In the Middle Chinese spoken during that period, as reconstructed by William H. Baxter, 土番 was pronounced thux-phjon and 吐蕃 was pronounced thux-pjon. Other pre-modern Chinese names for Tibet include Wusiguo, Wusizang and Tanggute. American Tibetologist Elliot Sperling has argued in favor of a recent tendency by some authors writing in Chinese to revive the term Tubote for modern use in place of Xizang, on the grounds that Tubote more includes the entire Tibetan plateau rather than the Tibet Autonomous Region; the English word Tibet or Thibet dates back to the 18th century.
Historical linguists agree that "Tibet" names in European languages are loanwords from Semitic Ṭībat orTūbātt, itself deriving from Turkic Töbäd, literally: "The Heights". Linguists classify the Tibetan language as a Tibeto-Burman language of the Sino-Tibetan language family although the boundaries between'Tibetan' and certain other Himalayan languages can be unclear. According to
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Genera of the Liliaceae family