Kham is one of the three traditional Tibetan regions, the others being Amdo in the northeast, and Ü-Tsang in central Tibet. The original residents of Kham are called Khampas, and were governed locally by chieftains and monasteries. Kham presently covers a land area distributed between five regions in China, most of it in Tibet Autonomous Region and Sichuan, with smaller portions located within Qinghai, Gansu and Yunnan provinces.
Xikang was a nominal province formed by the Republic of China in 1939 on the initiative of prominent Sichuan warlord Liu Wenhui and continued by the early People's Republic of China. The idea was to form a single unified province for the entire Kham region under direct Chinese administration, in effect annexing the western Kham region that was then under Tibetan control. Kham was entirely populated by Tibetan people called Khampas. The then independent Tibet controlled the portion of Kham west of the Upper Yangtze River. The nominal Xikang province also included in the south the Assam Himalayan region that Tibet had recognised as a part of British India by the 1914 McMahon Line agreement. The eastern part of the province was inhabited by a number of different ethnic groups, such as Han Chinese, Yi, Qiang people and Tibetan, then known as Chuanbian (川邊), a special administrative region of the Republic of China. In 1939, it became the new Xikang province with the additional territories belonging to Tibetan and British control added in. After the People's Republic of China invaded and occupied Tibet, the earlier nationalist imagination of Xikang came to fruition.
Khams Tibetan is the Tibetic language used by the majority of the people in Kham. Khams is one of the three branches of the traditional classification of Tibetic languages. In terms of mutual intelligibility, Khams could communicate at a basic level with the Ü-Tsang branch.
Kangding, also called Tachienlu and Dartsedo, is a county-level city and the seat of Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan province of Southwest China. Kangding is on the bank of the Dadu River and has been considered the historical border between the Kham region of Tibet and the Sichuan region. Kangding's urban center is called Lucheng, which has around 134,000 inhabitants.
Zhao Erfeng (1845–1911), courtesy name Jihe, was a late Qing Dynasty official and Han Chinese bannerman, who belonged to the Plain Blue Banner. He was an assistant amban in Tibet at Chamdo in Kham. He was appointed in March, 1908 under Lien Yu, the main amban in Lhasa. Formerly Director-General of the Sichuan-Hubei Railway and acting viceroy of Sichuan province, Zhao was the much-maligned Chinese general of the late imperial era who led military campaigns throughout Kham, earning himself the nickname "the Butcher of Kham" and "Zhao the Butcher".
The location of Tibet, deep in the Himalaya mountains, made travel to Tibet extraordinarily difficult at any time, in addition to the fact that it traditionally was forbidden to all western foreigners. The internal and external politics of Tibet, China, Bhutan, Assam, and the northern Indian kingdoms combined rendered entry into Tibet politically difficult for all Europeans. The combination of inaccessibility and political sensitivity made Tibet a mystery and a challenge for Europeans well into the 20th century.
Batang Town, officially Xiaqiong Town, is a town in Batang County, Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, in the China on the main route between Chengdu and Lhasa, Tibet, and just east of the Jinsha River, or Upper Yangtze River. It is at an elevation of 2,700 metres.
Batang County is a county located in western Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China. The main administrative centre is known as Batang Town.
Gyêgu Subdistrict, formerly a part of the Gyêgu or Jiegu town is a township-level division in Yushu, Yushu TAP, Qinghai, China. The name Gyêgu is still a common name for the Yushu city proper, which include Gyêgu subdistrict and three other subdistricts evolved from the former Gyêgu town. The four subdistricts altogether forms a modern town which developed from the old Tibetan trade mart called Jyekundo or Gyêgumdo in Tibetan and most Western sources. The town is also referred to as Yushu, synonymous with the prefecture of Yushu and the city of Yushu.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Kangding is a Latin Catholic diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the Metropolitan of Chongqing in western China, but still dependent on the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.
The main religion in Tibet has been Buddhism since its outspread in the 8th century AD. As of 2022 the historical region of Tibet is mostly comprised in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) of China and partly in the Chinese provinces of Qinghai and Sichuan. Before the arrival of Buddhism, the main religion among Tibetans was an indigenous shamanic and animistic religion, Bon, which would later influence the formation of Tibetan Buddhism and still attracts the allegiance of a sizeable minority of Tibetans.
Hannah Royle Taylor, known as Annie Royle Taylor, was an English explorer and Evangelical missionary to Tibet. She was the first Western woman known to have visited Tibet. She attempted to reach the "forbidden" city of Lhasa in 1892–1893.
Susanna "Susie" Carson Rijnhart, was a Canadian medical doctor, Protestant missionary, and Tibetan explorer. She was the second Western woman known to have visited Tibet, after Annie Royle Taylor.
The Batang uprising was an uprising by the Khampas of Kham against the assertion of authority by Qing China.
Edvard Amundsen was a Norwegian Lutheran missionary in China and India near the borders of Tibet. He is also remembered as an explorer and Tibetan specialist.
Dorris Evangeline Shelton Still was an American writer, who wrote the book Sue in Tibet, a semi-biographical work about growing up in Tibet.
Zenas Sanford Loftis was an American physician who worked briefly as a medical missionary in Batang, a largely Tibetan town in Sichuan Province of West China. His photography and published diary contained accounts of culture, religious traditions, and the geography of China and Tibet.
Gospel Church (Chinese: 福音堂; pinyin: Fúyīn táng; Wade–Giles: Fu2-yin1 tʽang2), today known as Kangding Christian Church (Chinese: 康定基督教堂; pinyin: Kāngdìng Jīdū jiàotáng; Wade–Giles: Kʽang1-ting4 Chi1-tu1 chiao4-tʽang2), is a Protestant church situated on Guangming Road, Kangding, a county-level city in Garzê Tibetan Prefecture, Sichuan Province. First built in 1905, on Yanhe West Road, by China Inland Mission missionaries; the church was relocated to its present location in 1958.
The Protestant mission began in the Chinese province of Sichuan in 1877, when premises were rented by the China Inland Mission in Chungking. However, it grew rather slowly, it was not until the late 1980s that Protestantism experienced rapid growth. The two largest denominations in the province before 1949 were Anglicanism and Methodism.
