Bairi Tibetan Autonomous County

For the village in Pakistan, see Bairi, Pakistan.

Bairi (Tianzhu) Tibetan Autonomous County (Tibetan: དཔའ་རིས་བོད་རིགས་རང་སྐྱོང་རྫོང༌།, Wylie: dpa'a-ris bod-rigs rang-skyong rdzong/, ZYPY: Bairi Poirig Ranggyong Zong; Chinese: 天祝藏族自治县; pinyin: Tiānzhù Zàngzú Zìzhìxiàn) is in the prefecture-level city of Wuwei in the Chinese province of Gansu. It has an area of 7,147km² and approximately 230,000 inhabitants (2003). Its administrative seat is the town of Huazangsi.

Name

The Chinese name "Tianzhu" was named by a Tibetan Luo Haoxue in 1936, combining name of the largest lamasery in the County (天堂寺) and the Zhugong lamasery (祝贡寺).

The Tibetan name Bairi (དཔའ་རིས།) is pronounced Bairi in Standard Tibetan, and pronounced Hwari in the local Amdo Tibetan.

Some Tibetan dispora use the name Tenzhu (ཐེན་ཀྲུའུ།), which is a transcription of the Chinese name Tianzhu.

Transport

• China National Highway 312
• Lanzhou–Xinjiang Railway crosses the county, with a station (Tianzhu) in the county seat. With the construction of the Wushaoling Tunnel under the Wushao Mountain Range (Wushaoling), about the half of the section of the main track of this railway within this county is actually underground.

Ethnic groups in Tianzhu, 2000 census

Nationality	Population	Percentage
Han	139,190	62.88%
Tibetan	66,125	29.87%
Tu	12,633	5.71%
Hui	1,986	0.9%
Mongol	961	0.43%
Manchu	213	0.1%
Dongxiang	90	0.04%
Uyghur	40	0.02%
Miao	23	0.01%
Others	86	0.04%

Further reading

• A. Gruschke: The Cultural Monuments of Tibet’s Outer Provinces: Amdo - Volume 2. The Gansu and Sichuan Parts of Amdo, White Lotus Press, Bangkok 2001. ISBN 974-480-049-6
• Tsering Shakya: The Dragon in the Land of Snows. A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947, London 1999, ISBN 0-14-019615-3