title: Twin Peaks

text: But the show's third episode lost 14% of the audience that had tuned in a week before. That audience had dropped 30% from the show's first appearance on Thursday night. This was a result of competing against "Cheers", which appealed to the same demographic that watched "Twin Peaks". A production executive from the show spoke of being frustrated with the network's scheduling of the show. "The show is being banged around on Thursday night. If ABC had put it on Wednesday night it could have built on its initial success. ABC has put the show at risk."


title: Twin Peaks

text: In response, the network aired the first-season finale on a Wednesday night at 10:00 pm instead of its usual 9:00 pm Thursday slot. The show achieved its best ratings since its third week on the air with a 12.6 and a 22 share of the audience. On May 22, 1990, it was announced that "Twin Peaks" would be renewed for a second season.


title: Twin Peaks

text: During the first and second season, the search for Laura Palmer's killer served as the engine for the plot and captured the public's imagination, although the creators admitted that this was largely a MacGuffin; each episode was really about the interactions between the townsfolk. The unique (and often bizarre) personalities of each citizen formed a web of minutiae that ran contrary to the town's quaint appearance. Adding to the surreal atmosphere was the recurrence of Dale Cooper's dreams, in which the FBI agent is given clues to Laura's murder in a supernatural realm that may or may not be of his imagination. The first season contained only eight episodes (including the two-hour pilot episode). It was considered technically and artistically revolutionary for television at the time and geared toward reaching the standards of film.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Critics have noted that "Twin Peaks" began the trend of accomplished cinematography now commonplace in today's television dramas. Lynch and Frost maintained tight control over the first season and served as showrunners, handpicking all of the directors, including some whom Lynch had known from his days at the American Film Institute (e.g., Caleb Deschanel and Tim Hunter) and some referred to him by those he knew personally. Lynch and Frost's control lessened in the second season as the two became less involved with the series, corresponding with what is generally regarded as a decrease in the show's quality once the identity of Laura Palmer's murderer was revealed. While Frost and Lynch technically remained showrunners after "Episode 14", the episode in which the killer's identity was revealed, Lynch had little creative control over the direction of the series from that point forward other than the season finale; Frost became less involved after "Episode 16" and became more involved again with "Episode 26" onwards. After "Episode 14", series producers Harley Peyton and Robert Engels served as additional showrunners along with Frost and Lynch.


title: Twin Peaks

text: The aforementioned "water cooler effect" put pressure on the show's creators to solve the mystery. Although they claimed to have known from the series' inception the identity of Laura's murderer, Lynch never wanted to solve the murder, while Frost felt that they had an obligation to the audience to solve it. This created tension between the two men.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Its ambitious style, paranormal undertones, and engaging murder mystery made "Twin Peaks" an unexpected hit. Its characters, particularly MacLachlan's Dale Cooper, were unorthodox for a supposed crime drama, as was Cooper's method of interpreting his dreams to solve the crime. During its first season, the show's popularity reached its zenith, and elements of the program seeped into mainstream popular culture, prompting parodies, including one in the 16th-season premiere of "Saturday Night Live", hosted by MacLachlan.


title: Twin Peaks

text: For its first season, "Twin Peaks" received fourteen nominations at the 42nd Primetime Emmy Awards, for Outstanding Drama Series, Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Kyle MacLachlan), Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (Piper Laurie), Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (Sherilyn Fenn), Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series (David Lynch), Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series (David Lynch and Mark Frost), Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series (Harley Peyton), Outstanding Art Direction for a Series, Outstanding Achievement in Main Title Theme Music, Outstanding Achievement in Music Composition for a Series (Dramatic Underscore), Outstanding Achievement in Music and Lyrics, and Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series. Out of its fourteen nominations, it won for Outstanding Costume Design for a Series and Outstanding Editing for a Series – Single Camera Production. On Rotten Tomatoes, the first season received a 91 percent approval rating with an average score of 8.95 out of 10 based on 114 reviews, with a critics consensus of: ""Twin Peaks" plays with TV conventions to deliver a beguiling – and unsettling – blend of seemingly disparate genres, adding up to an offbeat drama with a distinctly unique appeal." Metacritic scored the season a 96 out of 100 based on 16 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: Twin Peaks

text: For its second season, it received four nominations at the 43rd Primetime Emmy Awards, for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Kyle MacLachlan), Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (Piper Laurie), Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series, and Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Drama Series. On Rotten Tomatoes, the second season received a 63 percent approval rating with an average score of 7.65 out of 10 based on 161 reviews, with a critics consensus of: ""Twin Peaks" answers its central question with diminishing returns while struggling to establish worthy new mysteries, but there are enough mesmeric flourishes to keep devotees dreaming of what lies in the Red Room."


title: Twin Peaks

text: At the 48th Golden Globe Awards, it won for Best TV Series – Drama, Kyle MacLachlan won for Best Performance by an Actor in a TV Series – Drama, Piper Laurie won for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV; while Sherilyn Fenn was nominated in the same category as Laurie.


title: Twin Peaks

text: The pilot episode was ranked 25th on "TV Guide"s 1997 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time. It placed 49th on "Entertainment Weekly" "New TV Classics" list. In 2004 and 2007, "Twin Peaks" was ranked 20th and 24th on "TV Guide"s Top Cult Shows Ever, and in 2002, it was ranked 45th of the "Top 50 Television Programs of All Time" by the same guide. In 2007, UK broadcaster Channel 4 ranked "Twin Peaks" 9th on their list of the "50 Greatest TV Dramas". Also that year, "Time" included the show on their list of the "100 Best TV Shows of All-Time". "Empire" listed "Twin Peaks" as the 24th best TV show in their list of "The 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time".


title: Twin Peaks

text: In 2012, "Entertainment Weekly" listed the show at no. 12 in the "25 Best Cult TV Shows from the Past 25 Years", saying: "The show itself was only fitfully brilliant and ultimately unfulfilling, but the cult lives, fueled by nostalgia for the extraordinary pop phenomenon it inspired, for its significance to the medium (behold the big bang of auteur TV!), and for a sensuous strangeness that possesses you and never lets you go." The series has been nominated for the TCA Heritage Award six consecutive years since 2010. It was ranked 20th on "The Hollywood Reporter"s list of Hollywood's 100 Favorite TV Shows.


title: Twin Peaks

text: With the resolution of "Twin Peaks" main drawing point (Laura Palmer's murder) in the middle of the second season, and with subsequent story lines becoming more obscure and drawn out, public interest began to wane. This discontent, coupled with ABC changing its timeslot on a number of occasions, led to a huge drop in the show's ratings after being one of the most watched television programs in the United States in 1990. Due to the Gulf War, "Twin Peaks" was moved from its usual time slot "for six weeks out of eight" in early 1991, according to Frost, preventing the show from maintaining audience interest. A week after the season's 15th episode placed 85th in the ratings out of 89 shows, ABC put "Twin Peaks" on indefinite hiatus, a move that usually leads to cancellation.


title: Twin Peaks

text: An organized letter-writing campaign, dubbed COOP (Citizens Opposed to the Offing of "Peaks"), attempted to save the show from cancellation. The campaign was partly successful, as the season returned to airing on Thursday nights for four weeks from late March. The series then went on another hiatus, before the final two episodes of the season aired back-to-back on June 10.


title: Twin Peaks

text: According to Frost, the main storyline after the resolution of Laura Palmer's murder was planned to be the second strongest element from the first season that audiences responded to: the relationship between Agent Cooper and Audrey Horne. Frost explained that Lara Flynn Boyle, who was romantically involved with Kyle MacLachlan at the time, had effectively vetoed the Audrey–Cooper relationship, forcing the writers to come up with alternative storylines to fill the gap. Sherilyn Fenn corroborated this claim in a 2014 interview, stating: "[Boyle] was mad that my character was getting more attention, so then Kyle started saying that his character shouldn't be with my character because it doesn't look good, 'cause I'm too young... I was not happy about it. It was stupid." This meant the artificial extension of secondary storylines, such as James Hurley and Evelyn Marsh, to fill in the space. After ratings began to decline, Agent Cooper was given a new love interest, Annie Blackburn (Heather Graham), to replace the writers' intended romance between him and Audrey Horne. Despite ending on a deliberate audience-baiting cliffhanger, the series finale did not sufficiently boost interest, and the show was not renewed for a third season, leaving the cliffhanger unresolved.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Lynch expressed his regret at having resolved the Laura Palmer murder, saying that he and Frost had never intended for the series to answer the question and that doing so "killed the goose that laid the golden eggs". Lynch blamed network pressure for the decision to resolve the Palmer storyline prematurely. Frost agreed, noting that people at the network had in fact wanted the killer to be revealed by the end of season one.


title: Twin Peaks

text: In 1993, cable channel Bravo acquired the license to rerun the entire series, which began airing in June 1993. These reruns included Lynch's addition of introductions to each episode by the Log Lady and her cryptic musings.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Looking back, Frost has admitted that he wished he and Lynch had "worked out a smoother transition" between storylines and that the Laura Palmer story was a "tough act to follow". Regarding the second season, Frost felt that "perhaps the storytelling wasn't quite as taut or as fraught with emotion".


title: Twin Peaks

text: Writing for "The Atlantic" in 2016, Mike Mariani wrote that "It would be tough to look at the roster of television shows any given season without finding several that owe a creative debt to "Twin Peaks"", stating that "Lynch's manipulation of the uncanny, his surreal non-sequiturs, his black humor, and his trademark ominous tracking shots can be felt in a variety of contemporary hit shows." In 2010, the television series "Psych" paid tribute to the series by reuniting some of the cast in the fifth-season episode "Dual Spires". The episode's plot is an homage to the "Twin Peaks" pilot, where the characters of "Psych" investigate the death of a young girl in a small town called "Dual Spires". The episode also contains several references to the original show. "Twin Peaks" actors that guest-star in the episode are Sherilyn Fenn, Sheryl Lee, Dana Ashbrook, Robyn Lively, Lenny Von Dohlen, Catherine E. Coulson and Ray Wise. Prior to the airing of the episode, a special event at the Paley Center for Media was held, where the actors from both shows discussed the episode.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Reviewers and fans of four seasons of Veena Sud's U.S. TV series "The Killing" have noted similarities and borrowed elements from Lynch's "Fire Walk with Me" and "Twin Peaks", and compared Sud and Lynch's works.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Carlton Cuse, creator of "Bates Motel", cited "Twin Peaks" as a key inspiration for his series, stating: "We pretty much ripped off "Twin Peaks"... If you wanted to get that confession, the answer is yes. I loved that show. They only did 30 episodes. Kerry [Ehrin] and I thought we'd do the 70 that are missing."


title: Twin Peaks

text: "Twin Peaks" served as an inspiration for the 1993 video game "", with director Takashi Tezuka citing the series as the main factor for the creation of the "suspicious" characters that populate the game, as well as the mystery elements of the story. The show has also influenced a number of survival horror and psychological thriller video games—most notably "Alan Wake", "Deadly Premonition", "Silent Hill", and "Max Payne". The 1998 open world adventure video game "Mizzurna Falls" was reminiscent and an homage to "Twin Peaks".


title: Twin Peaks

text: The American animated show "Gravity Falls" repeatedly referenced the Black Lodge along with other elements of "Twin Peaks" throughout its run.


title: Twin Peaks

text: "Riverdale", an American teen drama, is noted for its many homages to "Twin Peaks". Along with many thematic similarities and direct references, Mädchen Amick appears in both series. In an interview promoting the second season of "Riverdale", showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa remarked that "all roads on "Riverdale" lead back to "Twin Peaks"".


title: Twin Peaks

text: The song "Laura Palmer" by the band Bastille was written influenced by the "slightly weird, eerie" atmosphere of the show.


title: Twin Peaks

text: While the series is not usually described as science fiction, it has been noted to have been influential on that genre.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Since Season 3 ended in 2017, Lynch and Frost have expressed interest in making another season of "Twin Peaks". Lynch has been asked in several interviews if he would continue, once saying "I don't know, I have a box of ideas, and I'm working with producer Sabrina S. Sutherland, kind of trying to go through and see if there's any gold in those boxes." Lynch also said one more story was "calling to him" involving the character of Carrie Page. In a Reddit AMA on June 22, 2020, star Kyle MacLachlan said Cooper was his "favorite role of all time" and that he would "absolutely" return to another season "without even seeing the script".


title: Twin Peaks

text: The series was released on VHS in a six-tape collection on April 16, 1995; however, it did not include the original pilot episode. The series was also released on LaserDisc in a sixteen-disc set in 1991 in Japan. The same set was later released in the U.S. across four different volumes from 1993 to 1994; neither release contained the original pilot nor "".


title: Twin Peaks

text: On December 18, 2001, the first season (episodes 1–7, minus the pilot) of "Twin Peaks" was released on DVD in Region 1 by Artisan Entertainment. The box set featured digitally remastered video and was noted for being the first TV series to have its audio track redone in DTS.


title: Twin Peaks

text: The second-season release was postponed several times, and the release was originally canceled in 2003 by Artisan due to low sales figures for the season 1 DVD. The second season was finally released in the United States and Canada on April 3, 2007, via Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment/CBS DVD.


title: Twin Peaks

text: On October 30, 2007, the broadcast version of the pilot finally received a legitimate U.S. release as part of the "Twin Peaks" "Definitive Gold Box Edition". This set includes both U.S. original network broadcast and international versions of the pilot. The set also includes all episodes from both seasons, deleted scenes for both seasons, and a feature-length retrospective documentary. "Entertainment Weekly" gave the box set a "B+" rating and wrote: "There are numerous fascinatingly frank mini-docs here, including interviews with many "Peaks" participants; together, they offer one of the best available portraits of how a TV hit can go off the rails."


title: Twin Peaks

text: In July 2013, it was revealed that a Blu-ray version of the complete series would be released. In January 2014, Lynch confirmed the Blu-ray release and that it would contain the pilot, season 1, season 2, new special features, and possibly the film. It was announced on May 15, 2014, that the Blu-ray box set containing the complete series of "Twin Peaks", the film "Fire Walk With Me", and "The Missing Pieces", the long-awaited release of 90 minutes of deleted scenes from the film, would be released on July 29, 2014.


title: Twin Peaks

text: "Twin Peaks: From Z to A", a 21-disc limited edition Blu-ray box set, which includes all the television episodes, "Fire Walk with Me", "The Missing Pieces", previously released special features, six hours of new behind-the-scenes content, and 4K versions of the original pilot and episode 8 from "The Return", was released on December 10, 2019. Additionally, "Twin Peaks: The Television Collection", a Blu-ray and DVD collection of the original series, "The Return", and all previously released special features, was released on October 15, 2019.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Online, the original series is available through Paramount+, while "The Return" is available with Showtime's "Anytime" service for pay-TV subscribers and its over-the-top separate service. "Twin Peaks Fire Walk with Me" is available via HBO Max.


title: Twin Peaks

text: During the show's second season, Pocket Books released three official tie-in books, each authored by the show's creators (or their family), which offer a wealth of backstory. "The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer", written by Lynch's daughter Jennifer Lynch, is the diary as seen in the series and written by Laura, chronicling her thoughts from her twelfth birthday to the days leading up to her death. Frost's brother Scott wrote "The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes". Kyle MacLachlan also recorded "Diane: The Twin Peaks Tapes of Agent Cooper", which combined audio tracks from various episodes of the series with newly recorded monologues. "Welcome to Twin Peaks: An Access Guide to the Town" offers information about the history, flora, fauna, and culture of the fictitious town.


title: Twin Peaks

text: "Twin Peaks: Visual Soundtrack" is a LaserDisc that plays like an elaborate music video. The show's entire soundtrack album is played over silent video footage shot by a Japanese TV crew visiting the Snoqualmie, Washington, locations where the series was shot.


title: Twin Peaks

text: "The Secret History of Twin Peaks", a novel by series co-creator Mark Frost, "places the unexplained phenomena that unfolded in Twin Peaks in a layered, wide-ranging history, beginning with the journals of Lewis and Clark and ending with the shocking events that closed the finale". It was published on October 18, 2016.


title: Twin Peaks

text: "" was released October 31, 2017. A follow-up to "The Secret History of Twin Peaks", it was written by Mark Frost. The novel fills in details of the 25 years between the second and third seasons, and expands on some of the mysteries raised in the new episodes.


title: Twin Peaks

text: "Twin Peaks VR", a virtual reality game developed by Collider Games and Showtime in collaboration with David Lynch, was released on December 13, 2019. Players can explore familiar locations while solving puzzles to help Special Agent Cooper and Gordon Cole. The game is available on Oculus Rift, Vive and Valve Index.


title: Twin Peaks

text: The 1992 film "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me" is a prequel to the TV series. It tells of the investigation into the murder of Teresa Banks, and the last seven days in the life of Laura Palmer. Director David Lynch and most of the television cast returned for the film, with the notable exceptions of Lara Flynn Boyle, who declined to return as Laura's best friend Donna Hayward and was replaced by Moira Kelly, and Sherilyn Fenn due to scheduling conflicts. Also, Kyle MacLachlan returned reluctantly as he wanted to avoid typecasting, so his presence in the film is smaller than originally planned. Lynch originally shot about five hours of footage that was subsequently cut down to two hours and fourteen minutes. Most of the deleted scenes feature additional characters from the television series who ultimately did not appear in the finished film. Around ninety minutes of these scenes are included in the complete series Blu-ray that was released on July 29, 2014.


title: Twin Peaks

text: "Fire Walk with Me" polarized critics upon its release, especially in comparison to the widespread acclaim of the series. However, the film was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival. It grossed a total of US$1.8 million in 691 theaters in its opening weekend and went on to gross a total of $4.1 million in North America. The film has developed a cult following over time and been critically reevaluated, with some critics considering the film one of Lynch’s major works.


title: Twin Peaks

text: The release of the third season in 2017, which made many references to the film, led to additional renewed interest.


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: The Queen's Gambit is a 2020 American coming-of-age period drama streaming television miniseries based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Walter Tevis. The title refers to the "Queen's Gambit", a chess opening. The series was written and directed by Scott Frank, who created it with Allan Scott, who owns the rights to the book. Beginning in the mid-1950s and proceeding into the 1960s, the story follows the life of Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy), a fictional chess prodigy on her rise to the top of the chess world while struggling with drug and alcohol dependency.


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: Netflix released "The Queen's Gambit" on October 23, 2020. After four weeks it had become Netflix's most-watched scripted miniseries, making it Netflix's top program in 63 countries. The series received critical acclaim, with particular praise for Taylor-Joy's performance, the cinematography, and production values. It also received a positive response from the chess community for its accurate depictions of high-level chess, and data suggests that it increased public interest in the game.


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: "The Queen's Gambit" won eleven Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, becoming the first show on a streaming service to win the category. The series also won two Golden Globe Awards: Best Limited Series or Television Film and Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film for Taylor-Joy. She also won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie.


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: "The Queen's Gambit" follows the life of an orphan chess prodigy, Elizabeth Harmon, during her quest to become an elite chess player while struggling with emotional problems, drugs and alcohol dependency. The title of the series refers to a chess opening of the same name. The story is set in the mid-1950s and 1960s.


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: In 1950s Lexington, Kentucky, an eight-year-old Beth, having lost her mother in a car crash, is taken to an orphanage where she is taught chess by the building's custodian, Mr. Shaibel. As was common at the time, the orphanage dispenses daily tranquilizer pills to the girls to "balance their disposition", which turns into an addiction for Beth. She quickly becomes a strong chess player due to her visualization skills. A few years later, Beth is adopted by childless suburban couple Alma and Allston Wheatley. As she adjusts to her new home, Beth enters a chess tournament and wins despite having no prior experience in competitive chess. Alma is initially resistant to Beth's interest in chess, but after Beth wins her first tournament, Alma is fully supportive of her adoptive daughter's sojourns to enter various chess competitions. She develops friendships with several people, including former Kentucky State Champion Harry Beltik, United States National Champion Benny Watts, and journalist and fellow player D.L. Townes.


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: As Beth rises to the top of the chess world and reaps the financial benefits of her success, her drug and alcohol dependency worsens. With help from her oldest friend Jolene, whom she grew up with in the orphanage, she prepares for her biggest challenge yet, a major international chess tournament against the world's best players in Moscow.


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: On March 19, 2019, Netflix gave the production a series order consisting of six episodes. The series was written and directed by Scott Frank, who also created the series with Allan Scott. The two also served as executive producers alongside William Horberg. Allan Scott had been involved in attempts to get the book on screen since 1992, when he purchased the screenplay rights from Walter Tevis's widow.


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: The series was released on October 23, 2020, with seven episodes instead of the original six-episode order.


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: Former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov and chess coach Bruce Pandolfini acted as consultants. Pandolfini had consulted with Tevis prior to the novel's publication some 38 years earlier, coming up with the title "The Queen's Gambit".


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: Pandolfini, together with consultants John Paul Atkinson and Iepe Rubingh, devised several hundred chess positions to be used for various situations in the script. Kasparov developed critical moments in the story, such as when a real 1998 game between grandmasters Arshak Petrosian and Vladimir Akopian was improved to showcase Beth's skill, or a 1993 game between Vasyl Ivanchuk and Patrick Wolff became the prototype for the decisive game in the last episode.


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: Alongside the series order announcement, it was announced that Anya Taylor-Joy was set to star as the lead. In January 2020, it was reported Moses Ingram had joined the cast of the series. Upon the miniseries premiere date announcement, it was announced that Bill Camp, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Harry Melling and Marielle Heller were cast in starring roles. Because the majority of the filming was carried out in Berlin, the minor roles were filled mostly by British and German actors.


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: Production designer Uli Hanisch developed the series' sets to evoke the aesthetic of the 1950s and 1960s. Much of the series was filmed in Berlin because interiors found there could stand in for a large number of the show's locations, including Las Vegas, Cincinnati, Mexico City, Moscow, and Paris.


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: Locations used in and near Berlin included the Kino International (for a restaurant, actually the Panorama Bar), the Berlin Zoo (for the zoo scene in Mexico City), the vintage clothes store Humana (for Ben Snyder’s Department in Louisville, Kentucky), Schloss Schulzendorf (for the Methuen Home orphanage), the Rathaus Spandau (for a hotel lobby in Cincinnati), the Meistersaal in Kreuzberg (for the Cincinnati tournament), Palais am Funkturm (for the Hotel Mariposa in Las Vegas), the Protestant University of Applied Sciences in Zehlendorf (for the US Championship games location), Haus Cumberland and its Café Grosz (for the Paris tournament), the Bode Museum (for scenes that take place in Paris), Karl-Marx-Allee (exterior of a hotel said to be in Moscow); the final scene of Beth walking in Moscow was filmed at Rosengarten Square, also on Karl-Marx-Allee. The Bärensaal (aka Bear hall) in the Altes Stadthaus was used for scenes set at the Moscow Tournament. The Friedrichstadt-Palast stood in for the Aztec Palace Hotel. The exterior of Henry Clay High School in Lexington was actually filmed at Max Taut Schule.


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: Some scenes were filmed in Canada; principal photography began in August 2019 in Cambridge, Ontario. For example, the Harmon family home is a house on Brant Road in the city. Other houses where some filming was done are on Salisbury Ave. in Cambridge and on Blenheim Road; the latter is a mansion built in the 19th century. The exterior of St. Andrew's College, Aurora (Ontario) was used for the Ohio Championship facility but the interior was actually a Berlin facility. The exterior of the fictional Ben Snyder Department store in Kentucky was filmed at the Winners department store (Front Street and Berczy Park) in Toronto, Ontario, the rural bridge is the Meadowvale Road Bridge in Toronto and the Fairfield High School in the show is actually Western Technical-Commercial School in Toronto. The fictional Bradley's pharmacy was actually an outdoor set built at Walnut and King streets in Hamilton, Ontario.


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: The musical score was composed by Carlos Rafael Rivera. Frank initially wanted the score to be piano-based only, but in the end decided with Rivera for a full orchestral score for more "instrumental depth and color". Rivera also described how he learned of the executive producer William Horberg's love of flute, and added prominent flute sections to the orchestral pieces. Rivera found scoring for chess a challenging task, having been warned by Frank that "music would be doing a lot of heavy lifting". He decided to reflect Beth's growth – both as a person and a chess player – by adding more and more instrumentation over time.


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: In October 2020, the series was the most watched show on Netflix in the United States. On November 23, 2020, Netflix announced that the series had been watched by 62 million households since its release, becoming "Netflix's biggest scripted limited series to date." Of this, Scott Frank stated "I am both delighted and dazed by the response" while several outlets characterized it as an "unlikely success". The series topped the Nielsen's U.S. streaming rankings for the weeks of October 26 to November 1, November 2 to 8, and November 9 to 15, 2020, making it the first series to do so for three weeks straight.


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: "The Queen's Gambit" eventually ranked third in Reelgood's yearly ranking of Netflix shows during 2020, with "Cocomelon" taking the first spot.


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, "The Queen's Gambit" received an approval rating of 96% based on 105 reviews, with an average rating of 7.9/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Its moves aren't always perfect, but between Anya Taylor-Joy's magnetic performance, incredibly realized period details, and emotionally intelligent writing, "The Queen's Gambit" is an absolute win." Metacritic gave the series a weighted average score of 79 out of 100 based on 28 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: In a column where she argues "So many lives would be different if we'd had "The Queen's Gambit" 50 years ago," culture critic Mary McNamara said, "I loved "The Queen's Gambit" so much, I watched the final episode three times." Sara Miller of "The New Yorker" recounted having experienced a sense of loss in her own association with the novel after seeing its depiction on screen because she could not relate to the main character: "Anya Taylor-Joy is way too good-looking to play Beth Harmon", she notes. Miller argues that Beth's ugliness is a central tension in the novel which the on-screen depiction misses completely despite staying true to everything else in the novel. Darren Franich of "Entertainment Weekly" gave the series a B and described the lead actress, "Taylor-Joy excels in the quiet moments, her eyelids narrowing as she decimates an opponent, her whole body physicalizing angry desperation when the game turns against her." "Variety" Caroline Framke wrote ""The Queen's Gambit" manages to personalize the game and its players thanks to clever storytelling and, in Anya Taylor-Joy, a lead actor so magnetic that when she stares down the camera lens, her flinty glare threatens to cut right through it." Reviewing for "Rolling Stone", Alan Sepinwall gave it 3 out of 5 stars and said, "An aesthetically beautiful project with several superb performances, all in service to a story that starts to feel padded long before the end comes."


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: Critics also frequently discussed the series' prominent theme of substance abuse. Phoebe Wong notes that "Interestingly though, unlike other works which study the self-destructive aspects of perfectionist obsession, mental health and substance abuse issues extend beyond the protagonist to other characters" in her review for "The Tufts Daily". Her summary reads "Impressive in its own right, "The Queen's Gambit" adopts a fresh perspective by delving into chess' intersections with substance abuse and gender discrimination". Matt Miller of "Esquire" stated "The result is a pretty scary depiction of the stress of competitive chess in the 1960s." On the other hand, "Harper's Bazaar"s Lilly Dancyger considered the "misrepresentation" of drug abuse to "nearly ruin the show" for her, using the following Stephen King quote to explain: "The idea that the creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time."


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: "The Washington Post"s Monica Hesse considers the miniseries "revisionist history" but also "a wonderful future" in that the heroine's "uncluttered path to success" is "uninterrupted by sexism", and has men "refreshingly" looking out for the main female character, noting that the show "has no women in peril, and no skeezy men". Carina Chocano of "The New York Times Magazine" also believes that the show again and again foils the audience's expectations: the janitor does not molest her, her adoptive father leaves her alone, and her adoptive mother Alma does not hold her back, a departure Chocano attributes to the "fantasy"-like quality of "The Queen's Gambit". Responding to these reviews, Fred Mazelis of the World Socialist Web Site wrote that "the claims that the series is appreciated because it is fantasy are disingenuous, to say the least. The show has struck a chord precisely because it is not seen as utopian fiction."


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: Bethonie Butler, also of "The Washington Post", while praising the show overall, criticized the characterization of Jolene, the show's only major Black character, saying "(her) backstory and character development are so limited that she seems to exist merely to make Beth's life easier".


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: Many aspects of the series' production values have been praised and discussed, including its location choices, set design, and costumes.


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: The series received praise from the chess community for its realistic portrayal of the game and players. In an interview with "Vanity Fair", Woman Grandmaster Jennifer Shahade said that the series "completely nailed the chess accuracy". In an article about the miniseries in "The Times", British chess champion David Howell felt that the chess scenes were "well choreographed and realistic", while British Women's chess champion Jovanka Houska said, "I think it's a fantastic TV series ... [i]t conveys the emotion of chess really well." Houska stated that she related to Beth being one of the few women in a tournament, and noted that sexism was worse at the "hobby" level, especially for young girls. International Master Dorsa Derakhshani described the show as "very, very accurate" and that she was surprised at "how actually strong the games are".


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: Judit Polgár, who was the first woman to play for a world championship title, said that the show depicted the male players as "too nice", while chess streamer Andrea Botez also felt the show "toned down" the sexism in the chess world. Former British women's champion Sarah Longson said that realistically, Beth should have lost more. Reigning chess world champion Magnus Carlsen gave it 5 out of 6 stars but found it "a little too unrealistic" for how quickly Beth developed her skills.


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: In the final episode of the mini-series, the women's world champion Nona Gaprindashvili is mentioned as having "never faced men", despite the real-life Gaprindashvili frequently playing against male opponents, including top-level grandmasters. In response, Gaprindashvili said it is dishonouring to have misinformation spread about someone's achievements. She sued Netflix for $5 million in a defamation lawsuit in September 2021, and called for the line that claimed she had never faced men to be removed. The case was settled in September 2022, on undisclosed terms.


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: In November 2020, "The Washington Post" reported that the COVID-19 pandemic had already increased the public's interest in chess, but the popularity of "The Queen's Gambit" made it explode. "The New York Times" compared the interest in chess to the "similar chess mania" after Bobby Fischer beat Boris Spassky to become world champion in 1972. According to "The Guardian", grandmaster Maurice Ashley has been inundated by messages from people – mainly women – enthused by the series: "the frenzy around it is crazy". Sales of chess sets rose greatly following the release of the series, with U.S. company Goliath Games stating their chess set sales increased over a thousand percent due to the series, while marketing firm NPD Group found chess book sales had increased over 600 percent. Chess.com reports several million new users since the release of the series, with a higher rate of registrations by female players compared to before the series. Chess instructors have stated that the demand for chess lessons has significantly increased as well.


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: In early 2021, due to the success of the series, the theatrical rights to the Tevis novel were acquired with the intent of producing a musical.


title: The Queen's Gambit (miniseries)

text: Together with "The Crown", another Netflix production, costumes from "The Queen's Gambit" were put on display by the Brooklyn Museum as part of its virtual exhibition ""The Queen and the Crown"".


title: House of Windsor

text: The House of Windsor is the reigning royal house of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms. In 1901, a line of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (itself a cadet branch of the House of Wettin) succeeded the House of Hanover to the British monarchy with the accession of King Edward VII, son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. In 1917, the name of the British royal house was changed from the German "Saxe-Coburg and Gotha" to the English "Windsor" because of anti-German sentiment in the United Kingdom during the First World War. There have been five British monarchs of the House of Windsor since then: George V, Edward VIII, George VI, Elizabeth II, and Charles III. The children and male-line descendants of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip also genealogically belong to the House of Oldenburg since Philip belonged to the Glücksburg branch of that house.


title: House of Windsor

text: The monarch is head of state of fifteen sovereign states. These are the United Kingdom, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, the Bahamas, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu. As well as these separate monarchies, there are also three Crown Dependencies, fourteen British Overseas Territories and two small associated states of New Zealand: the Cook Islands and Niue.


title: House of Windsor

text: Edward VII and, in turn, his son, George V, were members of the German ducal House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha by virtue of their descent from Albert, Prince Consort, husband of Queen Victoria, the last British monarch from the House of Hanover. High anti-German sentiment amongst the people of the British Empire during the First World War reached a peak in March 1917, when the Gotha G.IV, a heavy aircraft capable of crossing the English Channel, began bombing London directly and became a household name. In the same year, on 15 March, King George's first cousin Emperor Nicholas II of Russia was forced to abdicate, which raised the spectre of the eventual abolition of all the monarchies in Europe. The King and his family were finally persuaded to abandon all titles held under the German Crown and to change German titles and house names to anglicised versions. Hence, on 17 July 1917, a royal proclamation issued by George V declared:


title: House of Windsor

text: The name had a long association with monarchy in Britain, through the town of Windsor, Berkshire, and Windsor Castle; the link is alluded to in the Round Tower of Windsor Castle being the basis of the badge of the House of Windsor. It was suggested by Arthur Bigge, 1st Baron Stamfordham. Upon hearing that his cousin had changed the name of the British royal house to Windsor and in reference to Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor", German Emperor Wilhelm II remarked jokingly that he planned to see "The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha".


title: House of Windsor

text: George V also restricted the use of British princely titles to his nearest relations, and in 1919, he stripped three of his German relations of their British titles and styles.


title: House of Windsor

text: The 1917 proclamation stated that the name of the Royal House and all British descendants of Victoria and Albert in the male line were to bear the name of Windsor, except for women who married into other families.


title: House of Windsor

text: In 1947, Princess Elizabeth (who would become Queen Elizabeth II), heir presumptive to King George VI, married Philip Mountbatten (born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark), a member of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, a branch of the House of Oldenburg. A few months before his marriage, Philip abandoned his princely titles and adopted the surname "Mountbatten", which was that of his maternal uncle and mentor, the Earl Mountbatten of Burma, and had itself been adopted by Lord Mountbatten's father (Philip's maternal grandfather), Prince Louis of Battenberg, in 1917. It is the literal translation of the German "Battenberg", which refers to Battenberg, a small town in Hesse.


title: House of Windsor

text: Soon after Elizabeth became Queen in 1952, Lord Mountbatten observed that because it was the standard practice for the wife in a marriage to adopt her husband's surname, the "House of Mountbatten" now reigned. When Elizabeth's grandmother, Queen Mary, heard of this comment, she informed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and he later advised the Queen to issue a royal proclamation declaring that the royal house was to remain known as the House of Windsor.


title: House of Windsor

text: This she did on 9 April 1952, officially declaring it her "Will and Pleasure that I and My children shall be styled and known as the House and Family of Windsor, and that My descendants, other than female descendants who marry and their descendants, shall bear the name of Windsor." Philip privately complained, "I am nothing but a bloody amoeba. I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his own children."


title: House of Windsor

text: On 8 February 1960, some years after both the death of Queen Mary and the resignation of Churchill, the Queen confirmed that she and her children would continue to be known as the "House and Family of Windsor", as would any agnatic descendants who enjoy the style of Royal Highness and the title of prince or princess. Still, Elizabeth also decreed that her agnatic descendants who do not have that style and title would bear the surname Mountbatten-Windsor.


title: House of Windsor

text: This came after some months of correspondence between the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and the constitutional expert Edward Iwi. Iwi had raised the prospect that the royal child due to be born in February 1960 would bear "the Badge of Bastardy" if it were given its mother's maiden name (Windsor) rather than its father's name (Mountbatten). Macmillan had attempted to rebuff Iwi, until the Queen advised Rab Butler in January 1960 that for some time she had her heart set on a change that would recognise the name Mountbatten. She clearly wished to make this change before the birth of her child. The issue did not affect Prince Charles or Princess Anne, as they had been born with the name Mountbatten, before the Queen's accession to the throne. Prince Andrew was born 11 days later, on 19 February 1960.


title: House of Windsor

text: Any future monarch can change the dynastic name through a similar royal proclamation, as royal proclamations do not have statutory authority.


title: House of Windsor

text: At the creation of the House of Windsor, its head reigned over the British Empire. Following the end of the First World War, however, shifts took place that saw the emergence of the Dominions of the British Commonwealth as independent states. The shift was recognised in the Balfour Declaration of 1926, the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927, and the Statute of Westminster 1931. The Windsors became recognised as the royal family of multiple independent countries, a number that shifted over the decades, as some Dominions became republics and Crown colonies became realms, republics, or monarchies under a different sovereign. Since 1949, three monarchs of the House of Windsor, George VI, Elizabeth II and Charles III, have also been Head of the Commonwealth of Nations, comprising most (but not all) parts of the former British Empire and some states that were never part of it.


title: Tibet

text: Tibet (; "Böd"; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa, Tamang, Qiang, Sherpa and Lhoba peoples and now also considerable numbers of Han Chinese and Hui settlers. Since 1951, the entire plateau has been under the administration of the People's Republic of China, a major portion in the Tibet Autonomous Region, and other portions in the Qinghai and Sichuan provinces.


title: Tibet

text: Tibet is the highest region on Earth, with an average elevation of . Located in the Himalayas, the highest elevation in Tibet is Mount Everest, Earth's highest mountain, rising 8,848.86 m (29,032 ft) above sea level.


title: Tibet

text: The Tibetan Empire emerged in the 7th century. At its height in the 9th century, the Tibetan Empire extended far beyond the Tibetan Plateau, from Central Asian's Tarim Basin and the Pamirs in the west to Yunnan and Bengal in the southeast. But once the process of fragmentation began, the empire divided into a variety of territories. The bulk of western and central Tibet (Ü-Tsang) was often at least nominally unified under a series of Tibetan governments in Lhasa, Shigatse, or nearby locations. The eastern regions of Kham and Amdo often maintained a more decentralized indigenous political structure, being divided among a number of small principalities and tribal groups, while also often falling more directly under Chinese rule; most of this area was eventually annexed into the Chinese provinces of Sichuan and Qinghai. The current borders of Tibet were generally established in the 18th century.


title: Tibet

text: Following the Xinhai Revolution against the Qing dynasty in 1912, Qing soldiers were disarmed and escorted out of Tibet Area (Ü-Tsang). The region subsequently in 1913 without recognition and permission by the subsequent Chinese Republican government. Later, Lhasa took control of the western part of Xikang. The region maintained its autonomy until 1951 when, following the Battle of Chamdo, Tibet was occupied and annexed into the People's Republic of China, and 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 mostly ethnic autonomous prefectures within Sichuan, Qinghai and other neighbouring provinces. There are tensions regarding Tibet's political status and dissident groups that are active in exile.


title: Tibet

text: With the growth of tourism in recent years, the service sector has become the largest sector in Tibet, accounting for 50.1% of the local GDP in 2020. The dominant religion in Tibet is Tibetan Buddhism; other religions include Bön, an indigenous religion similar to Tibetan Buddhism, Tibetan Muslims, and Christian minorities. Tibetan Buddhism is a primary influence on the art, music, and festivals of the region. Tibetan architecture reflects Chinese and Indian influences. Staple foods in Tibet are roasted barley, yak meat, and butter tea.


title: Tibet

text: The Tibetan name for their land, "Bod" (), means 'Tibet' or 'Tibetan Plateau', although it originally meant the central region around Lhasa, now known in Tibetan as "Ü" (). The Standard Tibetan pronunciation of "Bod" () is transcribed as: "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" (1st century CE) and "Geographia" (Ptolemy, 2nd century CE), itself from the Sanskrit form "Bhauṭṭa" of the Indian geographical tradition.


title: Tibet

text: 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 (), which means 'area, district, region, ward'. Tibetan people, language, and culture, regardless of where they are from, are referred to as "Zang" (), although the geographical term is often limited to the Tibet Autonomous Region. The term "Xīzàng" was coined during the Qing dynasty in the reign of the Jiaqing Emperor (1796–1820) through the addition of the prefix (, 'west') to "Zang".


title: Tibet

text: The best-known medieval Chinese name for Tibet is "Tubo" (; or , or , ). This name first appears in Chinese characters as in the 7th century (Li Tai) and as in the 10th-century ("Old Book of Tang", describing 608–609 emissaries from Tibetan King Namri Songtsen to Emperor Yang of Sui). In the Middle-Chinese language spoken during that period, as reconstructed by William H. Baxter, was pronounced "thu-phjon", and was pronounced "thu-pjon" (with the "" representing a "shang" tone).


title: Tibet

text: 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 clearly includes the entire Tibetan plateau rather than simply the Tibet Autonomous Region.


title: Tibet

text: The English word "Tibet" or "Thibet" dates back to the 18th century. Historical linguists generally agree that "Tibet" names in European languages are loanwords from Semitic or (; ), itself deriving from Turkic "" (plural of ), literally 'The Heights'.


title: Tibet

text: Linguists generally 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 Matthew Kapstein:


title: Tibet

text: From the perspective of historical linguistics, Tibetan most closely resembles Burmese among the major languages of Asia. Grouping these two together with other apparently related languages spoken in the Himalayan lands, as well as in the highlands of Southeast Asia and the Sino-Tibetan frontier regions, linguists have generally concluded that there exists a Tibeto-Burman family of languages. More controversial is the theory that the Tibeto-Burman family is itself part of a larger language family, called Sino-Tibetan, and that through it Tibetan and Burmese are distant cousins of Chinese.


title: Tibet

text: The language has numerous regional dialects which are generally not mutually intelligible. It is employed throughout the Tibetan plateau and Bhutan and is also spoken in parts of Nepal and northern India, such as Sikkim. In general, the dialects of central Tibet (including Lhasa), Kham, Amdo and some smaller nearby areas are considered Tibetan dialects. Other forms, particularly Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Sherpa, and Ladakhi, are considered by their speakers, largely for political reasons, to be separate languages. However, if the latter group of Tibetan-type languages are included in the calculation, then 'greater Tibetan' is spoken by approximately 6 million people across the Tibetan Plateau. Tibetan is also spoken by approximately 150,000 exile speakers who have fled from modern-day Tibet to India and other countries.


title: Tibet

text: Although spoken Tibetan varies according to the region, the written language, based on Classical Tibetan, is consistent throughout. This is probably due to the long-standing influence of the Tibetan empire, whose rule embraced (and extended at times far beyond) the present Tibetan linguistic area, which runs from Gilgit Baltistan in the west to Yunnan and Sichuan in the east, and from north of Qinghai Lake south as far as Bhutan. The Tibetan language has its own script which it shares with Ladakhi and Dzongkha, and which is derived from the ancient Indian Brāhmī script.


title: Tibet

text: Starting in 2001, the local deaf sign languages of Tibet were standardized, and Tibetan Sign Language is now being promoted across the country.


title: Tibet

text: The first Tibetan-English dictionary and grammar book was written by Alexander Csoma de Kőrös in 1834.


title: Tibet

text: Humans inhabited the Tibetan Plateau at least 21,000 years ago. This population was largely replaced around 3,000 BP by Neolithic immigrants from northern China, but there is a partial genetic continuity between the Paleolithic inhabitants and contemporary Tibetan populations.


title: Tibet

text: The earliest Tibetan historical texts identify the Zhang Zhung culture as a people who migrated from the Amdo region into what is now the region of Guge in western Tibet. Zhang Zhung is considered to be the original home of the Bön religion. By the 1st century BCE, a neighboring kingdom arose in the Yarlung valley, and the Yarlung king, Drigum Tsenpo, attempted to remove the influence of the Zhang Zhung by expelling the Zhang's Bön priests from Yarlung. He was assassinated and Zhang Zhung continued its dominance of the region until it was annexed by Songtsen Gampo in the 7th century. Prior to Songtsen Gampo, the kings of Tibet were more mythological than factual, and there is insufficient evidence of their existence.


title: Tibet

text: The history of a unified Tibet begins with the rule of Songtsen Gampo (604–650CE), who united parts of the Yarlung River Valley and founded the Tibetan Empire. He also brought in many reforms, and Tibetan power spread rapidly, creating a large and powerful empire. It is traditionally considered that his first wife was the Princess of Nepal, Bhrikuti, and that she played a great role in the establishment of Buddhism in Tibet. In 640, he married Princess Wencheng, the niece of the Chinese emperor Taizong of Tang China.


title: Tibet

text: Under the next few Tibetan kings, Buddhism became established as the state religion and Tibetan power increased even further over large areas of Central Asia, while major inroads were made into Chinese territory, even reaching the Tang's capital Chang'an (modern Xi'an) in late 763. However, the Tibetan occupation of Chang'an only lasted for fifteen days, after which they were defeated by Tang and its ally, the Turkic Uyghur Khaganate.


title: Tibet

text: The Kingdom of Nanzhao (in Yunnan and neighbouring regions) remained under Tibetan control from 750 to 794, when they turned on their Tibetan overlords and helped the Chinese inflict a serious defeat on the Tibetans.


title: Tibet

text: In 747, the hold of Tibet was loosened by the campaign of general Gao Xianzhi, who tried to re-open the direct communications between Central Asia and Kashmir. By 750, the Tibetans had lost almost all of their central Asian possessions to the Chinese. However, after Gao Xianzhi's defeat by the Arabs and Qarluqs at the Battle of Talas (751) and the subsequent civil war known as the An Lushan Rebellion (755), Chinese influence decreased rapidly and Tibetan influence resumed.


title: Tibet

text: At its height in the 780s to 790s, the Tibetan Empire reached its highest glory when it ruled and controlled a territory stretching from modern day Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, China, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan.


title: Tibet

text: In 821/822CE, Tibet and China signed a peace treaty. A bilingual account of this treaty, including details of the borders between the two countries, is inscribed on a stone pillar which stands outside the Jokhang temple in Lhasa. Tibet continued as a Central Asian empire until the mid-9th century, when a civil war over succession led to the collapse of imperial Tibet. The period that followed is known traditionally as the "Era of Fragmentation", when political control over Tibet became divided between regional warlords and tribes with no dominant centralized authority. An Islamic invasion from Bengal took place in 1206.


title: Tibet

text: The Mongol Yuan dynasty, through the Bureau of Buddhist and Tibetan Affairs, or Xuanzheng Yuan, ruled Tibet through a top-level administrative department. One of the department's purposes was to select a "dpon-chen" ("great administrator"), usually appointed by the lama and confirmed by the Mongol emperor in Beijing. The Sakya lama retained a degree of autonomy, acting as the political authority of the region, while the "dpon-chen" held administrative and military power. Mongol rule of Tibet remained separate from the main provinces of China, but the region existed under the administration of the Yuan dynasty. If the Sakya lama ever came into conflict with the "dpon-chen", the "dpon-chen" had the authority to send Chinese troops into the region.


title: Tibet

text: Tibet retained nominal power over religious and regional political affairs, while the Mongols managed a structural and administrative rule over the region, reinforced by the rare military intervention. This existed as a "diarchic structure" under the Yuan emperor, with power primarily in favor of the Mongols. Mongolian prince Khuden gained temporal power in Tibet in the 1240s and sponsored Sakya Pandita, whose seat became the capital of Tibet. Drogön Chögyal Phagpa, Sakya Pandita's nephew became Imperial Preceptor of Kublai Khan, founder of the Yuan dynasty.


title: Tibet

text: Yuan control over the region ended with the Ming overthrow of the Yuan and Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen's revolt against the Mongols. Following the uprising, Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen founded the Phagmodrupa Dynasty, and sought to reduce Yuan influences over Tibetan culture and politics.


title: Tibet

text: Between 1346 and 1354, Tai Situ Changchub Gyaltsen toppled the Sakya and founded the Phagmodrupa Dynasty. The following 80 years saw the founding of the Gelug school (also known as Yellow Hats) by the disciples of Je Tsongkhapa, and the founding of the important Ganden, Drepung and Sera monasteries near Lhasa. However, internal strife within the dynasty and the strong localism of the various fiefs and political-religious factions led to a long series of internal conflicts. The minister family Rinpungpa, based in Tsang (West Central Tibet), dominated politics after 1435. In 1565 they were overthrown by the Tsangpa Dynasty of Shigatse which expanded its power in different directions of Tibet in the following decades and favoured the Karma Kagyu sect.


title: Tibet

text: In 1578, Altan Khan of the Tümed Mongols gave Sonam Gyatso, a high lama of the Gelugpa school, the name "Dalai Lama", "Dalai" being the Mongolian translation of the Tibetan name "Gyatso" "Ocean".


title: Tibet

text: The 5th Dalai Lama (1617-1682) is known for unifying the Tibetan heartland under the control of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism, after defeating the rival Kagyu and Jonang sects and the secular ruler, the Tsangpa prince, in a prolonged civil war. His efforts were successful in part because of aid from Güshi Khan, the Oirat leader of the Khoshut Khanate. With Güshi Khan as a largely uninvolved overlord, the 5th Dalai Lama and his intimates established a civil administration which is referred to by historians as the "Lhasa state". This Tibetan regime or government is also referred to as the Ganden Phodrang.


title: Tibet

text: Qing dynasty rule in Tibet began with their 1720 expedition to the country when they expelled the invading Dzungars. Amdo came under Qing control in 1724, and eastern Kham was incorporated into neighbouring Chinese provinces in 1728. Meanwhile, the Qing government sent resident commissioners called "Ambans" to Lhasa. In 1750, the Ambans and the majority of the Han Chinese and Manchus living in Lhasa were killed in a riot, and Qing troops arrived quickly and suppressed the rebels in the next year. Like the preceding Yuan dynasty, the Manchus of the Qing dynasty exerted military and administrative control of the region, while granting it a degree of political autonomy. The Qing commander publicly executed a number of supporters of the rebels and, as in 1723 and 1728, made changes in the political structure and drew up a formal organization plan. The Qing now restored the Dalai Lama as ruler, leading the governing council called "Kashag", but elevated the role of "Ambans" to include more direct involvement in Tibetan internal affairs. At the same time, the Qing took steps to counterbalance the power of the aristocracy by adding officials recruited from the clergy to key posts.


title: Tibet

text: For several decades, peace reigned in Tibet, but in 1792, the Qing Qianlong Emperor sent a large Chinese army into Tibet to push the invading Nepalese out. This prompted yet another Qing reorganization of the Tibetan government, this time through a written plan called the "Twenty-Nine Regulations for Better Government in Tibet". Qing military garrisons staffed with Qing troops were now also established near the Nepalese border. Tibet was dominated by the Manchus in various stages in the 18th century, and the years immediately following the 1792 regulations were the peak of the Qing imperial commissioners' authority; but there was no attempt to make Tibet a Chinese province.


title: Tibet

text: In 1834, the Sikh Empire invaded and annexed Ladakh, a culturally Tibetan region that was an independent kingdom at the time. Seven years later, a Sikh army led by General Zorawar Singh invaded western Tibet from Ladakh, starting the Sino-Sikh War. A Qing-Tibetan army repelled the invaders but was in turn defeated when it chased the Sikhs into Ladakh. The war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Chushul between the Chinese and Sikh empires.


title: Tibet

text: As the Qing dynasty weakened, its authority over Tibet also gradually declined, and by the mid-19th century, its influence was minuscule. Qing authority over Tibet had become more symbolic than real by the late 19th century, although in the 1860s, the Tibetans still chose for reasons of their own to emphasize the empire's symbolic authority and make it seem substantial.


title: Tibet

text: In 1774, a Scottish nobleman, George Bogle, travelled to Shigatse to investigate prospects of trade for the East India Company. His efforts, while largely unsuccessful, established permanent contact between Tibet and the Western world. However, in the 19th century, tensions between foreign powers and Tibet increased. The British Empire was expanding its territories in India into the Himalayas, while the Emirate of Afghanistan and the Russian Empire were both doing likewise in Central Asia.


title: Tibet

text: In 1904, a British expedition to Tibet, spurred in part by a fear that Russia was extending its power into Tibet as part of the Great Game, was launched. Although the expedition initially set out with the stated purpose of resolving border disputes between Tibet and Sikkim, it quickly turned into a military invasion. The British expeditionary force, consisting of mostly Indian troops, quickly invaded and captured Lhasa, with the Dalai Lama fleeing to the countryside. Afterwards, the leader of the expedition, Sir Francis Younghusband, negotiated the Convention Between Great Britain and Tibet with the Tibetans, which guaranteed the British great economic influence but ensured the region remained under Chinese control. The Qing imperial resident, known as the Amban, publicly repudiated the treaty, while the British government, eager for friendly relations with China, negotiated a new treaty two years later known as the Convention Between Great Britain and China Respecting Tibet. The British agreed not to annex or interfere in Tibet in return for an indemnity from the Chinese government, while China agreed not to permit any other foreign state to interfere with the territory or internal administration of Tibet.


title: Tibet

text: In 1910, the Qing government sent a military expedition of its own under Zhao Erfeng to establish direct Manchu-Chinese rule and, in an imperial edict, deposed the Dalai Lama, who fled to British India. Zhao Erfeng defeated the Tibetan military conclusively and expelled the Dalai Lama's forces from the province. His actions were unpopular, and there was much animosity against him for his mistreatment of civilians and disregard for local culture.


title: Tibet

text: After the Xinhai Revolution (1911–12) toppled the Qing dynasty and the last Qing troops were escorted out of Tibet, the new Republic of China apologized for the actions of the Qing and offered to restore the Dalai Lama's title. The Dalai Lama refused any Chinese title and declared himself ruler of an independent Tibet. In 1913, Tibet and Mongolia concluded a treaty of mutual recognition. For the next 36 years, the 13th Dalai Lama and the regents who succeeded him governed Tibet. During this time, Tibet fought Chinese warlords for control of the ethnically Tibetan areas in Xikang and Qinghai (parts of Kham and Amdo) along the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. In 1914, the Tibetan government signed the Simla Convention with Britain, which recognized Chinese suzerainty over Tibet in return for a border settlement. China refused to sign the Convention and lost its suzerain rights.


title: Tibet

text: When in the 1930s and 1940s the regents displayed negligence in affairs, the Kuomintang Government of the Republic of China took advantage of this to expand its reach into the territory. On December 20, 1941, Kuomingtang leader Chiang Kai-Shek noted in his diary that Tibet would be among the territories which he would demand as restitution for China following the conclusion of World War II.


title: Tibet

text: Emerging with control over most of mainland China after the Chinese Civil War, the People's Republic of China annexed Tibet in 1950 and negotiated the Seventeen Point Agreement with the newly enthroned 14th Dalai Lama's government, affirming the People's Republic of China's sovereignty but granting the area autonomy. Subsequently, on his journey into exile, the 14th Dalai Lama completely repudiated the agreement, which he has repeated on many occasions. According to the CIA, the Chinese used the Dalai Lama to gain control of the military's training and actions.


title: Tibet

text: The Dalai Lama had a strong following as many people from Tibet looked at him not just as their political leader, but as their spiritual leader. After the Dalai Lama's government fled to Dharamsala, India, during the 1959 Tibetan Rebellion, it established a rival government-in-exile. Afterwards, the Central People's Government in Beijing renounced the agreement and began implementation of the halted social and political reforms. During the Great Leap Forward, between 200,000 and 1,000,000 Tibetans may have died and approximately 6,000 monasteries were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution—destroying the vast majority of historic Tibetan architecture.


title: Tibet

text: In 1980, General Secretary and reformist Hu Yaobang visited Tibet and ushered in a period of social, political, and economic liberalization. At the end of the decade, however, before the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, monks in the Drepung and Sera monasteries started protesting for independence. The government halted reforms and started an anti-separatist campaign. Human rights organisations have been critical of the Beijing and Lhasa governments' approach to human rights in the region when cracking down on separatist convulsions that have occurred around monasteries and cities, most recently in the 2008 Tibetan unrest.


title: Tibet

text: From the 1951 Seventeen Point Agreement to 2003, life expectancy in Tibet increased from thirty-six years to sixty-seven years with infant mortality and absolute poverty declining steadily.


title: Tibet

text: All of modern China, including Tibet, is considered a part of East Asia. Historically, some European sources also considered parts of Tibet to lie in Central Asia. Tibet is west of the Central China plain. In China, Tibet is regarded as part of (), a term usually translated by Chinese media as "the Western section", meaning "Western China".


title: Tibet

text: Tibet has some of the world's tallest mountains, with several of them making the top ten list. Mount Everest, located on the border with Nepal, is, at , the highest mountain on earth. Several major rivers have their source in the Tibetan Plateau (mostly in present-day Qinghai Province). These include the Yangtze, Yellow River, Indus River, Mekong, Ganges, Salween and the Yarlung Tsangpo River (Brahmaputra River). The Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon, along the Yarlung Tsangpo River, is among the deepest and longest canyons in the world.


title: Tibet

text: Tibet has been called the "Water Tower" of Asia, and China is investing heavily in water projects in Tibet.


title: Tibet

text: The Indus and Brahmaputra rivers originate from the vicinities of Lake Mapam Yumco in Western Tibet, near Mount Kailash. The mountain is a holy pilgrimage site for both Hindus and Tibetans. The Hindus consider the mountain to be the abode of Lord Shiva. The Tibetan name for Mount Kailash is Khang Rinpoche. Tibet has numerous high-altitude lakes referred to in Tibetan as "tso" or "co". These include Qinghai Lake, Lake Manasarovar, Namtso, Pangong Tso, Yamdrok Lake, Siling Co, Lhamo La-tso, Lumajangdong Co, Lake Puma Yumco, Lake Paiku, Como Chamling, Lake Rakshastal, Dagze Co and Dong Co. The Qinghai Lake (Koko Nor) is the largest lake in the People's Republic of China.


title: Tibet

text: The climate is severely dry nine months of the year, and average annual snowfall is only , due to the rain shadow effect. Western passes receive small amounts of fresh snow each year but remain traversible all year round. Low temperatures are prevalent throughout these western regions, where bleak desolation is unrelieved by any vegetation bigger than a low bush, and where the wind sweeps unchecked across vast expanses of arid plain. The Indian monsoon exerts some influence on eastern Tibet. Northern Tibet is subject to high temperatures in the summer and intense cold in the winter.


title: Tibet

text: Cultural Tibet consists of several regions. These include Amdo ("A mdo") in the northeast, which is administratively part of the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, and Sichuan. Kham ("Khams") in the southeast encompasses parts of western Sichuan, northern Yunnan, southern Qinghai, and the eastern part of the Tibet Autonomous Region. Ü-Tsang ("dBus gTsang") (Ü in the center, Tsang in the center-west, and Ngari ("mNga' ris") in the far west) covered the central and western portion of Tibet Autonomous Region.


title: Tibet

text: Tibetan cultural influences extend to the neighboring states of Bhutan, Nepal, regions of India such as Sikkim, Ladakh, Lahaul, and Spiti, Northern Pakistan Baltistan or Balti-yul in addition to designated Tibetan autonomous areas in adjacent Chinese provinces.


title: Tibet

text: There are over 800 settlements in Tibet. Lhasa is Tibet's traditional capital and the capital of Tibet Autonomous Region. It contains two world heritage sites – the Potala Palace and Norbulingka, which were the residences of the Dalai Lama. Lhasa contains a number of significant temples and monasteries, including Jokhang and Ramoche Temple.


title: Tibet

text: Shigatse is the second largest city in the Tibet AR, west of Lhasa. Gyantse and Qamdo are also amongst the largest.


title: Tibet

text: Other cities and towns in cultural Tibet include Shiquanhe (Gar), Nagchu, Bamda, Rutog, Nyingchi, Nedong, Coqên, Barkam, Sagya, Gertse, Pelbar, Lhatse, and Tingri; in Sichuan, Kangding (Dartsedo); in Qinghai, Jyekundo (Yushu), Machen, and Golmud; in India, Tawang, Leh, and Gangtok, and in Pakistan, Skardu, Kharmang, and Khaplu.


title: Tibet

text: "Sus scrofa" expanded from its origin in southeast Asia into the Plateau, acquiring and fixing adaptive alleles for the high-altitude environment. The forests of Tibet are home to black bears, red pandas, musk deer, barking deer, and squirrels. Monkeys such as rhesus macaques and langurs live in the warmer forest zones. Tibetan antelopes, gazelles, and kiangs gaze on the grasslands of the Tibetan plateau. There are more than 500 bird species in Tibet. Because of the high altitude and harsh climate, there are few insects in Tibet.


title: Tibet

text: Snow leopards are hunted for their fur and the eggs of black-necked cranes have been collected as a delicacy food.


title: Tibet

text: The central region of Tibet is an autonomous region within China, the Tibet Autonomous Region. The Tibet Autonomous Region is a province-level entity of the People's Republic of China. It is governed by a People's Government, led by a chairman. In practice, however, the chairman is subordinate to the branch secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). As a matter of convention, the chairman has almost always been an ethnic Tibetan, while the party secretary has always been ethnically non-Tibetan.


title: Tibet

text: The Tibetan economy is dominated by subsistence agriculture. Due to limited arable land, the primary occupation of the Tibetan Plateau is raising livestock, such as sheep, cattle, goats, camels, yaks, dzo, and horses.


title: Tibet

text: The main crops grown are barley, wheat, buckwheat, rye, potatoes, and assorted fruits and vegetables. Tibet is ranked the lowest among China's 31 provinces on the Human Development Index according to UN Development Programme data. In recent years, due to increased interest in Tibetan Buddhism, tourism has become an increasingly important sector, and is actively promoted by the authorities. Tourism brings in the most income from the sale of handicrafts. These include Tibetan hats, jewelry (silver and gold), wooden items, clothing, quilts, fabrics, Tibetan rugs and carpets. The Central People's Government exempts Tibet from all taxation and provides 90% of Tibet's government expenditures. However most of this investment goes to pay migrant workers who do not settle in Tibet and send much of their income home to other provinces.


title: Tibet

text: Forty percent of the rural cash income in the Tibet Autonomous Region is derived from the harvesting of the fungus "Ophiocordyceps sinensis" (formerly "Cordyceps sinensis"); contributing at least 1.8 billion yuan, (US$225 million) to the region's GDP.


title: Tibet

text: The Qingzang railway linking the Tibet Autonomous Region to Qinghai Province was opened in 2006, but it was controversial.


title: Tibet

text: In January 2007, the Chinese government issued a report outlining the discovery of a large mineral deposit under the Tibetan Plateau. The deposit has an estimated value of $128 billion and may double Chinese reserves of zinc, copper, and lead. The Chinese government sees this as a way to alleviate the nation's dependence on foreign mineral imports for its growing economy. However, critics worry that mining these vast resources will harm Tibet's fragile ecosystem and undermine Tibetan culture.


title: Tibet

text: On January 15, 2009, China announced the construction of Tibet's first expressway, the Lhasa Airport Expressway, a stretch of controlled-access highway in southwestern Lhasa. The project will cost 1.55 billion yuan (US$227 million).


title: Tibet

text: From January 18–20, 2010, a national conference on Tibet and areas inhabited by Tibetans in Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu and Qinghai was held in China and a plan to improve development of the areas was announced. The conference was attended by General secretary Hu Jintao, Wu Bangguo, Wen Jiabao, Jia Qinglin, Li Changchun, Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, He Guoqiang and Zhou Yongkang, all members of Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. The plan called for improvement of rural Tibetan income to national standards by 2020 and free education for all rural Tibetan children. China has invested 310 billion yuan (about 45.6 billion U.S. dollars) in Tibet since 2001.


title: Tibet

text: The State Council approved Tibet Lhasa Economic and Technological Development Zone as a state-level development zone in 2001. It is located in the western suburbs of Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region. It is away from the Gonggar Airport, and away from Lhasa Railway Station and away from 318 national highway.


title: Tibet

text: The zone has a planned area of and is divided into two zones. Zone A developed a land area of for construction purposes. It is a flat zone, and has the natural conditions for good drainage.


title: Tibet

text: Historically, the population of Tibet consisted of primarily ethnic Tibetans and some other ethnic groups. According to tradition the original ancestors of the Tibetan people, as represented by the six red bands in the Tibetan flag, are: the Se, Mu, Dong, Tong, Dru and Ra. Other traditional ethnic groups with significant population or with the majority of the ethnic group residing in Tibet (excluding a disputed area with India) include Bai people, Blang, Bonan, Dongxiang, Han, Hui people, Lhoba, Lisu people, Miao, Mongols, Monguor (Tu people), Menba (Monpa), Mosuo, Nakhi, Qiang, Nu people, Pumi, Salar, and Yi people.


title: Tibet

text: The proportion of the non-Tibetan population in Tibet is disputed. On the one hand, the Central Tibetan Administration of the Dalai Lama accuses China of actively swamping Tibet with migrants in order to alter Tibet's demographic makeup. On the other hand, according to the 2010 Chinese census ethnic Tibetans comprise 90% of a total population of 3 million in the Tibet Autonomous Region.


title: Tibet

text: Religion is extremely important to the Tibetans and has a strong influence over all aspects of their lives. Bön is the indigenous religion of Tibet, but has been almost eclipsed by Tibetan Buddhism, a distinctive form of Mahayana and Vajrayana, which was introduced into Tibet from the Sanskrit Buddhist tradition of northern India. Tibetan Buddhism is practiced not only in Tibet but also in Mongolia, parts of northern India, the Buryat Republic, the Tuva Republic, and in the Republic of Kalmykia and some other parts of China. During China's Cultural Revolution, nearly all Tibet's monasteries were ransacked and destroyed by the Red Guards. A few monasteries have begun to rebuild since the 1980s (with limited support from the Chinese government) and greater religious freedom has been granted – although it is still limited. Monks returned to monasteries across Tibet and monastic education resumed even though the number of monks imposed is strictly limited. Before the 1950s, between 10 and 20% of males in Tibet were monks.


title: Tibet

text: The Chinese government continued to pursue a strategy of forced assimilation and suppression of Tibetan Buddhism, as demonstrated by the laws designed to control the next reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and those of other Tibetan eminent lamas. Monks and nuns who refused to denounce the Dalai Lama have been expelled from their monasteries, imprisoned, and tortured.


title: Tibet

text: It was reported in June 2021 that amidst the 2020–2022 China–India skirmishes, the People's Liberation Army had been forming a new unit for Tibetans who would be taken to Buddhist monks for religious blessings after completing their training.


title: Tibet

text: The first Christians documented to have reached Tibet were the Nestorians, of whom various remains and inscriptions have been found in Tibet. They were also present at the imperial camp of Möngke Khan at Shira Ordo, where they debated in 1256 with Karma Pakshi (1204/6-83), head of the Karma Kagyu order. Desideri, who reached Lhasa in 1716, encountered Armenian and Russian merchants.


title: Tibet

text: Roman Catholic Jesuits and Capuchins arrived from Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. Portuguese missionaries Jesuit Father António de Andrade and Brother Manuel Marques first reached the kingdom of Gelu in western Tibet in 1624 and was welcomed by the royal family who allowed them to build a church later on. By 1627, there were about a hundred local converts in the Guge kingdom. Later on, Christianity was introduced to Rudok, Ladakh and Tsang and was welcomed by the ruler of the Tsang kingdom, where Andrade and his fellows established a Jesuit outpost at Shigatse in 1626.


title: Tibet

text: In 1661 another Jesuit, Johann Grueber, crossed Tibet from Sining to Lhasa (where he spent a month), before heading on to Nepal. He was followed by others who actually built a church in Lhasa. These included the Jesuit Father Ippolito Desideri, 1716–1721, who gained a deep knowledge of Tibetan culture, language and Buddhism, and various Capuchins in 1707–1711, 1716–1733 and 1741–1745, Christianity was used by some Tibetan monarchs and their courts and the Karmapa sect lamas to counterbalance the influence of the Gelugpa sect in the 17th century until in 1745 when all the missionaries were expelled at the lama's insistence.


title: Tibet

text: In 1877, the Protestant James Cameron from the China Inland Mission walked from Chongqing to Batang in Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan province, and "brought the Gospel to the Tibetan people." Beginning in the 20th century, in Dêqên Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan, a large number of Lisu people and some Yi and Nu people converted to Christianity. Famous earlier missionaries include James O. Fraser, Alfred James Broomhall and Isobel Kuhn of the China Inland Mission, among others who were active in this area.


title: Tibet

text: Proselytising has been illegal in China since 1949. But , many Christian missionaries were reported to be active in Tibet with the tacit approval of Chinese authorities, who view the missionaries as a counterforce to Tibetan Buddhism or as a boon to the local economy.


title: Tibet

text: Muslims have been living in Tibet since as early as the 8th or 9th century. In Tibetan cities, there are small communities of Muslims, known as Kachee (Kache), who trace their origin to immigrants from three main regions: Kashmir (Kachee Yul in ancient Tibetan), Ladakh and the Central Asian Turkic countries. Islamic influence in Tibet also came from Persia. A Muslim Sufi Syed Ali Hamdani preached to the people of Baltistan, then known as little Tibet. After 1959, a group of Tibetan Muslims made a case for Indian nationality based on their historic roots to Kashmir and the Indian government declared all Tibetan Muslims Indian citizens later on that year. Other Muslim ethnic groups who have long inhabited Tibet include Hui, Salar, Dongxiang and Bonan. There is also a well established Chinese Muslim community (gya kachee), which traces its ancestry back to the Hui ethnic group of China.


title: Tibet

text: Tibetan representations of art are intrinsically bound with Tibetan Buddhism and commonly depict deities or variations of Buddha in various forms from bronze Buddhist statues and shrines, to highly colorful thangka paintings and mandalas. Thangkas are Tibet's traditional cloth paintings. Rendered on cotton cloth with a thin rod at the top, they portray Buddhist deities or themes in color and detail.


title: Tibet

text: Tibetan architecture contains Chinese and Indian influences, and reflects a deeply Buddhist approach. The Buddhist wheel, along with two dragons, can be seen on nearly every Gompa in Tibet. The design of the Tibetan Chörtens can vary, from roundish walls in Kham to squarish, four-sided walls in Ladakh.


title: Tibet

text: The most distinctive feature of Tibetan architecture is that many of the houses and monasteries are built on elevated, sunny sites facing the south, and are often made out of a mixture of rocks, wood, cement and earth. Little fuel is available for heat or lighting, so flat roofs are built to conserve heat, and multiple windows are constructed to let in sunlight. Walls are usually sloped inwards at 10 degrees as a precaution against the frequent earthquakes in this mountainous area.


title: Tibet

text: Standing at in height and in width, the Potala Palace is the most important example of Tibetan architecture. Formerly the residence of the Dalai Lama, it contains over one thousand rooms within thirteen stories, and houses portraits of the past Dalai Lamas and statues of the Buddha. It is divided between the outer White Palace, which serves as the administrative quarters, and the inner Red Quarters, which houses the assembly hall of the Lamas, chapels, 10,000 shrines, and a vast library of Buddhist scriptures. The Potala Palace is a World Heritage Site, as is Norbulingka, the former summer residence of the Dalai Lama.


title: Tibet

text: The music of Tibet reflects the cultural heritage of the trans-Himalayan region, centered in Tibet but also known wherever ethnic Tibetan groups are found in India, Bhutan, Nepal and further abroad. First and foremost Tibetan music is religious music, reflecting the profound influence of Tibetan Buddhism on the culture.


title: Tibet

text: Tibetan music often involves chanting in Tibetan or Sanskrit, as an integral part of the religion. These chants are complex, often recitations of sacred texts or in celebration of various festivals. Yang chanting, performed without metrical timing, is accompanied by resonant drums and low, sustained syllables. Other styles include those unique to the various schools of Tibetan Buddhism, such as the classical music of the popular Gelugpa school, and the romantic music of the Nyingmapa, Sakyapa and Kagyupa schools.


title: Tibet

text: Nangma dance music is especially popular in the karaoke bars of the urban center of Tibet, Lhasa. Another form of popular music is the classical gar style, which is performed at rituals and ceremonies. Lu are a type of songs that feature glottal vibrations and high pitches. There are also epic bards who sing of Gesar, who is a hero to ethnic Tibetans.


title: Tibet

text: Tibet has various festivals, many for worshipping the Buddha, that take place throughout the year. Losar is the Tibetan New Year Festival. Preparations for the festive event are manifested by special offerings to family shrine deities, painted doors with religious symbols, and other painstaking jobs done to prepare for the event. Tibetans eat "Guthuk" (barley noodle soup with filling) on New Year's Eve with their families. The Monlam Prayer Festival follows it in the first month of the Tibetan calendar, falling between the fourth and the eleventh days of the first Tibetan month. It involves dancing and participating in sports events, as well as sharing picnics. The event was established in 1049 by Tsong Khapa, the founder of the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama's order.


title: Tibet

text: The most important crop in Tibet is barley, and dough made from barley flour—called tsampa—is the staple food of Tibet. This is either rolled into noodles or made into steamed dumplings called momos. Meat dishes are likely to be yak, goat, or mutton, often dried, or cooked into a spicy stew with potatoes. Mustard seed is cultivated in Tibet, and therefore features heavily in its cuisine. Yak yogurt, butter and cheese are frequently eaten, and well-prepared yogurt is considered something of a prestige item. Butter tea is a very popular drink.


title: Dissociative identity disorder

text: Dissociative identity disorder (DID), better known as multiple personality disorder or multiple personality syndrome, is a mental disorder characterized by the presence of at least two distinct and relatively enduring personality states.


title: Dissociative identity disorder

text: The disorder is accompanied by memory gaps more severe than could be explained by ordinary forgetfulness. The personality states alternately show in a person's behavior; however, presentations of the disorder vary. Other conditions that often occur in people with DID include post-traumatic stress disorder, personality disorders (especially borderline and avoidant), depression, substance use disorders, conversion disorder, somatic symptom disorder, eating disorders, obsessive–compulsive disorder, and sleep disorders. Self-harm, non-epileptic seizures, flashbacks with amnesia for content of flashbacks, anxiety disorders, and suicidality are also common.


title: Dissociative identity disorder

text: The following three subsections give brief overviews of the proposed cause of dissociative identity disorder (DID) and how it is recognized; conventional treatment of DID, and how frequently it occurs; and finally how it is perceived in modern Western culture. All of the topics are treated in greater detail in later sections.


title: Dissociative identity disorder

text: Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is the result of repeated or long-term childhood trauma, most frequently child abuse or neglect, that is combined with an insecure or disorganized attachment. DID cannot form after ages 6-9 because individuals older than these ages have an integrated self identity and history. Trauma later in life can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder or complex post-traumatic stress disorder, other dissociative disorders including other specified dissociative disorder, somatic symptom disorders, or possibly borderline personality disorder, but DID requires an unintegrated mind to form. Genetic and biological factors are also believed to play a role. The diagnosis should not be made if the person's condition is better accounted for by substance use disorder, seizures, other mental health problems, imaginative play in children, or religious practices.


title: Dissociative identity disorder

text: Treatment generally involves supportive care and psychotherapy. The condition usually persists without treatment. It is believed to affect about 1.5% of the general population (based on a small US community sample) and 3% of those admitted to hospitals with mental health issues in Europe and North America. DID is diagnosed about six times more often in women than in men. The number of recorded cases increased significantly in the latter half of the 20th century, along with the number of identities reported by those affected.


title: Dissociative identity disorder

text: It is unclear whether increased rates of the disorder are due to better recognition or sociocultural factors such as mass media portrayals. The typical presenting symptoms in different regions of the world may also vary depending on culture, such as alter identities taking the form of possessing spirits, deities, ghosts, or mythical figures in cultures where normative possession states are common. The possession form of dissociative identity disorder is involuntary and distressing, and occurs in a way that violates cultural or religious norms.


title: Dissociative identity disorder

text: Dissociation, the term that underlies dissociative disorders including DID, lacks a precise, empirical, and generally agreed upon definition.


title: Dissociative identity disorder

text: A large number of diverse experiences have been termed dissociative, ranging from normal failures in attention to the breakdowns in memory processes characterized by the dissociative disorders. It is therefore unknown if there is a commonality between all dissociative experiences, or if the range of mild to severe symptoms is a result of different etiologies and biological structures. Other terms used in the literature, including personality, personality state, identity, ego state, and amnesia, also have no agreed upon definitions. Multiple competing models exist that incorporate some non-dissociative symptoms while excluding dissociative ones.


title: Dissociative identity disorder

text: Due to the lack of consensus regarding terminology in the study of DID, several terms have been proposed. One is "ego state" (behaviors and experiences possessing permeable boundaries with other such states but united by a common sense of self), while the other term is "alters" (each of which may have a separate autobiographical memory, independent initiative and a sense of ownership over individual behavior).


title: Dissociative identity disorder

text: Ellert Nijenhuis and colleagues suggest a distinction between personalities responsible for day-to-day functioning (associated with blunted physiological responses and reduced emotional reactivity, referred to as the "apparently normal part of the personality" or ANP) and those emerging in survival situations (involving fight-or-flight responses, vivid traumatic memories and strong, painful emotions – the "emotional part of the personality" or EP). "Structural dissociation of the personality" is used by Otto van der Hart and colleagues to distinguish dissociation they attribute to traumatic or pathological causes, which in turn is divided into primary, secondary and tertiary dissociation. According to this hypothesis, primary dissociation involves one ANP and one EP, while secondary dissociation involves one ANP and at least two EPs and tertiary dissociation, which is unique to DID, is described as having at least two ANPs and at least two EPs. Others have suggested dissociation can be separated into two distinct forms, detachment and compartmentalization, the latter of which, involving a failure to control normally controllable processes or actions, is most evident in DID. Efforts to psychometrically distinguish between normal and pathological dissociation have been made.


title: Dissociative identity disorder

text: According to the fifth edition of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" ("DSM-5"), symptoms of DID include "the presence of two or more distinct personality states" accompanied by the inability to recall personal information beyond what is expected through normal memory issues. Other DSM-5 symptoms include a loss of identity as related to individual distinct personality states, loss of one's subjective experience of the passage of time, and degradation of a sense of self and consciousness. In each individual, the clinical presentation varies and the level of functioning can change from severe impairment to minimal impairment. The symptoms of dissociative amnesia are subsumed under a DID diagnosis, and thus should not be diagnosed separately if DID criteria are met. Individuals with DID may experience distress from both the symptoms of DID (intrusive thoughts or emotions) and the consequences of the accompanying symptoms (dissociation rendering them unable to remember specific information). The majority of patients with DID report childhood sexual or physical abuse. Amnesia between identities may be asymmetrical; identities may or may not be aware of what is known by another. Individuals with DID may be reluctant to discuss symptoms due to associations with abuse, shame, and fear. DID patients may also frequently and intensely experience time disturbances.


title: Dissociative identity disorder

text: Around half of people with DID have fewer than 10 identities and most have fewer than 100; although as many as 4,500 have been reported. The average number of identities has increased over the past few decades, from two or three to now an average of approximately 16. However, it is unclear whether this is due to an actual increase in identities, or simply that the psychiatric community has become more accepting of a high number of compartmentalized memory components.


title: Dissociative identity disorder

text: The psychiatric history frequently contains multiple previous diagnoses of various disorders and treatment failures. The most common presenting complaint of DID is depression, with headaches being a common neurological symptom. Comorbid disorders can include substance use disorder, eating disorders, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, and personality disorders. A significant percentage of those diagnosed with DID have histories of borderline personality disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Presentations of dissociation in people with schizophrenia differ from those with DID as not being rooted in trauma, and this distinction can be effectively tested, although both conditions share a high rate of dissociative auditory hallucinations. Other disorders that have been found to be comorbid with DID are somatization disorders, major depressive disorder, as well as history of a past suicide attempt, in comparison to those without a DID diagnosis. Individuals diagnosed with DID demonstrate the highest hypnotizability of any clinical population. Although DID has high comorbidity and its development is related to trauma, there exists evidence to suggest that DID merits a separate diagnosis from other conditions like PTSD.