88
families.
There
minority races.
was also concern with the protection of
For example, in the autonomous areas, the
provincial leader had to be from the minority race which
predominated in that area. As many of the minority races
the border regions,
lived in
such concessions were
necessary to strengthen the links between these regions and
the central Government.
9.
(承德
This theme was also developed in the context of at
least two of our sight-seeing trips, the first to the Lamma Temple in Peking and the second to Chengde (12
}
which is the site of the Qing Dynasty· Sumner Palace about
250 niles to the northeast of Peking. The palace and
te ple complex at Chengde is
architectural expression of the
both a
political
and
integration of the Han,
It is no
Manchu, Mongolian and Tibetan cultures.
coincidence that the construction of much of Chengde took
place at the same time as the annexation of Tibet and
Xinjiang by the Qing Empire in the eighteenth century. At
Chengde, the great Qing emperors such as Kang Xi, Qian
Long, and Jia Qing built temples reflecting the styles of
their newly conquered subjects e.g. the Putuozongheng
Temple is modelled on the Potala in Lhasa.
10.
Through this visit, our Chinese hosts were clearly
conveying the message that China was a single nation and
would remain so, irrespective of what happened in the USSR
where the situation
borders is not dissimilar to
on the