A Brief History of the Kalmyk Mongols in Xinjiang The­re are approximately 140,000 Kal­myk Mongols in Xinjiang 新疆, or East Turkistan, about the same number as in Kalmykia, Rus­sia. 5,000 of them live in Ürümqi 乌鲁木齐, the capital. Often referred to as the East Turkistan Oirats,...

Introduction There are between 20,000 to 40,000 Yellow Yugurs (Yugu Zu 裕固族), a Turkic people residing in Gansu 甘肃, China. The Yellow Yugurs are related to the Uighurs of East Turkistan (Xinjiang 新疆), but they still follow Tibetan Buddhism, unlike the Uighurs, who converted...

Introduction A large number of Han Chinese of all ages in China are interested in Buddhism, but as in Tibet, the main problem is the lack of teachers. Many young people are receiving m­onastic ordination, but their quality is low. The majority of college-educated youth...

Introduction to the Altai Republic The Altai Republic is situated in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia and borders Kazakhstan, China and Mongolia. Its native inhabitants are presently known as Altaians, consisting of several peoples of Turkic ethnicity speaking...

Introduction to Buryatia In the year 2010, there were 286 000 Buryats in the Republic of Buryatia, in Russia, who constituted 30% of the population of the republic. In Chita district, Buryats make up just 5–6% of the population, and Buryats living in the Aginskoye subdistrict...

While Han Chinese are interested in Tibetan Buddhism, and some monasteries had been reconstructed in 1994, the monastic education level in Han China was low, mostly due to the lack of qualified teachers. Monasteries often functioned more like museums or tourist attractions...

Introduction Kalmykia is situated in the lower Volga-Don river basin, to the northwest of the Caspian Sea. There are 170,000 Kalmyks, and they constitute approximately half of the population of both the capital, Elista, which has a total population of 90,000, as well as the...

Overview The revival of Buddhism in Kalmykia began in 1988, after having been forbidden during the Soviet period up until then. Since that first new Buddhist group was officially registered, many local Buddhist communities have sprung up. At present in 2023,...

Introduction to Tuva From the sixteenth to the nineteenth of April 1990, together with Russian Buddhist scholar Andrey Terentyev, I visited the Tuva Autonomous Republic. Tuva is north of Western Mongolia, bordering the western Altai Region. It is at the southernmost reaches of...

The Revival of Buddhism during the 1990s Very soon after the April 1990 visit of Dr. Alexander Berzin to Tuva, the first “Tuvan Buddhist Society of Kyzyl,” chaired by Vladimir Kara-Sal, which was registered in 1989, started its activities, which were primarily fundraising to...