Tibetan Medicine Museum of China
Amid a sea of factories in Xining’s Biotech Zone, there is one building that stands out: the Tibetan Medicine Museum of China, a grandiose structure that blends elements of traditional monasteries with contemporary Chinese tastes. The museum, established in 2006, is the brainchild of the Qinghai Arura Tibetan Medicine Group. The company not only runs the biggest pharmaceutical factory in Qinghai Province, but also the Tibetan provincial hospital, a research center, and a Tibetan medicine college at a local university.
The museum’s upper floor houses the world’s largest thangka painting—nearly 2,000 feet long and worth an entry in the Guinness Book of Records. The basement features a lavish sales area where young Tibetan women in meticulously decorated dresses (harmonized with the colors of the shop’s interior design) sell medical products from the Arura company. The juxtaposition suggests that the museum is more than an expression of commercialism, but instead an ambitious Tibetan effort at claiming a space for Tibetan medicine in contemporary China.
(the world’s largest thangka painting)
In the exhibition hall of Medicine Buddha, there are one thousand of Medicine Buddha statues, flanked by Kangur, the collection of the words of Buddha. It is a well established custom in Tibetan monastery to display the Medicine and other Buddha statues in number of exact one thousand of each type to reflect the dedication,and devout of the sponsor and to be a repeating reminder of the availability of the path to enlightment.
(Hall of Medicine Buddha)
The Exhibition Hall exhibited a set of 80 medicine thangkas, an illustration of Tibetan medicine theory and its core application, a kind of special teaching mode rarely seen in other traditional medical system. The unique Tibetan medical theory depicted in the Thangkas together with the surgical instruments traced back to 1200 years ago, indicating not only the intelligence of Tibetan ancestors but also skillful surgery once carried out by Tibetan doctors.
(Hall of 80 medicine thangkas)
Tibetan Medicine Today 