Kham

From open-encyclopedia.com - the free encyclopedia.

Kham province is one of three ancient provinces comprising traditional Tibet (the other two being Amdo and U-Tsang). During the Republic of China's rule over mainland China (1911-1949), most of the region was called Xikang Province (西康省). In the 1950s the PRC partitioned Xikang into a Qamdo Region in the west and a new "Xikang Province" in the east; these were subsequently merged into Tibet Autonomous Region and Sichuan province, respectively. Kham comprises a total of 50 contemporary counties, distributed between the Chinese provinces of Sichuan (16 counties), Yunnan (3 counties), and Qinghai (6 counties) as well as the eastern portion of the Tibet Autonomous Region (25 counties).

Kham has a rugged terrain characterized by mountain ridges and gorges running from northwest to southeast. Numerous rivers, including the Mekong, Yangtze, Yalong, and the Salween flow through Kham.

From the collapse of the Tibetan kingship in the 10th century until the 1950s, the people of Kham maintained a large degree of independence from both Lhasa and China, aided by the rugged nature of their homeland. Kham itself was never controlled by a single king, but was comprised of a patchwork of two dozen or more kingdoms.