shoton festival

Shoton Festival

Shoton festival means in Tibetan language “the banquet of enjoying the Yoghurt”.

This festival could be traced back to 17th century, at that time, Shoton days was just a religious action, the founder of Gelu - pa sect set rules for lhamas in summer. Because in summer, it is the time for all kinds of insects to be born and to grow up, the tree leaves, the grass are have new greens, all type of lifes on highland are active in time of every year, in order to protect these lives from being stampled to death, he made this restriction, during this time period, lhamas were not allowed to leave monasteries but stay in for study.

After this time period, lham students poured out of monasteries, and the people would treated them with nice yoghurt, they would spend their time in woods, dancing, singing, making fun with each other.

In the middle of 17th century, the Qing dynasty emperor granded tittles to Fifth Dalai Lhama, and Fourth Panchan Lhama. In that year, in order to celebrate this, Dalai Lhama ordered Tibetan operas to be performed in Norbulinka, Tsepung monastery and Potala palce, and allowed common people to watch these showes in his “Forbidden city” - Norbulingka. Since then, the Shoton celebration gradually became a public programme, and became a festival of enjoying Tibetan operas, so some people aslo call this Shoton festival: opera watching festival.

During this festival, people can go and enjoy the grand show of giant Tangkha in Tsepung monastery at the first day of the festival, on the second day, giant Tangkha show will be in Sera monastery, and the Tibetan opera will be played in Norbulingka - the Summer palace.

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