A full view of Labrang Monastery in Gansu Province, Jan.18 2008. [Profile photo/Xinhua]

The newly published picture album titled "Best Selection of Labrang Culture" unveils the secrecy of magnificent buildings, religious rituals inside the Labrang Monastery, one of the six ancestral monasteries of the Gelug Sect or Yellow Sect in Tibetan Buddhism.

The original release of the specially planned cultural publications was hosted on Jan.15 in Lanzhou, capital city of northwest China's Gansu Province where Labrang Monastery is seated. The album for the first time publicly shows the inside view of Labrang Monastery, with exquisite pictures illustrated in Tibetan, Mandarin and English languages.

This series of documents consist of ten books, ten pieces of discs and one picture album, dedicated to further exploration, inheritance, protection and promotion of the enriched Labrang culture.

The newly published book gives an all-round introduction on this sacred monastery, from its historical legacy to eminent lamas and Buddhist cultural reserve, while a documentary on Labrang Monastery and several other special albums about "Labrang Guozhuang dance", folk songs and locals are collected in the discs.

Background in brief:
Labrang Monastery is ideally located in an alluvial basin made by the Daxia River between the Dragon Mountain and the Phoenix Mountain, to the west of Xiahe County, Gansu Province.

As a holy land, Labrang Monastery, built by Jamyang Rinpoche I in 1709, has been standing on the Gannan grassland for over three centuries. The name of Labrang derived from "Lhadrang", meaning the "rinpoche's seat" in Tibetan language.

As one of the six Gelug monasteries, Labrang Monaster boasts the largest building cluster second only to Tashilunpo Monastery in Tibet's Shigatse, worshipped as the highest institute for Buddhist scripture studies aside from Lhasa. And many master translators and chanters of Buddhist scriptures for the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama were recorded to have come from Labrang Monastery.