Photo shows old woodblocks in the Derge Scripture Printing Lamasery in Derge County of Sichuan's Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. [Photo/China Tibet Online]

The Derge Scripture Printing Lamasery has preserved 228,814 old printing woodblocks dated from China's Yuan Dynasty (1271 – 1368) to the Republic of China (1912 – 1949), according to www.ccdy.cn.

Reputed as one of the three great sutra printing lamaseries along with the Lhasa Scripture Printing Lamasery and the Labrang Scripture Printing Lamasery, the Derge Scripture Printing Lamasery ranks the top in scale and influence.

Inside the lamasery are Buddha chambers, sutra-chanting hall, woodblocks storage houses and other houses of different functions. Behind the Buddha chambers and on top of the wooden Tibetan stairs are the storage houses of woodblocks separated by partition walls and linked by an aisle.

The woodblock shelves often have 15 to 16 deckers with each decker full of orderly-placed woodblocks.

Different from many printing blocks in the ethnic Han Buddhism areas, the woodblocks in the Derge Scripture Printing Lamasery have three characteristic kinds: "arrow shaft" style that is 60 to 70 cm in length and 11 to 18 cm in width; "elbow length" style that is 7 to 10 cm in width and about an elbow long; "small cute" style that is about 10 cm long and 5 to 6 cm wide.

The woodblock printing often uses ink and cinnabar. And the most famous printing is the using "arrow shaft" style woodblocks with cinnabar.

Located among ordinary people's residence in Derge County of Sichuan's Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, the Derge Scripture Printing Lamasery is a three-story building with a quadrangle courtyard combining ethnic Han and Tibetan architectural styles.

The Derge lamasery is also known as the "encyclopedia of Tibetan culture", "a shining cultural pearl in Tibetan-inhabited areas", and "treasure house at the foot of snowy mountains." It was established by Chokyi Tenpa Tsering, the 12th Derge Gyalpo and 6th Dharmaraja in 1729 and completed in 1756, covering an area of about 5,000 square meters with the building complex covering 4,103 square meters.

Derge means "virtuous place", which comes from the ten virtues of abiding by the commandments in Tibetan Buddhism. The place used to be under the control of Derge Gyalpo, who was bureaucratized to be a native officer under the governance of the royal Qing court in the late Qing Dynasty. It gained its current name "Derge" in 1913. It is the central part of the Tibetan-inhabited area and is also the northern route of the Ancient Tea-Horse Road.

Derge once saw the popularity of the Nyingma sect of Tibetan Buddhism and later became a place with Nyingma, Sakya, Kagyu and Gelug sects of Tibetan Buddhism. The first Rinpoche, Karmapa of the Kagyu Sect, and the 9th Dalai Lama Lungtok Gyatso were both born here. Moreover, it is also known as the hometown of the Great King Gesar and the cradle of the Karma Garze school of Thangka painting.