The Most-Read Postings on High Peaks Pure Earth in 2010

“Bidding farewell to 2010” Image taken from Tibetan poet Gade Tsering’s blog

A Happy New Year to all High Peaks Pure Earth readers!

2010 was the second full year of translations and blog postings on High Peaks Pure Earth, thank you all for reading, commenting, supporting, sharing and getting in touch. We are happy to see so many of you not only here but also with us on our Facebook page and Twitter page. As we posted for the first time last year, here is a quick round-up of our blogposts that were popular over the past year:

2010’s most popular post on High Peaks Pure Earth was a music video titled “New Generation” by those cool Amdo rappers Yudrug. This song really struck a chord amongst readers and the video has been viewed almost 4000 times on Vimeo alone not to mention becoming a solid staple at Tibetan gatherings the world over! It is even enjoying a new lease of life as a ringtone.

Here is the video again for an inspirational start to 2011:

2. As regular readers will know, the most translated and most read Tibetan blogger on High Peaks Pure Earth is Woeser, this general link to her articles is one of the most-clicked links on the site: http://highpeakspureearth.com/category/woeser/ Over 2010, the most read articles by Woeser on High Peaks Pure Earth were either related to human rights cases such as the imprisonment of Tibetan environmentalist Rinchen Samdrup or related to mining in Tibet as in June’s “Songtsen Gampo’s Hometown Is About To Be Completely Excavated” and September’s “Avatar in Tibet”. Also popular was Woeser’s blogpost written for Losar (Tibetan New Year) “I Am Tibetan”.

3. Sadly, 2010 was characterised by expressions of grief from netizens due to natural disasters that impacted Tibet. The biggest natural disaster that occurred was the earthquake in Kyegundo, Kham on April 14, 2010. Our initial blogpost where Tibetan netizens expressed their grief and worry for their relatives and loved ones in the region was widely read. The arrest of leading Tibetan intellectual Shogdung in the wake of the earthquake was also one of the most read postings of 2010.

4. As in 2009, in 2010, Tibetan bloggers were often the first (and at times, only) sources of information about political detentions, imprisonments or activism inside Tibet. The October 2010 protests for the Tibetan language by students became one of the biggest Tibet-related media stories of 2010 and our blogpost carrying photos of a solidarity protest by Tibetan students in Beijing that were being posted and shared on social networking sites attracted a lot of attention.

5. Finally, 2010 was the year that High Peaks Pure Earth wrote about the surge in online activity related to being Tibetan and Tibetan identity around the time leading up to Losar (Tibetan New Year). Our “I Am Tibetan” blogpost combined images, poetry and translations of 2 videos made by Tibetan netizens.