An exhibition opened Sunday in the Ethnic Culture Palace in central Beijing to display the fruits of the Chinese nationwide assistance to Tibet.

The exhibition is composed of eleven sections, such as "62 projects," "educational aid" and "Tibetan Towns."

With hundreds of photos, movies, scale models and stage performance, it provides a systematic show of the assistance the Chinese interior has offered to Tibet over the past five decades.

This well-organized event attracted a large number of visitors, many of whom have worked in Tibet and came to review the contributions they have made to the region.

The exhibition is organized to encourage people to acquire a better understanding of and offer more care for Tibet, and thus further promote nationwide assistance to Tibet, sources said.

Zhang Yongfa, director of the Chinese Ethnic Culture Museum, said he and his wife went to Tibet soon after graduating from medical school in 1976, and had worked there until 1997.

"We had worked in Xigaze County for many years, and the mountains and people there are still fresh in my mind," he recollected, saying he hopes very much to revisit there someday.

"During the early days in Tibet, we were not used to the alpine climate." "Anyway, we overcame the difficulties and managed to settle down."

"I felt very proud to have spent my golden period in the place where our compatriots need us most, and I will never regret for my choice," he said.

Statistics show that in 1976 there had been an entrance of more than 2,000 Chinese interior graduates into Tibet, who chose to devote themselves to the region's well-being.

According to Baiba Cering, vice-commissioner of the Shannan Prefecture of Tibet, a good number of interior officials and professionals have come to work there, speeding up the progress of local education, engineering, and medical services.

"The financial aid the interior has offered us is undoubtedly a strong boost to our development, however, the 'spiritual treasure ' those interior talents have brought us is deemed as more precious," Cering said. "They have liberated local people's minds and enlarged their horizon....What they have done is potentially invaluable."

"Only a tiny number of separatists deny or stigmatize the assistance as unkind, but they can never attain a position," he said, noting the Tibetan people are looking forward to and grateful to the interior assistance.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the peaceful liberation of Tibet, with rich solid facts reflecting the prosperity enjoyed by Tibet people and the unity of all Chinese ethnic groups, the exhibition will strongly refute the fallacies preached by the Dalai Lama and anti-china forces, Sun Jiazheng, Chinese cultural minister, said at the opening ceremony.

Luo Gan, member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) as well as a state councilor, Legqog, chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region, and other related officials also attended the opening ceremony.

The exhibition is expected to run through June 29.

(People's Daily 06/25/2001)