‘Look! What a big Thang-ga! There are so many pandas on it!’ On October 11, the Hundreds of Giant Panda Thang-ga Long Scroll designed by Aba Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau was unveiled at the Sichuan Provincial Library for the first time. More than 40 Thang-ga masters worked on the piece for a year.

The ‘Hundreds of Giant Panda Thang-ga Long Scroll’ is 172 meters long and 2.6 meters high, with a length of 142 meters and a height of 1.6 meters. It depicts more than 600 giant pandas, representing the total number of captive giant pandas in the world as on December 2019.

Amidst the beautiful natural scenery of each county (city) in Aba Prefecture as the backdrop, the theme picture brings alive the naive charm of the giant panda, displaying the multi-type, high-density and high-quality tourism and cultural resources of Aba Prefecture. The most representative black Thang technique table in Thang-ga has been used in the front and back of each work. There’s rich portrayal of ethnic costumes, folk customs, landmark local buildings and historic sites in 13 counties (cities) of Aba Prefecture.

Giant panda is recognized as the ‘living fossil’ of Paleontology in the world and the most representative image of biodiversity; Tang-ga is the world intangible cultural heritage and the most sacred and unique artistic expression of Tibetan culture. Aba Prefecture is the main distribution area and important habitat of giant pandas in China. There are six national nature reserves, three World Natural Heritages and four national forest parks in Aba Prefecture. The unique geographical environment and natural ecological resources provide the best habitat for giant pandas. At present, Aba Prefecture has plans to set up a giant panda ecological protection park spanning 290,000 hectares.(By Edina Liang)