On August 20, the plate awarding ceremony of Tibet Movie & TV andAnimation Industry Base was held in Lhasa. During the activity, Tibet declared to make cartoon King Gesar and this project was listed as the special financial support project of 2016 China cultural industry.

King Gesar is an epic from Tibet based on Tibetan folk tales, legends, folk songs and proverbs. Representing the highest achievement of ancient Tibetan culture, it is renowned as oriental Homer Epic. In addition, it was listed as a World Intangible Heritage in 2009.

Previously, similar cartoons are made by departments and enterprises in Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan, Yunnan and Beijing. All of them do not have influences, according to Jampel Bartso, a researcher of Minority Literature Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and director of King Gesar Research Center. He says, “on the one hand, resources integration is not enough. On the other hand, it lacks strong fund investment. Now the nation and local government both provide enough support to the protection of traditional Tibetan culuture. ”

Numu, curator of Tibet Library, says that Tibet has formed the unique national traditional culture in the long-term national integration, so it has resources advantages in developing television and animation industry. Now in the initial development stage, Tibet still needs to integrate and explore traditional Tibetan culture so as to go global.

At present, phase I project has been launched and the main works are Aku Tenpa, eight Tibetan operas and Srongtsen Gampo. In the early period, it is said that 1 million yuan is planed to be invested in making cartoon King Gesar and original cartoon characters are collected from the masses.