
© ChinaTibetNewsLhoba people in traditional costumes.
Wearing beaded necklaces and traditional wool costumes, members of the Lhoba people dance around the Yin-Yang tree, a real-life version of the Tree of Souls from the movie
Avatar.
Unlike the mysterious Na'Vis, the Lhoba people, with a total population of more than 3100, are performing a traditional sword dance to entertain visitors to the forest-concealed area in the southeast of the Tibet Autonomous Region.
"The costume has been listed as the nation's intangible cultural heritage," said Dawa Chodron, a 31-year-old local tour guide who has returned to her hometown after graduating from a high school in a second-tier city in southwest China.
The sword dance is a Lhoba tradition celebrating harvest, hunting or the practice of becoming sworn brothers, according to Chodron.
"Visitors from home and abroad are also attracted by our ancestral customs and religious practices," she said.
The Lhoba, one of China's smallest ethnic minorities in terms of population, live mainly in Mainling County of Nyingchi Prefecture in Tibet.
Located near the Brahmaputra River, Chodron's hometown of Qionglin Village in Nanyi Lhoba Ethnic Township is the largest inhabitation for the ethnic group.
Chodron's ancestors were the first cultivators in the Himalaya mountains, but they led a primitive life even as late as 1950.