On Serfs Emancipation Day, celebration, recollection, and wishes from across China

In the Qamdo prefecture in east Tibet, slogans written on red scrolls hailing the Serfs Emancipation Day could be seen on major roads, where sellers in vegetable markets were waiting for their customers, monks in monasteries were chanting sutras and street vendors were soliciting business. Life was as peaceful as ordinary days. In the Tianjin square, dozens of passers-by stopped to watch performances for the holiday.

In Beijing, Serfs Emancipation Day became the hottest topic among students in the Tibet Middle School. Many students hummed the old song "Freed serfs sing in happiness".

"My grandparents were both serfs," said an eleventh-grader Dawa Dorje.

"They told me that they tied stones to their feet as shoes, and my granny became blind because she had no money to cure her eye illness," she said.

Currently there are 810 Tibetan students in the school, whose accommodation, clothes, health care were all funded by the government.

Main celebration for the holiday was held on the square in front of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, capital city of Tibet, at 10 a.m.

The gathering was presided over in both Tibetan and Mandarin by Qiangba Puncog, chairman of the regional government of Tibet, who was dressed in a traditional Tibetan robe. It was attended by about 13,280 people.