This Day, That Year

Item from June 24, 1999, in China Daily: Henk-Willem Nimeier, from the Netherlands, blows a religious horn he just bought at Barkhor Street in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet autonomous region.

The Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon, one of the biggest canyons in the world, is expected to become a top tourist attraction in China in the coming century ... Opening the canyon to tourists constitutes an important part of the Tibet Tourism Bureau's plan to expand and bolster tourism into one of the pillar industries of the Tibet autonomous region ... To maintain the area's ecological balance, experts from various local government agencies and institutions have divided the Yarlung Zangbo area into seven zones.

In February 2008, the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon in Nyingchi prefecture, the Tibet autonomous region, opened to tourists from home and abroad.