By the end, 90 per cent of the monasteries and nunneries were destroyed along with their artistic treasures and libraries built up over a thousand years. In 1980, a fact-finding mission found all the great shrines in ruins: Ganden, Sera, Gyantse, Drepung, the Jokhang in Lhasa – great centres of learning from the medieval heyday of Tibetan Buddhism which, especially in the eighteenth century under the Qing emperors, had played such a role in Chinese civilisation.
