China Central Television (CCTV) began airing a 5-part documentary A Year in Tibet on its Channel 1 yesterday. A Chinese book of the same title has been published by Beijing Shiyue Art Publishing House.

Director and author Sun Shuyun went to Gyantse, Tibet's third largest town, in July 2006 and spent a year filming eight ordinary Tibetans. With the support of China Tibetology Research Center, Sun and her crew from BBC followed a shaman, a village doctor, a Party official, a hotel manager, a rickshaw driver, a builder and two monks through their daily lives.

During the filming, the crew also captured the visit of the 11th Panchen Lama to Gyantse.

The documentary features four seasons while the book is focused mainly on the Rikzin family with the shaman Tseten and his two brothers. When it was aired on BBC last year, critiques said it revealed true aspects of Tibetans' lives.

"It requires a lifetime to understand Tibet," Sun writes in the postscript of her book.

Sun graduated from Peking University and won a scholarship to Oxford. She is a writer and documentary filmmaker and has worked for the BBC and other international broadcasters.

The documentary is aired at 10:30 pm this week on CCTV's Channel 1, the Channel 4 will rebroadcast it next week.

(China Daily July 28, 2009)