Joyce I agree with you,�@most of it is definitely not antique, though as I said before I believe they are luxury items made of valuable undyed coral, real dzi, solid gold etc.

Of course I'm sure some antique items do exist in those pictures - I think it varies by person to person and from place to place - but the majority is probably stuff acquired over the last few decades - since China started economic free market reforms.

Just like in other regions of China, some Tibet traders and entrepreneurs have managed to make small or large fortunes. I haven't researched this thoroughly, but my impression is that 0.01 and 0.1% of families have become very wealthy - enough to buy these costumes - through business, these people I am sure have had to demonstrate some loyalty to the Chinese communist party and play the CCP's game. Then I guess maybe two or three percent of Tibetans might be at a middle class level comparable to westerners - with university educations, working as professionals or running small business. And the rest are poorer with more than half still live in pretty harsh poverty, enduring daily hardship for a dollar or two a day.

Also, something important is that most of these festivals do NOT occur in the "Tibetan Autonomous Region" (which is only 50% of "pre-1959" Tibet. They occur in the parts of that were integrated into Sichuan, Qinghai and Yunnan provinces, which have historically had far better treatment and less interference from the government, have had far less Chinese immigration (many towns are 97% or more Tibetan people - compare that to Lhasa which is now less than 50% Tibetan people), and consistently named the places where Tibetan culture is best preserved.

Sadly things have taken a turn for the worst since the 2008 protests around Tibet, there are crackdowns happening in varies towns such as Aba - the stage of the festival in the first thread I posted. It had a history of being very free and autonomous with very little government/security force presence. But since 2008 riots have happened, many people have died, been tortured etc. and several of the monastery who campaign for Tibetan succession are currently under seige. A very scary situation with a real threat of escalation