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Statue of the legendary king Gesar - Yushu city (Jyekundo) in southern Qinghai province. I changed the dull grey sky into a blue background

King Gesar is a heroic epic collectively created by China's Tibetans. Originating via folk oral traditions, King Gesar was passed down through the generations in a combination of song and narration for over 1,000 years. So far, King Gesar has been collected in more than 120 volumes, with more than one million verses (over 20 million words) -- 25 times the length of the Western classic, Homer's Iliad. King Gesar, the greatest work of Tibetan literature, is easily the longest epic in the world, which has also appeared in ballads among the Mongols and Tus.

In Tibetan-inhabited areas Gesar was known as the king of the ancient Tibetan kingdom of the Ling (11th century AD). The great hero and his brave army are kept alive in the rich, imaginative retellings of the epic. From early times, the epic was passed on orally. Today, a small number of inscribed woodblocks of the epic can be found in Lhasa, Xigaze and Dege County in Sichuan Province; a few handwritten copies are also dispersed among some families. The Potala Palace contains a statue of Gesar, which still attracts pilgrims on a daily basis. Gesar's deeds were recorded in the Kangba region more than anywhere else, and handwritten and printed versions of Gesar from Dege are considered the most authoritative works. People still argue that the village of Ngaxu in Northern Dege County was the birthplace of Gesar.
source : chinaculture.org