The Larung Valley sits in Sertar County of the Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, in the region of Sichuan that Tibetans call Amdo. A mountain hermitage was established nearby in 1880 by Dudjom Dorje, and the area had long been considered sacred. In the summer of 1980, the Nyingma lama Khenchen Jigme Phuntsok -- who had weathered the Cultural Revolution hiding in these mountains -- founded the Serta Larung Five Science Buddhist Academy on the site. He began with fewer than a dozen students. The Academy's reputation for rigorous, ecumenical teaching drew monastics from across the Tibetan plateau. By 1986, six thousand monks and nuns had settled in the valley. By 1998, the population included 4,500 nuns, 4,000 monks, and nearly 1,000 Chinese students. More than a thousand new dwellings were going up each year, built by the residents themselves with help from family and friends. An ancient prophecy by the first Dodrupchen Rinpoche was said to have named both the founder and the location.

Chinese authorities began harassing Larung Gar in earnest around the turn of the millennium. Searches in 1999 and 2001 were followed by a "patriotic re-education" campaign in April 2000. In 2001, Sichuan authorities demanded that residents sign documents denouncing the Dalai Lama. When Khenchen Jigme Phuntsok refused, he was detained for a year and mass demolitions began. The Sichuan Religious Affairs Bureau confirmed to Reuters that students were being forced to leave "because of concerns about social stability and at the order of central authorities." Approximately 4,000 buildings were demolished and 8,000 people expelled. A population cap was set at 1,400. Further demolitions followed in 2002, shortly before Khenchen Jigme Phuntsok's death, and again in 2013 and 2015. In July 2016, the BBC reported that a government work team, backed by police and plainclothes military, had begun demolishing 1,500 more dwellings and evicting 4,600 residents. By November, about 3,000 monks and nuns had been forcibly removed, and around 1,000 homes destroyed by bulldozers.

The evictions did not end at the valley's edge. Reports from 2016 described monks and nuns being bused to political re-education centers, where they were forced to participate in "patriotic education" exercises. A video surfaced showing twelve Tibetan nuns in religious robes dancing on a stage before an audience of officials -- an act that violated their monastic vows and appeared to be compelled. Human Rights Watch documented cases of "apparent public humiliation" in Nyingchi. A re-education camp in Sertar was prepared to receive more than 800 nuns. Satellite images from Apollo Mapping confirmed the camp's construction. Evicted nuns and monks were not permitted to re-enroll at their home monasteries or to relocate to other institutions. The European Parliament adopted an urgency resolution condemning the demolitions in December 2016. Six United Nations human rights experts issued a joint condemnation in 2017. The U.S. State Department expressed concern in 2018. In October 2020, a statement by 39 countries at the U.N. General Assembly compared human rights abuses in Tibet to those in Xinjiang.

The Chinese government framed the demolitions as safety measures -- the dense settlement of self-built wooden houses was, in fairness, a fire hazard. But a 2017 investigation found that the real objective was converting the sacred site into a tourist attraction, with displaced Tibetans forced to sign away their land rights before being bused to unknown destinations. Han Chinese migration to the area continued even as Tibetan residents were expelled. Larung Gar has been closed to foreign visitors since June 2016. The population cap was set at 5,000 -- 3,500 nuns and 1,500 monks. Yet the valley's significance extends beyond any census. The Academy graduated more than 500 khenpos and khenmos who established Buddhist centers and monasteries across Tibet and beyond, carrying Khenchen Jigme Phuntsok's ecumenical vision far past the reach of any bulldozer. Larung Gar remains, diminished but not erased, a place where devotion and the state continue to test each other's resolve.