In the Xizang autonomous region, The Epic of King Gesar is a monumental narrative, crafted collectively by the Tibetan people and passed down orally for over a thousand years through generations of storytellers. Widely regarded as the world's longest living epic and often described as "The Iliad of the East", it remains one of the few great epics still actively performed today. It was included in China's national intangible cultural heritage list in 2006 and added to the UNESCO list of world intangible cultural heritage in 2009.