A senior monk in a quake-hit part of northwest China has started a microblog on the country's popular Twitter-like service, tweeting for world peace amid the turmoil in the Middle East and the approach of the Chinese New Year.

Lodroe Nyima Rinpoche, a living Buddha at the Thrangu monastery in Yushu, Qinghai Province, prayed for world peace and happiness in his first posting on Sina's microblog service.

"Over the past year, it is sad that people in some places in the world have had to endure war, conflict and disaster," he wrote. "I wish all people in the world can live free of disease, fear and disaster."

The living Buddha's prayers came as deadly protests swept Tunisia and Egypt, shaking the fragile peace of the restive region.

A magnitude-7.1 earthquake destroyed Lodroe Nyima Rinpoche's Thrangu monastery last April.

The quake razed the plateau town of Gyegu, where the 700-year-old monastery was located, killing more than 2,200 people.

Over one hundred Thrangu monastery monks have been living in tents since the disaster. Work crews will start rebuilding the monastery at the end of March.

Lodroe Nyima Rinpoche told Xinhua Sunday that it is a good thing that through his microblog he can interact with people outside the monastery.

Though the microblog is managed by his friends, he goes online time to time to read comments and answer questions.

He said he regrets his Mandarin-language skills are not good enough to allow to communicate efficiently, as more people are seeking out Buddhism to find inner peace amid an increasingly materialistic world.

"People in big cities feel pressured and frustrated. They cannot find true happiness even as their wealth grows," the monk said.

Twitter-like microblog services have become immensely popular in China, allowing unprecedented interaction between unlikely figures and the general public.

The Thrangu monastery was nestled in a remote mountainous region few people outside the nearby herding community knew about.

Lodroe Nyima Rinpoche said many senior Tibetan monks like him have started microblogging.

China has the world's largest number of Internet users, having some 457 million people online at the end of 2010, up 73.3 million from a year earlier.

Microblog users in China totaled 53.11 million at the end of last year.

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