Residents of southwest China\'s Tibet Autonomous Region gathered in the Potala Square in Lhasa on Thursday to mark the emancipation of 1 million serfs when the theocratic rule in Tibet was abolished in 1959.Authorities designated March 28 as the day to commemorate the 1959 democratic reform in Tibet, which ended the feudal serf system, freeing about 1 million Tibetan, over 90 percent of the region\'s population at the time, from a life of serfdom.