Living and Dying in Modern Tibet: The Time of Great Calamities

354 Pages·2016·1.82 MB·English

by  Orgyan Nyima

ɽĻāŖɰŌāŇŎŘāŊāŬāŬāŬāŬ ǹŇŬŇŬ āǤāŢāŢ ŚāŢāŢāŢāŢ ĹŜʼnŬʼnŬ ă

LIVING AND DYING IN MODERN TIBET
THE TIME OF GREAT CALAMITIES

by

ŞāŬāŬ ȄʼnāĿāŢāŢ Ŏă Orgyan Nyima
NOTICE

I lOa rengngycuaoanug Nreasyg iamen ad l lm wahkoe iwt oauvaldil alibkle ftor t frraenes tloat de ot hsois. text into other
PREFACE

1
was born in Lungda Village located in a Kham area in the early
1970s, attended a local primary school in the early 1980s, and
received an undergraduate education in a provincial level college.
I
Memories of my early life in Lungda Village are my vivid
companions. Let me give you some examples:

Daily village life moved to a rhythm of herding, milking, fetching water,
spreading fresh dung on the ground to dry, collecting dry dung, and
chatting.
One day, three people speaking a southern (south of Gawa)
dialect visited Trashi Penpa's home. Children of the host family called
one of the men 'Uncle Handless'. He was in his fifties and his name
matched him. His arms ended at his wrists, which were covered with
skin. It seemed elbows had replaced his hands. He wore a wool-fabric
robe that had probably never been washed. The natural wool color had
become darker over the years. His arms were just like the upper legs of
Trashi Penpa's pawless dog. We called the dog 'Pawless', which was why
I assumed the host family children addressed their distant uncle as
'Uncle Handless'.
Those who speak this southern dialect seemed in constant need
of barley, the basic staple food. If a household lacked barley, we
assumed that they were short of all other food. Beggars, wanderers, and
barley traders often seemed to speak the same dialect. They might have
been from Zurmang, Nangchen, or Chamdo. I could not distinguish
between dialects very well. Locals called these people Lhowa
'Southerners'.
The host family accompanied their guests to each community
household to trade strings of small bells for barley, trailed by the crippled
dog. I was frightened when Trashi Penpa's children escorted Uncle
Handless through the gate. I was sitting on Grandmother's lap as she
spun wool in the courtyard. I was scared of strangers who spoke dialects

1
Kham is a traditional Tibetan area mainly in parts of present-day Qinghai and
Sichuan provinces, and the Tibet Autonomous Region.

•4•
different than my own because Grandmother threatened that she would
give me to strangers to be their son when I was very disobedient.
My fear was gradually replaced by curiosity. Uncle Handless had
many thumb-sized bells in strings around his left arm. It was fun to watch
the action. Uncle Handless energetically ordered his companions to do
this and that. It seemed that the other two men didn't know what to do
without him. Grandmother traded a small bag of barley for a string of
bells. Holding the upper cover of the bags, Uncle said, "Tie it," and
another man tied the bag shut with string. They then continued door to
door, visiting every household.
I followed them as did other children. Uncle Handless held the
bags and the balance, did the weighing, and counted the bells. He did it
all very skillfully. In the end, various-sized bags of barley accumulated in
Trashi Penpa's family courtyard. Three
men weighed, reloaded, and marked the ...the darkest
bags. They also traded brown sugar for
part of our
barley. I did not understand the trade
history - a time
arrangement for these items.
when starvation
The barley traders soon left,
leaving tinkling bells here and there in the and modern
village. Children rhythmically shook strings weapons of war
of bell, competing to see who could make
- planes,
the most noise. Bells were hung under the
mortars, and
gate roof to ring when the gate opened.
Bells were also hung around the neck of machine guns
favorite goats and sheep. The tinkle of threatened our
bells was truly Uncle Handless's legacy.
very physical
Uncle Handless had been a terribly
existence...
bad man – a criminal, a murderer, a thief,
a bandit, and a vicious fighter. His habitual evil was unstoppable until he
was made physically incapable of carrying out criminal acts. In the end,
his legendary criminal life was ended by a local chief, who ordered that
his hands be amputated carefully so as to not leave bone fragments in
the wounds.

History abounds with tragedy. War, starvation, a frightened fugitive
existence, forced incarceration in labor camps, death, and so on - they

•5•
all figure in the history of many individuals, families, and nations.
Such tragic experiences are deeply embedded in the memories of
those who witnessed or experienced them. Rural illiterates in pre-
industrialized environments often have little sense of the value of
recording their own history. Time steadily obliterates unrecorded
history as dementia and death rapidly erase lived experience from
space and memory. As this older generation passes on, their narratives
become ever more distant and faded.
My childhood memories include the accounts I heard from my
parents' and grandparents' generations as they recounted experiences
from their, at that time, recent pasts. Those who were twenty years of
age and older had all experienced the darkest part of our history - a
time when starvation and modern weapons of war such as planes,
mortars, and machine guns threatened our very physical existence.
Their memories and stories were fresh, clear, and vivid.
I interviewed several locals who were born in the 1930s and
1940s. Their individual narrative accounts
Memories are
are presented without judgment. The same
name that occurs in different narratives who we are,
refers to the same person. All narrators where we have
were from villages near each other and
been, and
narrators tell, at times, the same general
where we will
story from different angles. For example,
go - they are
Dorje Trashi and Sonam Trashi fled
together as fugitives. Each refers to the our coherence.
other in their account as 'Cousin'. The
different perspectives of their common journey complement each
other.
As the narrators talked to me about their past, they were
transported back to that violently chaotic era. Memories, refreshed,
they recalled people from their past and remembered more events.
Narrators questioned their own stories and repeatedly said, "It is hard
to believe what we went through." Their grandchildren, and even their
own children, continue to question the harsh reality of what their
parents and grandparents experienced.
Violence is a recurring theme. The stories occurred in a
particular historic context in which violence and death drove events

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and were commonplace. Violence is memorable, and highlights the
ordinary lives of the narrators as they recalled and relived their pasts
as I talked to them. As Eric Hoffer wrote, "The game of history is
usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the
majority in the middle." In the context of this book, the game of
history favored the worst by providing them a platform to perform the
dark side of human nature, inevitably creating a mountain of misery.
In the second decade of the twenty-first century, a global,
consumer-based economy drives every corner of a Tibet that has been
embraced by a market-driven economy. RMB provides, on the surface
at least, whatever is desired.
Many locals seem to have
I record
accepted the value of relentlessly
pursuing material prosperity. Locals self- individual lives
sustaining livelihood has largely in the context of
vanished. Many farmers no longer farm
historical events
and many herders no longer herd.
while describing
Villages are incorporated into cities.
the local culture,
Trade between pastoralists and farmers
has no modern role. economy, and
The narrators' description of the intimacies of
economic and cultural background of
individual
their lives before and during the political
narrators.
and military interventions in their home
area provides a rich tapestry upon which
social economic perspectives have played out. This history of
calamity is still largely untouchable, given modern political realities. I
masked the names of villages, monasteries, and certain individuals.
Anonymity is the only mechanism narrators and I can use to honestly
present these accounts. By the year 2025, few witnesses to this time
will still be alive, emphasizing the value of this book.
These interwoven, connected narratives describe events in the
geographic center of the Tibet Plateau in the mid-twentieth century. It
is an enormous area where great mountain ranges have an average
altitude of 5,500 meters. Countless snow-covered peaks exceed 6,000
meters. Even in midsummer, snow colors the peaks white. Many tiny
streams of melting snow run through innumerable alpine valleys,

•7•
rushing to join the greatest rivers of Asia that originate here. These
streams water the grassland and provide drinking water for people,
livestock, and wildlife.
These vast areas are overwhelmingly pastoral. Few areas are
suitable for agriculture. The limited farmland is in deep valleys where
narrow barley fields parallel river banks. Roasted barley ground into
flour is mixed with butter, hot tea, dried cheese, and sugar and then
eaten. Historically, farmers and herders obtained tsampa 'barley flour',
butter, and cheese from each other, meeting mutual needs at annual
trade fairs during winter religious festivals in farming areas. Tsampa
is thus a food that perfectly combines pastoral and agricultural
products. Each group could not have produced such food without
acquiring part of the ingredients from the other.
This book is a record of individual lives in the context of
historical events while describing the local culture, economy, and
intimate events of individual narrators. My childhood was little
different from Mother's and Grandmother's childhoods in term of food,
housing, and way of life. This allows me to understand and articulate
the narrators' cultural background. Grandmother and I both grew up in
the same century-old two-story house. The ground floor was divided
into an animal shelter and a barley storage room. Two small glassless
windows featured four vertical wooden bars to keep out stray cats.
The main house door was located in the animal shelter. A glassless
window provided light for that dark room.
A wooden-framed yak-leather box containing barley was the
same height as Grandmother, who was much taller than Mother.
Grandmother easily poured barley into the top of that hair-covered
leather box and then took grain out from the bottom by opening a
small hole whenever grain was needed. I am sure Grandmother was
reluctant to enter the dark storage room when she was a child. She
used to threaten to lock me inside that room when I became very
disobedient. This warning worked, as I pictured the hairy box in the
dark corner transforming into a monster.
No electricity and no plastic products cluttered my early
childhood. The first time that I saw an electric light bulb was in
Father's home when I was six. I switched the light on and off out of
curiosity and to amuse myself. Father told me not to stare at the bright

•8•
bulb because it would hurt my eyes. I then, or course, stared at the
shining bulb when Father was absent and thought, "It doesn't hurt my
eyes. My eyes aren't painful."
I was dressed in traditional homemade costume - a sheep-skin
robe in winter and a cloth robe in summer. Mother was a skilled
seamstress and made my boots, shirts, and robes. She also helped sew
for neighbor children.
Grandmother and Great Grandmother ate the same food as I
did. Our food supplies were seasonal. Potatoes, meat, and fresh butter
were available in autumn and winter. Old meat, old butter, and dried
meat were characteristic of spring food, which I disliked. Yogurt,
milk, and cheese were abundant in summer. We even fed yogurt to
dogs.
Narrators featured in this book had much the same cultural
and economic environment as I did. I was born at the right time, and
in the right place to empathetically understand, interpret, translate,
and record their narratives.
The narrators are the real authors. Memories are who we are,
where we have been, and where we will go. They are our coherence.

Orgyan Nyima

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CONTENTS

Preface <4>
Contents <10>
Narrators <16>

Part One: Two Decades Before the Red Chinese Occupation <20>

ƒ Chodron: One <22>
o Jangtsang Awo Marries Great Grandaunt <22>
o Jangtsang Awo is a Hero <23>
o The Tibet Army is Defeated <27>
o Consulting A Deity <29>
ƒ Samdrubcho <32>
o Five Tribes Against Drawu <32>
o Reinforcement Troops From Ziling <33>
ƒ Chodron: Two <36>
o The Dege-Drawu Conflict <36>
o Chodron Gives an Eyewitness Account <43>
ƒ Choying Dorje <46>
o A Rolling Boulder <46>
o Encountering a Ghost <47>
o Renouncing Hunting <47>
o A Mountain Deity Kidnaps Grandfather's Servant
<48>
o Grandfather Fights the Tibet Army <51>
o Uncle Butruk <51>
o Unexpected Peaceful Liberation <54>

Part Two: 1940s-1970s <58>

ƒ Lhakpa Wangmo <60>
o Father's Caravan Trip <61>
o Chinese Come to Our Village <63>
o Village Men Hide in the Mountains <65>

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