This book will mean different things to different people. It was first published in 2007 in Tibetan, albeit in an Amdo dialect from the north-east of the Tibetan plateau — now part of the Chinese provinces of Qinghai and Gansu. Tibetan exiles in India brought with them an edition in standard Tibetan the following year. After becoming the most reprinted Tibetan literary work in history, it was banned by Beijing in 2010.
It then appeared in a Chinese translation in Taipei in 2011. This new translation, from Duke University Press, is the first English version.
My Tibetan Childhood describes the first 11 years of the life of the author, someone who went on to become a school teacher, police officer, judge, prison governor and county leader — jobs working for the Chinese authorities. The book later caused a sensation, because it was apparently the first book available within Tibet that openly described the sufferings of Tibetans in the 1950s as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) moved across their country.
Quite how the book managed to evade suppression in its early years following publication is anyone’s guess. Maybe its use of an obscure local dialect helped, or its presentation of itself as the innocent depiction by a child of a timeless pastoral world. (Much of that eulogizing has been cut from this somewhat abbreviated edition.)
There are descriptions of Tibetans helping to dismantle their local monasteries, and fighting — sometimes to death — any villagers who tried to oppose them. This may have been seen as reinforcing the official Beijing line that the Tibetans welcomed the Chinese with open arms. But even so, there are enough stories here of brutality by the invaders to dismay even the most pro-Chinese reader.
The book is divided into five sections. The first two deal with the author’s earliest recollections and are largely unmemorable (though the “sky burial” — the chopping up of a corpse so it can be devoured by vultures — of the author’s mother is unforgettable). Then comes a pilgrimage covering 2,414km to and from Lhasa.
The fourth section describes a second, uncompleted Lhasa-ward trek which ends with the death of the boy’s father following an encounter with PLA troops.
Finally comes imprisonment in truly horrific conditions — in deep dungeons. To describe them as “unsanitary” would be an absurd understatement. Many prisoners die, but the author and his brother are eventually released into a famine-struck landscape where they become expert scavengers, saving their own lives and those of many others. They are finally admitted to a school, and the closing pages contain a photo of the two of them in Chinese-style school uniforms.
For many this book will be important mainly because of its political dimension. For me, however, it was its evocation of the Tibetan lifestyle and landscape that was most extraordinary.
In the very informative prefatory material by two US academics, it’s stated that the book will challenge images of an unchanging spiritual Tibet. This is certainly the case. Animals are slaughtered and devoured with enthusiasm, even while those involved discuss whether they are breaking a Buddhist taboo against the taking of life. But in the high-altitude Tibetan plateau little grows above ground, so human life is bound to be dependent on animals, whether for milk, cheese, yogurt or meat.
Cruel punishments by the monastic authorities also feature, even though the monasteries are largely perceived as sources of succor and safety. Bandits are a threat on any long journey, though wolves, wild dogs and bears present an even greater danger. And when the author’s family finally arrives in Lhasa, they encounter so many beggars, together with even more cruel punishments, that the holy city reminds them of the proverb “If you would know the sufferings of hell, go to Lhasa.”
Even so, the landscape as described here is spectacular in the extreme. Mountainous, windswept and occupied (where it’s occupied at all) by disparate ethnic groups, the feeling is more of Tolkien’s Middle Earth than anywhere in the modern world. Tibetan wild asses, Tibetan gazelles, Tibetan antelopes, deer, argali, foxes, bears and wolves all abound, and it takes the sight of a herd of hundreds of yaks to prompt any surprised comment.
Travel across this landscape, even with the aid of horses, takes the family several months. From Lhasa, they then visit some famous monasteries, the author casually commenting that they walked ten days to reach one of them, Tashilhunpo. Today the Lonely Planet guidebook details free wi-fi access and pizza restaurants in the vicinity.
My Tibetan Childhood, in other words, evokes Tibet as it was for a thousand years, not only before the arrival of the Chinese, but before the advent of modern life in general. If this aspect of the book appeals to you, as it did to me, then perhaps the praise of ancient ways largely excised from this edition would have been of greater interest than the editors imagined.
Endless circumambulations, the burning of incense at the tops of mountain passes, ritual prostrations, invocations to the Three Precious Jewels (the Buddha, his teaching, and the community of monks and nuns), curses such as “May his mouth be filled with ashes,” butter lamps and silver coins — all these characterize this fascinating account of life in the 1950s far from any major cultural centers.
The black-and-white photos are especially interesting. Many are from collections based on pictures taken by a German expedition from 1938 to 1939, while others date from the 1920s. The faces that stare out at you are from a primordial world, while the landscape shots are of views that could have hardly changed, even today.
If this book makes you want to visit the Land of Eternal Snows, much changed though it now is, I won’t be surprised. The tone throughout is balanced, with acts of kindness by some Chinese soldiers alternating with betrayals by some fellow Tibetans. It may not, in other words, be quite the political document its editors appear willing to claim.
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