The Other Serf Liberation Day and the Appropriation of Chinese Symbolism

As I argued in the comments of an earlier post, the idea that China liberated the Tibetan serfs in 1959 is ahistorical because the standard of living, personal freedom, and political rights of the Tibetan public do not appear to have improved afterwards in the 1960s. In other words, if nothing changed for the better, there’s no way that can be described as a liberation. On the other hand, some aspects of life in Tibet did improve in the 1980s, when the Deng economic reforms were extended to Tibet and relatively liberal political policies were followed. If somebody feels like celebrating a “Serf Liberation Day”, the official government date doesn’t make any sense, but maybe May 29 would instead.

On May 29, 1980, twenty-nine years ago today, Hu Yaobang, who was then the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, gave a speech in Lhasa to 4,500 party members and government officials. Hu harshly criticised the policies that had been followed in Tibet up to that point and offered six points for a new policy, which amounted to implementing autonomy for Tibet, (“You should according to your own characteristics, draft specific decrees, laws and regulations, and rules to protect the special interests of your own nationality.”); flexible economic policies as opposed to rigid socialist measures; respect for and promotion of Tibetan culture; and a dramatic shift in power in the TAR from Chinese cadres to Tibetans (“Today there are 300,000 ethnic Han, including military, in Tibet. How can that ever do?”)

Highway to Lhasa

Dear Jigme,

We hope you are moved by “Highway To Lhasa” on YouTube

Traditional Tibetan Folk Tales

Tibetan Folk Tales - A.L. Shelton

Albert L. Shelton was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on June 9th 1875, his parents soon after moved to Kansas where Shelton grew up. Shelton spent more than twenty years in Kham as a medical missionary and was particularly well respected among the Tibetans there but on a high mountain pass in 1922 Shelton was shot, apparently by a bandit, and died at the age of 46.  In 1923, Shelton’s widowed wife Flora published a biography on the life of her late husband entitled Shelton of Tibet. Then in 1925 Flora also compiled and published a collection forty-nine tales that had been gathered by Shelton during his trips among Tibetans.

The little stories in this book are told as the people sit around their boiling tea made over a three stone camp-fire. They are handed down from father to son, from mother to daughter, and though often filled with their superstitious beliefs, through them all run a vein of humor and the teachings of a moral truth which is quite unexpected.

Refugee Stories

Tibetan Elders

In the article The stories of Tibetan elders in exile by J.M. Brown, Brown writes about the oral history project work by clinical psychologist Marcella Adamski in recording the stories of Tibetan elders in exile. Adamski’s work was spurred directly from a request by the Dalai Lama, whom she met in Dharamsala in 1999.

After reading this article I was reminded of some of the exile stories I have heard from my own exiled elders when I was younger. I thought I’d patch together and share some of the stories that I can recall so that people can read them and then maybe share their own exile stories as well.

I can remember most clearly my mother’s account of why her family fled from Tibet in late 1959. My mother’s family lived in the  small farming village of Namdha, about a half hour walk from the city of  Khangma in the district of Gyantse. Her family was the wealthiest of the village and her father was well respected for the kindness he showed to the poorer villagers in the village and also for the loans he lent out to those who needed it.

Response to Jim Luce on “Tibet: Polar Perspectives”

Over at the Huffington Post, Jim Luce has an interesting post up asking  “Can Both Sides Be Heard?”, in which he discusses what he’s learned in his attempt to get the Chinese perspective on Tibet.

This is an important topic and I applaud anyone’s efforts to learn about it. It seems that, all too often, we’re stuck with only one side of the story — here in the West we get one version, and people in China get basically the opposite. This is especially true for casual observers, who are often not even aware there is another side, but activists are not exempt, either. I remember, some years ago, when I was in college, I attended a meeting of my school’s “Students for a Free Tibet” chapter. It was the first meeting of the year, so most of the people present were newly involved and had a lot of questions about Tibet, which the club president answered at length and with passion. However, when a girl eventually asked him, “why does China want to rule Tibet?” he was stumped — he eventually just said, “I don’t know” and moved on to the next question. No matter how committed we are to a cause, if we can’t even take the time to understand what motivates the “other side”, how are we ever going to be savvy enough to do anything about it?