Tashi Tsering, exemplar of the dilemmas of modern Tibet, died on December 5th, aged 85
Dec 20th 2014 |
From the print edition
THIS was the way things were, and always had been. The great mountains reared their heads above Tashi Tsering’s childhood village; his stone house, with animals below and family above, stood among the rocks; his shaven-headed paternal aunts, Buddhist nuns, helped to churn the butter and to weave his thickly padded clothes. In autumn the lentils were crushed from their yellow pods; in summer the yaks trudged up to high pasture. Year-round, prayer-flags fluttered in the thin, clear air. For centuries on the highTibetan plateau, nothing had changed.
Foreigners exalted the place as a Shangri-La. It was far from that. This brutal world was divided between the nobility, lay and religious, and the common herd, who bowed when their superiors passed. Or, as one aristocrat put it to him once, the world was divided into “those who’ll eat tsampa [roast barley meal, stirred into salty tea] and those who’ll eat shit”.
Peasant families like his did whatever they were asked to do. They grew the food, dug the roads and paid tribute to the Dalai Lama, their spiritual leader, in silver coins, tea bricks and yak butter, which the other high-ups would rifle as they pleased. When he was ten, his parents gave Tashi himself to the Dalai Lama as a member of his ceremonial boy dance troupe in Lhasa. His mother cried for days, to no avail. This was the way things had always been.
Yet the seed of different thinking had been planted in the boy. Though the rest of the village was illiterate, sometimes his father would mix ink, carefully fill an inkwell, sharpen his bamboo pen and trace signs on paper. In his eagerness to imitate him, young Tashi put up with his daily beatings at the dance school (though at 14 he escaped, crossing the 4,800-metre Gampa La pass before he was dragged back). He tolerated even the monk-official who used him, as the tradition was, as a passive sexual partner, because the monk also encouraged him to read and write.
No other acquaintances saw any point in this. Why should a peasant write or read? At best, his efforts would lead to a lowly desk-job from which he could rise no higher. Even after he had scraped together money in 1957 to go to India to learn English, the Tibetans he met there, aristocrats no more literate than himself, would not admit this witty, wiry young rustic to their circle. They treated him, instead, as their menial and runner of errands.
These Tibetans were now exiles. In 1950 the Chinese had entered eastern Tibet; in 1959 Lhasa rose up against their savage occupation and the Dalai Lama fled to India, taking with him enough silver coins to fill a room which, for weeks, Mr Tsering silently guarded. The exiles longed to fight China, but he was not so sure. Much had impressed him about the Chinese in Lhasa: how quickly they built hospitals, bridges and the first-ever primary school, and how they did not take “as much as a needle” from the people. Even as they mocked and destroyed the culture, they also seemed to offer a route to the modern world.
Not liberty, but equality
Something else impressed him, too. The Chinese invaders talked about egalitarianism and the brotherhood of man. Mere propaganda perhaps, echoing through the megaphone in Lhasa, but he liked the sound of it. In 1960, a chance meeting in India allowed him to study briefly at the University of Washington; there he started to read Marx and Lenin and learned that Europe, too, had once been as feudal as Tibet. Slowly but surely, communism drew him. It was clear that Tibet needed revolution if it was ever to change. Perhaps that revolution had come in Chinese boots.
In his enthusiasm he taught in a remote Chinese school for a while, and even became a Red Guard. When the Cultural Revolution broke out his American sojourn was used against him, and he was immured as a spy for 11 years. This was time enough to wrestle with his dilemma: that he wanted reform, and also wanted his beloved land to survive. Its language, its Buddhism and the better parts of the culture had to be preserved. That included, for him, the practice of polyandry, by which his mother had slept contentedly with two brothers, one upstairs and one down, and he had never cared which man his father was. It included too, the dance rituals that had been beaten into him, which still brought him solace in captivity until, in 1978, he was rehabilitated and released.
Once again, though, reading and writing were the key to wealth, social progress and Tibetan identity. After his return to Lhasa he taught a night class in English, then unique in Tibet, and started to compile his masterwork, a Tibetan-Chinese-English dictionary. Yet he saw himself first of all as the voice of voiceless people. With his owlish specs and winning smile and his “Be Optimystic” cap, he devoted most of his energy to setting up, with Chinese efficiency, rural schools where children could learn written Tibetan, science, painting and commerce. By his death he had opened 77 of these, funded by donations, his own carpet business and his wife’s sales of barley beer. The schools were built willingly by peasant hands, and outside them over the years thousands of wind-tanned and rosy-cheeked pupils—his children, as he thought of them—lined up in the sunshine, smiling, as the great mountains stood sentinel behind.
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2008.4.26
a Tibetan refugee on charges of obstructing police
Taiwan to help arrested Tibetan-Taiwanese arrested at Japan torch relay
Taipei (dpa) - Taiwan said Saturday it would provide legal assistance to a Tibetan man with Taiwan citizenship who was arrested while trying to disrupt the Olympic torch relay in Japan earlier Saturday.
"We have contacted Japanese police and will provide necessary legal assistance to Tashi Tsering. When his 48-hour detention incommunicado is lifted, our representative in Japan will visit him," Phoebe Yeh, acting spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, said.
"Our representative office in Japan has already got in touch with Japanese police. The office will consult a lawyer to study Tsering's case and to provide assistance," she added.
Tashi Tsering, 38, a Tibetan refugee, came to study in Taiwan from India in the 1980s and has obtained Taiwan citizenship.
He runs a Tibetan antique shop in Taipei and sometimes organizes anti-China protests as the vice chairman of the Taiwan branch of the Tibetan Youth Congress, the India-based group fighting for Tibetan independence.
On Saturday morning, Tsering tried to snatch the Olympic torch from the torch bearer in Nagano, Japan, but was overpowered and arrested by police.
He is being detained at Nagano's central police station on charges of obstructing police.
Before Saturday's incident, some Taiwan-based Tibetans and their supporters had travelled to other foreign cities to disrupt the Beijing Olympic torch relay and condemned China's suppression of the Tibetan people.
They have China to hold talks with the Dalai Lama who has been living in exile in Dharamsala, north India, since 1959.
西藏青年會議台灣分部副主席札西慈仁昨天上午在日本試圖衝進聖火傳遞隊伍，遭日本警方逮捕。外交部發言人葉非比表示，我國駐日代表處會全力提供協助，但依日本法律，四十八小時後駐日官員才能探視。
葉非比受訪時證實，札西慈仁於民國八十年代從西藏來到台灣，並取得中華民國國籍，持有中華民國護照。
葉非比表示，札西慈仁是以「威力業務妨害」罪名被捕，依規定，必須等四十八小時禁令解除後，駐日官員才能到長野縣中央警察署留置所探視，提供司法等後續協助，在獲准探視之前，駐日人員會先與長野縣警方取得聯繫，並與律師先研究案情。
另一方面，據中央社報導，西藏流亡政府駐台辦事處秘書長索朗多吉表示，他們並不清楚札西慈仁在日本的行動，流亡政府給予尊重。在民主多元社會裡，西藏流亡政府尊重各組織的活動和意見，但達賴喇嘛堅持中庸和非暴力。
西藏青年會議台灣分部主席青美多杰接受中央社訪問時也表示，札西慈仁的行為代表西藏人民對中共鎮壓的不滿，西藏青年會議已請日本方面的組織協助救援，盡快讓札西慈仁獲釋。
TIBET TASHI TSERING EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT CO.
Tashi Tsering is the founder of the corresponding education organization with headquarters in Lhasa (Tibet), as well as the author of the trilingual dictionary (English, Chinese, Tibetan) “New Trilingual Dictionary” and an autobiography titled “The Struggle for Modern Tibet” (first published in 1999 by M.E. Sharpe). Born in 1929, Tashi Tsering at the age of 10 was given the opportunity to join the Dalai Lama’s personal dance troupe. This “membership” also provided him access to education, which at that time was only available to the very elite. After completion of his duties in the dance troupe, Tashi Tsering worked for some time as an official at the Potala Palace. In order to expand his knowledge and horizon, in 1957 Tashi began his studies at the St. Joseph’s School in Darjeeling (India) which he then continued in 1960 in the United States at the Williams College in Seattle and the University of Washington.
In 1964, Tashi returned to Tibet with the objective of making a contribution to the standard of living and level of literacy in Tibet. At the same time, he taught English language courses at the Tibet University in Lhasa.
In the late 1980s, Tashi initiated his largest project: the construction of elementary schools in remote and rural areas with limited access to education. Thus far, 77 such schools have successfully been opened and are funded to a large extent through the earnings from the sale of carpets, the operation of a restaurant, private and institutional donations, as well as the support from local communities and authorities.
The school’s curriculum does not only include courses in Tibetan language and culture (e.g. the traditional craftwork of Buddhist paintings) or other elementary subjects, but also more practical topics of hygiene and recycling. These skills provide useful everyday knowledge and are sometimes passed on to the children’s parents.
The organization of Tashi Tsering has set itself the objective of not only supporting the Namling region (hometown of Tashi), but all areas of Tibet with a particular focus on providing education to children in the most remote areas as well as making a contribution to the preservation of the Tibetan culture and language.
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