Tashi Tsering

Tashi Tsering , born in 1929 in Guchok, Namling County, Shigatse prefecture, and died on in Lhasa, is a Tibetan of peasant origin, author of the autobiography, My fight for a modern Tibet, Life story of Tashi Tsering, where he describes the life he led successively in pre-communist Tibet, in exile in India and the United States, and finally back in China during the Cultural Revolution, between Tibet and Eastern China in the decades that followed.

Early life

In the village Tashi Tsering was the son of a poor peasant family living outside Lhasa. They live in a village stone house, the first and second floors are used as living space and the ground floor accommodates the animals. They grow barley and lentils and raise yaks, goats and sheep. The family makes its clothing by spinning wool and weaving it on wooden looms. She uses barter to obtain products like salt. Tashi Tsering's father is a scholar.

At the dance school In 1939, at the age of 10, he was designated to become a gadrugba , a young dancer of the Gar, traditional dance troupe of the Dalai Lama, also called the dance society of the Tibetan government. It is a servitude traditionally owed by his village and abhorred by all because it almost amounts, for parents, to losing a son. Young Tashi, however, is not unhappy with this situation, even if his mother is desperate: it is in fact the opportunity for him to learn to read and write, his dearest wish.

At the dance school the method used by the masters to stimulate the students is to hit them for each mistake they make, as has been done for centuries. Tashi still bears the marks of almost daily corrections. At the age of 13, in 1942, he was whipped in front of the entire troupe for having been absent from a performance: his skin tore, the pain became unbearable.

The young dancer makes his way by becoming the drombo (, literally the 'guest'), that is to say, euphemistically, the “passive homosexual companion" and according to Goldstein "sex toy" by Wangdu, a monk with interpersonal skills who treats him gently and promotes his intellectual training. But he was kidnapped and sequestered for a few days by a dob-dob and managed to escape, no one having been able to do anything to help him, this dob-dob being known for his ferocity had always a dagger on him.

Tashi is surprised that such behavior can be tolerated in monasteries: "When I spoke about 'dob-dob' to other monks and monastic leaders, they shrugged their shoulders and simply said that it was the course of things". Patrick French, who met Tashi Tsering in Lhasa in 1999, where French noted the oppressive atmosphere linked to the massive presence of security forces, indicates that he is not homosexual but that he took advantage of this relationship for personal purposes. During his interview, Tashi Tsering told him that in hindsight, he saw the "sexual practices of ancient Tibet, as a matter of habits and conventions, the accepted social consequence of people exploiting the loopholes of religious rules.".

In 1947 Tashi, who was eighteen years old, applied for a position as secretary to the treasury of the Potala Palace. Passing the entrance exam, he is assigned to an office headed by two monks and a nobleman. He stayed there for about a year. He is fascinated by their practices, which are different from those of the Tibetans: they fish in rivers with a worm on the end of a hook, they collect dog and human droppings to serve as fertilizer in their search for food autonomy, practices that Tashi finds repulsive. He also remembers that a loudspeaker was installed in the heart of the city and broadcast propaganda in the Tibetan language.

He is impressed by the achievements of the Chinese: opening of the first primary schools, a hospital and various public buildings in Lhasa. In a short period of time, he sees more improvement than he has seen in his life, or even than Tibet has seen in centuries.

Tashi has an affair with a noble girl named Thondrup Dromala. The opposition of the latter's family and the young man's limited resources ultimately got the better of their couple despite the birth of a boy in 1953.

Studies

In India (1957–1959) Resourceful, in 1957 he managed to raise the necessary funds to study in India. He was abroad when the 1959 Tibetan uprising.

He worked closely with exiled Tibetan resistance leaders, in particular an older brother of 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, Gyalo Thondup (" Gyalola as we called him"), with whom he befriended. He assists him in welcoming the Tibetan refugees, without knowing that Gyalo Thondup is financed by the CIA and that he has significant financial resources.

One of his tasks is to collect stories of atrocities from refugees. He found very few and most of the refugees he interviewed were illiterate and unable to present their experience in an orderly and logical manner. Many have not even seen the battles waged by the Chinese army in Lhasa. They were caught up in the fear panic that had gripped the entire country. They have no story to tell other than the suffering they endured during their march across the mountain but not at the hands of the Chinese. Ultimately, the accounts recorded by him, along with those from other refugee camps, would be presented by the International Commission of Jurists in its 1960 report accusing China of atrocities.

In 1959, he was charged by his friend Gyalo Thondrup with taking care of part of the Dalai Lama's treasure which had been secured in 1950 in the reserves of Tashi Namgyal, maharaja of the Sikkim. After the Dalai Lama fled, the Chinese government demanded its return, claiming that it was not the Dalai Lama's property but that of the country, which they now considered as theirs. When Tashi Tsering intervenes, the treasure has just been transported by truck from Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim, to Siliguri further south. While the gold is sent by cargo plane to Calcutta, where it is entrusted to banks, the silver is kept with a trusted Tibetan trader, where Tashi must keep it for almost a month before participating in its melting into ingots.

In the United States (summer 1960 – end of 1963)

Tashi Tsering then meets an American student in India, thanks to whom he will be able to study in the United States. Before leaving, he meets the 14th Dalai Lama, who invites him to "be a good Tibetan", to "study seriously" and to "put his education at the service of his people and his country".

In July 1961, he arrived in Seattle after spending a year studying English at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He would become one of the interpreters of Dezhung Rinpoche after the departure of Thupten Jigme Norbu in June 1962 and would also collaborate with E. Gene Smith.

He studied on the East Coast then in Seattle in State of Washington: his historical readings made him establish a parallel between the Western Middle Ages and the Tibetan society he came from. to leave.

Upon his arrival in China, he was sent some km northwest of Guangzhou, to the Xianyang Tibetan Minority Institute, which houses students. He is part of a class of 40 Tibetans destined to become teachers in Tibet.

Liberation (1973–1976)

In May 1973, Tashi Tsering was released. Always suspicious, he is assigned to manual work that does not suit him.

In the fall of 1974, he went to Lhasa to see his parents. There he married Sangyela, a long-time Tibetan friend, very religious, with whom he formed a very united couple. In 1991, a second school opened, in .

This is how around fifty primary schools will be founded on the high plateau at his initiative and in collaboration with the county school authorities who distribute the funds, choose the locations, define the size of the schools, as well as with residents who voluntarily provide labor.

According to Tsering Woeser who interviewed him, Tashi Tséring is very concerned about the current state of the Tibetan language, but says "if we emphasize the importance of the Tibetan language, we will be accused of narrow nationalism, because according to official government guidelines, the higher the level of Tibetanness, the stronger the level of religious consciousness, and consequently the stronger the reactionary behavior".

His autobiography

In 1992, having reconnected with Melvyn Goldstein, he returned to the United States to work on his autobiography with his former classmate. His memoirs were finally published in 1997 under the title The Struggle for Modern Tibet. The Autobiography of Tashi Tsering, and under the co-signature of Melvyn Goldstein, William Siebenschuh and Tashi Tsering.

For P. Christiaan Klieger, just as the refugee stories of 1959 had to be reshaped to be understandable and coherent, when Tashi Tsering gave the story of his life in the 1990s, it was in turn shaped but by two interlocutors (Melvyn Goldstein and William Siebenschuch) who believed the world needed to hear another message about Tibet. The castigation inflicted on Tashi Tsering by his Tibetan dance master, his elevation to the rank of official lover of a high-ranking monk, and his desire to work within the framework of Chinese Tibet serve to disrupt the idealized representation of Tibet in vogue among Westerners.

For Jamyang Norbu, the impression that emerges from reading Tashi Tsering's biography is that of extreme naivety.

Second audience with the Dalai Lama In 1994 (at age 65), he met the Dalai Lama again, at the University of Michigan, thirty years after their last meeting. Tashi tells the Dalai Lama that he respects his commitment to non-violence, but also suggests that Tibetans need to know how to oppose the Chinese when their policies seem unreasonable, but that Tibetans also need to learn how to live with them. Tashi further told the Dalai Lama that he believed he was in a unique situation to negotiate an agreement with the Chinese that could be favorable to both the Chinese and the Tibetans, and that both the Chinese and the Tibetans would listen to him. Tashi ardently wished that the Dalai Lama would once again unify his people, end the government in exile and return to Tibet.

After listening attentively to Tashi Tsering, the Dalai Lama replied that he himself had thought of most of the ideas that Tashi had just expressed and that he appreciated his advice, but that he did not believe not that the timing is right. Tashi Tsering was neither surprised nor discouraged, but satisfied that he was able to express what he had in mind and that the Dalai Lama listened attentively.

The struggle for education and defense of the Tibetan language

In 2003, Tashi Tsering published his second work, co-authored by William Siebenschuch, on his struggle for education, under the title The struggle for education in modern Tibet: the three thousand children of Tashi Tsering.

In 2007, he spoke to the deputies of the autonomous region of Tibet to protest the too little place given to the Tibetan language in higher education and in the administration. In his opinion, schools in Tibet should teach all subjects, including modern science and technology, in Tibetan, to preserve the language.

In his official statement submitted to the Tibet Autonomous Region People's Congress in 2007, he wrote: .

Death

Tashi Tsering died on 5 December 2014, in Lhasa, at the age of 85.

Works With William Siebenschuh, and Melvyn Goldstein, The Struggle for Modern Tibet: The Autobiography of Tashi Tsering, Armonk, N.Y., M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1997, xi + 207 p. – Chinese Edition of The Struggle for a Modern Tibet: the Life of Tashi Tsering, Mirror Books, Carle Place, N.Y., 2000. With William Siebenschuch, The struggle for education in modern Tibet: the three thousand children of Tashi Tsering, Volume 88 of Mellen studies in education, E. Mellen Press, 2003,