A Year in Tibet

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I started learning Tibetan at Oxford, with the late Tibetologist Michael Aris, and wrote my master's thesis on Britain's role in Tibet when it withdrew from its empire in India. I made my first trip to Tibet in 1991, to see for myself whether it was hell on earth or Shangri-la. I found a land of emptiness and majesty. The guidebooks say Tibet is closer to heaven, and that was how I felt: a harmony between nature, man and faith, which had a strong appeal for me. Was I attracted because I grew up in such a crowded country, where nature was being trampled on by the vast population? Was it because I was living in a spiritual void created by disillusionment with communism? Or was I, like the long string of adventurers and explorers before me, looking for a ‘land of lost content’ that perhaps exists only in the mind? I went back many times, going further and further into the plateau, living with nomads, nuns, and hermits, each trip longer than the previous one. But these were all relatively brief encounters.

Then came my chance — to direct a documentary series about a year in the life of ordinary Tibetans. From July 2006 to June 2007 that is just what I did. I decided to film in Gyantse, 13,000 feet up, Tibet's third largest town, but one with still only 8,000 people. It is also the seat of a county with 60,000 people, big enough for me to find a representative range of characters. It is beautiful and all of a piece, with its ancient fort, well-known monastery, and traditional houses largely intact — a rarity in today's Tibet. Of course, change has come to Gyantse too, along with a growing influx of tourists, migrants, and traders, although they have not, or not yet, altered its character. And Gyantse is a place of history, the scene of Colonel Younghusband's infamous massacres in 1904, when he led an expedition to open up Tibet for the British Empire.

My film crew and I rented a Tibetan house on the edge of town, with an outside toilet and no running water — we had to fetch water in barrels by motor rickshaw, and shower in the public bath. Altogether we were nine, a mixture of Tibetan and Chinese: myself, three cameramen at the start, later reduced to one, two Tibetan researchers, a young Chinese assistant producer, a Chinese production manager, and a Tibetan driver. We also had a Sichuanese cook and a Tibetan housekeeper who came in daily.

For a year we followed a shaman, a village doctor, a junior Party official, a hotel manager, a rickshaw driver, a builder, and two monks through the ups and downs of their lives. Late summer was tense due to the visit of the controversial Panchen Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader second only to the Dalai Lama, but the hotel manager had record profits. Autumn brought anxiety to the villagers anticipating the all-important harvest; new technology also cost the shaman his job as warder-off of hailstones. During the long winter we filmed a wedding in which the bride and the grooms had no say, but we also observed a household where three brothers have shared a wife for twenty years. The monastery was burgled and the rickshaw driver had to leave home to find work. The village doctor found herself sick, on top of her struggles to care for the patients in her ill-equipped clinic, and she herself turned to a lama and a pilgrimage in the hope of a cure. In the spring the builder was trying to get a contractor's certificate, for which he had to pass an exam in Chinese, a language he did not speak. The novice monk, our youngest character, was threatened with expulsion for lack of discipline. We were watching a people bound by tradition, but challenged by rapid change.

But this is not the book of the film. Television is good for action, and often with no action, there is no film. At the start of our project, the shaman's mother died. There could not have been a more important occasion to explore Tibetan beliefs. But we could not film the actual death; it would have been too intrusive. The elaborate rituals for her rebirth were not enough; we had to drop the whole event in the final cut. This is where books come into their own; they are also far better at exploring people's innermost feelings and thoughts, their beliefs and their reflections on the past. And this is particularly vital for portraying Tibet, a society so rich and complex, and so different from any other.

In this book, I have followed the dramas of the characters in the film, but I focus mainly on the Rikzin family: the shaman Tseten and his two brothers, Dondan and Loga; their wife, Yangdron; their father, Mila; and their four children. The shaman is at the very heart of Tibetan life. People come to him with headaches, toothaches, broken hearts and sick animals. They consult him about births and deaths, which hospital to go to for operations, who should marry whom, whether or when to start a business, or to pray for a felled tree. Tseten even had a visit from a distraught man wanting to know his dog's next incarnation.

The Rikzin family's stories took me into the most intimate aspects of village life, and beyond — the strength of the Tibetans' beliefs and the importance of their rituals; the joy they take in life; their battle to be educated, and in their own language; the pitiful standards of health care; the success of the few in the midst of poverty and lack of opportunity; the palpable political tensions; the animosity between Tibetans and Chinese.

As a Chinese I felt honoured to be welcomed into this community, and by the Rikzin family. They have enabled me to describe as a witness the everyday lives of rural Tibet. Ninety per cent of Tibetans live in villages and on the pastoral land — yet the vast literature on Tibet rarely refers to them. It is among them that faith is still nurtured, the culture is maintained, and tradition flourishes. This is the real Tibet.

ONE The Shaman, the Gun and Mao's Red Book (#u4c1adc6b-5b0a-5abf-b1ea-1800bb73b761)

IT IS EARLY MORNING, and the sky is leaden — not at all like the crystal blue Tibetan vault on the postcards. Dark clouds hang over the village of Tangmad and the mountains behind it, the sky lit now and then by a dramatic flash of lightning. We are huddled in the Rikzins' kitchen, watching the rain. It is not heavy, quite gentle in fact, but it is unrelenting. For four days in a row, the family has got up at two or three in the morning, hoping for it to break. But they — and we — have been disappointed every time. Loga, the oldest brother, Dondan, the middle one, Tseten, the youngest, who is also the village shaman, and Yangdron, the wife they share, are not saying very much. They are drinking yak-butter tea and eating tsampa (#litres_trial_promo) — roasted barley flour — which they mix with the tea. Mila, the brothers' father, is praying in his room.

Yangdron breaks the silence. ‘Do you think the rain will stop this morning? Yesterday, we could not get into the fields. It was so wet. Last year the harvest was already in by now.’

‘It should be all right,’ Tseten says breezily, trying to lighten the atmosphere.

Dondan turns his head to look out of the window. The clouds over the horizon are becoming thicker and thicker. He sighs. ‘It could be worse,’ he says.

The only truly cheerful one is Loga. He has the mental age of a child. He does not understand; with hot butter tea and tsampa, what is there to worry about? It is the start of another day.

I have heard that the village held a festival two weeks ago for the local god Yul Lha. He is one of the most powerful deities. He is supposed to control the mountains, the rivers that flow from them, the land beneath them, the people and animals who live near them — and the weather. It was before we started filming. I ask Tseten to tell me about it.

‘We have a shrine to Yul Lha on the edge of the village. Each family brought a bundle of their best crops, barley, mustard seeds, and peas as offerings. I recited mantras to invoke the presence of Yul Lha, asking him to come and enjoy them. You know, he is responsible for just about everything important — the rain and the harvest, sickness and health, the safety of men and animals.’

‘Will it be a good harvest this year?’ I ask. I noticed that some of the fields we passed on the way to the village looked rather pitiful, like an old man's hair, the stalks short, the ears sagging.

‘We could have done with a bit more rain earlier after the planting,’ Tseten concedes, ‘but we cannot complain.’

I have found mentions of some offerings made in the past in a book I have been reading: widows' or prostitutes' menstrual blood in a bowl made from the skull of an illegitimate child, hearts and livers, flowers, incense, and a sampling of the finest food available. In the 1950s, an assembly of monks required ‘one wet intestine, two skulls, and a whole human skin’ for a ritual to pray for the Dalai Lama's longevity.

(#litres_trial_promo) The best barley and peas seem a bit ordinary by comparison.

Tseten laughs. ‘Yul Lha is not so hard to please. If you are respectful and sincere, he will help you.’

Tseten refers to Yul Lha with reverence, but also with familiarity, as though he is a real presence. Of course it is his job as a shaman, but it still comes as a surprise to me. I know the Cultural Revolution destroyed much of the fabric and culture of Tibetan life, and took from the Tibetans what they had for centuries valued most — their monasteries, their monks, their religious rituals. But I did not realise how many of the old traditions had returned in the years since, how much people's lives were once again dominated by the old beliefs.

I made a mistake when I first came to Tangmad village looking for the Rikzin family in July. I met a little girl with clear, radiant eyes, and a beautiful smile, and she was holding her mother's hand. When I complimented the mother on her daughter's beauty, she did not look at all pleased. She took the girl off in a hurry. My Tibetan researcher, Penpa, told me the woman would probably head for the monastery to pray to her daughter's deity in order to appease any anger or jealousy I might have invoked. I had put the girl at risk.

After three months in Tibet, I have learned that gods are everywhere. One day, I had arranged to follow Tseten on one of his rounds to see what it was like. He was an hour late to meet us. When he appeared, he apologised — he had been praying to the tree god for his neighbours before they cut down a tree to make a beam for their new house. Trees, flowers, crops, animals, humans, houses, wells, springs, rivers, mountains, earth, heaven — all have gods assigned to them. Humans, too, have gods keeping an eye on them: the one over your shoulder is the fighting god, the one under your right armpit is the masculine god and the one under your left the feminine god; the house god is present on the four corners of your roof, and the storage god in the cupboards; there is a god in the well, in the stable, and in the kitchen — if you make the stove dirty, you might offend the stove god, and she will make the whole family sick.

In fact, the story of how Buddhism came to Tibet is embedded in the mythology of these demons and gods. In the eighth century, King Trisong Detsen invited an Indian master to come to teach and to build the first Tibetan monastery. Legend has it that devils did their best to halt the construction. The master's life was also threatened by followers of Bön, the widespread indigenous religion. So another great Indian master, Padmasambhava — or Padam, as he is known — was called upon to travel to Tibet. Again, the same devils put obstacles in his path. The God of Gnyan Chen Tanggola, one of Tibet's holiest and highest mountains, was his most notable assailant. Padam's response was to sit in deep meditation on this mountain top, and, soon enough, the snow started to melt, creating a torrent, bringing earth and rocks down with it. The mountain god surrendered, convinced of Padam's superior powers, and offered his loyalty. Padam made him a protective deity in the Tibetan Buddhist pantheon, together with all his 360 subsidiary gods and goddesses, and numerous other devils and spirits.

These gods and goddesses are duty-bound to protect and to bring prosperity to the monasteries and monks, and the faithful. But they have been allowed to keep their bad habits — they are carnivorous, thirsty for blood, and often consumed by ego, anger, jealousy, and greed. They are quite unBuddhist; they have nothing to do with delivering enlightenment — that is left to the numerous Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

Traditionally, it is the shaman who intercedes with the deities and spirits, to honour them, to placate them, and to plead with them for help. When we were choosing characters to feature in our documentary film, every Tibetologist we consulted recommended that we include a shaman. After hunting for several weeks in the villages, Penpa, the researcher, came back one day in early August looking very pleased with himself, ‘You owe me a big present. I think I've found just the family you want.’

I drove with him the next day to Karmad — one of the eighteen districts (xiang (#litres_trial_promo)) of Gyantse County. We turned off onto a stony track after twenty minutes on the main road to Shigatse, the second biggest city in Tibet. It was lined with willow trees, and through them I could see the vast expanse of yellowing barley fields under brilliant sunshine, stretching to the dark mountains on either side. The track went on straight for miles to the end of the valley, into the huge space of sky and clouds. Where were we going to end up? We crossed the Nyangchu River and passed several villages, all looking very inviting. I asked Penpa repeatedly, ‘Is this one ours?’ At last we slowed down and went left into Village No. 1, Tangmad, at a row of prayer-wheels. We went by a water tap where the villagers were queuing, the only tap for 600 people, Penpa told me. As far as I could see, as we drove through the lanes of traditional mud-brick houses, that was the only sign of modernity, bar some telephone lines and the occasional motorbike or car.

We parked outside a wide corrugated-iron gate. Penpa pulled a rope that opened the inside latch of the narrow side, and we entered the Rikzins' house. Like the others, it has two storeys of the traditional kind, the cows and sheep on the ground floor, and the family on the first floor, with a big courtyard where chickens run amongst the tractor and cart, and cowpats dry on the walls. We climbed up a flight of stairs to the small upper courtyard. Yangdron came out of the kitchen to greet us, smiling warmly. She had a broad oblong face, handsome rather than beautiful, with dark wide-set eyes, and brilliant white teeth — her smile really lit up her face.

‘This is our director, Sun, who wanted to find a shaman family,’ Penpa introduced me. ‘You want to see Tseten,’ she said, taking my hands in hers. ‘He has someone with him. But let me take you to his room.’

My first sight of Tseten was a little curious. He was sitting on a narrow bed in the family prayer room, in front of a wall hung with tangkas, ritual paintings of the Buddha and various deities. On a bench under the windows to his right was his patient, a young woman with a badly swollen face. He leaned over to her and spat on her cheek. After half a minute, he stopped and beckoned us with a smile to sit next to her, and went on with his spitting. I noticed Tseten's smooth, pale skin, unlike any villager we had seen. I supposed he spent a lot of time indoors. His smile seemed to express a benign disposition — no doubt a comfort to the woman. I immediately took a liking to him.

The patient left, bowing with gratitude. We had a brief chat with Tseten about our film, and then he led us to the kitchen to meet the rest of the family. I felt I was taken back to another time. A liquidiser for making butter tea, a solar reflector in the courtyard for boiling water, a telephone presumably for Tseten's activities, and a small black and white TV in a corner — these were the only reminders of the modern world. The family were sitting around the stove, drinking and chatting. Dondan, tall and solid, greeted us with a handshake. Penpa had told me he was forty-six, eleven years older than Tseten; he was a man of very few words, but the pillar of the household who took care of the farm. Loga was sitting in a corner, staring at us with a grin that revealed tiny teeth with big gaps between them. Although the oldest at forty-eight, he was also the slightest. I took a closer look at him. Something seemed to be wrong with him: his complexion was sallow and his hair sparse and yellowish. I looked at Penpa; he whispered, ‘He's had some illness all his life, the family does not know what it is.’ The two older sons were there, Jigme and Gyatso, looking like younger versions of Dondan, but behaving like typical, bored teenagers. There were two younger children, Tseyang — the only daughter — and Kunga, but they were still in school that day.

Mila, their grandfather, was away in Shigatse, visiting his wife in hospital. I was keen to find out more about him. Mila has been more than a shaman. He was a lama at the Palkhor Monastery in Gyantse for a decade, but was thrown out in 1959, after the Tibetan uprising against the Communists. He was forced to marry, but that was not enough — he was persecuted right up to the late 1970s. From him I hoped I could learn about the violent upheavals of those times, and how, despite everything, the old traditions have come back, and not just in his family.

I wonder whether Yul Lha did not hear Tseten's prayers. Or was he not pleased with the villagers' offerings? For the next week, whenever the weather looks like brightening up, we go back to the village, hoping to film. But the rain still does not let up enough for them to start harvesting, and if it goes on, the crop will be ruined. Now frustration is turning to fear — the rain might become hail. The villagers say that is Yul Lha's revenge for transgressions against him. Powerful as he is, Yul Lha is also easily offended. Forgetting to say a prayer to him, talking too loudly on the mountain top, making a fire in the forest — these are just a few of the things that displease him. Gale-force winds, thunder and lightning, downpours, blizzards, drought, and hailstones are his other weapons. It is said that Yul Lha has a consort to help him; according to one legend she has lightning in her right hand and hailstones in her left, ready to launch these wherever she is directed.

The Tibetans have a famous story about hail, which dates back to the eleventh century. It is the story of Milarepa, one of their most beloved sages. Born into a wealthy family, Milarepa and his mother and sister were turned out of their own home by an uncle and aunt after Milarepa's father died. Milarepa's mother was incensed, and told him to go away and learn the black arts so he might come back and take vengeance for the loss of their property. Milarepa did as his mother asked, and returned to his village an accomplished sorcerer. First, he made the roof collapse on a wedding party, killing thirty-five members of his clan. But this did not satisfy his mother, who demanded he launch a hailstorm and destroy all their relatives' crops. Milarepa created not one storm but three — and devastated the barley fields of the entire area. He was so appalled by the destruction he had unleashed that he soon turned to Buddhism to find repentance.

Hailstorms do not come around often in Gyantse, but when they do, they can destroy everything in the space of half an hour. Tseten tells me that five years ago villages further up the valley had a disaster. Right before their eyes, the ripened barley was flattened; nothing was left but useless heaps on the ground. They had worked the whole year for nothing. I have read of another hailstorm in 1969 in the County records, more widespread, and even more devastating. All these years later, just mentioning it still sends chills down the villagers' spines.

A hailstorm would be the worst thing for the Rikzin family, especially now. Even in a normal year, they have to be careful. This year, they will need a lot of extra money if Jigme and Gyatso get into university. In other parts of rural China, farmers have extra income from their migrant sons and daughters and from the highly successful ‘town and village enterprises’, the small local businesses which began with the economic reforms of 1979. I have seen none of them around Gyantse, except for families weaving carpets. The young men in Tangmad village have begun to seek work further away. But they speak only Tibetan and have no skills; they can do manual jobs — building houses for nomads, road construction, menial labour in the city for roughly 15 yuan a day (about £1). The Rikzin family do not have even that income, because they want all their four children to be educated.

‘Cheer up,’ Penpa says to the family one day at lunch time. They — and we — have spent yet another morning waiting for the rain to stop. ‘If you are so worried, how do other families cope? After all, you have a hailstone lama under your roof. Surely that is some guarantee?’ We all smile.

Indeed, ‘hailstone lama’ is what the villagers call Tseten, now I think about it. But strangely, since I started following Tseten in August, he has never mentioned his anti-hailstone work. On a particularly threatening day like today, does he not have to say a special prayer? Is there something he is not telling me? Why, when everyone is so worried about hail, is the ‘hailstone lama’ just sitting here, not doing anything?

‘I'm unemployed now. The government brought an antiaircraft gun a few years ago to disperse the clouds and prevent hailstorms. So I have been made redundant,’ he says, laughing perhaps a little too loudly.

‘Which is more effective?’ I ask him. ‘You or the gun?’

‘Our family has done anti-hailstone work for six generations. You can ask anyone in this village. Tangmad has not been hit by hailstorms in recent times.’

‘What about the one I read about in the County record?’

‘That was not us. Our village has never been hit by hail,’ Tseten says gently, but confidently. ‘One year the hail was particularly powerful. All the trees were killed; even the ground was pitted. But it did not land in the fields. It stopped just outside them because of the power of my mantras. The three villages up the valley suffered for two years in a row after they bought the gun!’

‘What do the villagers prefer, relying on the gun or placating Yul Lha?’ I ask cheekily.

‘Some other villages still invite me to do my mantras, but I say no.’

‘Why?’

‘They say the guns can do it. So let them do it.’ He sounds a little peevish.

I ask Tseten if I can film him demonstrating his anti-hail ritual; he agrees. While our cameraman gets ready, Penpa asks if we are going to film the demonstration inside or outside.