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This captivating autobiography by a Tibetan educator and former political prisoner is full of twists and turns. Born in 1929 in a Tibetan village, Tsering developed a strong dislike of his country's theocratic ruling elite. As a 13-year-old member of the Dalai Lama's personal dance troupe, he was frequently whipped or beaten by teachers for minor infractions. A heterosexual, he escaped by becoming a drombo, or homosexual passive partner and sex-toy, for a well-connected monk. After studying at the University of Washington, he returned to Chinese-occupied Tibet in 1964, convinced that Tibet could become a modernized society based on socialist, egalitarian principles only through cooperation with the Chinese. Denounced as a 'counterrevolutionary' during Mao's Cultural Revolution, he was arrested in 1967 and spent six years in prison or doing forced labor in China. Officially exonerated in 1978, Tsering became a professor of English at Tibet University in Lhasa. He now raises funds to build schools in Tibet's villages, emphasizing Tibetan language and culture.
This captivating autobiography by a Tibetan educator and former political prisoner is full of twists and turns. Born in 1929 in a Tibetan village, Tsering developed a strong dislike of his country's theocratic ruling elite. As a 13-year-old member of the Dalai Lama's personal dance troupe, he was frequently whipped or beaten by teachers for minor infractions. A heterosexual, he escaped by becoming a drombo, or homosexual passive partner and sex-toy, for a well-connected monk. After studying at the University of Washington, he returned to Chinese-occupied Tibet in 1964, convinced that Tibet could become a modernized society based on socialist, egalitarian principles only through cooperation with the Chinese. Denounced as a 'counterrevolutionary' during Mao's Cultural Revolution, he was arrested in 1967 and spent six years in prison or doing forced labor in China. Officially exonerated in 1978, Tsering became a professor of English at Tibet University in Lhasa. He now raises funds to build schools in Tibet's villages, emphasizing Tibetan language and culture.
This resource revisits the Nyemo incident, which has long been romanticised as the epitome of Tibetan nationalist resistance against China. The authors show that far from being a spontaneous battle for independence, this event was actually part of a struggle between rival revolutionary groups and was not ethnically based.
During the Vietnam war, the United States sought to undermine Hanoi's subversion of the Saigon regime by sending Vietnamese operatives behind enemy lines. A secret to most Americans, this covert operation was far from secret in Hanoi: all of the commandos were killed or captured, and many were turned by the Communists to report false information. Spies and Commandos traces the rise and demise of this secret operation-started by the CIA in 1960 and expanded by the Pentagon beginning in1964-in the first book to examine the program from both sides of the war. Kenneth Conboy and Dale Andrade interviewed CIA and military personnel and traveled in Vietnam to locate former commandos who had been captured by Hanoi, enabling them to tell the complete story of these covert activities from high-level decision making to the actual experiences of the agents. The book vividly describes scores of dangerous missions-including raids against North Vietnamese coastal installations and the air-dropping of dozens of agents into enemy territory-as well as psychological warfare designed to make Hanoi believe the "resistance movement" was larger than it actually was. It offers a more complete operational account of the program than has ever been made available-particularly its early years-and ties known events in the war to covert operations, such as details of the "34-A Operations" that led to the Tonkin Gulf incidents in 1964. It also explains in no uncertain terms why the whole plan was doomed to failure from the start. One of the remarkable features of the operation, claim the authors, is that its failures were so glaring. They argue that the CIA, and later the Pentagon, was unaware for years that Hanoi had compromised the commandos, even though some agents missed radio deadlines or filed suspicious reports. Operational errors were not attributable to conspiracy or counterintelligence, they contend, but simply to poor planning and lack of imagination. Although it flourished for ten years under cover of the wider war, covert activity in Vietnam is now recognized as a disaster. Conboy and Andrade's account of that episode is a sobering tale that lends a new perspective on the war as it reclaims the lost lives of these unsung spies and commandos.
An overall view of the Tibetan civilization, both ancient and modern Tibet. This book relates developments in Tibet to those in the rest of Asia.
It is not possible to fully understand contemporary politics between China and the Dalai Lama without understanding what happened in the 1950’s. The third volume in Melvyn Goldstein's History of Modern Tibet series, The Calm before the Storm, examines the critical years of 1955 through 1957. During this period, the Preparatory Committee for a Tibet Autonomous Region was inaugurated in Lhasa, and a major Tibetan uprising occurred in Sichuan Province. Jenkhentsisum, a Tibetan anti-communist émigré group, emerged as an important player with secret links to Indian Intelligence, the Dalai Lama’s Lord Chamberlain, the United States, and Taiwan. And in Tibet, Fan Ming, the acting head of the CCP’s office in Lhasa, launched the "Great Expansion," which recruited many thousands of Han Cadres to Lhasa in preparation for beginning democratic reforms, only to be stopped decisively by Mao Zedong’s "Great Contraction" which sent them back to China and ended talk of reforms in Tibet for the foreseeable future. In Volume III, Goldstein draws on never-before seen Chinese government documents, published and unpublished memoirs and diaries, and invaluable in-depth interviews with important Chinese and Tibetan participants (including the Dalai Lama) to offer a new level of insight into the events and principal players of the time. Goldstein corrects factual errors and misleading stereotypes in the history, and uncovers heretofore unknown information on the period to reveal in depth a nuanced portrait of Sino-Tibetan relations that goes far beyond anything previously imagined.
An untold story that reshapes our understanding of Chinese and Tibetan history From 1956 to 1962, devastating military conflicts took place in China's southwestern and northwestern regions. Official record at the time scarcely made mention of the campaign, and in the years since only lukewarm acknowledgment of the violence has surfaced. When the Iron Bird Flies, by Jianglin Li, breaks this decades long silence to reveal for the first time a comprehensive and explosive picture of the six years that would prove definitive in modern Tibetan and Chinese history. The CCP referred to the campaign as "suppressing the Tibetan rebellion." It would lead to the 14th Dalai Lama's exile in India, as well as the Tibetan diaspora in 1959, though the battles lasted three additional years after these events. Featuring key figures in modern Chinese history, the battles waged in this period covered a vast geographical region. This book offers a portrait of chaos, deception, heroism, and massive loss. Beyond the significant death toll across the Tibetan regions, the war also destroyed most Tibetan monasteries in a concerted effort to eradicate local religion and scholarship. Despite being considered a military success, to this day, the operations in the agricultural regions remain unknown. As large numbers of Tibetans have self-immolated in recent years to protest Chinese occupation, Li shows that the largest number of cases occurred in the sites most heavily affected by this hidden war. She argues persuasively that the events described in this book will shed more light on our current moment, and will help us understand the unrelenting struggle of the Tibetan people for their freedom.
Modern Tibetan Literature and Social Change is the first systematic and detailed overview of modern Tibetan literature, which has burgeoned only in the last thirty years. This comprehensive collection brings together fourteen pioneering scholars in the nascent field of Tibetan literary studies, including authors who are active in the Tibetan literary world itself. These scholars examine the literary output of Tibetan authors writing in Tibetan, Chinese, and English, both in Tibet and in the Tibetan diaspora. The contributors explore the circumstances that led to the development of modern Tibetan literature, its continuities and breaks with classical Tibetan literary forms, and the ways that writers use forms such as magical realism, satire, and humor to negotiate literary freedom within the People’s Republic of China. They provide crucial information about Tibetan writers’ lives in China and abroad, the social and political contexts in which they write, and the literary merits of their oeuvre. Along with deep social, cultural, and political analysis, this wealth of information clarifies the complex circumstances that Tibetan writers face in the PRC and the diaspora. The contributors consider not only poetry, short stories, and novels but also other forms of cultural production—such as literary magazines, films, and Web sites—that provide a public forum in the Tibetan areas of the PRC, where censorship and restrictions on public gatherings remain the norm. Modern Tibetan Literature and Social Change includes a previously unavailable list of modern Tibetan works translated into Western languages and a comprehensive English-language index of names, subjects, and terms. Contributors: Pema Bhum, Howard Y. F. Choy, Yangdon Dhondup, Lauran R. Hartley, Hortsang Jigme, Matthew T. Kapstein, Nancy G. Lin, Lara Maconi, Françoise Robin, Patricia Schiaffini-Vedani, Ronald D. Schwartz, Tsering Shakya, Sangye Gyatso (aka Gangzhün), Steven J. Venturino, Riika Virtanen
A gripping portrait of modern Tibet told through the lives of its people, from the bestselling author of Nothing to Envy “A brilliantly reported and eye-opening work of narrative nonfiction.”—The New York Times Book Review NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Parul Sehgal, The New York Times • The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post • NPR • The Economist • Outside • Foreign Affairs Just as she did with North Korea, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick explores one of the most hidden corners of the world. She tells the story of a Tibetan town perched eleven thousand feet above sea level that is one of the most difficult places in all of China for foreigners to visit. Ngaba was one of the first places where the Tibetans and the Chinese Communists encountered one another. In the 1930s, Mao Zedong’s Red Army fled into the Tibetan plateau to escape their adversaries in the Chinese Civil War. By the time the soldiers reached Ngaba, they were so hungry that they looted monasteries and ate religious statues made of flour and butter—to Tibetans, it was as if they were eating the Buddha. Their experiences would make Ngaba one of the engines of Tibetan resistance for decades to come, culminating in shocking acts of self-immolation. Eat the Buddha spans decades of modern Tibetan and Chinese history, as told through the private lives of Demick’s subjects, among them a princess whose family is wiped out during the Cultural Revolution, a young Tibetan nomad who becomes radicalized in the storied monastery of Kirti, an upwardly mobile entrepreneur who falls in love with a Chinese woman, a poet and intellectual who risks everything to voice his resistance, and a Tibetan schoolgirl forced to choose at an early age between her family and the elusive lure of Chinese money. All of them face the same dilemma: Do they resist the Chinese, or do they join them? Do they adhere to Buddhist teachings of compassion and nonviolence, or do they fight? Illuminating a culture that has long been romanticized by Westerners as deeply spiritual and peaceful, Demick reveals what it is really like to be a Tibetan in the twenty-first century, trying to preserve one’s culture, faith, and language against the depredations of a seemingly unstoppable, technologically all-seeing superpower. Her depiction is nuanced, unvarnished, and at times shocking.
Required reading for students searching for a connection between medical training and social justice. Timothy Holtz's intimate recounting of a year spent serving Tibetan refugees in India describes his struggles with being unable, as one young physician with only a year to spend, to fix the many wrongs he witnessed. Holtz concludes that "practicing good medicine-whether in a modern city or an impoverished refugee community-is far more complex than opening up a magic bag and handing out its contents." Although Holtz may not be aware of it, his memoir is a testament to the fact that he did in fact learn to practice good medicine, and he has been at it ever since. His year in "Little Lhasa" led Holtz to deepen his understanding not only of clinical medicine, but of the social roots of disease and of the indivisibility of health and human rights, broadly conceived. Students and practitioners alike will find this book inspiring. - Paul E. Farmer, Presley Professor, Harvard Medical School; and Co-founder, Partners in Health Timothy Holtz's account is no romance about the joys of practicing medicine among Tibetan exiles in northern India. It is rather about people's suffering from diseases that should easily be prevented, a doctor's efforts to provide good care without the resources he should have, and a community's struggles to cope with the consequences of torture. Even more important for the practice of medicine, it is a story of how a doctor's duty to take care of patients is quite inseparable from seeking to protect their human rights. - Len Rubenstein, Executive Director, Physicians for Human Rights Open this book to find a wonderful story about a transformative journey for a young physician. Timothy Holtz went to India with a purpose, to help Tibetan refugees in their struggle for a better life and better health. Little did he know how much his year working in a small hospital with few resources would change the trajectory of his life. Filled with stories that are both compassionate and humbling, it reminds us all that changing the world happens one person at a time. - Zorba Paster, Professor of Family Medicine, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health; and Author of The Longevity Code - Your Personal Prescription for a Longer Sweeter Life In this warm and sensitive memoir, Timothy Holtz portrays the challenges confronting the Tibetan exile community in Dharamsala as it struggles to preserve its culture and traditions. In recounting heartwarming stories of illness and healing, Holtz also reveals his own personal path of growth and discovery as a physician. The episodes he tells are sobering, but also inspiring, such as fighting drug-resistant tuberculosis in newly arrived refugees, and assisting nuns who survived torture in their native Tibet only to face the hardships of an unfamiliar country. I recommend this book for anyone interested in better understanding the lives of Tibetans in exile, as they fight to survive and to safeguard their traditional culture and human dignity. - Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi, Director, Emory-Tibet Partnership; and Spiritual Director, Drepung Loseling Monastery, Inc.