From school to monastery, from monastery to exile in India
Tibet Watch conducted a series of interviews this year (I, II, III, IV, V, VI) with a group of newly arrived Tibetan refugees in Dharamsala, northern India who escaped from occupied Tibet.
This interview is the seventh in the series. The refugee is a monk who grew up to his grandparent’s advice on the importance of Tibetan language and culture. He studied for a brief period of time in a township school and then enrolled in a small monastery. However, upon finding himself in a monastery without resources - where monks mostly did prayers and rituals- he travels beyond his hometown, continuing his pursuit of Buddhism and, by pretending to be mentally unsound to escape scrutiny from the authorities, he manages to find a place in a monastery with thousands of monks and a huge library.
He also shared observations of a rapidly changing society of a county in Nyingchi Prefecture: the inflow of Chinese migrant labourers, the proliferation of food and catering businesses, dam construction and mining, the state of unemployment which compels Tibetans to take up border patrolling to provide for their family. And lastly, blood sample collection, the medical result of which local Tibetans have not received till date.
The following account is in his own words. We have kept his identity anonymous and omitted a few geographical details for security.
Advanced Education of Developed Nation
In our village, there are more than 500 households. There is a boarding school, which is called XXX Township School. There were around 600 students and it had classes up to the sixth standard. When I was attending the school, there were textbooks and medium of instruction in both Chinese and Tibetan. I studied until third grade and then dropped out.
These days, I heard that except for the only one class in first and second grade where Tibetan is taught as a language subject, all the other subjects are taught in Chinese as the medium of instruction. Even so, it is not a subject as seriously taken as the Chinese language. If you get good marks in the Chinese language exam but fail in the Tibetan language exam, you will still get promoted to the next level. But if you fail in Chinese language exams, then you have failed and you can’t go to the next grade.
My nephew is studying in this school nowadays. They are mainly taught mathematics, social science, the history of socialism, education on thoughts and morality, and so on. The school emphasises more on an education system promoting historical propaganda and indoctrination which is called the “Advanced Education System of Developed Nation*” (སྔོན་ཐོན་མི་རིགས་ཀྱི་སློབ་གསོ།). The main focus, primarily, is Chinese language study and the promotion of teaching in Chinese.
Tibetan parents are concerned about the alienating effect the new education system has on their children and they are making efforts to pass on Tibetan language education and provide Tibetan upbringing to their kids during the summer and winter vacations.
Parents are either secretly teaching Tibetan language to their children or sending them on tuition to study the Tibetan language. For instance, I used to keep my nephew with me at the monastery, teach him Tibetan language and let him practice reading prayer books. You cannot do it openly but secretly. The authorities have imposed restrictions and prohibited children from taking off-campus coaching classes, forbidding them from studies that are not related to their subjects and textbooks. They also forbid Tibetan children from visiting monasteries and from keeping or wearing religious items (སྲུང་འཁོར་དང་ཕྱག་མདུད།**) around the neck.
They select model students from every class to personify three values: hard work, discipline, and cleanliness, and they wear red scarves around their necks. They have to tie the red scarf around their neck. When these students visit their homes after spending time in school, they show dramatic changes. They have become accustomed to speaking fluently in Chinese, with great ease, but rarely speak in Tibetan with their parents and family members. Only a few make conversations in Tibetan.
A few students manage to graduate from university. But still, they are neither competent in Chinese like the Chinese students nor are they able to speak and understand Tibetan like a Tibetan. They hardly manage to find work in their field of profession and some have been adversely affected by such circumstances and they’ve been enduring depression. Their behavior and lifestyles have become divorced from the Tibetan way and they don’t have a close relationship with their parents and relatives. They have become Chinese in their lifestyle and the choices they make.
It is the same in the case of one of my nephews. This is similar to the fate of many other graduates in other Tibetan areas. There is no way to get a promotion in school unless you study the Chinese language. The same is the case with other Tibetan schools.
Even if you are good in Tibetan, unless or until you pass the Chinese language exam with the required minimum marks, there is no way you can find admission in colleges and universities.
In the school that I mentioned earlier, during the Chinese officials’ visit, students have to raise their hands high and sing the Chinese anthem and song of praise to the Chinese Communist Party. Then the officials conduct meetings and speak about “Advanced Education of Developed Nation” and so on and so forth. And now all the school textbooks and subjects are replaced with Chinese only. There are around forty teachers and staff and, amongst them, only two are Tibetan. There was a small library but most of the books were in the Chinese language. There is no public library- neither in the town nor in our monastery.
Tibetan language and culture: From school to monastery, from monastery to Exile in India
A Tibetan monk in exile waiting out the rain at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, Dharamsala Photo taken on 8 September 2012, Tenzin Choekyi
My grandfather and grandmother used to share their story and tell me:
"We are enslaved by the communist regime. The Chinese army created immense suffering for us in 1958. Now all our leaders are Chinese and they will continue to make us suffer in the future."
They told me many things about the Tibetan issue and reminded me that it was very important to study the Tibetan language and culture.
I studied till the third grade in XXX Township boarding school. Then I got enrolled in XXX Monastery and have been living in the monastery since then. There are around 25 monks in that monastery and we were mainly engaged in performing rituals and routine prayers. We don’t have many [resources] to study and learn Buddhist studies.
You have to obtain a monk’s registration certificate from the county’s Department of Religion. Otherwise, you are not allowed to stay in the monastery. XXX Monastery is a very small monastery and has a Monastic Management Committee but the local department of religion wields the main power. Any activity carried out in the monastery has to be communicated in advance to the Department of Religion.
Furthermore, you are not allowed to study in another monastery once you are enrolled in one monastery. But with the help of a friend, I managed to secretly join XXX Monastery in 2015. I did not have the permission from the concerned authorities. During my absence, security officials visited my family several times and asked where I had been and for what reason, and so on.
My parents told them that I had become mentally unsound and that they were finding it difficult to take care of me and therefore they had sent me off to a friend studying at that monastery in the Ngaba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture.
The Monastic Management Committee in that monastery also asked me why I had come there. I acted like a deranged person and then they let me stay there. But I was told that I was not allowed to go to other places. My monk friend signed himself as a guarantor to this agreement. There were over 3,100 monks in that monastery. There, I was able to study Buddhism. The monastery has a huge library. So I stayed there for almost five years.
The Chinese authorities have set up a security checkpoint between the monastery and XXX Street in the county town. Five to six armed police and security officials patrol this checkpoint on rotating shifts for 24 hours. They check visitors, their mobile phones, and belongings. There is another security checkpoint behind the monastery. There, too, are six to seven armed police and security officials. A few of them are Tibetans who are employed by the government to assist the police.
In 2018, I set out on a pilgrimage to Labrang Monastery, Rongwo Monastery, and Kumbum Monastery with four other monk friends. It was impossible to book a room in the hotel and get bus tickets without showing an identity card. I kept my ID card back in the room because I was scared that they might find out I was pretending to be a mad person. There were so many police and checkpoints on the routes we traveled and they were searching cars, luggage, and mobile phones at every checkpoint. I don’t remember how many checkpoints I crossed.
Proliferation of business in Nyingchi and Unemployed Tibetans on border patrol
In the months of June and July, there are many tourists visiting Nyingchi Prefecture because it has many places endowed with scenic beauty, snowy mountains, and deep forests. The local tourist department says that there are around 300,000 to 400,000 tourists visiting annually so I guess there must be that many visitors. The majority of tourists are from mainland China. We only see a few Tibetans or foreigners visiting these tourist places. In these tourist places, there is an explosion of business: of people running hotels, shops, and catering services. Over 90 percent of the people doing business there are Chinese and Muslims. Only a few Tibetans are doing business in this area. I don't know the reason why Tibetans are less in numbers in running businesses. Maybe Tibetans don't have enough money to start a business or maybe there is an official limitation on the Tibetans.
There were people in Bowo County who were sent to patrol the border areas and they were paid subsidiary assistance by the government. I think it might not be a forced campaign to participate. There are many Tibetans who are jobless, and for reasons of providing subsistence for their family, a few might have willingly joined. I don't know whether students and villagers are forced to enrol or join the military.
HydroDam, Railway, and Mining : The Inflow of Chinese migrant labourers
China built a huge hydroelectric dam on the riverside of the Choezong River (ཆོས་རྫོང་གཙང་པོ།) in 2013. I think they started building it in 2010 but I don't remember it clearly. I heard this hydropower station is the main source of electricity for the entire county of Bowo. The dam’s location is called Damchu Thanggo (འདམ་ཆུ་ཐང་མགོ།) and it’s the confluence of Choezong River and Putak River (སྤུ་སྟེགས་གཙང་པོ།). These two rivers run into Yarlung Tsangpo. These are quite big rivers.
During the dam construction, a black-stone mine near this area was found and the mineral resource was mined. I heard that this black stone is a precious mine but no locals knew what it exactly was. The mining company and miners were only Chinese and, from what I heard, it seems the company had the support of the government.
Since 2021, thousands of workers and labourers from China have come into Bowo County and they set up a huge camp in a land known as Tashi Thang (བཀྲ་ཤིས་ཐང་།) nearby Thanggon Township in Bowo County. I heard that they were there for mining-related work. It was said that the township authorities and the county governments don’t have the power to stop their movement. Their campsite looks exactly like the settlement where restaurants and shops were set up.
These migrant workers said that they were there for the construction of a railway line and claimed that they had nine years to complete the construction. But they don’t share details of railway construction like from where to which direction they are going to construct the railway. The villagers living nearby say that they have already put up an electrical and metal wireline from the bottom to the waist of the mountain and dug out a massive hole.
They transported something day and night from that location but it was never clear what exactly they were taking out. To this day, they haven’t constructed a railway line. Sometimes, the villagers go shopping at these migrant workers' places but they are not allowed to visit their construction area.
I heard from the villagers that there are mining activities being carried out in the area of Tarong valley (རྟ་རོང་ལུང་པ།), Shay valley (བྱེ་ལུང་།) and Gangrima valley (སྒང་རི་མ་ལུང་པ།). The government has already made an announcement of planned mining in the region at the sacred site of Sangdok Palri (ཟངས་མདོག་དཔལ་རི།), Dolma Neyri (སྒྲོལ་མ་གནས་རི།), and a place in Khada valley (མཁའ་མདའ་ལུང་པ།), but it is yet to start. Nevertheless, it is clear that they have already planned mining work in the region.
Health Insurance and Blood sample collection
Since 2020, the authorities have been issuing health cards (医保卡), and promising people government assistance and subsidy if they have it. This health card is linked to the ID card and bank account. The officials were saying that it [health card] is in order to get the health insurance benefit. There was also a blood sample collection campaign in the name of checking on people’s health but no further explanations were given. The villagers were in two minds as some were saying that there were risks in blood sample collection whilst others were saying that it would not be any trouble. We were not given any results of the health check, though.
*When China says སྔོན་ཐོན་མི་རིགས་ཀྱི་སློབ་གསོ། the second word, མི་རིགས། means nationality. But we have translated it as nation because of the centrality of Chinese nation-building in the education system in Tibet which is not based on Tibetan history, language, and culture.
**སྲུང་འཁོར་, Sungkhor, is a consecrated pendant in the form of a disc of thread that is tied to a thread and worn around the neck
ཕྱག་མདུད, Chagdue, is a consecrated thread usually with a knot that is worn around the wrist or arm