Memories of Life in Lhasa Under Chinese Rule

Memories of Life in Lhasa Under Chinese Rule PDF Author: Tubten KhŽtsun
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231142870
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
Born in 1941, Tubten Khétsun is a nephew of the Gyatso Tashi Khendrung, one of the senior government officials taken prisoner after the Tibetan peoples' uprising of March 10, 1959. Khétsun himself was arrested while defending the Dalai Lama's summer palace, and after four years in prisons and labor camps, he spent close to two decades in Lhasa as a requisitioned laborer and "class enemy." In this eloquent autobiography, Khétsun describes what life was like during those troubled years. His account is one of the most dispassionate, detailed, and readable firsthand descriptions yet published of Tibet under the Communist occupation. Khétsun talks of his prison experiences as well as the state of civil society following his release, and he offers keenly observed accounts of well-known events, such as the launch of the Cultural Revolution, as well as lesser-known aspects of everyday life in occupied Lhasa. Since Communist China continues to occupy Tibet, the facts of this era remain obscure, and few of those who lived through it have recorded their experiences at length. Khétsun's story will captivate any reader seeking a refreshingly human account of what occurred during the Maoists' shockingly brutal regime.

Memories of Life in Lhasa Under Chinese Rule

Memories of Life in Lhasa Under Chinese Rule PDF Author: Tubten KhŽtsun
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231142870
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Get Book Here

Book Description
Born in 1941, Tubten Khétsun is a nephew of the Gyatso Tashi Khendrung, one of the senior government officials taken prisoner after the Tibetan peoples' uprising of March 10, 1959. Khétsun himself was arrested while defending the Dalai Lama's summer palace, and after four years in prisons and labor camps, he spent close to two decades in Lhasa as a requisitioned laborer and "class enemy." In this eloquent autobiography, Khétsun describes what life was like during those troubled years. His account is one of the most dispassionate, detailed, and readable firsthand descriptions yet published of Tibet under the Communist occupation. Khétsun talks of his prison experiences as well as the state of civil society following his release, and he offers keenly observed accounts of well-known events, such as the launch of the Cultural Revolution, as well as lesser-known aspects of everyday life in occupied Lhasa. Since Communist China continues to occupy Tibet, the facts of this era remain obscure, and few of those who lived through it have recorded their experiences at length. Khétsun's story will captivate any reader seeking a refreshingly human account of what occurred during the Maoists' shockingly brutal regime.

Memories of Life in Lhasa Under Chinese

Memories of Life in Lhasa Under Chinese PDF Author: Tubten Khétsun
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780143066804
Category : Political prisoners
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Born in 1941, Tubten Khetsun is a nephew of the Gyatso Tashi Khendrung, one of the senior government officials taken prisoner after the Tibetan peoples' uprising of March 10, 1959. Khetsun himself was arrested while defending the Dalai Lama's summer palace, and after four years in prisons and labor camps, he spent close to two decades in Lhasa as a requisitioned laborer and 'class enemy'. In this eloquent autobiography, Khetsun describes what life was like during those troubled years. His account is one of the most dispassionate, detailed, and readable firsthand descriptions yet published of Tibet under the Communist occupation. Khetsun talks of his prison experiences as well as the state of civil society following his release, and he offers keenly observed accounts of well-known events, such as the launch of the Cultural Revolution, as well as lesser-known aspects of everyday life in occupied Lhasa. Since Communist China continues to occupy Tibet, the facts of this era remain obscure, and few of those who lived through it have recorded their experiences at length. Khetsun's story will captivate any reader seeking a refreshingly human account of what occurred during the Maoists' shockingly brutal regime.

Food of Sinful Demons

Food of Sinful Demons PDF Author: Geoffrey Barstow
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231542305
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
Tibetan Buddhism teaches compassion toward all beings, a category that explicitly includes animals. Slaughtering animals is morally problematic at best and, at worst, completely incompatible with a religious lifestyle. Yet historically most Tibetans—both monastic and lay—have made meat a regular part of their diet. In this study of the place of vegetarianism within Tibetan religiosity, Geoffrey Barstow explores the tension between Buddhist ethics and Tibetan cultural norms to offer a novel perspective on the spiritual and social dimensions of meat eating. Food of Sinful Demons shows the centrality of vegetarianism to the cultural history of Tibet through specific ways in which nonreligious norms and ideals shaped religious beliefs and practices. Barstow offers a detailed analysis of the debates over meat eating and vegetarianism, from the first references to such a diet in the tenth century through the Chinese invasion in the 1950s. He discusses elements of Tibetan Buddhist thought—including monastic vows, the Buddhist call to compassion, and tantric antinomianism—that see meat eating as morally problematic. He then looks beyond religious attitudes to examine the cultural, economic, and environmental factors that oppose the Buddhist critique of meat, including Tibetan concepts of medicine and health, food scarcity, the display of wealth, and idealized male gender roles. Barstow argues that the issue of meat eating was influenced by a complex interplay of factors, with religious perspectives largely supporting vegetarianism while practical concerns and secular ideals pulled in the other direction. He concludes by addressing the surge in vegetarianism in contemporary Tibet in light of evolving notions of Tibetan identity and resistance against the central Chinese state. The first book to discuss this complex issue, Food of Sinful Demons is essential reading for scholars interested in Tibetan religion, history, and culture as well as global food history.

Repentance for the Holocaust

Repentance for the Holocaust PDF Author: C. K. Martin Chung
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501712527
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
In Repentance for the Holocaust, C. K. Martin Chung develops the biblical idea of "turning" (tshuvah) into a conceptual framework to analyze a particular area of contemporary German history, commonly referred to as Vergangenheitsbewältigung or "coming to terms with the past." Chung examines a selection of German responses to the Nazi past, their interaction with the victims’ responses, such as those from Jewish individuals, and their correspondence with biblical repentance. In demonstrating the victims’ influence on German responses, Chung asserts that the phenomenon of Vergangenheitsbewältigung can best be understood in a relational, rather than a national, paradigm. By establishing the conformity between those responses to past atrocities and the idea of "turning," Chung argues that the religious texts from the Old Testament encapsulating this idea (especially the Psalms of Repentance) are viable intellectual resources for dialogues among victims, perpetrators, bystanders, and their descendants in the discussion of guilt and responsibility, justice and reparation, remembrance and reconciliation. It is a great irony that after Nazi Germany sought to eliminate each and every single Jew within its reach, postwar Germans have depended on the Jewish device of repentance as a feasible way out of their unparalleled national catastrophe and unprecedented spiritual ruin.

Islamic Ecumene

Islamic Ecumene PDF Author: Eric Tagliacozzo
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501772414
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
The essays in Islamic Ecumene address the ways in which Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia and from sub-Saharan Africa to the steppes of Uzbekistan are members of a broad cultural unit. Although the Muslim inhabitants of these lands speak dozens of languages, represent numerous ethnic groups, and practice diverse forms of Islam, they are united by shared practices and worldviews shaped by religious identity. To highlight these commonalities, the co-editors invited a team of scholars from a wide range of disciplines to examine Muslim societies in comparative and interconnected ways. The result is a book that showcases ethics, education, architecture, the arts, modernization, political resistance, marriage, divorce, and death rituals. Using the insights and methods of historians, anthropologists, literary critics, art historians, political scientists, and sociologists, Islamic Ecumene seeks to understand Islamic identity as a dynamic phenomenon that is reflected in the multivalent practices of the more than one billion people across the planet who identify as Muslims.

My Appeal to the World

My Appeal to the World PDF Author: Dalai Lama XIV Bstan-ʼdzin-rgya-mtsho
Publisher: Tibet House
ISBN: 0967011566
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Every March 10th, from 1961 until 2011, in commemoration of the greatest uprising of the Tibetan people against the Chinese military occupation, the Dalai Lama delivered an appeal to the world on behalf of his people. Each statement is a heartfelt call to recognize the truth and the factual reality of Tibet's history and situation; a cry for help, a plea for justice, and a pledge of determination to withstand the worst and to overcome. In these annual addresses, he began to articulate and fully express his overarching appeal to humanity. All of the Dalai Lama's March 10th speeches, at their most poignant and eloquent, are collected here, introduced and historically contextualized by Sofia Stril-Rever, an author and scholar of Tibetan history and culture and Buddhist spirituality who has long served as his French translator. Here in this book is his appeal to us all. The people of all nations have heard it and have tried to help, but their governments still have not dared to stand up effectively for justice on behalf of the Tibetan people and for recognition of the basic human rights to which we all are entitled. --Publisher's description.

The Division of Heaven and Earth

The Division of Heaven and Earth PDF Author: Shokdung
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1849049254
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
This is a translation of one of the most influential and important books from Tibet in the modern era, a passionate indictment of Chinese policies and an eloquent analysis of protests that swept Tibet from March, 2008 - the 'Earth Rat' year according to the Tibetan calendar - as a re-awakening of Tibetan national consciousness and solidarity. The Division of Heaven and Earth was banned by the Chinese government on publication, and led to Shokdung being "disappeared" and imprisoned for nearly six months. This English translation is being made available for the first time since copies began to circulate underground in Tibet. The author, Tagyal -- who uses the pen name Shokdung, meaning "morning conch"-- one of Tibet's leading intellectuals, wrote his book in response to an unprecedented wave of bold demonstrations and expressions of Tibetan solidarity and national identity. In his foreword Matthew Akester, a Tibet specialist who translated this book into English, offers an account of the significance of these developments, which transformed the political landscape across the plateau and led to a sustained and violent crackdown by the Chinese authorities that continues to this day. Shokdung's book is regarded as the most daring and wide-ranging critique of China's policies in Tibet since the 10th Panchen

Taming Tibet

Taming Tibet PDF Author: Emily Yeh
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801469775
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
The violent protests in Lhasa in 2008 against Chinese rule were met by disbelief and anger on the part of Chinese citizens and state authorities, perplexed by Tibetans' apparent ingratitude for the generous provision of development. In Taming Tibet, Emily T. Yeh examines how Chinese development projects in Tibet served to consolidate state space and power. Drawing on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork between 2000 and 2009, Yeh traces how the transformation of the material landscape of Tibet between the 1950s and the first decade of the twenty-first century has often been enacted through the labor of Tibetans themselves. Focusing on Lhasa, Yeh shows how attempts to foster and improve Tibetan livelihoods through the expansion of markets and the subsidized building of new houses, the control over movement and space, and the education of Tibetan desires for development have worked together at different times and how they are experienced in everyday life.The master narrative of the PRC stresses generosity: the state and Han migrants selflessly provide development to the supposedly backward Tibetans, raising the living standards of the Han's "little brothers." Arguing that development is in this context a form of "indebtedness engineering," Yeh depicts development as a hegemonic project that simultaneously recruits Tibetans to participate in their own marginalization while entrapping them in gratitude to the Chinese state. The resulting transformations of the material landscape advance the project of state territorialization. Exploring the complexity of the Tibetan response to—and negotiations with—development, Taming Tibet focuses on three key aspects of China's modernization: agrarian change, Chinese migration, and urbanization. Yeh presents a wealth of ethnographic data and suggests fresh approaches that illuminate the Tibet Question.

The Buddha Party

The Buddha Party PDF Author: John Powers
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019935815X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
The Buddha Party tells the story of how the People's Republic of China employs propaganda to define Tibetan Buddhist belief and sway opinion within the country and abroad. The narrative they create is at odds with historical facts and deliberately misleading but, John Powers argues, it is widely believed by Han Chinese. Most of China's leaders appear to deeply believe the official line regarding Tibet, which resonates with Han notions of themselves as China's most advanced nationality and as a benevolent race that liberates and culturally uplifts minority peoples. This in turn profoundly affects how the leadership interacts with their counterparts in other countries. Powers's study focuses in particular on the government's "patriotic education" campaign-an initiative that forces monks and nuns to participate in propaganda sessions and repeat official dogma. Powers contextualizes this within a larger campaign to transform China's religions into "patriotic" systems that endorse Communist Party policies. This book offers a powerful, comprehensive examination of this ongoing phenomenon, how it works and how Tibetans resist it.

Tibet's Fate

Tibet's Fate PDF Author: Warren W. Smith
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538173999
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
Tibet's Fate examines the issue of the political fate of Tibet. It is told by Tibetans themselves as well as by the author from his own experiences. The title is not meant to imply that the current fate of Tibet is an ultimate destiny, or even that Tibet’s fate is already decided. It is only meant in the sense that if Tibet’s fate is now determined, it has been determined not by the Tibetan people but by those of China. If it is to be determined by China, then Tibet’s fate is indeed to be an integral part of China. However, if Tibet’s fate were to be decided by the Tibetan people, if they were allowed their right to national self-determination, then it would definitely be different. Given all the criteria for independent statehood—territory, culture, language, religion and government—Tibet surely should be an independent state. Tibetan territory, defined by altitude, was the very nearly exclusively habitation of people who identified themselves as Tibetans. Those people share a distinct culture, language and religion. They had a central government that directly administered the territory of Central Tibet and indirectly that of Kham and Amdo. Had Tibetans been allowed to determine for themselves their political status; that is, if they had the right to self-determination as specified in the most fundamental documents of international law, there is no doubt that they would have chosen independence. Whatever the flaws of the Tibetan social and political systems, Tibet should have had the right to determine its own fate, and could have done so, until deprived of that right by China. The book also examines the sensitive question of the nature of the Tibetan political system and its role in the fate that has befallen Tibet. The author concludes that the Tibetan political system of Chosi Shungdrel, or the unity of religion and politics, is implicated in the failure of Tibet to maintain its independence.