Tashi Tsering, an extraordinary Tibetan

Tashi Tsering, an extraordinary Tibetan

(1929-2014)

(Introduction)

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

I’m a little embarrassed to address this learned gathering for two reasons: firstly, I’m completely incompetent when it comes to artificial intelligence; and secondly, it’s been twelve years since I last set foot in Tibet, unlike younger friends who went there quite recently and came back enchanted. All I can do is introduce you to an extraordinary Tibetan by the name of Tashi Tsering, who, after centuries of obscurantism, helped establish a fundamental human right in Tibet: education for all children, boys and girls alike. His life was a veritable novel.

(Young Tashi Tsering witnesses the birth of a new Tibet)

Born in 1929 in Guchok, a small village west of Lhasa in Namling county, Shigatse prefecture, he was destined to remain an illiterate peasant: as a child, he would have liked to learn to read and write, but there was no school in his village. But then, at the age of ten, he was requisitioned to serve in the gadrugpa, the Dalai Lama’s sacred dance company (it was a kind of human tax). It was here, in Lhasa, that he would begin his education; it was also here that the young teenager would become the sexual partner of an older monk. It was common practice in those days…

In September 1951 - he was 22 at the time - he witnessed the People’s Liberation Army enter Lhasa. He was surprised and amazed by the enthusiasm and efficiency of the young Chinese soldiers, who were building roads, a dispensary and a school. He was also amazed by their honesty, in stark contrast to the corruption of the traditional Tibetan administration: “They would not even take a needle from the people”, remarked the inhabitants of Lhasa.

For several years, cohabitation between the Tibetan population and the new Chinese authorities was excellent: the 17-point agreement on the peaceful liberation of Tibet was fully respected. This agreement, signed on May 23 1951 in Beijing between the Chinese authorities and representatives of the Dalai Lama, established China’s sovereignty over Tibet, subject to Beijing’s respect for traditional religious institutions. The gradual transformation of Tibetan society from an Old Regime to a modern republic was so peaceful that it has been described as a “honeymoon”.

But the situation took a turn for the worse in 1956, when land reform in neighboring Sichuan, not covered by the 17-Point Agreement, provoked discontent among landowners, aristocrats and high-ranking monks, who refused to accept the loss of their privileges: the Khampa armed revolt.

Powerfully supported by the United States, the revolt spread throughout the interior of Tibet, reaching as far as Lhasa, causing the Dalai Lama to flee to India on March 17, 1959, with the support of the CIA.

(A hard learning curve and a radical decision)

At the time, Tashi Tsering was in India, taking English courses. Together with Gyalo Thondup, the Dalai Lama’s elder brother, Tashi Tsering organized the Mussamari camp to take in the poor Tibetan exiles who had followed the Dalai Lama in his flight and were lost far from their homeland.

At the end of 1959, Tashi Tsering befriended a wealthy young Texan tourist in India, who gave him a scholarship to study in the United States for one year in New York and two years in Seattle.

A paradox of history: it was in the United States, barely out of the McCarthyism crisis, that he learned from his history courses at Seattle University that modern European countries had been feudal and theocratic societies for centuries in the Middle Ages. For Tashi Tsering, it was a revelation: he understood that the feudal and theocratic Tibetan society he had always known could also become a modern state under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.

He then made a decision that would affect his whole life: well integrated into the community of young Tibetan students in Seattle, he decided to return home to serve his people.

CIA collaborator Gyalo Thondup tries to dissuade him, and even to bribe him, by promising him a well-paid job at the Tibet House in New York if he puts himself at the service of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan exiles. But nothing can be done: Tashi Tserng is not a man to lose his soul.

After an interminable journey from Havana, he landed in Canton in December 1964. The Chinese authorities sent him to study in Xianyang, Shaanxi, far from his native Tibet. In far less comfortable conditions than those he had experienced in the United States, Tashi Tsering perfected his knowledge of Mandarin language and received an intense political training, an intellectual baggage he hoped to be able to use soon once back in Tibet.

But in October 1967, he was caught up in the maelstrom of the Cultural Revolution: he was accused of being an agent of the United States and the Dalai Lama. He was subjected to interminable interrogations and finally convicted of treason. For two and a half years, he was imprisoned and then subjected to manual labor under a regime of semi-liberty.

This dark period of more than ten years finally came to an end on December 19, 1978, when, thanks to Deng Xiaoping’s new policy, Tashi Tsering was acquitted and fully rehabilitated to the point of receiving the wages he deserved for his work in a supervised workshop.

(A new life begins at the age of fifty)

At the end of 1979, at the age of 50, he set about compiling a trilingual English-Tibetan-Chinese dictionary, a time-consuming task that involved collating and transcribing thousands of index cards by hand. Finally, in 1988, this monumental work was published by the Beijing Minorities Publishing House, and went on to undergo several revised and enlarged editions.

In 1985, during this period of intense intellectual activity, he opened a successful evening English-language course in Lhasa, which brought him considerable financial income, to which must be added the profits made by Sangyela, a childhood friend married in captivity, who proved to be an excellent businesswoman despite her illiteracy. Tashi Tsering is tempted to squander it all, as he later admits in his memoirs. But…

… when he went to visit his family in Guchok in 1985, he found that there was still no elementary school and that the children were still as illiterate as he had been forty-five years earlier. It was then that he decided to build an elementary school in his home village, but to do so he had to overcome the resistance of the peasants who felt that studying was a waste of time and that children’s place was to work in the fields.

Tashi Tsering finally overcame the resistance: the villagers agreed to build the school, he provided the funds, and the local government agreed to pay the teacher.

Such was his success that it spread beyond Guchok. One by one, using the same method, schools sprang up all over Namling County and the surrounding area. In the end, Tashi Tsering founded some fifty schools during the last third of his life.

(A fascinating and disturbing autobiography)

Such an experience deserved to be known. So Tashi Tsering reconnected with former classmates from Seattle University, including a certain Melvyn Goldstein, now one of the world’s leading Tibetologists and a professor at Case Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Melvyn Goldstein invited Tashi Tsering to return to the United States. In lengthy interviews, sometimes in Tibetan, sometimes in English, Melvyn Goldstein helped Tashi Tsering recall the key events of his life.

The result was The Struggle for Modern Tibet. The Autobiography of Tashi Tsering, which I translated into French.

Finding a publisher in French was an obstacle course for me: a wave of collective anti-Chinese hysteria had invaded France on the occasion of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. In this climate, French publishers, dominated by their worship of the Dalai Lama and their detestation of China, refused, one after the other, to publish my translation.

Despite the fact that Tashi Tsering’s biography is a first-hand account of a pivotal period in Tibet’s history, recounting without resentment both the humiliations suffered under the Old Feudal Regime and the ill-treatment inflicted during the Cultural Revolution ; despite the book’s rigorous historical truth, for the arrogant Parisian intelligentsia, it was out of the question to speak of a man, like Tashi Tsering, who was both an ardent defender of Tibetan culture and a loyal citizen of the People’s Republic of China.

Finally, I found a small publisher in Lyon who agreed to publish my translation in 2010. The book is now out of print.

Fortunately, “La Route de la Soie” (i.e. “The Silk Road”) has just republished my translation. Many thanks to Sonia Bressler, the courageous editor who has already published many interesting books on China.

(Two lengthy visits to a remarkable man)

When I finished my translation in 2009, I learned that Tashi Tsering was still alive and living in Lhasa. It was a wonderful encounter with a generous, intelligent, welcoming, optimistic and humorous man. When I said to him, “You’re the one who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize”, he burst out laughing and replied, “The important thing is what you’ve done!” Tashi Tsering quickly became a true friend to my wife and me, surprisingly close despite the seven thousand three hundred kilometers separating Brussels from Lhasa.

We saw him at length for a second time in December 2012, and he allowed us to marvel at the immense Emagang technical school he had founded ten years earlier in the middle of nowhere near Shigatse. The school’s teaching staff consisted of 32 young people (8 women and 24 men, including 3 Han Chinese), supervising 320 male and female students. We were won over by the seriousness of their work and delighted by the warmth of their welcome.

Tashi Tsering had a lot to be proud of. We had planned to visit him for the third time in spring 2015, but he sadly passed away in December 2014. This great man with an exemplary career only received one obituary in the West, in The Economist. And yet, God knows, he deserves to be better known.

In addition to the English original and my French translation, I’d like to point out that there is a Spanish version entitled Memorias de un Tibetano and a Chinese version that many of you are probably familiar with, entitled “西藏是我家 (Xizang shi wo jia), that is Tibet is my home.

When people once asked Tashi Tsering if he wasn’t sad that he and his wife had no children, he replied: “Oh no, I’m not sad at all. The children in my schools are my children. I have three thousand children.” For him, who had risked remaining illiterate, nothing could fill him more than giving boys and girls access to education.

(Conclusion: Education for all: a right dear to Tashi Tsering and the Tibetan government)

Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims that “Everyone has the right to education”. This is an essential right that Tashi Tsering was instrumental in developing in Tibet. He died too young to be aware of the birth and development of artificial intelligence. But I have no doubt that, if he were still alive, he would be delighted with the current education system and would continue to fight so that every Tibetan school, from the smallest to the university, would be equipped with this new tool which, if used properly, will enable every citizen to better understand the evolution of the world and thus contribute to the construction of a more just and environmentally-friendly society.

I’d like to thank the organizers of the Seminar for allowing me to tell you about my friend Tashi Tsering, and I’d like to thank you all for your kind attention.