My Tibetan Childhood: When Ice Shattered Stone by Naktsang Nulo (review)

I now regret having agreed to write a review for this book because I am afraid that an interpretation from a “sophisticated” (which means “more-than-necessary” to some) anthropologist-sociologist may tarnish the unspoiled natural flow of the childhood experiences of Naktsang Nulo. I am both puzzled and amazed by the fact that a retired man like Nulo could write such an “intimate” book that reads as if everything were happening right in front of us, conveyed through the eyes of a perpetually ten-year-old child. This surely suggests that an innocent child still lives in Nulo’s heart. A renowned Tibetologist and reincarnate lama from my hometown of Gyalrong in Sichuan, Professor Tsanlha Ngawang, in his late eighties, argues that Tibetans have a very “scientific” technique of memorizing through constant repetition and visualization, largely marginalized as an “old-fashioned” and “backward” method by the modern Chinese education system. He also adds that Tibetans used to—and many continue to—eat the healthiest food (barley flour and milk products from the unpolluted Tibetan plateau) in the world that is “naturally” good for memory.

When I read Professor Ngawang some paragraphs from Nulo’s “Prelude” regarding the Chinese army’s massacre of pilgrims on the way back from Lhasa and massive starvation and deaths in the “Joyful Home,” he seemed genuinely astonished, asking, “How could such a book come out?” He paused for a moment, and then said, “I have something similar to tell, too, but I had thought that it was not good to talk about.” What he meant by “not good to talk about” was his concern for the political repercussions for those memories unsanctioned by the Party-State. As a matter of fact, he is one of the few outspoken Tibetan intellectuals I have interacted with in person. He has no desire to keep his title as “reincarnate lama,” because he became sick of what he calls the “ugliness” and “hypocrisy” of monastic politics he witnessed while studying in the Drepung Monastery in Lhasa in the 1940s. For instance, based on his own experience, many high-ranking lamas of old, and especially the present, are actually not real Buddhists. They have a very shallow knowledge of the unusually profound Buddhist philosophy and possess the same desires as other people, such as sexual urges and passion for power and fame. The cruelty of Wasang, the head of discipline in Tashi Chulong Monastery, toward Nulo’s father—depicted in episodes 34 and 35 (pp. 119–125)—is a disturbing and vivid illustration of such “ugly” and “hypocritical” monastic politics.

Ngawang would say that many of the Chinese cadres in the early 1950s were initially sincere and kindhearted to the general public, including the newly “liberated” Tibetans. That is why he was drawn to communism. Soon he realized that it was out of naïveté that he believed in the “good intentions” of these cadres. The cadres would become even more ugly than monastery leadership and masters. It was the new regime, not the Tibetans, that actually purposefully provoked the revolts in Amdo and Kham in the 1950s, because it was considered “convenient” to crush and exterminate those who had been classified as rebels. The cadres forced “activists” to accuse their native elites (nobles, monks, and others) of misconduct and cruelty, and report their “rebellious intentions.” Many of these accusations were exaggerated, unfounded, or completely fabricated. Many of the accused had no choice but to flee and hide—in mountains or forests, for instance. They were consequently labeled rebels or bandits to be targeted for destruction by the People’s Liberation Army.

Nonetheless, the new regime at times seemingly saw no need even to invent sufficient or legitimate excuses for imprisoning or executing the innocent. What happened to those pilgrims who were slaughtered by the army (pp. 9–12)? What had the respectable and compassionate Ganden Wula and Sera Lama done...