Download or read book Memories of Life in Lhasa Under Chinese Rule written by Tubten Khtsun and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Memories of Life in Lhasa Under Chinese written by Tubten Khétsun and published by . This book was released on 2009-11-01 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Division of Heaven and Earth written by Shokdung and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book Forbidden Memory written by Tsering Woeser and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2020-04 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Red Guards arrived in Tibet in 1966, intent on creating a classless society, they unleashed a decade of revolutionary violence, political rallies, and factional warfare marked by the ransacking of temples, the destruction of religious artifacts, the burning of books, and the public humiliation of Tibet’s remaining lamas and scholars. Within Tibet, discussion of those events has long been banned, and no visual records of this history were known to have survived. In Forbidden Memory the leading Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser presents three hundred previously unseen photographs taken by her father, then an officer in the People’s Liberation Army, that show for the first time the frenzy and violence of the Cultural Revolution in Tibet. Found only after his death, Woeser’s annotations and reflections on the photographs, edited and introduced by the Tibet historian Robert Barnett, are based on scores of interviews she conducted privately in Tibet with survivors. Her book explores the motives and thinking of those who participated in the extraordinary rituals of public degradation and destruction that took place, carried out by Tibetans as much as Chinese on the former leaders of their culture. Heartbreaking and revelatory, Forbidden Memory offers a personal, literary discussion of the nature of memory, violence, and responsibility, while giving insight into the condition of a people whose violently truncated history they are still unable to discuss today. Access the glossary.
Download or read book Echoes from Forgotten Mountains written by Jamyang Norbu and published by Penguin Random House India Private Limited. This book was released on 2023-07-24 with total page 1088 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jamyang Norbu has taken the stories of 'forgotten' Tibetansresistance fighters, secret agents, soldiers, peasants, merchants, even street beggarsand skillfully worked their myriad accounts into a single glorious 'memory history' of the Tibetan struggle. He uses recollections from his own childhood to ease the reader into an immersive understanding of the complexity of Tibet's modern history: the Chinese invasion, the uprisings in Kham and Amdo, the formation of the Four Rivers Six Ranges Resistance Force, the March '59 Lhasa Uprising, the CIA supported Air Operations, the Nyemo peasant Uprising of 68/69 and the Mustang Guerilla Force in northern Nepal, where Norbu later served. He writes of leaving home to drive tractors at refugee settlements, educate refugee children, produce plays at the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts, and collect intelligence for the Tibetan Office of Research and Analysis (TORA) and for France's External Intelligence Agency (SDECE). He uses these anecdotes not so much as autobiography but as a framing device to recount the lives, deeds and, too often, tragedies of the many Tibetans he encountered and befriended throughout his lifenearly all of whom played vital roles in shaping the recent history of their country but whose contributions are still unsung and forgotten. Jamyang Norbu's lifelong commitment to collecting and orchestrating the 'echoes' of these many forgotten voices from the past has resulted in a lyrical, learned and compassionate book that could well be described as the prose epic of the Tibetan freedom struggle.
Download or read book China s Tibet written by Warren W. Smith and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2008-05-16 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking book explores China's efforts to assimilate Tibet, in the process rewriting Tibetan history to conform to Beijing's goals. Warren W. Smith Jr. provides the historical context for understanding the current situation through an overview of China's actual—as opposed to its promised—policies toward Tibet over time. His clear-eyed appraisal of Chinese policy convincingly shows that the PRC's ultimate intention is assimilation rather than autonomy. The author argues that Beijing fears that any genuine autonomy or dialogue with the Dalai Lama will fuel renewed nationalism in "China's Tibet," as the Chinese leadership calls its possession. The book highlights China's past and current propaganda on Tibet to demonstrate China's sensitivity and defensiveness regarding the legitimacy of its rule. It traces the history of Sino-Tibetan dialogue to show how China has tried to use it to defuse Tibetan exile and international criticism, while making no concessions in regard to Tibetan autonomy. In the absence of any solution, Smith advocates the promotion of Tibet's right to self-determination as the most viable strategy for sustaining international attention and maintaining the most essential elements of Tibetan national identity. Smith's thoroughly informed work will be valuable not only to Tibet experts and students, but also to the larger world of Tibet activists, sympathizers, and others attempting to understand China's policies.
Download or read book Conflicting Memories written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-09-07 with total page 711 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conflicting Memories is a study of historical rewriting about Tibetans' encounter with the Chinese state during the Maoist era. Combining case studies with translated documents, it traces how that experience has been reimagined by Chinese and Tibetan authors and artists since the late 1970s.
Download or read book Taming Tibet written by Emily Yeh and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-15 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Medicine and Memory in Tibet written by Theresia Hofer and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Only fifty years ago, Tibetan medicine, now seen in China as a vibrant aspect of Tibetan culture, was considered a feudal vestige to be eliminated through government-led social transformation. Medicine and Memory in Tibet examines medical revivalism on the geographic and sociopolitical margins both of China and of Tibet�s medical establishment in Lhasa, exploring the work of medical practitioners, or amchi, and of Medical Houses in the west-central region of Tsang. Due to difficult research access and the power of state institutions in the writing of history, the perspectives of more marginal amchi have been absent from most accounts of Tibetan medicine. Theresia Hofer breaks new ground both theoretically and ethnographically, in ways that would be impossible in today�s more restrictive political climate that severely limits access for researchers. She illuminates how medical practitioners safeguarded their professional heritage through great adversity and personal hardship.
Download or read book Islamic Shangri La written by David G. Atwill and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Islamic Shangri-La transports readers to the heart of the Himalayas as it traces the rise of the Tibetan Muslim community from the 17th century to the present. Radically altering popular interpretations that have portrayed Tibet as isolated and monolithically Buddhist, David Atwill's vibrant account demonstrates how truly cosmopolitan Tibetan society was by highlighting the hybrid influences and internal diversity of Tibet. In its exploration of the Tibetan Muslim experience, this book presents an unparalleled perspective of Tibet's standing during the rise of post–World War II Asia.
Download or read book Politics in China written by William A. Joseph and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-14 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On October 1, 2009, the People's Republic of China (PRC) celebrated the 60th anniversary of its founding. And what an eventful and tumultuous six decades it had been. During that time, under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), China was transformed from one of the world's poorest countries into the world's fastest growing major economy, and from a weak state barely able to govern or protect its own territory to a rising power that is challenging the United States for global influence. Over those same years, the PRC also experienced the most deadly famine in human history, caused largely by the actions and inactions of its political leaders. Not long after, there was a collapse of government authority that pushed the country to the brink of (and in some places actually into) civil war and anarchy. Today, China is, for the most part, peaceful, prospering, and proud. This is the China that was on display for the world to see during the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The CCP maintains a firm grip on power through a combination of popular support largely based on its recent record of promoting rapid economic growth and harsh repression of political opposition. Yet, the party and country face serious challenges on many fronts, including a slowing economy, environmental desecration, pervasive corruption, extreme inequalities, and a rising tide of social protest. Politics in China is an authoritative introduction to how the world's most populous nation and rapidly rising global power is governed today. Written by leading China scholars, the book's chapters offers accessible overviews of major periods in China's modern political history from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, key topics in contemporary Chinese politics, and developments in four important areas located on China's geographic periphery: Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Download or read book Tibet in Agony written by Jianglin Li and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-10 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jianglin Li provides the first clear historical account of the Chinese crackdown in Lhasa in 1959. Sifting facts from the distortions of propaganda and partisan politics, she reconstructs a chronology of events that answers lingering questions and tells a gripping story of a crisis whose aftershocks continue to rattle the region today.
Download or read book Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union written by Felix Wemheuer and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-24 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the twentieth century, 80 percent of all famine victims worldwide died in China and the Soviet Union. In this rigorous and thoughtful study, Felix Wemheuer analyzes the historical and political roots of these socialist-era famines, in which overambitious industrial programs endorsed by Stalin and Mao Zedong created greater disasters than those suffered under prerevolutionary regimes. Focusing on famine as a political tool, Wemheuer systematically exposes how conflicts about food among peasants, urban populations, and the socialist state resulted in the starvation death of millions. A major contribution to Chinese and Soviet history, this provocative analysis examines the long-term effects of the great famines on the relationship between the state and its citizens and argues that the lessons governments learned from the catastrophes enabled them to overcome famine in their later decades of rule.
Download or read book Legal Reforms and Deprivation of Liberty in Contemporary China written by Elisa Nesossi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-06-03 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume presents an extensive investigation into the process of reforms of detention powers in today’s China and offers an in-depth analysis of the debates surrounding the reformist attempts. The chapters in this collection demonstrate that legislative and institutional reforms in this area result from political opportunities - openings and tensions at the central institutional levels of political authority - and contingent social and political factors. The book examines legal and institutional reforms to institutions of detention and imprisonment that have occurred since the 1990s, with a particular focus on the 21st century. Its content follows three particular lines of enquiry concerning the issue of deprivation of liberty in contemporary China. The first deals with the academic and theoretical debates on the subject of imprisonment and detention. The related chapters explain the difficulties encountered in this area of research and understandings of the discourses of reform through labour in Western and Chinese scholarship. The second deals with the specific issues of criminal and administrative forms of deprivation of liberty, examining in particular the institutional and legislative dimensions, considering the relationship between reforms and criminal justice policy agendas. The third assesses the meaning of institutional reforms in the context of the changing state-society relationship in contemporary China.
Download or read book The Traditional Lhasa House written by André Alexander and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2013 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at a particular type of indigenous architecture that has developed in the city of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. The focus is on the vernacular residential architecture in the form of the historic Lhasa Town House, as it was built and lived in from the mid-17th to mid-20th century. The book defines the Lhasa House as a distinct variety of traditional Tibetan architecture by providing a technical analysis and discussing the cultural framework and the development of a typology. (Series: HABITAT - INTERNATIONAL: Articles on International Urban Development / Schriften zur internationalen Stadtentwicklung - Vol. 18)
Download or read book The Himalayas written by Andrew J. Hund and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-06-15 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thorough and detailed resource that describes the history, culture, and geography of the Himalayan region, providing an indispensable reference work to both general readers and seasoned scholars in the field. The Himalayas: An Encyclopedia of Geography, History, and Culture serves as a convenient and authoritative reference for anyone exploring the region and seeking to better understand the history, events, peoples, and geopolitical details of this unique area of the world. It explores the geography and details of the demographics, discusses relevant historical events, and addresses socioeconomic movements, political intrigues and controversies, and cultural details as to give an overarching impression of the region as a coherent and cohesive whole. Readers will come away with a vastly heightened understanding of the geographical region we recognize as the Himalayas, and grasp the issues of geography, history, and culture that are central to contemporary understandings of the human culture in the region. The alphabetically arranged and succinct entries provide easy access to detailed, authoritative information. Additionally, sidebars throughout the book relate compelling facts that point readers to new and interesting avenues of exploration. The volume also includes a chronological overview of the region, ten primary source documents, and a comprehensive bibliography of supporting works.
Download or read book Repentance for the Holocaust written by C. K. Martin Chung and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-15 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
