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Tashi dele from Tibet [April-May 1999]

Tibet trip

Agelasto
2004-05-20 20:00:06

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still have schools and clinics and perhaps a single Chinese
restaurant, but most of the people are Tibetan. Third, there are villages and even smaller
settlements, which have virtually no Chinese influence. Finally, there is nomadic Tibet,
herdspeople who live as they have for thousands of years. They have some contact with
the larger economy nowadays, but their chief contact with the world is through their
monasteries and nunneries, some 1,500 in Tibet, many of them with only one or two
monks in residence.
Tibet?s nomads and village folk live simple lives; they do not have much access to modern
education, welfare and health services. They live in a world without development. I am
not at all convinced it is in their interest to be brought into the 20th, much less the 21st
century. For fifty years, Tibetans have migrated to towns and cities, but a village and
nomad population still exists. Whether a rural life style clashes with the interests of the
PRC in the future remains uncertain. I did not see a backward, impoverished Tibet. I saw
a land where, in the rural areas at least, peopled lived in the past. Whether this lifestyle
should be changed (some would say improved) to ensure that Tibet reaches the health,
education and welfare standards and expectations of the rest of China and the developed
world depends on point of view. The tradeoff is that traditional culture would be lost. At
the moment Chinese policy dictates that part of Tibet should be developed and that part of
it should remain traditional. This seems like a fairly sensible policy, but like most sensible
policies, it may be short-lived.
Shenzhen, where I have been recently living, is China?s most developed area. So I
expected a sharp contrast between Shenzhen and Tibet, not just in the economic status of
the inhabitants, but in culture as well. Whether Tibet has been part of China for centuries,
...