by John Avedon
Propaganda plays, performed on three holidays a year, also continued. One play depicted the defeat of the Japanese occupation of China, another celebrated the virtues of hard labor, the third—always received with the greatest interest—portrayed the evils of capitalism. With a translator for the Tibetans standing beside them, the action would begin on the high platform framed by the backdrop of the dead monks’ robes. A figure representing Uncle Sam emerged. Wearing a beige suit and black top hat, he sported a long red nose, sharp birdlike claws and a tail, hung from which was a sign in Chinese characters identifying him and noting that he was “a nuclear power.” Holding his hands before his chest like a cat about to pounce, Uncle Sam went about exploiting Africans, played by prisoners in blackface. After suffering much brutal oppression, the Africans, with the help of the Chinese people, ultimately overcame their oppressor in a glorious revolt and subjected him to the all too familiar thamzing.
The third year of the Tibetans’ stay at Jiuzhen brought sudden, unexpected relief to all the prisoners in the PRCs northwestern gulag. According to one survivor who spent twenty-one years in five separate camps, roughly 70,000 Tibetans were imprisoned north of Langzhou, 35,000 of whom perished from starvation in 1959–61. The death rate throughout Qinghai and Gansu was so high during the early sixties that prisoners had to be continually shifted around in order to keep the prisons functioning as labor camps. One system located ten hours west of Xining and called Vebou housed 30,000 inmates in thirty camps, the larger ones holding 9,000 men, the smaller, 7,000, 5,000 and 1,000. Ten percent of the inmates were Tibetans and members of other minority groups, the rest Chinese. By the time the famine lifted there, Chinese officials sent from the mainland to take a census reported that 14,000 had died. Another prison, named Bhun-cha tsa Shen-shu, contained six camps within a three-mile stretch, housing 12,000 men, more than half of whom also died. In Jiuzhen, twenty-one Tibetans were still alive, enough to fill only one of three cells the group had originally occupied. Early in the year, the four security officers who had accompanied them returned from their main office in Lhasa. With fifty-five dossiers closed, and the remaining ones as complete as could reasonably be expected, it was determined that nothing more was to be had from the Tibetans. Interrogation stopped, the “reeducation” classes lost their zealous fervor and the number of thamzing declined dramatically. The survivors were transferred to three adjoining rooms in a corner of the prison. A front door opened on a small entranceway, to the right and left of which were cells designed to accommodate ten men. At night the door was left unlocked, making it possible to go to the toilet unattended; this minor relaxation, in turn, afforded the first opportunity since the men’s arrival for unobserved contact. As the interpersonal barriers melted, so did mutual suspicion, and in consoling one another over the loss of their comrades, the prisoners began once more to speak hopefully about the Dalai Lama and the thousands of Tibetans they knew had escaped with him to India.
The new leniency was soon complemented by an increase in rations. As China’s famine eased, sixteen and a half pounds of grain a month—borderline rations under normal conditions, but a feast for the inmates—were issued. New Year’s Day 1962 featured a meal of pork soup, with actual bits of pork in each prisoner’s portion—their first taste of fat in two and a half years. The new cells, as well, afforded unexpected benefits. Permitted to keep some of the wheat chaff and small kindling from the autumn harvest, the men made fires at night beneath their sleeping platforms. Sometimes they were lucky enough to corner a rat on the floor, which they cooked and ate. Rats also ran in the hollow space between the wooden beams of the ceiling and the old newspapers which covered them. Open hunting for them soon got underway. Each night, the rats scurried over the papers, while the men waited below, armed with long sticks, following the sound of their feet. With good aim and a fierce upward thrust, it was possible to stun a rat long enough to capture and kill it. As infrequent as these meals were, they nonetheless provided meat.
With the worst of the famine over, the death rate quickly dropped. In two years Jiuzhen had lost over 1,000 prisoners—more than half its population. Most of the Chinese survivors were now transferred to prisons in other areas of Qinghai and Xinjiang, where their labor could be of more use to the state. As they embarked, the remaining Tibetans gained access to a far greater supply of food.
The newly empty cells throughout the camp were used by the kitchen staff to store cabbages, turnips and carrots. Aware of this, the remaining prisoners began to make nocturnal raids. One night a man named Thubten Tsundu shook Dr. Choedrak’s feet and whispered, “Now’s our chance to steal some cabbages.” The two men snuck from their cell with a pillowcase and pair of pants, its legs tied. Breaking into a nearby storeroom, they waited for a Chinese prisoner to pass on his way to and from the toilet, filled their bags with cabbages and hurried back to their cell, where they hid the load under their bedding. On their return from work the following day, a prison guard singled out Dr. Choedrak. “Tell me yourself what you have done,” he said threateningly. Knowing that execution was the punishment for stealing, Dr. Choedrak replied that he had done nothing. The guard then ordered him inside, where Tenzin Choedrak saw that not only his bedding but all the bedding in the cell had been turned upside down. The cabbages that he and Thubten Tsundu had stolen were surrounded by a vast quantity of other cabbages, carrots and turnips. Everyone was stealing, it turned out—making punishment impossible. In the new plenitude, any item at all could buy at least a few extra dumplings on the black market, resulting, ironically, in a rather odd form of crime wave. During the day, those who had been detailed—with Chinese approval—to guard their mates’ cells often took the opportunity to raid neighboring rooms. Even the patients in the hospital would drag themselves out of bed in the hope of finding something to bargain with. After dark, prisoners slipped from their cells and broke into others. There were fights, ambushes were laid by one cell against another and even group forays occurred. To steal grain directly from the prison store, Tibetans concealed handfuls in their socks and shoes, fashioned pouches in their undershirts and made long, narrow bags which, hanging inside their pants tied back to front between their legs, could be discreetly filled while bending over to sow seed.
By the autumn of 1962, only 300 inmates remained in Jiuzhen. A rumor began to spread that some men had arrived from Lhasa. On September 28, the announcement was officially made: “Now you have been well educated,” a Chinese official said to the twenty-one Tibetan survivors lined up before him. “So we have decided to let you return to your home. And look,” he continued, holding up a rubberized oxygen pillow of the kind used by the Chinese in Tibet, “we have gone to great effort on your account and spent a good deal of money. We’ve bought five such bags at twenty yuan each so that you will not die on the high passes on the road. You will be given a holiday until your departure. Now wash yourselves and clean up,” he advised. “But don’t damage your bedding. Don’t tear it or burn it. It has to stay here.”
For the entire week excitement and doubt gripped the prisoners until, the night before their announced departure, an officer arrived with new suits for them to wear, sewn together from the clothing of prisoners who had died. The cotton padding had been redistributed smoothly, then covered over with a fresh piece of rough linen. Jiuzhen’s authorities, it seemed, cared a good deal about the Tibetans’ appearance now that they were to be released into the custody of other guards.
At eight o’clock in the morning of October 5, 1962, a canvas-covered army truck was driven into the prison yard. Carrying small bundles, the Tibetans marched to the truck, where the weakest were helped up by the stronger. As they left, the prison staff bade them farewell: “Now that you’re finally going home,” they called out, waving vigorously, “look after your health and take good care of yourselves.” Incredulous, the Tibetans replied through their translator, “Thank you so much. And we promise to do as you say.” Then, as the engine started, they cursed under their breath,
and with that, waving and cursing, they were driven through the gate, on their way out of China.
FIFTEEN DAYS AFTER Dr. Choedrak’s release from Jiuzhen Prison, the 1962 Sino-Indian border war broke out. For China it represented the greatest dividend to date from the years of effort expended in Tibet. Following 1959 the PLA had hurried to consolidate its position for an eventual strike on India, a move Peking viewed as essential to its drive to assert military and thereby political dominance over Central Asia. Accomplished exclusively with forced Tibetan labor, a network of roads was created linking the PLA’s three forward headquarters in Chamdo, Shigatse and Rudok, in the Himalayan border regions. Once the roads were in place, observation posts, airfields, bases and supply dumps all had to be carefully built at night and with the utmost secrecy. As readiness for the attack was stepped up, thousands of Tibetans from southern and western Tibet were conscripted to supplement local workers by carrying supplies. Simultaneously, those left behind were told in nightly meetings that India had occupied the very best regions in Tibet making it the PLA’s sacred duty to regain them for the people. Reinforcements of men and ammunition now arrived from China, and with them came a further drain on the Tibetan economy, the greater portion of the harvest being diverted to feed the newly arrived troops. But the most ruthless aspect of the war occurred for Tibetans after the fighting started. Blood donations became compulsory and though 3,000 or so Indian prisoners were captured, it was soon obvious from the extent of the blood drive that the Chinese themselves had not been immune from losses. In as many areas as it could be mounted, the policy required Tibetans between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five to give one and a half times the amount of blood normally taken. Chief donors were those labeled as “class enemies”; the Chinese themselves were exempted. At the start, it had been claimed that all who voluntarily came forward would receive twenty-five yuan (or roughly $12.50), a half pound of butter and a full pound of meat. When no Tibetans volunteered, however, large numbers were forcibly subjected to blood donations. As a result, many already on the verge of death from starvation perished. Only token Tibetan cadres received the promised gifts. Both human and animal blood was stored in Lhasa at a newly built blood bank at Dohdun, northeast of the Potala, to which many of the more serious Chinese casualties were eventually transported from the front.
While blood extraction was one of the grimmer campaigns of the early 1960s, sterilization and the forced marriage of Tibetan women to Chinese soldiers were considered by many to be even more threatening. As the “leading elements of the masses,” Tibetan cadres were the first to be sterilized, at the Lhasa Municipal People’s Hospital, constructed in 1952 as a “research and training center for medical science and medical cadres of minorities nationalities.” To sterilize as many people as possible, novice Chinese still in medical training routinely operated on Tibetan patients. Many cadres, both male and female, who underwent the operations emerged paralyzed below the waist or having lost control of their bladder. A number, admitted to the hospital for unrelated conditions, discovered that during surgery they had also been sterilized. Witnessing such results, Tibetans henceforth resisted sterilization. But while this method of population control was gradually phased out, the considerably more widespread practice of inducing Tibetan women to marry Chinese soldiers was launched. (Tibetan men were strictly barred from marrying Chinese women.) In the early 1960s almost all of China’s occupation troops continued to be those soldiers who had arrived with the original invasion force in 1950. Young men at the time, they had been granted no leave in over a decade and were now approaching middle age without families. It was convenient to bolster the troops’ morale by encouraging them to marry Tibetan women, but it was also an obvious boon to Peking’s overall policy of assimilation, as any offspring would be raised as Chinese. Broad inducements—including cooking utensils, extra food and clothing rations—were offered to all Sino-Tibetan couples, and under the desperate circumstances, quite a few such marriages occurred. In secret many Tibetans condemned those who had collaborated in what appeared to be a blatant attempt to dilute the race. Publicly, though, the stigma went the other way. A common Chinese expression, often said on hearing of the birth of a Tibetan child, was: “The crows in the sky are all black. There are no white ones,” meaning that only Chinese babies would be “white” crows, or good signs.
Following the 1962 war the Indian-Tibetan border, together with its support zones, remained on constant alert. In Mustang, Chushi Gangdruk had regrouped and accelerated the pace of its attacks. The PLA, faced with a hostile, if temporarily cowed, Indian army, was deeply concerned about the guerrillas. In addition, despite the tightly sealed border, hundreds of Tibetans continued to escape during the summer months bringing with them tales of suffering under the Chinese. In July of 1964 PCART formulated a policy, announced in large posters hung in Tibet’s major towns, to cope with the problem: Tibetans who returned from India, and those guerrillas who gave themselves up, were to be richly rewarded; cash prizes specified for each type of weapon as well as the number of extra people brought in. Radio Lhasa continually broadcast pleas delivered by the families of those who had escaped, begging them to return to the “socialist paradise.” Agents filtered through the Tibetan communities in Kalimpong, Darjeeling and Nepal, wooing the destitute refugees with promises of prosperity at home. A few did return. The most prominent of these was Dorje Phagmo, Tibet’s highest female tulku, or incarnate lama, who was immediately conscripted into the “upper strata” United Front. But there were not many others. Meanwhile, concerned families in Tibet were informed that they were responsible for inducing their relatives to return and would be punished unless they succeeded. A newly coined Chinese proverb was often quoted to bring the point home: “The lama might escape, but his monastery cannot.”
Four more policies covering the years 1962-1964 led up to the founding of the Tibet Autonomous Region. The first, “Rechecking the Democratic Reforms,” began as early as 1960 and continued for years throughout the countryside. “Rechecking” amounted to ascertaining whether or not all reactionaries and “class enemies” had indeed been ferreted out in the reforms themselves. The natural corollary was the creation of a separate prison and labor camp system for Tibet, comprised of four levels, under the jurisdiction of the Public Security Bureau in Lhasa. So many reactionaries were found that quotas were established though, according to Tibetan sources, never carried out, limiting the number of arrests to no more than 5 percent of the local population. Concerned about Tibetans fleeing abroad, a second policy, commonly known as “Go Easy,” was adopted. This included a ninety-six-point program issued in 1962-63 for all of Tibet, ten points of which applied especially to the sensitive border area, where greater personal freedom, tax exemption and higher rations were all instituted. In 1963-64 came the third and fourth policies, entitled the “Three Big Educations” and the “Four Cleanlinesses.” The first Big Education was “Class-Consciousness Education.” The middle class was now divided into “upper” and “lower” middle class. Being placed in the “upper” category was tantamount to receiving a bad class designation. It brought thamzing and frequently imprisonment. Concurrently, the “lower” middle class and the poor were given “thought classification”—all those having old or reactionary thoughts receiving the same treatment as class enemies. As a result, every strata of Tibetan society was found to be rife with logchoepas, or reactionaries—there being scarcely any group left intact save the Chinese and their collaborators, to represent the “broad masses serving as the revolutionary vanguard.” The second Big Education was called “Socialist Transformation Education.” In theory, this meant “destroying selfishness to establish unselfishness.” It was aimed at breaking down the last resistance to MATs and increased collectivization. The third one, “Scientific Technical Education,” was a propaganda drive designed to introduce communes. It consisted of creating a few prototype showpiece communes supplied with modern equipment, fertilizer, seeds and tools. The final campai
gn, the Four Cleanlinesses—of Thought, History, Politics and Economics—set forth the party line on correct interpretations of Tibet’s history—arguing, for instance, that Tibet had always been an integral part of China.
Tibetan cadres were responsible for implementing this turbulent stream of policies on the grass-roots level. During the early to mid-sixties, the number of the best-trained workers stood between 6,000 and 10,000; by the end of the eighties, approximately 80,000 Tibetans were working for the Chinese, 30,000 having been trained in China itself. These were the cream of the crop—Tibetan children who had often voluntarily left their homes in the mid-fifties, lured by the modern world in its Chinese manifestation, eager to see a land where “no one had to walk” and the roads “shone like mirrors.” Brought into the burgeoning network of China’s Nationalities Institutes, they were trained as a fifth column to eventually replace the “upper strata” indigenous leaders who had to be used for the time being. On them, China placed its greatest hope.
Throughout the 1950s, the Peking Institute of National Minorities, located on the western side of the city led sixteen other academies attended by Tibetans, most of which were located in western China. Constructed on an ancient graveyard, its monolithic dormitories, auditorium and class buildings, brightly fringed with flower gardens, pine and willow trees, offered a curriculum which, though including science, mathematics and, in the early days, painting and music, concentrated largely on learning Chinese language and Marxist ideology. Local folk songs and dances were encouraged. Caucasian students from Xinjiang were permitted to wear their native garb, and on special occasions Tibetan students, too, were provided with new chubas. Social life at the Institute was active and varied, punctuated by frequent field trips around Peking, visits to the planetarium, the zoo and the Forbidden City; on Saturday evenings, films were shown, and a wide variety of novel sports were offered, including soccer, basketball and track and field. So, for a while, these young Tibetans found pride in their roles and looked forward to their eventual return home as leaders under the new order in Tibet.
