![]() After the Cultural Revolution was over, he was rehabilitated and given token positions in the Chinese system until his death in 1990. He has been made to carry a case of knives and forks, probably with ivory handles, either to show that he was a member of the exploiting class or that he was attracted to foreign or Western lifestyles. He had held only a mid-level position in the Tibetan government when it was disbanded in 1959, seven years before this photograph was taken. His father had been a kalon or minister in the four-person cabinet of the government of the Dalai Lama in the 1940s, and his older brother was a son-in-law of the king of Sikkim. A moustache has been painted on his face and he has been made to wear the single long earring in the left ear that was a mark of noble rank in the traditional Tibetan system. (Tsering Dorje, Lhasa, 1966.)Ī former aristocrat-official, Phunkhang Tsering Dondrub, is paraded through the streets of Lhasa. He was released from prison in 1976 and was able to get to India eleven years later, after which he spent the rest of his life teaching Buddhism outside Tibet. His given name, “Ngawang Gyatso,” and the words “ox-demon-snake-spirit” are legible on the tall hat he has been made to wear as a sign of criminality. ![]() On this occasion his face has been daubed with paint to make him look like a villain and he has been made to carry a small Buddhist shrine in his hands, with a set of ritual cymbals draped around his neck. The man with the crudely painted face was a famous lama from Sera Monastery, Ribur Rinpoche, who was the struggle target in some thirty-five struggle sessions. Targets of struggle sessions are paraded along an alley leading from the Tsemonling temple to the Ramoche temple in Lhasa, on their way to or from a struggle session. The fires have been set in the Sungchöra, the former teaching courtyard outside the Jokhang temple, the most famous shrine in the Tibetan Buddhist world. (Tsering Dorje, Lhasa, 1966.)Īctivists in Lhasa burn religious texts that have been taken from Buddhist volumes in homes and temples. She is said to have later become a devout Buddhist practitioner after the Cultural Revolution. The one in the foreground was from a wealthy trading family and normally would not have been able to join the Red Guards, but an exception seems to have been made in her case. They are holding their red-tasseled spears, an insignia of the Red Guards. Tibetan Red Guards with their armbands, lined up in the Sungchöra, the teaching courtyard beside the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa, just before or just after going into the temple to smash up much of its contents. For our previously published interview with Tsering Woeser about her book and her father’s photographs, please read here. His photos, which came to light only after his death, are the only known visual records of the struggle sessions, humiliation parades, and mass rallies staged during the Cultural Revolution in Tibet. All of the photos were taken by Woeser’s father, Tsering Dorje (1937-91), who was a PLA officer and photographer serving in Lhasa in the early 1960s. This photo essay features 18 of the more than 300 photos in the book, accompanied by Woeser’s comments (translated by Susan Chen) these are based on her interviews with Tibetans and Chinese in Lhasa who lived through the events shown in the photos. ![]() In her new book Forbidden Memory: Tibet During the Cultural Revolution, the Tibetan essayist and poet Tsering Woeser dissects the impact of China’s Cultural Revolution on Lhasa, her birthplace, five decades ago. Tsering Woeser presents her father’s photographs of Tibetan struggle sessions
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |