The Cultural Revolution in Tibet: A Photographic Record By LUO SILING
In 1999, the Tibetan
writer Tsering Woeser came across Wang Lixiong’s book “Sky Burial: The Fate of Tibet.” On finishing it, she
sent Mr. Wang photographs taken by her father, who was with the People’s Liberation
Army when it entered Tibet in the 1950s and documented the early years of the Cultural
Revolution in Lhasa in the 1960s. Mr. Wang wrote back, saying, “It’s
not for me, as a non-Tibetan, to use these photos to reveal history. That task
can only be yours.”
On Aug. 24, 1966, in Lhasa, Buddhist
scriptures were burned as part of
the campaign against the “Four Olds” — old
customs, old culture, old habits,
old ideas. Credit Tsering Dorje
Ms. Woeser began
tracking down and interviewing people who appeared in the photos. This resulted
in two books published by Locus in Taiwan in 2006: “Forbidden Memory: Tibet
During the Cultural Revolution,” based on her father’s photographs, and “Tibet
Remembered,” an oral history narrated by 23 people who appear in them.
Meanwhile, Ms. Woeser had begun taking her own photos, using her father’s camera,
of the places he photographed. Many were included in a new edition of
“Forbidden Memory,” published this year on the 50th anniversary of the start
the Cultural
Revolution.
Ms. Woeser was born in
Lhasa in 1966 to a Tibetan mother and her father, Tsering Dorje, who was half
Tibetan and half Han, the dominant ethnicity in China. But in 1970, her
father, who had served as deputy commander of the Lhasa military district, was
transferred to Sichuan Province. It wasn’t until 1990 that Ms. Woeser returned
to Lhasa, where she became editor of the journal “Tibetan Literature.” In 2003,
she published “Notes on Tibet,” a collection of essays and short stories that
was soon banned by the Chinese government. She is now a freelance writer and
poet based in Beijing with Mr. Wang, whom she married in 2004. In an interview,
she discussed what she learned from her father’s photographs of Tibet’s
experience of the Cultural Revolution.
How did your father
manage to take these photos?
In 1950, Mao Zedong ordered
the People’s Liberation Army into Tibet, and on the way it passed through my
father’s hometown, Derge, which is in the present-day Garze Tibetan Autonomous
Prefecture in Sichuan. At the time my father, who was only 13, was sent away by
his Han father to enlist in the P.L.A. His mother was a local Tibetan. During
the Cultural Revolution, my father served as an officer in the political
department of the Tibet Military District. I suppose he was able to take photos
because of his privileges as a P.L.A. officer.
It’s curious, however, that for all the
photos that my father took, he was able to keep the photos and negatives. This
certainly could not have happened if the army had assigned him to take the
photos. This indicates that my father’s activity was not commissioned by the
military.
Very few people had
cameras then, and even fewer had the chance to take photos of public events.
There were several media agencies active in Tibet then. They produced lots of
documentaries, photos and reports. And yet in the newspapers and posters from
then you can’t find any photos of ruined temples or “struggle sessions” against
“counterrevolutionary monsters and demons.” I’ve looked at all the issues of
Tibet Daily from 1966 to 1970 but can find no such photos.
What do your
father’s photos show?
Mostly mass meetings
and “incidents.” By mass meetings I mean large-scale gatherings such as the
celebration by tens of thousands of Chairman Mao’s launching of the Cultural
Revolution. Incidents include the destruction of temples and struggles against
“monsters and demons.” The photos contain many identifiable figures including
the Communist leaders of Tibet, the founder of the Tibetan Red Guards,
individual Red Guards, as well as nobles, clergy and officials of the old Tibet
society who were targeted in “struggle sessions.” In my investigations most of
my efforts were focused on these people, because it’s through them that the
photos have their greatest value. Over six years, I interviewed about 70 people
in the photos.
How do your
photographs and your father’s, taken in the same locations, differ?
In 1966 and 1967, my
father took photos of mass meetings and rallies of Red Guards and the P.L.A. in
front of the Potala Palace. In 2012, when I went to the same place to take
photos, two self-immolations by Tibetans had taken place in Lhasa that May. As
a result, the government tightened its policy of ethnic segregation and took
more security measures against Tibetans, especially those from outside Lhasa.
The measures were first implemented in March 2008, when protests broke
out across the Tibetan region, and became more severe in 2012. As I took my
photos, I noticed a curious phenomenon: the palace square was filled with men
in black. They had umbrellas on their backs, which they would use to block
people from taking pictures if an incident broke out. They lined up in rows and
monitored the people passing by. They prohibited anyone from sitting in the
square.
Another example: In
2014, I was standing where my father had taken photos in front of the Jokhang
Temple. What did he see back then? Red Guards trying to hang Chairman Mao’s
portrait on the roof of the temple, where the Chinese flag was also planted.
Though I didn’t see any Mao portraits there, the flag was waving in the same
place. Also, there were quite a few believers kneeling and praying, as well as
a crowd of tourists fascinated by their actions. On the roof of a house
diagonally across from the temple there were sharpshooters from the armed
police. Ever since 2008, sharpshooters have been deployed on the roofs of
buildings around the temple.
Comparing today with
the Cultural Revolution, there were no believers kneeling back then, and the
temple was ruined, while today the temple offers a bustling scene where
believers may freely worship. But these are only superficial differences. Religious
worship is still strictly controlled. Furthermore, there is now commercialized
tourism, with gawking tourists who treat Tibetans like exotic decorations and
Lhasa as a theme park.
Who was the founder
of the Lhasa Red Guards?
Tao Changsong, born in
Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province. In 1960, he graduated from East China Normal
University and volunteered to move to Tibet, where he became a teacher of
Chinese at Lhasa Middle School. During the Cultural Revolution he was the main
force behind the creation of the Lhasa Red Guards, as well as commander of the
Lhasa Revolutionary Rebels Headquarters. When the Revolutionary Committee of
the Tibet Autonomous Region was formed, he became its deputy director, a
position equivalent to vice chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region today. He
also went to Beijing many times and met with Zhou Enlai, Jiang Qing and other
key members of the Central Revolutionary Committee. In 2001, I interviewed him
twice. I didn’t show him my father’s photos, assuming he might not tell me the story
if he saw them, since he appears in one. It shows him at the Dalai Lama’s summer
palace, the Norbulingka, leading a team of Red Guards hanging up a poster on
which is written “People’s Park.”
There were two “rebel
factions” in Lhasa during the Cultural Revolution. One was the Revolutionary
Rebels Headquarters. The other was the Great Alliance of Proletarian
Revolutionaries Command, or Great Alliance Command for short. The two fought
each other for power. In the later period of the Cultural Revolution, the Headquarters
faction lost ground, while the other faction achieved total control, and
retained it even after the Cultural Revolution [which ended in 1976].
Headquarters members were purged from the party. Tao Changsong was investigated
on suspicion of belonging to the “three types of people” — “people who followed
the Lin Biao-Jiang Qing counterrevolutionary faction,” “people with a strong
factionalist bent” and “people who engaged in looting and robbery.” After the
mid-1980s, he worked at the Tibetan Academy of Social Sciences and served as
assistant editor of the journal “Tibet Studies” and as deputy director of the
Modern Tibetan Research Institute.
Now he’s retired and lives in Chengdu and
Lhasa, where he is in good standing with the government.
Mr. Tao is a lively
talker with a sharp memory. He also showed his cautious side when he began
having difficulty answering my questions about the Red Guards’ campaign against
the “Four Olds” at the Jokhang Temple. The statement in his account that left
the deepest impression on me concerned the P.L.A.’s crackdown on “second
rebels” [Tibetans who revolted in 1969]. He said: “The Tibetans are too
simple-minded. If you execute them they say, ‘Thank you.’ If you give them 200
renminbi they also say, ‘Thank you.’ ”
Tibet was an exception
to the general practice of purging the “three types of people” after the
Cultural Revolution. In Tibet there were few purges of that kind. When Hu
Yaobang came to Lhasa in 1980, he put an end to the purging of the “three
types.” Why? Because there were many Tibetans among them. Hu thought if you
purged them, the party wouldn’t be able to find reliable agents among local
Tibetans. So the party couldn’t purge them. And some of them not only were
shielded from purges but even received promotions. As a result, the people who
rose in power during the Cultural Revolution still dominate Tibet, whether
Tibetan or Han.
Tell us about the
people in the photographs who were victims of the struggle sessions.
There were about 40 of
them. They belonged to a variety of professions in the old Tibet: monks,
officials, merchants, physicians, officers, estate overlords and so on. The
settings included struggle sessions at mass assemblies, in the streets and at
local neighborhood committees that methodically conducted their sessions by
turns. The time frame was from August to September 1966. After that, the
division between the factions led each to conduct its own separate struggle
sessions. The people attacked in these sessions were incorporated into the
“monsters and demons” unit, where they were ordered to attend long-term labor
and study sessions at their assigned neighborhood committee.
What’s most
interesting about these victims is that most were members of the upper class
whom the Communist Party from the 1950s to the eve of the Cultural Revolution
had designated as “targets to be won over.” And since they did not follow the
Dalai Lama and flee the country during the 1959 uprising, the party rewarded
them with many privileges. In other words, they were partners of the party. One
of them, a monk, even served as an informant for the military.
But after the Cultural
Revolution began they were labeled “monsters and demons” and suffered
humiliating attacks. In the end they were overtaken by madness, illness and
death. Some died during the Cultural Revolution, others afterward. Most of the
victims died. Of the few who survived, some went abroad. Some, however,
remained in Tibet, where they took up the party’s offer and joined the system
to regain their high status. Today these people are found in the Chinese
People’s Political Consultative Conference, the National People’s Congress and the
Buddhist Association, where they fulfill ceremonial functions needed by the
party.
Given the fate of most
of the victims, the people I interviewed were mostly their relatives, or in
some cases the disciples of victimized monks. They told me so many stories.
Such as?
There was the Lhasa
nobleman Sampho Tsewang Rinzin, from one of the most renowned noble families in
Tibet. Sampho began working with the party in the 1950s and benefited from
that. But he was cruelly struggled against during the Cultural Revolution, as
you can see in the photos. The Red Guards who were beating him made him wear
the uniform of a senior minister in the Tibetan government, which as much as it
made him look splendid, brought him so much humiliation and stripped him of all
dignity, so that in the end he was sobbing in front of everyone. He died soon
after this.
Then there was the
“female living Buddha” — an erroneous term; we call them rinpoche — Samding
Dorje Phagmo Dechen Chodron. Historically there have been very few female
living Buddhas in Tibet. She was the most famous. In 1959 she followed the
Dalai Lama and escaped to India. But she was persuaded by party cadres to
return to Tibet and was held up as a patriot who had “resolved to shun the
darkness and embrace the light.” She even met with Mao. After the Cultural
Revolution started she was labeled a “monster and demon” and humiliated at
struggle sessions.
In the photo where she
is shown being beaten, she was only 24. She was weak then, because she had
recently given birth to her third child. Her husband was the son of the great
Lhasa nobleman Kashopa. The couple eventually divorced. It was her ex-husband
who told me about her experiences as well as those of her parents after I
showed him the photos.
Today, Dorje Phagmo is
vice chairwoman of the Tibetan Autonomous Region and a member of the Chinese
People’s Political Consultative Conference Standing Committee. She often appears
on television attending various conferences.
Did you interview
the Red Guards in the photos?
In one of my father’s
photos there is a female activist, a quite vicious one during the Cultural
Revolution. She once led a team to ransack a house where she not only seized
the owner’s property but set fire to manuscripts bequeathed to the owner by the
great Tibetan scholar Gendun Choephel. A Tibetan scholar called this a major
crime against Tibetan history and culture. Later this woman became party
secretary at the Wabaling neighborhood committee. When I found her there, she
looked quite insignificant. As soon as I brought up the Cultural Revolution,
her facial expression immediately changed. She refused to give an interview or
let me take her photo.
There was also a
former monk I interviewed who had smashed Buddhist stupas and burned scriptures
during the Cultural Revolution. Afterward, he volunteered to be a janitor at
the Jokhang Temple and worked there for 17 years. He told me: “If it weren’t
for the Cultural Revolution, I think I would have lived my entire life as a
good monk. I would have worn monk’s robes. The temples would still be there.
Inside the temples I would have devotedly read scriptures. But the Cultural
Revolution came. The robes could no longer be worn. Though I have never looked
for a woman or abandoned monastic life, I am not fit to wear the robes again.
This is the most painful thing in my life.”
Follow Luo Siling
on Twitter @luosiling. This article was
adapted from a three-part interview in
the Chinese-language site of The New York Times.
see link for photos:
