The Struggle for Modern Tibet: The Autobiography of Tashi Tsering.

By Melvyn Goldstein, William Siebenschuh and Tashi Tsering. Armonk (New York) and London: M. E. Sharpe. 1997. xi, 207 pp. US$27.95, cloth. ISBN 1-56324-950-2.

Tashi Tsering was born in 1929 in a village 100 miles west of Lhasa. After a traditional upbringing he was sent to Lhasa in 1942 to join the Dalai Lama's dance troupe, where the harshness of the training, and various personal adventures, confirmed his conviction that there was something deeply wrong with the traditional system in Tibet. Although disposed to sympathize with the Chinese after their arrival in Lhasa in 1952, he used the proceeds of a successful trading venture to leave in 1957 for Kalimpong, India and embark on a course of Western-style education. Meanwhile, the Lhasa uprising of 1959 propelled many Tibetan refugees to India, and Tashi Tsering became involved in their affairs. In 1960 he obtained sponsorship for university study in the U.S.A. Determined to put his education to the service of Tibet, he voluntarily returned to China in 1964 and spent three years in a training school for cadres in Xianyang.

With the start of the Cultural Revolution, Tashi Tsering, like many others, was denounced and imprisoned under appalling conditions until 1973. In 1978 he resumed academic work in the shape of writing a Tibetan-English dictionary, eventually moving back to Lhasa. There he began a project for starting and running schools in Tibetan villages, which still continues, and was again able to make visits to the United States and work further on Tibetan lexicography.

This book may be read in several ways. At one level it is the story of the left-wing sympathizer savaged by the very system he tries to support, a tale familiar from the writings of Orwell, Koestler, Djilas and many others. One hopes that such cases are now consigned to history.

At another level the book portrays the psychology and development of an individual, convinced of the failings of the old society but without any very clear idea of what can remedy them, other than a touching faith in "education." The predicament of many like him, similar to that of others now in post-Communist countries, is that, in his words, "naive and foolishly optimistic," they lack a clear understanding of the possible alternatives to the old system that they have rejected. This is the story, apparently honestly told, of how one individual tries to come to such an understanding in the face of enormous hardship and a chaotic personal life. The conclusion, that "the older I get, the harder it is to find simple answers," would seem rather lame if one did not know how hard it had been won.

Another way of seeing the book is as a piece of literature squarely in the Tibetan biographical tradition. I was amazed at the number of parallels between Tashi Tsering's account and that of the life of Milarepa, written in the fifteenth century, but recounting events of the eleventh. Tibetan peasant society, with its stable and self-sufficient economic basis and supportive families, gave both individuals a good start in life but left them both dissatisfied with its conservatism and what was seen as a narrow and self-satisfied materialism. In Milarepa's case, religion was seen as the cure; in Tashi Tsering's, education; in neither case with much idea of what they were to entail. The vicious local feuding, which is the downfall of many families and individuals, plays an essential part in both stories, as does the system of petty trading by which individuals can rapidly enrich themselves. Tashi Tsering adds to the picture of Tibetan society by portraying some aspects of the urban life of Lhasa.

Altogether, a very worthwhile read for anyone concerned with Tibetan studies.

PHILIP DENWOOD University of London, United Kingdom