“China’s promise of easier living herds Tibetan nomads into jobless penury”, The Age, 20/2. Here is yet another example of ensnaring a once-independent indigenous people by enticing them into “civilization” and the capitalist system so that they become dependent upon it to survive. It is a sad story repeated again and again throughout history, and one which is still happening in parts of the world, in developing countries such as Africa and South America with their indigenous peoples – governments forcing them to abandon their traditional lifestyles, in a misguided attempt to seem sophisticated to the rest of the world (i.e. Western nations). In the article it is Tibetan nomads being enticed away from the traditional life that has sustained them for centuries, to find themselves the most disadvantaged in the new society they have joined. Such people are arguably the last truly free humans, unlike us so-called civilized humans who are trapped in the complex web of the society we have created, and bound by all the wearisome obligations required to survive in it.
Tibetan nomads roam the grasslands at high altitudes in summer, usually in village-like communities of a dozen or two - free to herd their yaks and sheep in whichever direction the grass is lush and weather fine. Their yaks are their best friends, used to lug tents and equipment, for meat and milk, which is in turn used for butter and yoghurt. Even their dung is dried and burnt for fuel. Family, song and dance are vital to the culture, as is faith – just about all nomads in the region are devout Tibetan Buddhists.
For Losang, a lifetime in the expansive grasslands of Qinghai’s mountains has ended abruptly. He knows he’s likely to never earn enough to accumulate a self-sustaining herd again, having spent most of the money he got from selling his herd on his house. He also finds he has greatly underestimated cost of living in a world where nothing comes for free. “When I was a nomad I ate meat everyday, drank yak milk tea and wore sheepskin robes, now I can’t. I have to buy everything. And I even have to eat [vegetables],” he says.
A letter in The Age, 22/2:
Lure of prosperity
IN ITS attempts to preserve territorial integrity, the Chinese Communist Party is using immense investment in its volatile Tibetan and Uighur-populated regions.
The idea is to lure the rural people to trade in their subsistence living for some sort of newfound prosperity. But such policies are substandard and culturally destructive.
Unlike Australia with its multicultural attitude, China insists on the “Han” being the central identity of all Chinese. Such unity has helped hold China together for 2000 years. Nonetheless, it is this strong belief in their superiority that results in such disrespect towards minority groups. The anticipated outcome of such policies is simple: by diminishing other culture, the likelihood of separatism is also diminished, and Chinese sovereignty and economic development are sustained.
– Gerard Papas, Balwyn North
