OUR HOUSEHOLD IS known as Gyatso Tashi, and was so named after the builder of our family house, in the Banak-shöl area of Lhasa. Our forebears were farmers from Nyémo district who settled in Lhasa after two successive family members served as officials in the palace bursary (rTse phyag las khung) of the Ganden Po-trang government. One of them, Sonam Rabten-la, married Tsewang Sangmo, daughter of the Lhasa resident Ba-pa Changdzö-la, and they had one son and one daughter. Their son, Tubten Changchup, the elder of the two, became a novice monk in the Tsangpa Khen-chen’s residence in Drépung monastery’s Loséling college, and later entered government service as a monk-official (rTse drung). Their daughter, Pema Drölkar, was my mother. Following social convention, my father, Changchup Lo-dro of Lhasa Gyéché-ling, joined the household as her husband (Mag pa). His father came from the Lha-khang-teng family from Rinchen-gang in Tromo, and had joined Lhasa Gyéché-ling through marriage (Mag pa). He served as a clerk (Jo lags) in the government Labrang Bursary (Bla phyag las khung), and passed away while on the annual grain procurement mission to Tingkyé. My grandfather Sonam Rabten-la retired at the age of sixty after an exemplary career in the palace bursary and took full monastic vows, dedicating the rest of his life to religion.
My father, Changchup Lo-dro, was duly appointed in his stead to the bursary, where he served as a clerk. He worked diligently in recognition of the government’s kindness, and was the Jo-la selected to supervise the mission organized every four years to visit Nepal and make offerings to the three great stupas there, offer religious objects to the Nepalese king, and procure official supplies such as rice (Bal yul rten bzhengs). He fulfilled this task on two successive occasions. Later on, in the earth mouse year 1948, when he was forty-two, he was appointed government trade officer in west Tibet, but tragically, he came down with a fever and did not survive
Panorama of Lhasa in 1942, with the Potala Palace at the upper left, by Demo Rinpoche Tendzin Gyatso. After Wangchuk Dorje 2005.
My eldest brother, Jampa Tsultrim, was serving as a palace steward (rTse mgron) at the time of the 1959 uprising against the unacceptable subjection of the Tibetan people by the Red Chinese invaders. He was arrested at the Summer Palace (Nor bu gling ka) and subjected to twenty years of torture and imprisonment. After his release, he worked in the research department at the TAR teacher training college, and in 1983 he traveled to India to seek an audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and took up employment in His Holiness’s private office. The next eldest, my sister Losang Chönyi, a nun, was imprisoned for three years by the Chinese and later went to settle in India, together with my two younger nun sisters and younger brother Jampun. My elder sister Yangchen Drölkar, younger sister Tendröl, and younger brother Nga-nam have remained in Lhasa. My elder brother Yéshé Khédrup was a monk-scholar at Drépung at the time of the uprising. He escaped to India, where he worked for the exile government teacher recruitment program and the Mussoorie school, before requesting leave to join the Mongolian Géshé Wangyel-la in New Jersey in America, where he now works for the [Voice of America] Tibetan-language broadcasting service.
My mother, Pema Drölkar, dedicated herself to the service of others, had great faith in the Three Jewels [of Buddhist refuge], and always strove to be virtuous. In 1959, when the popular uprising broke out, she joined the Womens’ Association when it was first established at Shöl (below the Potala). She participated in the demonstrations and was one of the association’s delegates to the parliament (gZhung dmangs tshogs ‘dus), and one of the delegates sent to plead the truth of Tibet’s case with the resident Indian trade representative, the Nepalese and Bhutanese representatives, and leaders of the Muslim community. Following the violent suppression of the uprising by the Chinese authorities, they summoned my mother, while she was severely ill, to the Tsémön-ling Reeducation Center that they had set up for the systematic investigation and interrogation of participants in the uprising. Only when her illness worsened was she permitted to return home, and even as she approached death, Chinese officials repeatedly came to search the house and harangue us, saying that her imprisonment could not be delayed further. But before long, later the same year, she passed away. This was our kind mother, a courageous and unselfish patriot who had loved and cared for us so tenderly, and to be separated from her by imprisonment while she was still with us, only to be separated by death straight after, oppressed us with tremendous sorrow, especially as we never had the opportunity to commemorate everything she had done for us. I continually pray and beseech Arya Lokesvara never to forsake her throughout all her future lives, in memory of her great kindness and exemplary conduct.
The Gyatso Tashi family house in Lhasa, 1998. Photo by Andre Alexander
My mother’s elder brother, my uncle Tubten Changchup-la, studied at the Tarpo-ling primary school before becoming a monk at Drépung, where he voluntarily and earnestly continued his studies. His father, Sonam Rabten-la, performed a divination (Pra phab) to discover whether he would complete his academic studies, and the response came clearly expressed in a four-line stanza. I was not able to discover the first two lines, but the last two said: “Despite aspirations for the religious life, external factors will cause obstacles / To perform service beneath the golden throne is excellent!”
To give a brief account of his service in the Tibetan Ganden Po-trang government: his father was sent to India several times to procure supplies on behalf of the great Thirteenth Dalai Lama, which he did well, and the Dalai Lama showed His pleasure at this by asking about his son. Later, after he had returned from another supply mission to India, they were suddenly notified that Tubten Changchup, then aged eighteen, had been appointed as a monk-official to the palace secretariat (Yig tshang las khung). While serving there, he worked on the collection of pastoral taxes at Uyuk Lingkar, served as sacristan of the Eleventh Dalai Lama’s (Phan bde ‘od ‘bar) reliquary stupa in the Potala, and assisted in the construction of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s reliquary stupa (dGe legs ‘dod ‘jo). He was an estate manager in the ön valley, was a librarian, and accompanied the former Purbu-chok incarnation on a mission to the northern territories to identify candidates for the recognition of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. He served as a steward of the fifth rank under the Taktra regent, and when the fourth-rank senior monk-official (mKhan chung) was promoted to governor of Lho-ka province (lHo spyi), he managed the ongoing office work for the next five years. Then he worked for a short time in the foreign ministry, and took charge of the office that organized special government-sponsored pujas (Zhabs ‘phar) for a few years. Then he was appointed state monastic representative (mKhan nang) in Nakchu, as counterpart of the fourth-rank [lay] official Mönkyi-lingpa, and again as governor of the northern provinces (Byang spyi) for three years. During that time, the new Preparatory Committee for the Tibet Autonomous Region (PCART) was set up and established an Animal Husbandry Bureau (in replacement of the former office) of which he took charge. In 1957 he was appointed chief secretary of the palace secretariat (mKhan drung), and he continued his duties right up until the [1959] uprising, not only as an official who benefited both state and society while ascending the various levels of the bureaucracy but also as a bhikshu who was an indefatigable religious practitioner. He guided us with loving kindness and skillfully trained us with exceptional generosity.
Khendrung Tubten Changchup. Photo taken in the mid-1940s when he was serving as governor of Lho-ka.
Lhasa 1979: the author’s three nun sisters, from left to right: Losang Chödzom, Losang Chönyi, Losang Dékyong. In the back row: sister-in-law Lochö Doyontsang holding nephew Tendzin Jikmé, younger sister Tendzin Drölkar. Author’s collection
At the time of the 1959 uprising, he was among the elected deputies to the parliament, and it was he who took charge of fulfilling a request written by the Dalai Lama when departing the Norbu Lingka to rescue as many sacred images as possible from all over the palace, and he continued in his efforts even during the artillery bombardment. After the Chinese had forcibly suppressed the uprising, he was arrested at the Norbu Lingka and imprisoned at the Chinese military headquarters. After a series of interrogations, they suspended their decision on his case and kept him in leg irons for a long period for not showing the required attitude during questioning. In 1963 he was transferred to Drapchi prison, became very sick, became worse after incorrect medical treatment, and died later that year. It is one of my greatest misfortunes that I was unable to meet this immeasurably kind teacher again before his death. However, one can see that even if he had lived a few more years, his suffering would only have intensified under the conditions of heightened cruelty, torture, and enslavement that were to come, and I console myself with the thought that during his lifetime he not only pursued a blameless career in government service but also encountered the Dalai Lama and many other high lamas, as well as perfecting his own religious practice, and with the certainty that he will reap the karmic rewards of his virtuous conduct.
Losang Dékyong, Losang Chödzom, and Losang Chönyi in Dharamsala, India, 1985. Author’s collection
My mother’s elder stepbrother Jampel Khétsun-la, the former Kalachakra teacher (Dus ‘khor slob zur) of Namgyel Dra-tsang college, was taken to the Tsukla-khang temple after the suppression of the uprising to join the group that the Chinese called the “Buddhist Association,” who were obliged to attend frequent “study” sessions on Chinese government policy. When they were told to recognize the outrageous claim that Tibet is an inseparable part of China, he told them openly that since relations between the two countries were like the relations between lama and benefactor (mChod yon), Tibet could not be incorporated by China in this way, and spoke about history, for which he was criticized and viciously denounced. Not long after, at the start of the so-called Cultural Revolution, he was sent to Drépung monastery, which was like the number two prison, where the conditions of his detention were such that even when he became sick his relatives were not permitted to visit him, and that is where he passed away.