ALAI WAS BORN in a tiny hamlet in Maerkang County, in what is now western Sichuan. At the time of the story, however, his hometown was located in the northeastern part of the Tibetan autonomous region. Settled centuries earlier by Tibetan nomads, the region’s power and legitimacy came largely from the Chinese to the east, who ennobled the strongest and richest families. Religious ties to the Buddhist centers of Lhasa and Shigatse to the west were tenuous at best; political ties were equally difficult, with encroachments from all directions always a threat. During the War of Resistance against Japan (1937–1945), Tibet was spared from fighting the foreign aggressors, although power struggles among the various clans and chieftains continued. At the conclusion of the Chinese civil war (1945–1949), territorial lines were redrawn, autonomy for all of Tibet was lost, and the age of chieftains came to an end.
In the 1980s, Alai published a story about a legendary wise man, Aku Tonpa, who, in the author’s words, “represents the Tibetans’ aspirations and oral traditions.” But rather than focus on the sagacity so often extolled by others, he “preferred the wisdom masked by stupidity.” A decade later, Aku Tonpa would become the model for the narrator in Red Poppies. Alai has written that “the intelligence of Aku Tonpa epitomizes raw and uncultured folk wisdom.”
Alai writes in Chinese. We are grateful to Tseten Dolkar of Radio Free Asia for supplying Tibetan spellings of the names and places in this novel.