The People of Tibet
Tibetans have a unique identity that mixes influences from their Himalayan neighbours, extreme mountain environment and war-like past. In terms of language, script, food, temperament and above all religion, they are poles apart from their Han Chinese neighbours. Where the Chinese drink their tea green, Tibetans take theirs with yak butter; when the rest of China eats rice and drinks rice wine, Tibetans eat tsampa (roasted-barley flour) washed down with barley beer.
Traditional Lifestyle
Tibetans are such a deeply religious people that a basic knowledge of Buddhism is essential in understanding their world view. Buddhism permeates most facets of Tibetan daily life and shapes aspirations in ways that are often quite alien to the Western frame of mind. The ideas of accumulating merit, of sending sons to be monks, of undertaking pilgrimages, and of devotion to the sanctity and power of natural places are all elements of the unique fusion between Buddhism and the older shamanistic Bön faith.
Traditionally there have been at least three distinct segments of Tibetan society: the drokpa (nomads); rongpa (farmers); and sangha (communities of monks and nuns). All lead very different lives but share a deep faith in Buddhism.
These communities have traditionally shared a remarkable resistance to change. Until the early 20th century Tibet was a land in which virtually the only use for the wheel was as a device for activating mantras. Tibet has changed more in the past 50 years than in the previous 500, although many traditional social structures have endured Chinese attempts at iconoclasm.
Nomads’ marriage customs differ from those of farming communities. When a child reaches a marriageable age, enquiries are made, and when a suitable match is found the two people meet and exchange gifts. If they like each other, these informal meetings may go on for some time. The date for a marriage is decided by an astrologer, and when the date arrives the family of the son rides to the camp of the prospective daughter-in-law to collect her. On arrival there is a custom of feigned mutual abuse that appears to verge on giving way to violence at any moment. This may continue for several days before the son’s family finally carry off the daughter to their camp and she enters a new life.
Tibet’s traditional nomadic lifestyle is particularly under threat. According to some estimates, over one million nomads or herders across the Tibetan plateau have been moved off their land by local government, often under the guise of environmental protection. Critics accuse the government of making a massive land grab in order to gain access to rare minerals for mining. Either way, the result is a serious blow to an ancient lifestyle that has thrived in harmony with the environment for generations.
As in most societies, there is some generational divide among Tibetans. The younger generation (in Lhasa and the main towns at least) is as enamoured with pop music, karaoke, mobile phones and the internet as most young people around the world and most know little about ‘old’ Tibet, having often grown up in a Chinese-language environment. That said, young Tibetans still have a remarkably strong sense of Tibetan identity and you’ll still see many young Tibetans visiting monasteries, wearing traditional dress and making pilgrimages to holy sites.
GOOD GENES
In case you’re wondering why your Tibetan guide can run up the side of a 4500m hill with ease, while you collapse gasping in the thin air after less than one minute, recent DNA research has shown that the Tibetan people are genetically adapted to living at high altitudes. In fact the 3000 years it took Tibetans to change their genes is considered the fastest genetic change ever observed in humans. You never stood a chance.
Farming & Trading
Farming communities in Tibet usually comprise a cluster of homes surrounded by agricultural lands that were once owned by the nearest large monastery and protected by a dzong (fort). The farming itself is carried out with the assistance of a dzo, a breed of cattle where bulls have been crossbred with yaks. Some wealthier farmers own a small ‘walking tractor’ (a very simple tractor engine that can pull a plough or a trailer). Harvested grain is carried by donkeys to a threshing ground where it is trampled by cattle or threshed with poles. The grain is then cast into the air from a basket and the task of winnowing carried out by the breeze. Animal husbandry is still extremely important in Tibet, and there are around 21 million head of livestock in the country.
Until recently these communities were effectively self-sufficient in their needs and, although theirs was a hard life, it could not be described as abject poverty. Plots of land were usually graded in terms of quality and then distributed so that the land of any one family included both better- and poorer-quality land. This is changing rapidly as many regions become more economically developed.
Imports such as tea, porcelain, copper and iron from China were traditionally exchanged for exports of wool and skins. Trading was usually carried out by nomads or in combination with pilgrimage. Most villages now have at least one entrepreneur who has set up a shop and begun to ship in Chinese goods from the nearest urban centre.
One significant change to rural life has been the government-sponsored construction of over 230,000 new houses across Tibet, providing new housing for some 1.3 million Tibetan farmers and herders. Families are given around ¥10,000 to ¥15,000 as a base subsidy to construct a home. A typical house might cost around ¥33,000 to ¥44,000 so farmers usually take out a loan (interest-free for three years) to cover the remaining costs. Critics of the scheme claim that many of the new homeowners then have to rent out their farmland to Chinese immigrants in order to pay off the loans.
Individual households normally have a shrine in the home and some religious texts, held in a place of honour, which are reserved for occasions when a monk or holy man visits the village. Ceremonies for blessing yaks and other livestock to ensure a productive year are still held. One of the highlights of the year for rural Tibetans is visiting nearby monasteries at festival times or making a pilgrimage to a holy site.
As traditional life reasserts itself after 60 years of communist dogma and the disastrous Cultural Revolution, many of these traditions are slowly making a comeback.
PILGRIM MAGNETS
In Tibet there are countless sacred destinations, ranging from lakes and mountains to monasteries and caves that once served as meditation retreats for important yogis. Specific pilgrimages are often prescribed for specific ills; certain mountains, for example, expiate certain sins. A circumambulation of Mt Kailash offers the possibility of liberation within three lifetimes, while a circuit of Lake Manasarovar can result in spontaneous buddhahood. Pilgrimage is also more powerful in certain auspicious months and years.
Pilgrims often organise themselves into large groups, hire a truck and travel around the country visiting all the major sacred places in one go. Pilgrim guidebooks have existed for centuries to help travellers interpret the 24 ‘power places’ of Tibet. Such guides even specify locations where you can urinate or fart without offending local spirits (and probably your fellow pilgrims).
Making a pilgrimage is not just a matter of walking to a sacred place and then going home. There are a number of activities that help focus the concentration of the pilgrim. The act of kora (circumambulating the object of devotion) is chief among these. Circuits of three, 13 or 108 koras are especially auspicious, with sunrise and sunset the most auspicious hours. The particularly devout prostrate their way along entire pilgrimages, stepping forward the length of their body after each prostration and starting all over again. The hardcore even do their koras sideways, advancing one side-step at a time!
Most pilgrims make offerings during the course of a pilgrimage. Kathaks (white ceremonial scarves) are offered to lamas or holy statues as a token of respect (and then often returned by the lama as a blessing). Offerings of yak butter or oil, fruit, tsampa, seeds and money are all left at altars, and bottles of chang (barley beer) and rice wine are donated to protector chapels.
Outside chapels, at holy mountain peaks, passes and bridges, you will see pilgrims throwing offerings of tsampa or printed prayers into the air. Pilgrims also collect sacred rocks, herbs, earth and water from a holy site to take back home to those who couldn’t make the pilgrimage, and leave behind personal items as a break from the past, often leaving them hanging in a tree. Other activities in this spiritual assault course include adding stones to cairns, rubbing special healing rocks, and squeezing through narrow gaps in rocks as a method of sin detection.
Koras usually include stops that are of particular spiritual significance, such as rock-carved syllables or painted buddha images. Many of these carvings are said to be rangjung (‘self-rising’), meaning that they haven’t been carved by a human hand. The Mt Kailash kora is a treasure trove of these, encompassing sky-burial sites, stones that have ‘flown’ from India, monasteries, bodhisattva footprints and even a lingham (phallic image).
Other pilgrimages are carried out to visit a renowned holy man or teacher. Blessings or tsering rilbu (long-life pills) from holy men, trulkus (reincarnated lamas) or rinpoches (highly esteemed lamas) are particularly valued, as are the possessions of famous holy men. According to Keith Dowman in his book The Sacred Life of Tibet, the underpants of one revered lama were cut up and then distributed amongst his eager followers!
Pilgrimage sites:
| Mountains | Lakes | Caves |
| Mt Kailash, western Tibet | Manasarovar, western Tibet | Drak Yerpa, outside Lhasa |
| Bönri, eastern Tibet | Nam-tso, northern Ü | Chim-puk, near Samye |
| Tsari, southern Tibet | Yamdrok-tso, Tsang | Sheldrak, Yarlung Valley |
| Mt Labchi, east of Nyalam | Lhamo La-tso, eastern Ü | Drakyul, Yarlung Tsangpo Valley |
Pilgrimage
Pilgrimage is practised throughout the world, although as a devotional exercise it has been raised to a level of particular importance in Tibet. This may be because of the nomadic element in Tibetan society; it may also be that in a mountainous country with no roads and no wheeled vehicles, walking long distances became a fact of life, and by visiting sacred places en route pilgrims could combine walking with accumulating merit. To most Tibetans their natural landscape is imbued with a series of sacred visions and holy ‘power places’: mountains can be perceived as mandala images, rocks assume spiritual dimensions and the earth is imbued with healing powers.
The motivations for pilgrimage are many, but for the ordinary Tibetan it amounts to a means of accumulating sonam (merit) or tashi (good fortune). The lay practitioner might go on pilgrimage in the hope of winning a better rebirth, to cure an illness, end a spate of bad luck or as thanks for an answered prayer.
Death
Although the early kings of Tibet were buried in tomb mounds with complex funerary rites (the tombs are still visible in Chongye), ordinary Tibetans have not traditionally been buried. The dead bodies of the very poor were usually dumped in a river and the bodies of the very holy were cremated and their ashes enshrined in a chörten (or their bodies dried in salt). But in a land where soil is at a premium and wood for cremation is scarcer still, most bodies were, and still are, disposed of by sky burial.
After death, the body is kept for 24 hours in a sitting position while a lama recites prayers from The Tibetan Book of the Dead to help the soul on its journey through the 49 levels of Bardo, the state between death and rebirth. Three days after death, the body is blessed and early-morning prayers and offerings are made to the monastery. The body is folded up (the spine is broken and the body itself is folded into a surprisingly small package) and carried on the back of a close friend to the dürtro (burial site). Here, special body-breakers known as rogyapas cut off the deceased’s hair, chop up the body and pound the bones together with tsampa for vultures to eat.
There is little overt sadness at a sky burial: the soul is considered to have already departed and the burial itself is considered to be mere disposal, or rather a final act of compassion to the birds. Sky burial is, however, very much a time to reflect on the impermanence of life. Death is seen as a powerful agent of transformation and spiritual progress. Tibetans are encouraged to witness the disposal of the body and to confront death openly and without fear. This is one reason that Tantric ritual objects such as trumpets and bowls are often made from human bone.
TOURISTS & SKY BURIAL
Sky burials are funeral services and, naturally, Tibetans are often very unhappy about camera-toting foreigners heading up to sky-burial sites. The Chinese authorities do not like it either and may fine foreigners who attend a burial. You should never pay to see a sky burial and you should never take photos. Even if Tibetans offer to take you up to a sky-burial site, it is unlikely that other Tibetans present will be very happy about it. As tempting as it may be, if nobody has invited you, don’t go.
Dress
Traditional dress is still the norm among TIbetans in the countryside. The Tibetan national dress is a chuba (long-sleeved sheepskin cloak), tied around the waist with a sash and worn off the shoulder with great bravado by nomads and Khampas (people from Kham). An inner pouch is often used to store money belts, amulets, lunch and even small livestock. Most women wear a long dress, topped with a colourful striped apron known as a pangden. Traditional Tibetan boots have turned-up toes, so as to kill fewer bugs when walking (or so it is said).
Women generally set great store in jewellery and invest their personal wealth and dowry in it. Coral is particularly valued (as Tibet is so far from the sea), as are Baltic amber, Indian ivory, Afghan turquoise and silver of all kinds. The Tibetan zee, a unique elongated agate stone with black and white markings, is highly prized for its protective qualities and can fetch tens of thousands of US dollars. Earrings are common in both men and women and they are normally tied on with a piece of cord. You’ll see Tibetans shopping for all these goodies around the Barkhor in Lhasa.
Tibetan women, especially those from Amdo (northeastern Tibet and Qīnghǎi), wear their hair in 108 braids, an auspicious number in Buddhism. Khampa men plait their hair with red or black tassels and wind the lot around their head. Cowboy hats are popular in summer and fur hats are common in winter. Most pilgrims carry a thogcha (good luck charm) or gau (amulet), with perhaps a picture of the owner’s personal deity or the Dalai Lama inside.
The Politics of People
Modern political boundaries and history have led to the fracture of the Tibetan nation. Large areas of historical and ethnic Tibet are now incorporated into the Chinese provinces of Qīnghǎi and Gānsù (traditionally known as Amdo), and Sìchuān and Yúnnán (traditionally known as Kham). More Tibetans now live outside the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) than inside it.
Population Control
Population control is a cornerstone of Chinese government policy, but the regulations are generally less strictly enforced in Tibet. ‘Minority nationalities’ such as the Tibetans are allowed two children before they lose certain stipends and housing allowances. Ironically, the most effective form of birth control in modern Tibet still seems to be to join a monastery.
Ethnic Groups
There are considerable variations between regional groups of Tibetans. The most recognisable are the Khampas of eastern Tibet, who are generally larger and a bit more rough-and-ready than other Tibetans and who wear red or black tassels in their long hair. Women from Amdo are especially conspicuous because of their elaborate braided hairstyles and jewellery.
The people of Kongpo in eastern Tibet have a distinctive traditional dress that features a round hat with an upturned rim of golden brocade for men (known as a gyasha) and a pretty pillbox hat with winged edges for women. Men and women wear brown woollen tunics, belted around the waist. The former kingdom of Kongpo has for centuries been vilified by central Tibetan rulers as a land of incest and poison, whose inhabitants would routinely drug unsuspecting strangers to steal their souls.
There are pockets of other minority groups, such as the Lhopa (Lhoba) and Monpa in the southeast of Tibet, but these make up less than 1% of the total population and only very remote pockets remain. A more visible ethnic group are the Hui Muslims. Tibet’s original Muslim inhabitants were largely traders or butchers (a profession that most Buddhists abhor), although the majority of recent migrants are traders and restaurant owners from southern Gānsù province. Tibetans are also closely related to the Qiang people of northern Sìchuān, the Sherpas of Nepal and the Ladakhis of India.
RESPONSIBLE TOURISM
Tourism has already affected many areas in Tibet. Most children will automatically stick their hand out for a sweet, a pen or anything. In some regions, locals have become frustrated at seeing a stream of rich tourist groups but few tangible economic results. Please try to bear the following in mind as you travel through Tibet:
A Try to patronise as many small local Tibetan businesses (including your tour agent), restaurants and guesthouses as possible. Revenues created by organised group tourism go largely into the pockets of the Chinese authorities.
A Doling out medicines can encourage people not to seek proper medical advice, while handing out sweets or pens to children encourages begging. If you wish to contribute something constructive, it’s better to give pens directly to schools and medicines to rural clinics, or make a donation to an established charity.
A Monastery admission fees go largely to local authorities, so if you want to donate to the monastery, leave your offering on the altar.
A Don’t buy skins or hats made from endangered animals such as snow leopards.
A Don’t pay to take a photograph of someone, and don’t photograph someone if they don’t want you to. If you agree to send a photograph of someone, ensure you follow through on this.
A If you have any pro-Tibetan sympathies, be very careful with whom you discuss them. Don’t put Tibetans in a politically difficult or even potentially dangerous situation. This includes handing out photos of the Dalai Lama (these are illegal in Tibet) and politically sensitive materials.
A Try to buy locally made souvenirs and handicrafts, especially authentic and traditionally made products whose profits go directly to artisans, such as Dropenling.
A If you have a guide, try to ensure that he or she is a Tibetan, as Chinese guides invariably know little about Tibetan Buddhism or monastery history.
Han Migration
Official statistics claim 93% of the TAR’s population is Tibetan, a figure that is hotly contested by almost everyone except the government. Chinese figures for the population of Lhasa, for example, suggest it is just over 87% Tibetan and just under 12% Han Chinese, a ratio that stretches the credulity of anyone who has visited the city in recent years. It is more likely that well over 50% of Lhasa’s population is Han Chinese.
The current flood of Chinese immigrants into Tibet has been termed China’s ‘second invasion’. The Chinese government is very coy about releasing figures that would make it clear just how many Chinese there are in Tibet, but for visitors who have made repeated trips to Tibet the increased numbers of Han Chinese are undeniable.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there’s an endemic mistrust between the Tibetans and Chinese and ethnic tensions bubble just under the surface. Many Tibetans see the Han Chinese as land-hungry outsiders, while the Chinese often complain that the Tibetans are ungrateful and slow to adjust to economic opportunities. Actual violence between the two communities is rare, but it’s quickly apparent to visitors that most towns have quite separate Chinese and Tibetan (and in some cases also Hui Muslim) quarters.
Women in Tibet
Women have traditionally occupied a strong position in Tibetan society, often holding the family purse strings and running businesses like shops and guesthouses. Several of Tibet’s most famous Buddhist practitioners, such as Yeshe Tsogyel and Machik Labdronma, were women, and Tibet’s nuns remain at the vanguard of political dissent. Most of the road workers you see across the plateau are women!
Up until the Chinese invasion many Tibetan farming villages practised polyandry. When a woman married the eldest son of a family she also married his younger brothers (providing they did not become monks). The children of such marriages referred to all the brothers as their father. The practice was aimed at easing the inheritance of family property (mainly the farming land) and avoiding the break-up of small plots.