The first 10 years in Tibet left a deep imprint on the life of Wang Gui, who is 78. He still cries sometimes when relating long-ago stories.
When he was 19, serving as a soldier of the People's Liberation Army (PLA)'s 18th Corps, Wang met the first Tibetan in his life in late March, 1950, somewhere near Ya'an in southwestern Sichuan Province.
"It was a group of traveling tea merchants. I went up to ask them the way in Tibetan, which I had just learned weeks earlier. They did not understand. Our interpreter said I did not pronounce the words right," he recalled. "All other comrades laughed at me."
In the following months, he saw his first Tibetan village and was first hit by altitude sickness. He fought in a critical battle in Qamdo of eastern Tibet from Oct. 6 to 24, 1950.
"All the way from Sichuan to Tibet, we were told that we should make every effort to liberate Tibet in a peaceful way, and war was not the best choice. But, before the battle, the envoys we sent to Lhasa for peace talks were all turned away. One of them was even poisoned to death in Qamdo," Wang said.
The battle, in which the PLA defeated the Tibetan regional government's army, laid a foundation for the peace talks that began in Beijing in March, 1951.
An agreement about the peaceful liberation of the Himalayan region was reached in May, 1951. Staying in Qamdo for another four months and then marching for about a month, Wang and his brothers in arms caught the first sight of Lhasa in October the same year.
UNCOMFORTABLE FACTS IN OLD TIBET
Before joining in the PLA, Wang studied engineering at the National Central University in Kuomintang-controlled Nanjing.
As a young Communist swearing to fight for the poor, he was deeply impressed and uncomfortable about the strict hierarchy in Tibetan society and the suffering of serfs.
"Everywhere I went in Tibet, I saw serfs bow deeply, unbind their long plaits and stick their tongues out, a Tibetan way of showing respect and fear when encountering a noble. They dared not to look into the eyes of a noble person when talking," he said.
On the first day of the Tibetan New Year in February, 1952, Wang witnessed a strange "new year routine" at a large manor at Gyangze owned by a rich noble, Gashi.
As he recalled, a dozen serfs were invited by the noble for "tea" that day. Those who had paid enough rent and were considered dutiful were seated on cushions and offered butter tea; others sat on the ground and were offered clear tea. Those who paid the least rent or were considered insubordinate got huge clay jars filled with cold dirty water.
The chamberlain and a couple of servants held down one such man by his arms and legs, pinched his nose to force him to open his mouth and poured down the whole jar of water.
"I saw that man groaning, struggling. At last his stomach swelled and his eyes rolled back, so that the whites were showing," Wang said. "Later I learned from other serfs that this would happen every New Year's Day. A serf going through this usually got sick and some even died."
The noble and his wife watched the whole process from the balcony of the house.
Wang and his comrades could not stop it or interfere, because, according to the 17-article agreement on Tibet's peaceful liberation, the central government promised not to change the existing political system nor force the regional government to reform it.
Under the same agreement, PLA troops in Tibet stayed away from temples.
"When the troops arrived, our commanders visited local nobles and senior monks, bringing them gifts like tea and silk and introducing our policy to them. I took part in several such visits."
"Except when on official visits and when we were invited to rituals at festivals, we seldom went to temples," Wang recalled.
But he learned about the dark side of monastic life from local friends, serfs and open-minded nobles.
Temples held great power in old Tibet. They could force serf families on their land to send their children into the temples, which was one of the duties of these families. They could also apply to the religious authorities in Lhasa to seize people from outside and make them monks, Wang said. "These were two major ways to maintain the number of monks."
"Monks from poor families took up the toughest work in temples. They barely had the time to study sutras. Many were illiterate. Pretty teenage monks would suffer sexual harassment from powerful senior ones."
Wang and other soldiers were not well-prepared for these conditions. "At first we could not understand why we had to befriend nobles and senior monks. It was different from what we did in other places of the country -- the poor were our friends. We received quite an education about the special situation in Tibet," Wang said.
The education included learning Tibetan. In 1952, Wang was already a fluent Tibetan speaker.
BUDDHA'S SOLDIERS
The first impression of these PLA soldiers among Tibetans were that they looked kind, disciplined and treated poor people well.
"We bought horse fodder from locals and paid cash. At first, they dared not accept our money. In their previous experience, soldiers never paid, they only took," Wang said.
Then, these soldiers from outside set up free medical camps and schools that accepted everyone, from whatever background. They built roads and granted interest-free loans to serfs.
"Many poor people called us 'Buddha's soldiers'," Wang said.
The Lhasa River flows west to east across the city of Lhasa in the south. For many years, residents from the southern suburb crossed the river by boat on their way to the city.
The boats and port were owned by Shasur Gyumey Dorje, one of the Galoins (cabinet ministers) of the Tibetan local government. Passengers had to pay him if they wanted to board.
In 1954, funded by the central government, a steel bridge was built above the river, as part of the Sichuan-Tibet highway project.
"Numerous white kha-btag ribbons were tied on the railings when the bridge was put into operation," Wang said.
He still remembered a folk song popular among locals who no longer needed to pay for crossing the river: "Tibet liberated peacefully, bridge built above the Lhasa River, Shasur, the old fat 'granny', cattle muzzle harnessed upon him."
The bridge, compared by locals to a muzzle that stopped the noble to profit from common people, kept the nickname "Muzzle Bridge" till now.
But Shasur was not happy about losing a profitable business. He was one of the nobles who masterminded the rebellion in 1959.
In 1953, Wang was transferred to the office of the committee in charge of building the western section of the Sichuan-Tibet highway. About 8,000 Tibetans were mobilized for the project.
"The PLA soldiers worked side by side with Tibetan workers. They were paid by the PLA's Tibet Military Command. When they were sick, they received free treatment," Wang said. "All of them were sent by order of their lords. None of them thought they would be paid because it was their 'labor duty'. Some nobles confiscated their salary, so later we gave them tea and butter instead of cash."
He recalled that another Galoin, Surkhang Wangchen Gelek, then the committee's deputy director, visited the construction site several times.
"Seeing the Tibetan laborers getting on quite well with us, Surkhang told his men, 'It is bad. Tibet will have an earthquake!'"
Being a long-term supporter of "Tibet independence", Surkhang was one of the forces behind the 1959 rebellion and he fled to India with the 14th Dalai Lama.
"We did not force reform in Tibet. But, honestly, our behavior was really a contrast to that of the nobles. People could see," Wang said.
1959 REBELLION
It was the rebellion that forced the central government, which had decided to suspend democratic reform in Tibet, to change its mind.
On the morning of March 10, 1959, Lhasa's streets were full of armed officers of the Dalai Lama's army and rebels fleeing from Sichuan to Lhasa, Wang remembered.
They urged ordinary people to gather in front of the Norbu Lingka, the palace garden where the 14th Dalai Lama spent summer days, to save him from "being poisoned by the PLA", "being kidnapped to Beijing by helicopter", he said. "They were ridiculous rumors. There was not yet helicopter service in Tibet. We had far fewer soldiers than the regional government.
"I saw a rebel tie the body of Phagpalha Sonam Gyatso (a Tibetan noble on the side of the central government) on his horse and drag it all the way from the Norbu Lingka to Lhasa. He was shouting, 'Anyone standing with Han people will end up like this!'"
In the following seven days, many PLA facilities including the command headquarters were hit by gun shots, said Wang, who was then a staff officer at the headquarters.
"I thought they were provocations. They wanted us to fire back so that they would have an excuse. The headquarters banned any soldier from firing back and asked them to wait for further instruction."
Five decades later, what Wang remembers as a violent rebellion was a "peaceful uprising" according to the 14th Dalai Lama.
On the night of March 17, the 14th Dalai Lama fled from the Norbu Lingka. Three days later, military action was taken to foil the rebellion and democratic reform followed.
The land and property of nobles, who took part in the rebellion, were confiscated by the state and distributed among their serfs. Those who did not take part in the rebellion could sell their land to the state and land was also given to the serfs. Nobles could keep their houses, other personal property and a portion of their land.
"I met a serf at a village in Lhasa's eastern suburb. He was weeping while talking to me: 'I had never imagined that I would have my own land in this life. I am human now, no longer a cow.'"
Democratic reform involved temples, whose privileges were revoked. But temples were not closed and monks were not evicted.
"A brother in arms told me about his work in temples. Monks could decide whether to stay in temples or not. Some decided to leave because they had not become monks of their own will. Some hated mistreatment of senior monks," Wang said. "This was the first time in centuries in Tibet that people had the freedom of not believing in Buddha.
"Since democratic reform, the central government has made mistakes, for example, during the Cultural Revolution. But these mistakes have been corrected," he said. "The reform gave 95 percent of the Tibetan population basic human rights for the first time and revoked privileges enjoyed by 5 percent of the population. Which is more important?"
Wang left Tibet in 1981 and worked as a researcher at the Beijing-based Academy of Military Sciences until 1988. Since leaving Tibet, he has rarely spoken of his years there.
Abroad, the 14th Dalai Lama, who is five years younger than Wang, has been a celebrity and frequent storyteller about the "lost Tibet". The Dalai Lama himself was brought up in the high castle of the Potala Palace and pretty garden of the Norbu Lingka since he was five years old, surrounded by nobles. He has been away from his homeland for five decades.
(Xinhua News Agency March 27, 2009)
