Mining Gold in Tibet

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MAJOR FOLKTALES IN TIBET

Stories of the Dead tells of a young man who manages to master magic on the sly, but is found out by seven masters. They fight the young man who, however, kills them all. As he has perpetrated sins, Master Nagajunar forces him to carry the bodies to a designated place, but he is told he should refrain from talking to the bodies. When he carries one body after another, each tells him a story. The young man, attracted by the interesting stories, exclaims, and the body goes back to the original place. As a result, the mission goes on and on, and the story is told on and on, too.

This one of the stories told in Tibet. The region is also a treasure house of proverbs and sayings. Beginning in the 13th century, many books on sayings and proverbs were published, including Sagya Sayings, Gandain Proverbs, and Yeshi Sayings. Accompanying these are books on notes to these sayings and proverbs.

Story of Agu Toinba is known to all in Tibet. He is considered to be the wisest in the region. The story makes people laugh and gives them wisdom.

Of the folktales told in Tibet, the greatest number deal with animals, which perhaps has much to do with the fact that Tibet itself is a world of wildlife.

SIX KINDS OF FOLKTALE IN TIBET

How many folktales have Chinese literary and art workers gathered in the Tibet Autonomous Region? No accurate data can be found. According to the preface of Selected Folktales of Tibet, compiled and published in May 1979 in Shanghai by Prof. Geng Yufang: “Statistics released by cultural departments concerned and some schools show that there should be at least 1,000 Tibetan folktales. A few hundred have been compiled and published.

Ms. Huang Jiping with the Ethnic Minorities Department of the Taiwan Political Science University has a collection of 25 kinds of publications on Tibetan folktales published before 1975. They contain 1,020 Tibetan folktales. Excluding those with the same contents, there are 776 stories.

Statistics show that 235 Tibetan storytellers were visited from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. About 54 books were published with a total of 110 million words. They contain some 7,000 stories collected in Tibet. Some of them might have the same contents.

When divided according to contents, the Tibetan folktale can be divided into six kinds:

―Fairy tales and legends about historical personages;

―Stories about the dead;

―Old sayings and proverbs;

―Stories about white-mask and blue-mask Tibetan opera pieces;

―Stories of intelligent people; and

―Stories about animals in snow-covered mountains and forests.

When divided according to areas where these stories were gathered, the Tibetan folktales can be divided into four kinds:

―Folktales told on both banks of the Yarlung Zangbo River;

―Folktales told in the Changtang Grasslands;

―Folktales told in the three-river valley in east Tibet; and

―Folktales told in the Himalayan area.

I fell in love with Tibetan folktales while at university. I read many books, and became attached to that remote region.

To my satisfaction, I was given a job in Tibet upon graduation. In the first eight years of my stay, I worked for a Tibetan art troupe. I learned to speak Tibetan and live in a Tibetan style, gaining a better understanding of Tibetan history, religion, culture, folklore and arts, and made many Tibetan friends. During this period, I gathered many Tibetan folktales.

COLLECTING FOLKTALES. During the reform and opening period that started in late 1978, some friends of mine united to gather Tibetan folktales. For this purpose, we interviewed Yexei Dainzain, an expert in the field. Formerly a lama with the Gongdeling Monastery, Yexei Dainzin worked as a sorcerer for the people of Lhasa. His work required him to contact more people, a chance for him to listen to folktales, and tell others stories.

Yexei Dainzin could narrate some 1,000 stories. When we met him, he said he had forgotten half of them. Most of his stories are associated with history, people, animals and legends.

As he was formerly a lama, he has a good command of Tibetan literature and art. He told us stories with vivid language and humorous gestures. When he told us about the Sun-Tanned Prince, he narrated it on and on for one week. We were entranced.

Yexei Dainzin lived in a monastery on the slope of the mountain on which the Potala Palace was built. To record more of his stories, we visited him almost every day. Seeing this, many of his neighbors asked us whether Yexei Dainzin had gold for us to mine.

Later on, we went to Gyangze, Lharze, Xigaze and Gonggar for the same purpose. We found more than 10 storytellers, including farmers, herders, monks, artisans, and intellectuals. In Xigaze, we managed to locate a hunchbacked old lady, named Nyima Pundo. She told us stories while twisting yarn. Though aged, the way she told stories was unique. Everyone held their breath and strained to hear every precious word.

In order to make it possible for more to “listen to these stories, we compiled a book which was published by the tibet Peoples Publishing House in both Tibetan and Han Chinese. The book won a first-class award in a 1983 national contest.

In the summer of 1982, Cedain Dorje and I crossed snow-covered mountains to Medog in the Himalayas. We went there to gather stories unique to the Moinba and Lhoba ethnic groups. We found some sorcerers, who were considered to be the most knowledgeable people in this secluded world. We spent lots of evenings listening to them spinning their yarns. They told us how the world was created, how man was born and evolved, how the Lhoba people went hunting, what went on in the dense forests, and how the deities worked wonders. These stories took us into a mysterious land that we had never previously envisaged. Although we experienced untold hardships, such as attacks by leeches, poisonous mosquitoes and wild bees, known as “Mongolian soldiers, and although we had a narrow escape from a devastating avalanche, we always thought it worthwhile to go there.

JOINT EFFORTS. As a matter of fact, our book is just one of many recording folktale told by the Tibetan, Moinba or Lhoba peoples. They include Collection of Tibetan Folktale compiled and printed by literary workers who went to Tibet with the PLA troops. During their stay in the region, they collected lots of Tibetan folktales, and had them published either in Beijing or Lhasa.

Leafing through these works, we found Lobsang Cering who told more stories than others. A native of Sadang Village in Lhunzhub County, he was a career Tibetan opera performer who, therefore, had a good command of phrasing. He was so good in this regard that Regent Razheng asked him to follow him in the 1930s.

In 1960, when the Democratic Reform was rounded off successfully in Tibet, teachers and students with the Central Institute for Nationalities and a group of literary workers in Beijing joined hands to gather folktales in Tibet. When they returned to Beijing, I went to listen to the stories they re-told. This prompted me to follow their example later.

The late 1970s was obviously a golden age for collecting Tibetan folktales. Two young people with the Lhasa Mass Art Hall joined hands to collect stories. They were Dawa Zhaxi, son of farmers in Nyingchi, and Guisang Gyaincain, a farmer in Nyemo County southwest of Lhasa. They were very successful.

In the Yarlung Zangbo River area, we encountered a woman who had been working for years to collect Tibetan folktales in north Tibet. Named Cering Yuzin, she was later promoted to be a Party secretary of a county. She published a number of books on Tibetan folktale including Folktales in North Tibet and Changtang Grasslands and I. Heroes in her books include spirits and animals. In 1993, she was transferred to the Tibet Federation for Literary and Art Circles, and took in charge of folk literature and a magazine titled Folklore in Tibet. She died of illness in her post.

No matter who went to Tibet for the collection of folktales, they tended to visit people of the Tibetan, Moinba, Lhoba and Ba ethnic groups living in the eastern Himalayas and primitive forests to the south of the Yarlung Zangbo River. For example, Li Jianshang with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences went to Medog seven times beginning in 1976. Once, he stayed there for 19 straight months. Accompanied by Yao Zaolin, Zhang Jianghua and Liu Fangxian, they covered the bulk of mountainous areas in the four counties of Medog, Mainling, Lhunze and Cona. Prof. Yu Naichang with the Tibet Institute for Nationalities and his assistants Cheng Liming and Zhang Lifeng also went there six times. In 1979, Prof. Yu visited Mainling and gathered Lhoba tales related to the creation of the world, the penis, and totems. When they were published, they created a hit, and many held them as “living fossils of primitive folktales.

Outstanding people who worked hard to introduce Moinba and Lhoba cultures in Medog to the outside world include Li Chaoqun and Ji Wenzheng, members of the PLA 18th Army stationed in Tibet as early as the early 1950s. During their stay in Medog, they managed to learn to read and write the Moinba and Lhoba languages, a boon for them to collect tales from peoples of the two ethnic groups.

During the reform and opening period, Li Chaoqun turned to rescuing King Gesar, and Ji Wenzheng continued to gather folktales in Medog. Ji was in his 60s, but he crossed the Himalayas twice to Medog.