Tibet, ‘a barbarous land where men drink blood’
Chinese propaganda represented Tibet as a darkly primitive place. But one Beijing student found its emptiness and majesty difficult to resist, finds John Hinton
13 June 2008

Demonstrations in Tibet earlier this year

A Year in Tibet: A Voyage of Discovery by Sun Shuyun, Harper Press £20

In the 1980s, long before China's bullying of its peaceful neighbour in recent headlines, the enigmatic, fabled land of Tibet called to Sun Shuyan when she graduated from Beijing University. The reasons weren't entirely romantic. Volunteering to work in Tibet for eight years' service tempted her in a number of ways. She would receive Communist Party membership, double pay, housing priority and faster promotion on her return.

She was just 23 and hadn't read Lost Horizon by James Hilton, the book that planted the mystic Shangri-la in the minds of foreigners, or the fascinating accounts by early travellers.

Writing to her parents about the opportunity, she was scolded by her father for even considering such an idea. To those who had soaked up years of Communist propaganda during the iron rule of Chairman Mao, Tibet was a barbarous land where men drank blood and drums were made from human skin. Moral standards were so low that brothers - and even fathers and sons - shared a wife, and sisters shared a husband.

There were some dark corners of the British Empire where those who had blundered or offended were sent to serve out their days. Similarly, the Chinese imperial court started sending officials there as a kind of exile.

Unsurprisingly, many of them were corrupt and looked haughtily on the Tibetans "as stupid as deer or pigs". During the Republican period Chaing Kai-shek's envoy to Lhasa found it devoid of dreamy colours and idyllic smells; "no different from the surrounding areas, only more barren, more poverty stricken and drowned in a deadly silence".

As it happens, Sun Shuyan did not take up the offer, although her fascination remained. Instead she won a scholarship to Oxford where she learned Tibetan and wrote her Master's thesis on Britain's role in Tibet when it withdrew from India, the jewel in the crown of its empire.

She made her first visit to the country in 1991, finding its combination of emptiness and majesty, its harmony between nature, man and faith, strongly appealing. Was this because she had grown up in the spiritual desert of Communism, in crowded cities where nature was trampled on?

She wonders - as she returned many times to visit - if she was looking for A E Houseman's "land of lost content". She lived with nomads, nuns and hermits. But never for long enough.

Her big chance to study the country and the society closely came when she was asked to direct a documentary about a year in the life of ordinary Tibetans.

The chosen location, Gyantse, 13,000 feet up, is Tibet's largest town with a population of just 8,000, a monastery, an ancient fort and traditional houses mostly intact. She and her film crew followed a village doctor, a junior Party official, a hotel manager, a rickshaw driver and two monks through the ups and downs of their lives. Not to forget one of the shamans - the characters at the heart of Tibetan life - who people come to with everything from toothaches and broken hearts to sick animals and also for advice on everything from their marriages to their businesses.

They filmed some strange goings on. Those Tibetans who enjoy the local booze - called chang - believe Buddha approves of a few drinks and there are many noisy parties to which they were invited.

They saw a typical wedding in which the bride and her groom had no say; a monastery was burgled; new technology in the form of a gun battery was used to break up the cloud formations which can bring severe hailstorms, capable of destroying ripening crops.

And running through the whole year, the contrast between the success of the few and abject poverty of the many, and the animosity between Tibetans and the Chinese. Canadian writers have sometimes described their relationship with the United States as "like sleeping with a friendly elephant". From its recent actions, China appears to want to roll all over its tiny, dependent neighbour and discourage its distinctive, colourful way of life.

The author clearly found what she wanted in Gyantse - the mountains, the river, the fort, the old town and the gentle people there.

She wonders, and so does the reader, what will become of them in 10 or 20 years' time and whether they will survive as the Chinese giant stretches itself into new economic and cultural shapes in the years ahead.