Phurbu Tsering, a son of house slaves, explains the history of serfdom at Phalha Manor, Gyalze county, Tibet. [Photo/China Daily]
Slavery
Sixty years ago, serfs accounted for about 90 percent of Tibet's population. They had no means of production or personal freedom, and their survival depended entirely on working for officials, aristocrats and high-ranked lamas in monasteries.
The upper classes owned farmland, grassland and even whole mountains. House slaves, aka "talking tools", accounted for 5 percent of the population, according to Zhang Yun, head of the history department at the China Tibetology Research Center in Beijing.
The contrast between the lives of the aristocrats and their retainers is illustrated perfectly at Phalha Manor, where the items on display and the architecture tell the stories of their very different owners.
While the master wore an Omega wristwatch and his friends sipped Scotch whisky and played mahjong in the sunroom at the top of the three-story house, Phurbu Tsering's parents lived in a tiny, windowless adobe house, which was just 1.4 meters high and could only be entered by bending down.
While the master's wife tried to decide which Louis Vuitton bags she would take on outings, Phurbu Tsering's mother was given just one item of clothing a year.
"My parents often talked about how the housekeepers punished the house slaves and serfs whenever they liked. Not many people who lived through those dark days are alive now to tell the stories," Phurbu Tsering said.
At noon, Pagor, another resident of Paljor Lhunpo, opened all the curtains in her living room. "Isn't it like the sunroom in the manor house?" the 57-year-old asked.
As a young man, her father was a Phalha family nangzan. "His job was to manage the master's horses, so he slept in the stable with the animals for many years. He was never allowed to ride them, though, because that would have been disrespectful to the masters," recalled Pagor, who like many Tibetans only uses one name.
Because Pagor's father was a good worker, the master of Phalha Manor allowed him to manage a piece of land, meaning he became a tralpa, a class of serfs who worked land assigned to them and provided free labor for their owners.
Serfs had to stay within the boundaries of their owner's manors. They were not allowed to leave without permission and were strictly prohibited from fleeing the manors.
By contrast, the owners could trade and transfer serfs, present them as gifts, exchange them, and use them as stakes for gambling and as collateral for loans, according to a white paper on Tibet's democratic reform, published on Wednesday by the Information Office of the State Council, China's Cabinet.
Nyima Tsering, from the Tibet Archives in Lhasa, checks documents from the former government of Tibet. [Photo/China Daily]
In the Tibet Archives in Lhasa, the regional capital, China Daily reporters saw several documents from the former government of Tibet that recorded such trades, along with several petitions from serfs begging for their taxes to be reduced and a list of people required to provide free labor.
"My father had no control over his fate. All he could ever do was to survive. It's really hard to imagine life in such a society," Pagor said.
Zhang, from the China Tibetology Research Center, said: "Of course, the majority of the landlords and serf owners didn't want the social system to change because they didn't want to lose their power and privileges. However, a small number of them had started to notice that the old system barely allowed Tibetan society to function, let alone develop."
The serfs had no incentive to work, so productivity was extremely low, and the accumulated and ever-growing heavy debts imposed on them were impossible to repay, no matter how hard they worked. As a result, many fled, leaving the land unattended, despite knowing that they would face punishment when caught, according to Zhang.
"To punish them, cruel torture methods were introduced, such as skinning people alive and gouging out their eyes. Such cruelty is rare in the world," he said. "What's more, these punishments were often ordered randomly by the serfs' owners."
The population declined in some parts of Tibet. A document from Khesum village in Lhokha city, where Khesum Manor once stood, shows that when the Surkhang family built the house in the 17th century, 606 serfs belonged to the manor. About 300 years later, the number had fallen to 302.
Dewa, 82, was born a tralpa of Khesum Manor. She started working on the farmland when she was just 8 years old. "My family had to give almost everything we harvested to the manor. We starved most of the time. If we didn't hand in enough highland barley, our land would be taken back and we would become house slaves or have to beg," she said.
The mother of seven still feels heartbroken when she remembers the moment the master took her brother away and sent him to another manor: "We could do nothing but cry inside."
Guo Kefan, a researcher at the Tibetan Academy of Social Sciences in Lhasa, said most Tibetans had experienced severe oppression for a very long time, but they showed little resistance, largely because of their religious beliefs.
"They believed their current life was a punishment for bad behavior in a previous life, so they deserved to serve the masters. If they weren't willing to endure the hardship, they would continue to receive punishment in the next life," he said.
"Reform in Tibet had to come from the top. With the exception of a few aristocratic families who accumulated their wealth by becoming involved in trade with India in the early 20th century, the others had to exploit the serfs ever harder to maintain their lifestyle."
