The Changing Peasant: Part 2: the Uprooted
19791No. 41 by Richard Critchfield The Changing Peasant Asia [ RC-4-'793 Part II: The Uprooted Theirs is the true lost horizon. Whatever their number, most jutting rocks of shale, schist, and Tibetans are nomadic shepherds limestone. Tibet is the source of all The Tibetan homeland is still so who live in yak-hair tents and move the great rivers of Asia: the Sutlej remote, unmapped, unsurveyed, about much of the year in search of and Indus, the Ganges and and unexplored that in 1979 less is grass for their large herds of yaks, Brahmaputra, the Salween, known about its great Chang Tang sheep, goats, and horses. Aside Yangtze, and Mekong. Violent plateau and Himalayan-high from Lhasa (population 50,000) and gales, dust storms, and icy winds mountain ranges than is known some town-like monasteries, before blow almost every day. about the craters of the moon. the Chinese occupation almost no Until the Chinese occupation the human habitations existed; the Tibet remains a mystery. wheel, considered sacred, was Tibetan herdsman's life, like that of never used: horses, camels, yaks, the Arab Bedouin, revolves around sheep, and men provided the only It is now 29 years since Mao Tse- his livestock, their wool for clothing tung's armies invaded what had transport over rugged tracks and and shelter and their meat and milk precarious bridges spanning deep almost always been an independent for food. sovereign country and declared it an narrow gorges. Even the way of autonomous area within the The Tibetans are racially and death was harsh, the bodies being People's Republic of China.
[Show full text]