About the Book
Forbidden Memory: Tibet during the Cultural Revolution provides a glimpse of the history of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the Tibetan Region through the power of never-before-seen photographs, detailed interviews, and cultural analysis. The Chinese Cultural Revolution arrived in Tibet in July 1966. Upon its arrival, monasteries were systematically destroyed and libraries were looted, rare books and paintings burned. Buddhist scriptures were used as wrapping paper and the Dalai Lama was declared a criminal. Long veiled in mystery, the events that took place five decades ago on the snowy plateaus of Tibet are known to few outsiders. Under the guise of "national unity" and modern civilization," Chinese authorities have managed to cover up their reign of terror on the Tibetan plateau. Forbidden Memory: Tibet during the Cultural Revolution provides a glimpse of the history of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the Tibettan Region through the power of never-before-seen photographs, detailed interviews, and cultural analysis. Denouncing the Chinese government's invasion of Tibet, writer and activist Tsering Woeser refects deeply on the ethnic character and cultural traditions of Tibet. The collection of photographs in Forbidden Memory were taken by Woeser's father, and reveal how the Chinese government transformed the once-secluded Buddhist state into a hell on earth - sacred temples demolished, cultural artifacts destroyed, monks and nuns humiliated and beaten, and formidable processions of troops, bedecked with flags and banners and they march through the mountains. Tsering Woeser's Forbidden Memory brings an end to the silence with an honest look at the disturbing history of Tibet in the latter half of the twentieth century. AUTHOR: Tsering Woeser is a poet, essayist, and blogger and one of the most prominent voices of the Tibetan independence movement. Two of her books have been published in English, Tibet on Fire: Self-Immolations against Chinese Rule and Voices from Tibet: Selected Essays and Reportage. Woeser has received the Prince Claus Award and the U.S. Department of State's International Women of Courage Award. She lives under close surveillance in Beijing. 345 photographs
Table of Contents:
Foreword
Wang Lixiong
A Note on the Photographs
Tsering Woeser
Defining Revolution: A Note on the Word Shajie
Tsering Woeser
Introduction
Robert Barnett
A Note on the English Edition
Robert Barnett and Susan T. Chen
I. Smash the Old Tibet! The Cultural Revolution Arrives On the Eve of Revolution
The Sacking of the Jokhang
The Red Guards in Lhasa Take Action How Was the Jokhang Sacked? The Red Guards from Mainland China
The Aftermath of the Sacking of the Jokhang
Who Is to Be Blamed?
After the Sacking Denouncing the Ox-Demon-Snake-Spirits
Ox-Demon-Snake-Spirits in Tibet The Diversification of Activists
Rule by Intimidation: Life Under the Neighborhood Committees Changing Names
The Barkor Becomes “Establish-the-New Avenue” The Norbulingka Is Changed to the “People’s Park”
Renaming Chagpori as “Victory Peak”
II. Civil War among the Rebels: “Whom to Trust-The Faction Decides!” The Two Main Rebel Factions: Key Facts
Factional Ideologies: Fighting over the Same Idea A Rivalry of Blood and Fire
The Dust Settles
III. The Dragon Takes Charge: The People’s Liberation Army in Tibet Military Rule
The People’s Liberation Army in Tibet Conflicts within the Military
The Passionate Dedication of the Military Propaganda Teams Everyone a Soldier: The Tibetan Militia
IV. Mao’s New Tibet: Revolutionary Violence and Destruction The Revolutionary Committees
The People’s Communes
Installing a New God
V. Coda: The Wheel Turns The Karmic Debt
Postscript: Forty-Six Years Later Return to Lhasa
Forty-Six Years Later
Appendix: Jampa Rinchen’s Testimony
Glossary of Chinese and English Terms
Glossary of Tibetan Terms
Notes
References
About the Author :
Tsering Woeser is a Tibetan poet and essayist. She is the most prominent commentator on the Tibet issue still living within China and has written twenty-one books in Chinese, with eighteen translations of her work published in nine other languages, including Voices from Tibet,Tibet on Fire, and two others in English. Woeser has received the Prince Claus Award from the Netherlands and the U.S. Department of State’s International Women of Courage Award. She lives under close surveillance in Beijing. Tsering Dorje (1937–91) was a Tibetan officer in the People’s Liberation Army who served in Tibet during the Cultural Revolution. Robert Barnett is a leading scholar of modern Tibetan history and politics who founded and directed the Modern Tibetan Studies program at Columbia from 2000 until 2017. His books include Lhasa: Streets with Memories, and he is currently a professorial research associate at SOAS, University of London. Susan T. Chen is a longtime collaborator with Tsering Woeser and translator of her work. She received her PhD in contemporary Tibetan culture from Emory University and is visiting assistant professor of history at Wingate University in North Carolina.
Review :
"[Forbidden Memory is] one of the most important books on Tibet during the final years of the Mao era. . . . This new edition, translated fluidly by Susan T. Chen, comes with an elegantly crafted, informative yet concise editor’s introduction by Robert Barnett, a leading scholar of and public commentator on contemporary Tibet. . . . With yet another grand experiment spiraling into tragedy, it is valuable to have accounts like these that help us understand how a notable precursor imploded."-Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Wall Street Journal "Forbidden Memory is essential reading for popular and scholarly audiences interested in Chinese and Tibetan history, and it is an arresting resource for introducing students at all levels to the complexities of the Cultural Revolution."-Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa, China Review International "Forbidden Memory is a beautiful book as well as an important contribution to the historiography of Tibet."-Economist "In lucid, engaging prose interspersed with her own insights, Woeser highlights how the Cultural Revolution shaped the contours of Tibet’s negotiation with communist China. Her account is a powerful, nuanced argument against the popular perception that Tibetans strongly resisted Beijing’s secularisation and sinicising policies."-Ajay Singh, South China Morning Post “Forbidden Memory is an extraordinary and unique record of events in Tibet in the 1960s, when Tibetan intellectuals, lamas, and officials were publicly humiliated by Communist Party activists and their supporters, and is an account of the disastrous push for communalization that followed. Woeser’s thoughtful and nuanced reflections on her interviews with Tibetans and Chinese involved in those events should be read by anyone seeking to fathom the thinking, motives, and in some cases-acute regrets-of former participants in extreme political violence and mob justice.”-Tsering Shakya, Canada Research Chair in Religion and Contemporary Society in Asia, University of British Columbia and author of The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947 “Through her books, poetry, and blogs, Tsering Woeser has been for many years one of the world’s most reliable and eloquent sources of information about Tibet. Now it turns out that her father, Tsering Dorje, an officer in the Peoples’ Liberation Army who died in 1991, had left a hidden treasure-a cache of rare photographs of the Cultural Revolution in Tibet. Realizing that these photographs document events from the 1960s that the Chinese Communist Party has tried to obliterate from recorded history, Woeser has used them to start to fill in the blanks. They are all the more precious as presented in this volume with the expert commentary of Tsering Woeser and the leading Tibet scholar Robert Barnett.”-Barbara Demick, author of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea and Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town “Tsering Woeser has long been among the most prominent, thoughtful, and courageous of Tibetan public intellectuals and independent voices within China. Now, thanks to the efforts of Robert Barnett and Susan Chen, her groundbreaking work on the Cultural Revolution in Tibet, Forbidden Memory, has been made available to an English-speaking audience. Featuring remarkable photographs taken by her father, and based, in part, on extensive interviews with participants and witnesses, Forbidden Memory not only chronicles the events of the Cultural Revolution and documents the abuses committed during the campaign against Tibetans and their heritage. It should be required reading for anyone interested in understanding how the memory of the violence of the Maoist period, rarely voiced in public, continues to hamper the state’s efforts to integrate Tibetans and other ethnic minorities into the modern Chinese nation.”-Benno Weiner, associate professor of Chinese history at Carnegie Mellon University and author of The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan Frontier.
