The leading historian of modern Tibet discusses the background to recent protests on the Plateau. What has been the evolution of its culture, modern and traditional, under the impact of the PRC’s breakneck development and market reforms?
Tsering Shakya on Melvyn Goldstein et al, A Tibetan Revolutionary. Memoirs of an indigenous Lenin from the Land of Snows, and his long imprisonment by the Mao government.
In a landmark exchange, Tibet’s outstanding national historian replies to China’s dissenting writer Wang Lixiong (NLR 14), setting out his own view of Tibetan society and religion, and the PRC’s record in his country.
Breaking taboos on both sides of the conflict over Tibet, a Chinese writer within the PRC considers some of the bitter paradoxes of its history under Communist rule, and their roots in the confrontation of an alien bureaucracy and fear-stricken religion.
Henry Zhao on Herbert Batt, ed.: Tales of Tibet; and Manoa special issue: Songs of the Snow Lion. The paradoxes of an experimental joint fiction in Inner Asia.