KEY POINTS:
The BBC television series that this book accompanies has caused a fair amount of controversy in print and online in Britain. On a number of blogs, pro-Tibetan independence campaigners and pro-Chinese writers have used the five-part documentary as a starting point for arguments around the big questions of Tibetan autonomy and Chinese oppression. Those on the side of the Tibetans accuse the programme makers and the BBC of failing to address the subjugation of Tibetans by China. There has been a lot of anger about the programme's treatment of the Panchen Lama, a high-level Tibetan spiritual leader - second only to the Dalai Lama - who, many Tibetans believe, is a Chinese proxy for the Dalai Lama's own choice, a six-year-old child who disappeared with his family in 1995.
The Panchen Lama pays a visit to the Gyantse monastery in the series, and some critics have suggested that by not adequately detailing how he came to power, the BBC is complicit in Chinese corruption and tyranny. Others say the BBC has created a piece of pro-Chinese propaganda and that controls on media activity in Tibet are such that no documentary openly made there (like this one) would ever be allowed to reflect real life in Tibet accurately.
Naturally the pro-Chinese bloggers disagree. The recent Dispatches programme on Britain's Chan-nel 4, Undercover in Tibet, included secretly filmed interviews with people who claimed they'd been illegally interned, tortured or forcibly sterilised, as well as disturbing footage of China's overwhelming military presence.
The intentions of A Year in Tibet are different. Sun Shuyun, the location producer who made the programmes and lived in a Tibetan community for a year to do so, and who then wrote this book, is clear that her project is anthropological. Her agenda, for better or worse, is not particularly political. It is almost certainly true that Shuyun's filming would have been closely monitored. It is also true that she is Chinese and was leading a mixed crew of Chinese and Tibetans. This raises a set of questions about the extent to which programme makers and organisations such as the BBC have a responsibility to tell the whole story, rather than just the bits they choose or are easily able to.
If the recent riots in Tibet had not taken place, or the travelling circus that was the progress of the Olympic torch hadn't drawn further attention, it's unlikely that A Year in Tibet would be widely seen as anything other than a charming look at ordinary Tibetan life, rather than as an irresponsible sop to Chinese sensibilities. Shuyun admits that her book allows her to be much more nuanced and detailed than films can. Presumably she is freer to speak her mind in print now that she is out of Tibet, so she does discuss the Panchen Lama in greater detail than in the programme, as well as broader concerns such as poverty and the appalling standard of healthcare available to Tibetan communities; prohibitively expensive for the majority who are subsistence farmers, wrenching a living from the high-altitude arable land that makes up less than 1 per cent of Tibet's territory.
Precisely because of her anthropological bent, Shuyun only discusses these things in as much as they are relevant to the families she spent the year following: a shaman and his family, monks at Gyantse monastery, a very poor rickshaw driver, a Communist party worker, a builder, a doctor and a hotel manager. When the shaman is asked to assess a couple's suitability for marriage, Shuyun learns that the bride will be told she is getting married only on her wedding day and that she will probably have to marry the groom's school-age younger brother because traditionally most Tibetan brothers share their wives in a very literal fashion. So it is only then that she writes about the paradoxical status of women in Tibet, as both revered and as chattels.
Similarly, a death in one of the villages they film in prompts Shuyun to address "sky burials", a method of disposing of corpses that has left Tibetans with a long-standing reputation for savagery. Bodies are dismembered and ritually fed to vultures, which is seen as the only way to ensure the soul is correctly released. This is also sensible in a land where the earth is frozen solid half the time and precious diggable land is used to grow food. Throughout A Year in Tibet, it is experiences like these, at the micro level, that intrigue Shuyun. Yes, the book could be more political, but it would be wrong to suggest that it should be. Censored or not, it is still an enlightening look at one of the least known peoples on the planet.
A Year in Tibet: A voyage of discovery
By Sun Shuyun (HarperCollins $34.99, released Sept 1)
- OBSERVER
