Home
Letters to Editor
Domestic
World
Business & Trade
Culture & Science
Travel
Society
Government
Opinions
Policy Making in Depth
People
Investment
Life
Books/Reviews
News of This Week
Learning Chinese
Former Serf Happy With Life in Tibet Today

Lobsang, a former Tibetan serf who began to drive a donkey-drawn wagon for a feudal lord at the age of 15, is satisfied with his life which has been getting better "day by day" since the democratic reform in Tibet in 1959.

"We lived a dog's life under the rule of the Dalai Lama. Now we're the master of Tibet, and our life is improving day by day," said 63-year-old Lobsang, who is here attending the on-going annual session of China's top legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC), as a deputy.

More and more Tibetan people have come to see the true color of the Dalai Lama and his clique, he said, adding "None of us is willing to return to the dark days."

Lobsang recalled the day his father was beaten to death by the feudal lord, or serf owner, simply because he could not repay 36 kg of grain owed to the lord. Lobsang was 12 years old that year.

The former serf is now head of a neighborhood committee in a residential quarter at the foot of the Potala Palace. There are 1,800 people living in Lobsang's residential quarter, one of the 28 residential areas in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region.

The residents live in two- or three-storeyed Tibetan style houses built at the expense of the local government and have access to power and tap water supply and paved roads.

"Some places around our houses are as beautiful as in Beijing,"he said.

He said 550 of the 1,800 residents work for a dozen enterprises each with an annual income of more than seven million yuan (US$840,000), and 300 more others run their own businesses, with 23 of them engaged in transportation with their own motor vehicles.

"The per capita net income of the people in my neighborhood is 3,900 yuan (US$470) a year, 99 percent of the families have TV sets, and 40 percent of them have access to telephone and mobile communications service," Lobsang said.

The primary school in the neighborhood, with 1,100 students, is the biggest in Lhasa, and all the kids of school age there have access to schooling. As it is in other schools in Lhasa, the children learn Tibetan and Chinese languages as well as English.

According to Lobsang, some of his neighbors have relatives living abroad. Every time they return from trips to see their overseas relatives, they say the living conditions of their relatives are far poorer than in Tibet and many of them want to get back.

"The people in my neighborhood are disgusted with the Dalai Lama's claim that the life is not good in Tibet today," Lobsang said. "They say the so-called independence the Dalai Lama has been advocating is not for the Tibetan people, but for the serf owners."

(Xinhua News Agency March 11, 2002)

Tibet Chairman Hits out at Separatism
Tibet Improves Social Security System
The Real Tibet
Urbanization Arrives in Tibet
Tibet's Senior Citizens to Live Happier Life
Surf Tibet on the Web
"Roof of the World"
Congress in Session
China's Tibet
Copyright © China Internet Information Center. All Rights Reserved
E-mail: webmaster@china.org.cn Tel: 86-10-68996214/15/16