Ok, so I know I promised a post on the Horse Ears Monastery in Yushu (don't worry it's coming) but the summer has been sort of out of control so I'm writing this post to fill the gap. I'll try to post about Horse Ears tomorrow, before heading to the countryside for about a week.
In the meantime, a recent conversation has led me to ask the following question: what are the qualities of a good leader. Jim Collins in his "Good to Great" suggests a combination of determination and selflessness. I personally agree. But even in the west we generally don't look for this. We look for someone charismatic, or larger than life. Here in C, it is still different. There's a distrust of the larger-than-life, charismatic type of person. Those people generally cause social unrest (see the Taiping Rebellion during the Qing among others). Even when that unrest causes lasting change (Mao) the legacy such a leader leaves behind is often somewhat ambivalent. Recently though, I've been looking at the physical characteristics of leaders. And one of the most striking differences to me between Western views of leaders and the leaders in this country has to do with hair. That's right. Hair. Leaders in the west are supposed to have a little bit of gray. It suggests wisdom, experience, knowledge. There are some notable exceptions (like JFK or first-term Obama, the latter has been increasingly gray though), but in general, the leaders of the Western world are supposed to look like they've seen things. In this country, one sees that leaders almost all (uniformly) dye their hair black. Why is this? I'm not entirely sure, and what follows is a discussion of my opinions (these are not facts, and I have nothing other than time spent here to back up these opinions) of why this might be. I encourage anyone who reads these posts (you perhaps happy few) to chime in. My take runs roughly as follows: elders are of retirement age, they are to be looked after, and cared for in their old age by their filial children, not taking the reigns of the state. I noticed that when my mother was here (and she is not particularly old, by US standards) she was frustrated by how often people asked her to sit down and NOT do any work, and to let the young people do it all. The same reverence that old age brings also seems to imply a sense of distrust and weakness. Even after retirement, (former) leaders will often continue dying their hair (like my father in law) seemingly to avoid this very stigma. This is perhaps most interesting when contrasted with some of my sickly looking students who, at the youthful age of a 13 already has more grey in his hair than I do. I gather that this is most likely due to a combination of poor diet, and insane study habits forced on them by their parents. Personally, remembering how cruel middle schoolers can be, I would rather see that child dye his hair than all the leaders, but this is just me talking. While perhaps not fully able to live up to the promising title of this post, I think that this difference (something so trivial-seeming as hair!) does provide an interesting way of approaching some of divergent understandings of peoples' roles and expectations in our cultures.
0 Comments
Many apologies, friends, but this period of time has been too busy and I have yet to find a time to complete a new blog post. In the meantime, please enjoy this nerd humor: Explanation: par means 'photo'. gyi is a classical Tbtn imperative. 'o marks full stops. Par gyi'o therefore can be read by some creative nerds, as "take a photo" which I duly did. In reality, this was the end of a series of rocks spanning the length of that particular valley all etched with a syllable or two of a scripture. In total, an entire scripture was carved. I only saw fit to photograph the final two as they served my purpose best. The prayer ends with shog par gyi'o, which is sort of like an imperative and is used to invoke blessings to come.
I know I've been a little slow to get posts online, and for this I apologize. It has been a busy time, not least because many of my expatriate friends (and I didn't have many to begin with, so, almost all) are leaving. Nonetheless, I'd like to continue my Yushu trip reflections today with a discussion of Nangchen. I'm doing this somewhat out of order, since Nangchen was actually at the beginning of the trip and Jiegu at the end, but I hope that you'll bear with me. Nangchen is a fascinating region historically, religiously, and geographically (to the extent that one can separate the three). First of all, this county boasts some of the most brilliant scenery I have ever seen on the plateau. The first few days of my research journal are filled with panegyrics about verdant slopes giving way suddenly to rocky peaks jutting up from the sea of green like a whale suddenly breaking through the waves on the open sea. After a few days, however, I slowly ceased writing about the scenery as I grew accustomed to it. It ceased to amaze, gradually becoming the rule rather than the exception. Andreas Grüschke writes a nice introduction to the region's politics and history, and if you'd like to get your hands on that, I'd be happy to make a PDF and send it to you. The name "Nang chen" literally means "Inner big" and is a shortening of the original title of the first Nangchen king who, during the Tbtn imperial era, was called Nang blon chen po 'the Great Interior Minister.' For centuries after the dynasty's collapse, his descendants ruled more-or-less independent kingdom . I say "more-or-less," because a brief perusal of the limited historical resources available to me suggests that the kingdom was not particularly isolated from the winds of dynastic change. Even though technically under the control of the Xining Amban after 1731, the kingdom was often, it seems, caught between two masters (one in what is now the TAR, and the other that is now the capitol of this country). At the same time, however, it should be recognized that these two "masters" were fairly hands-off, and the kings seem to have operated with relatively little input from those same powers. Further complicating this situation was the fact that the relatively 'hands-off' approach of those two powers meant that the Nangchen kings often seem to have gone to one of the two strategically, positioning themselves closer to one rather than the other only temporarily and tenuously for their own, personal, benefit. One C-language history of the plateau's various "tribes" describes several generations of the Nangchen kings collecting stamps and letters from both L-h-@-s-@ and Beijing, which suggests that they were not truly independent from anybody, but being a region that was both physically distant from all the major political power centers of the town, and cut off from those regions by a daunting array of natural barrier was frequently left alone as long as it paid its taxes. This is not to say that the region was free of strife. Mongol soldiers were stationed in the area at different times, and in the 1930s, during the Qinghai-Tbtn war, Soldiers from lh@s@ were sent to the region to fight the forces of Ma Bufang. Some families in Yushu (and they are called Bod dmag 'Tbtn soldiers') can trace their family histories to different parts of the TAR. Religiously, one could argue that many of the same issues apply to the region's religious history, in which first Bka' rgyud pa and later Sa skya pa sects of Tbtn Buddhism were and remain the primary sects in the area. Bka' rgyud pa Buddhism was supported by the Nangchen king, while Sa skya pa Buddhism reportedly owes its foothold in the area to the efforts of a Sa skya pa monk who visited the area during the Yuan dynasty named 'Phags pa (a key counselor to Kublai Khan's court and the creator of of the 'Phags pa script). In fact, Schneiderman (in her 2010 article on whether or not the Central Himalayas should be including in Zomia) points out that many of the non-hegemonic sects appear to have fled to the margins and the mountainous regions that were harder to penetrate, while Dge lugs pa sect Buddhism remained very powerful in lower-elevation regions like A mdo and the TAR. Our trip to the area was designed to take in a bit of the region's historical, religious, and ecological peculiarities. Religiously, we visited 'Gar Dgon pa, and Tshe bcu dgon pa. 'Gar dgon pa is located atop a cliff overlooking a beautiful national forest. We had a meeting with the monastery's resident sprul sku (often called a tulku), who, even when confronted with several devout followers, was more interested in me, and asking particuarly if I had had an audience with 'Gar sprul sku, the primary sprul sku of the monastery, though I gather that he is not resident in this fine country. I have some stunning images from this monastery (two of the better ones are below). The monastery itself had little to see, but it was a beautiful place. WILDLIFE Politically and historically, the region still retains a memory of the lineage of the Nangchen kings and their history, and we went searching for this at Tshe bcu dgon pa (Tshe bcu Monastery). Tshe bcu monastery was once the family monastery of the Nangchen kings, boasts a reasonably large pile of Mani stones, and the last remaining "walls" of the Nangchen king's former palace. It was our good luck to meet a monk at this place who happened to know a good deal about Tshe bcu Monastery's history and relation with the Nangchen kings. He even was able to show us an image of a drawing he had made under an old bla ma's supervision, and opened a special little temple in which several images of the last king and a reliquary are available. It was also mentioned that several of the Nangchen king's descendants live in the area. I found out that one of my acquaintances is actually descended from that lineage. He said that when he was young, his grandmother (who was directly descended) was often treated like royalty in the area. Now that she has passed beyond suffering, people don't pay him any special attention. The third element, geography, will have to be relegated to another post. The trip to Rta sna Monastery took us through perhaps some of the most stunning landscapes I've ever seen, but this post has already gone on long enough.
COMING NEXT: the Horse Ears Monastery, and wildlife... In a conversation today, a friend was suffering from the hiccups. He suggested that there were two cures to hiccups:
1) Scare the person 2) The person should think about something very deeply. They'll come to a sudden realization which will get rid of the hiccups The first is no new remedy, but the second is fascinating. |
About TimAs you can see elsewhere on this webpage, I conduct research on ethnic minorities in western China. This blog offers semi-academic musings on the minutiae of daily life out here--the sort of information otherwise destined for footnotes. Categories |