My wife's grandmother's aunt (complicated, I know) passed away this week in her mid 90s. Each of the two times I have been to Yushu, she has felt like a constant amidst so much change. A tiny wrinkled constantly praying and laughing woman whose life spanned the entirety of the Ma Bufang (republican), Maoist, and Reform eras on the plateau. She lived as a farmer and a nomad, completed pilgrimages, and saw five generations of Khams pas on the plateau.
My wife had been interviewing her to write an oral history of this woman. Now she can gather no new information. In fact, when she started writing, all of her three main informants were alive and well. Now, all three have passed within a single month. As they say here after mentioning a deceased person: om mani padme
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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 |