Ge Gele, the first Tibetan doctor in New China: I have had two mothers in my life
Chengdu, September 10 (China News Network) "This year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, and I have had two mothers in my life, one is my mother, Meadowlatso, and the other is the mother who nurtured me to grow and grow and make me a Marxist Tibetologist - the Chinese Communist Party. Ge Ge, former deputy director general of the China Tibetology Research Center and professor of Southwest University for Nationalities, said in a recent interview with a reporter from China News Network that to be a true Marxist Tibetologist, we should highlight academic research to serve reality like Marx, and strive to combine the topics, contents, directions, and scope of our research with the long-term peace and stability, high-quality development, and modernization construction of Tibet and other Tibet-related areas.
Greco at work. Photo by Zhang Lang
Geller was the first doctor of anthropology and Tibetan doctor in New China. Over the years, with the heart of a child, he traveled west to Ali, north to the grasslands of northern Tibet, south to the Shannan region, which is known as the "cradle of the origin of the Tibetan nation", east to Qamdo and the Tibetan Autonomous Prefectures of Yunnan, Qinghai, and Gansu provinces, and in addition to publishing a large number of academic monographs related to Tibet, he also published academic essays such as "The Place where the Moon Sinks in the West -- A Side Note on the Fieldwork of Ali in Tibet" and other prose works.
In the 1940s, Geller was born in a remote village in Ganzi County, Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province. He had never seen his father, and he was dependent on his mother and two older sisters. This family, which had no adult men, was the lowest level of the serfs, the "Langsheng", who was regarded by the nobles as "talking beasts". As the only male in the family, Geller is the hope of his mother Meadowlatso.
Geller recalled that he had no tile land on his home, no inch of land to plant, and lived at the bottom of society. Although his mother struggled to read and write or have a future since he was a child, it was not until the democratic reform of his hometown in 1956 that his hometown first opened the first primary school funded by the people's government under the leadership of the Communist Party of China.
Talking about the changes in education in his hometown today, Geller said happily that there are now primary schools and kindergartens in the townships and townships of Sichuan's ethnic minority areas, and students can receive modern education at the "doorstep" and more and more excellent teachers. "In 2004, I began to serve as a doctoral supervisor at southwest Minzu University, with doctoral students, of which more than one-third of Tibetan doctoral students, in the past two years, I have also discovered a new phenomenon, that is, Tibetan doctoral students can write papers in Tibetan and defend their papers, which is the concrete embodiment of the implementation of the ethnic policy of our party and state."
After receiving his ph.D. in anthropology with honors from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, Geller was invited to the China Tibetology Research Center, a national authority on Tibetan studies in China, to engage in research on Tibetan society, culture and economy.
During this period, Geller served as a member of the leading group and deputy leader of the investigation team for the national project "The Social Form of Feudal Serfdom in Tibet", and he led the team to go deep into the agricultural and pastoral areas of Tibet for many times, conducted field investigations, and completed a series of scientific investigation reports that were considered "weighty" by experts. Among them, after the publication of "Herdsmen in Northern Tibet" (co-authored by four people), it has received extremely high praise in the Tibetan and social anthropology circles at home and abroad, and professor Chie Nakane, a world-renowned Japanese social anthropologist, believes that "'Herdsmen of Northern Tibet' is the best book to study Tibetan society from an anthropological point of view so far."
GeLe introduced that from the beginning of its establishment, in order to implement the spirit of the central government on protecting the excellent traditional culture of the Tibetan people, the China Tibetology Research Center has devoted a lot of energy to collecting, sorting out, and studying Tibetan literature and archives.
Grad and his students. Photo courtesy of Geller
Soon after its establishment in 1986, the China Tibet Research Center undertook the task of collating and publishing the Great Tibetan Classic, and set up a special working body in Chengdu, the "Great Tibetan Classic" Survey Bureau. According to Geller, this is the largest, most complete, most systematic, and most authoritative survey and publication of the Great Tibetan Classics in history, including 4842 copies of the Kangyur and Tengyur, "We can proudly say that this is also the most complete version of the surviving Great Tibetan Classics."
GeLe introduced that since China's reform and opening up, the number of scholars and tourists from Western countries who have traveled to Tibet or made field trips from the West to Tibet is limited, and not many people have really understood the actual situation in Tibet. As an anthropologist who likes fieldwork, he had the opportunity to be invited to more than a dozen Western developed countries to carry out academic exchanges and introduce the great changes that have taken place in China's Tibet-related areas and Tibetan people's lives after the founding of New China, especially since the reform and opening up.
As a Tibetan researcher in new China, Geller proudly said that he retired but did not "fade". In recent years, he has still worked hard in the field of Tibetan studies, and in order to cultivate more Marxist Tibetan researchers, he has continued to stand on the podium and become a Tibetan researcher of the party who will always exert his residual heat. (End)
Source: China News Network