In 1951, Tibet was peacefully liberated, and since then, Tibetan society has entered a new era, and in 1959, Tibet implemented democratic reforms, and millions of serfs shook off the shackles of serfdom and turned over to become masters of their own country.
In the dark: "Talking animals"
Before the 50s of the 20th century, it was a stagnant land. The so-called stagnation refers to time, lifestyle, class composition, and decades of continuous oppression and exploitation.
In the last years of the Qing Dynasty, Danba Badi Tusi died of illness, and his wife Bai Linam took over the post of Tu Si, however, Bai Linam's appointment did not make the rigid serfdom better, she was brutal and murderous, and in addition to the iron-fisted policy against serfs, she often robbed dignified men and imprisoned them in the official residence to play with them, but more often, if one did not go well, her lover would be killed.
Bai Linam's elder brother Iseramai raped more than 60 women, and the brother and sister forcibly seized the serfs and expropriated them violently, which was the darkest period of modern Tibet's history.
In the 40s, Wu Zhongxin, an official of the Nationalist Government, made statistics on the arable land area in Tibet, and the data showed that the arable land area was about 5 million mu, 29.5% belonged to the aristocracy, 30.9% belonged to the local government, and 39.5% belonged to the upper-class monk group, which were also called the "three major lords of Tibet". As for the peasants, they were forced to serve in the estates of the three major lords, large and small, and became serfs.
In addition to handing over most of the agricultural produce to the landlord as a Tibetan tenant farmer, he also had to perform forced labor and give gifts to all the officials who passed by.
From January to February every year, they have to send spring fertilizer; from February to April, the sheep begin to go up the mountain; from May to June, the cattle go up the mountain, and when the weather is drought, they release water to water the seedlings, repair the ridges, and prevent the embankment, and take turf fertilizer; from July to August, they begin to harvest the crops and cultivate the fallow land and autumn ploughland; in September, they drive the cattle and sheep back to the flat land, plough the fallow land, burn the mountain soil and grass into ashes and pour them into the toilet; from October to December, it is a year of severe cold, they still have to send winter fertilizer and pour winter water into the fields.
The serfs were not allowed to leave their land without the permission of the "lord", and "if they wanted to leave temporarily, they had to submit what the Tibetans called "applications," but such applications were usually not approved. Tsering Lhamo said.
In 1926, Tsering Lhamo was born in a serf family, she began to work at the age of 6, she could only eat two spoonfuls of tsampa a day, after sleeping at night, in her memory of the first ten years, the warmest place was the broken cowshed where she was born.
Tibetan serfs are divided into several categories, such as chaba, duqiao, langsheng, and fireworks. Among them, Langsheng is a domestic slave, and Tsering Ram is a Langsheng. "In old Tibet, Lang Sheng was a talking animal, hungry and frozen, and could only endure like a cow or horse. She said indignantly.
Serfs were not completely incapable of resisting, they would deliberately bury stones in the ground while ploughing, pull out or trample on crops, drunk them with turbid wine to make them unable to walk while they were on errands, or select sick and weak animals before going out to their homes, causing them to die on the way. "If we do that, we will definitely be beaten, but they will not kill us, we still have to work. After the liberation, a long-lived Tibetan man recalled that he was a child under the age of 15 when he was robbed of the estate.
In the manor, the situation of the serf is no better than that of a cow, an old ox has worked all his life, and if it falls, most of the landlords will bury it, but the serf dies, but he throws it away, and he still has a wife and children to drive. In fact, most serfs would be resold again before they died, in exchange for the last money for the landlord.
"Liberate Tibet": "Serving the Tibetan People as a Long-term Worker"
In 1950, the 18th Army issued an order to march into Lhasa. From Qamdo to Lhasa, Zhang Guohua would visit local nobles, living Buddhas, Tusi, and leaders everywhere he went, and publicize to them the purpose of the PLA, ethnic policy, and the "17-Article Agreement."
More than 2,300 miles and 19 snow-capped mountains, he bought hundreds of thousands of catties of barley and more than 10,000 heads of cattle from Tibetans, the vast majority of whom were once oppressed serfs.
Mao Zedong was a little worried, Zhang Guohua is old, and he has high blood pressure, heart disease, and other diseases, "What should you do if you go in and are kicked out again? This is entirely possible." Zhang Guohua said: "If you want to go, you will only know when you go, and if you are kicked out, you will worship again." ”
On October 26, 1951, the main force of the 18th Army arrived in Lhasa, and thus the mainland was completely liberated. Zhang Guohua, with his bloodshot eyes open, looked at the majestic Potala Palace, and actually cried, and said to his entourage: "I, Zhang Guohua, have come to work for the Tibetan people for a long time. ”
They distributed rice, canned food, and biscuits to the Tibetan compatriots who had crossed thousands of mountains and rivers, while Zhang Guohua and his troops chose to blend in with the local area, eating boiled barley and peas, and grinding their own coarse glutinous rice.
"How can it be so delicate, people Tibetans eat it like this. Zhang Guohua was full of illness, ate and worked with the little soldiers, and worked day and night, for fear of fulfilling the promise of "being a long-term worker".
However, the so-called "such food" of Tibetans was limited to exploited peasants, and during the most turbulent period in Tibet, the landlords also ate meat and drank wine, and tasted the fruits and vegetables brought back by serfs.
"Man with a capital letter": serfs turned into masters
In 1959, when the democratic reform was implemented, Tsering Lhamo's family of three was given land, a house and sheep.
But because they were the lord's family slaves, the mutual aid group was reluctant to accept them at first, but Tsering Lhamo refused to admit defeat, "We have turned over now, others can do it, why can't we do it?"
Since then, the former "Langsheng" led 11 households to form an agricultural production mutual aid group, their working tools are three old wooden ploughshares, two old ploughshares, people call it "poor stick mutual aid group", and finally, everyone worked together to make it the earliest model mutual aid group to achieve poverty alleviation and prosperity.
And Tsering Lhamo has also won the "National 38 Red Flag Bearer", "National Model Worker" and other advanced titles, "If there is no party, I will be a hard-working Langsheng all my life." Tsering Ram said with tears in his eyes.
How much does the word "liberation" weigh?
When she was born with her tongue cut off and her deaf ears pierced, a clean girl who had never been loved, when she was 16 years old, chiseled her skull and poured mercury into her body.
As mercury fills the body, the girl's skin is peeled off in whole pieces to make a human skin drum before she loses consciousness, which is used as an important tool for Tibetan lamas in their rituals. The parents of the girls who were chosen not only did not feel a little sad, but also felt a great honor.
This is the Tibetan "human skin drum" that once shocked for a while. With the founding of the People's Republic of China, this cruel form of sacrifice was also abolished.
But those girls who had suffered the pain of their skin and were made into drums alive tasted that life was worse than death before they died. In the face of such a painful and terrible encounter, why did these girls never run away? Why did such a cruel and bloody form of sacrifice arise during the period of serfdom in Tibet?
A 16-year-old girl made of human skin as a sacrificial weapon
Before the founding of the People's Republic of China, Tibet was in a stage of ignorance and backwardness for a long time. For them, offering sacrifices to the gods became an extremely important and sacred activity. In the sacrificial activities, an indispensable ritual instrument is the "human skin drum".
The main material of the drum is the human skin of a 16-year-old girl, and in order to find a pure, unpolluted human skin, the Tibetan lama will go to all the poor and humble serf families, and select girls with beautiful faces and fair complexions from among the babies who have just learned to walk and cannot speak.
The girl chosen for the sacrifice will endure the first extremely cruel and painful torture - piercing her ears and breaking her tongue.
The Tibetan lamas believe that the world is filthy and that the instruments used for sacrifice will become unclean if they hear filthy swearing. Even if the girls had normal hearing and speech abilities, their tongues were brutally cut out and their ears pierced. The whole procedure does not involve any anesthetic.
No matter how much the girls scream and scream, they can't escape the pain of having their tongues cut out alive. As the wounds healed, their world fell silent forever, they could not hear a single swear word, and their minds and bodies became infinitely pure.
Strangely, when the girls were cut out of their tongues and pierced in their ears with sharp weapons, their parents were not only saddened, but also proud. The child chose to make the human skin drum, which is a supreme honor for the whole family!
In addition to eating clean food, the girls are also asked to apply a special potion on their backs. This will make their skin more elastic and make the sound of the drum more ethereal. In order to maintain holiness, girls are even more forbidden to have sexual affairs.
And that's just the first step for the girls to be made into adult drums. When they reach the age of 16 in the silent world, they will be stripped of their entire skin alive, in an extremely cruel way, until the last inch of skin is peeled off, and the girl's consciousness is completely awake, but she is firmly imprisoned, maintaining a very reverent movement, unable to make any resistance.
The lama would first cut a small hole in the girl's skull, and pour mercury into it little by little through the hole, filling the gaps in the skull, and then entering the blood vessels, intestines, and every nerve ending. The girls screamed in horror like never before, and the lamas had long been surprised.
In their eyes, the life of a little girl is far less important than a delicate and sacred "human skin drum".
When mercury fills every crevice in the girl's body, the whole human skin will be removed with a gentle flick and become the main ingredient for making the "human skin drum". Girls without skin will also be knocked off the skull, which is relatively glued to the main body of the drum, which looks like an "8" in appearance. The leg bones are separated and made into drumsticks.
Under the serfdom of the old Tibetan society, people firmly believed that beating the "human skin drum" in the sacrificial activities could help people's souls transcend life and death, break free from reincarnation, and obtain ultimate salvation.
There is also a terrifying legend about the human skin drum.
Horror Legend: Sister Drum
In a poor family on the Tibetan plateau, a pair of twin sisters were born, and the elder sister was born deaf and mute, and was directly taken away by the lama who chose to be the material for the human skin drum.
Although the two sisters have never met, the younger sister has asked her mother where her sister has gone every day since she can remember. According to the lama's explanation, his parents didn't say a word about his sister's skin drum.
But my sister always felt that something was wrong, and when she grew up, she climbed up the mountain every day and shouted at her sister in the open mountains. Once when I ran to the market, my sister seemed to be able to hear her sister's singing, but the sound seemed to be far away in the sky, and she couldn't see or touch it.
My sister walked down in despair and met an old man. The old man silently recited the six-character mantra and closed her eyes and said that she did have a sister, but she had been made into a "human skin drum". The vague singing she heard was made by beating the "human skin drum" during the sacrifice.
After listening to this, my sister cried sadly, and it turned out that her ears caught the distant singing, which was the response of my sister to her sister's hard work on the other side of the world.
Later, this legend was compiled into a song, and the name was "Sister Drum". One of them sings, "Sister Ah has never met, and she went to the edge of the world when she was born......"
Although the legend of the Sister Drum has not been verified in detail in the literature. But the real human skin drum is on display in the Tibetan Museum, and it is accompanied by instructions for making it. In addition to the human skin drum, there are also thangkas (a kind of religious scroll painting) made of human skin, which is even more bloody, which shows the cruelty and horror of the Tibetan society in the old society.
In the entire feudal environment, even if the girls wanted to run away to survive, there was no chance of escape. From the day the girl was chosen by the lama, she completely lost her personal freedom and was destined to die a tragic death.
Especially in poor and low-income serf families, a girl may not be as valuable as a yak. In Tibet, some aristocrats also enjoy the strange right of the first night. Those girls who were lucky not to be selected as "human skin drums" did not suffer much better. When they reach marriageable age, they are most likely sent to the homes of nobles to give their first time.
Tibetan serfdom was abolished, and women were emancipated
But this extremely unequal and bloody way of sacrifice was quickly abolished with the founding of New China and the entry of the army into Tibet, and the poor girls finally escaped the sea of suffering.
In October 1950, the People's Army entered the Tibetan areas in a unified manner. In 1951, the Tibetan people were completely liberated, and those Tibetan serfs who had been oppressed for thousands of years finally turned over and became masters, and their waists stood up for the first time. The "human skin drum" sacrifice that lasted for thousands of years was directly abolished and became history forever.
Nowadays, in some museums in Tibet, you can still vaguely see the exhibition and explanation of the "human skin drum", which is more like the innocent girls' blood and tears of indictment of sad fate, and it is also a shameful testimony to the ignorant sacrificial system in Tibet.
Cutting out tongues, stabbing deaf ears, knocking open skulls, pouring mercury, this unimaginable cruel way of sacrificial sacrifice, I hope it can stay in the past forever, be sealed by history, and no innocent girl will fall into the abyss.
(Source: Bai Xiaosheng talks about the history of the WeChat public account.) Thanks to the original author, just for knowledge sharing. ）