1. The Three Lords
Leaving the Baiju Temple in the county seat of Gyantse County, I drove to The Parra Manor.
It is said that the Pala Manor is one of the twelve noble manors of the old Tibet, or the only manor house of the three lords that has been completely preserved today. In addition to the Pala estate, what are the names of the eleven other manors? Where are they? I couldn't find any information, but I saw another way of saying that the owner of the manor was one of the twelve nobles of old Tibet.
In the traditional feudal aristocratic system, the eldest and second elders can have, but the ordering outside the core is rarely done. The position of power is always changing dynamically, and from today the temple may collapse tomorrow. I think that the so-called "twelve" was obviously made up casually, and it has been falsely rumored to this day.
However, it is an indisputable fact that The Pala Manor is the only one that has survived among the thousands of aristocratic manors in old Tibet. I thought that the manor of former Vice Chairman of the National People's Congress, Ngapoi Ngawang Jigme, should always be preserved, so I checked and learned that the manor that was famous at that time was destroyed by floods decades ago. The Pala Manor is indeed the only remaining relatively complete aristocratic manor in Tibet.
The village of Ganga, where Pala Manor is located, is only one or two kilometers from the county seat. The road to the village is smooth, but the tractors and trucks have made the road full of dust and rubble.
When I arrived at the gate of the manor, I looked at the low earthen wall in front of me and was confused for a while: is this really a "big manor"? If we talk about the quality and style of architecture, we can't catch up with the newly built Tibetan courtyards in the county. Last night I spent the night in an alley in a Tibetan residential area on the outskirts of the city, and the dozens of high-walled compounds were no less than the luxury villas in the interior.
Of course, we cannot measure the past by the standard of living now. Covering an area of 5,000 square meters, the three-storey and eighty-room Pala Manor was already a top mansion in old Tibet 70 or 80 years ago. After all, Tibet at that time had a population of just over one million, less than a county in a developed southern province today, and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was the size of more than twenty Jiangsu provinces.
Before introducing the manor, let's talk about the three lords of old Tibet.
The three lords are the collective name for the upper ruling class in the old Tibetan feudal system. Historically, Tibet has long practiced a feudal serfdom in which the administration and religion are integrated, with officials, nobles, and upper-class monks of monasteries — the so-called "three lords" — and their agents controlling the political and religious power and vast majority of land and wealth in Tibet, while millions of serfs (accounting for more than 90% of The Tibetan population) are at the lower level of society, ruled by manor lords and temple monks, and very few self-employed farmers.
The owners of the Pala Manor were a prominent aristocratic family, who were said to have owned thirty-seven manors throughout Tibet at their peak, occupied 30,000 mu of arable land, and had more than 3,000 serfs under them.
The founder of the family was a monk, prosperous in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, was the most senior governor of the local government of Tibet (Kalon) of the aristocratic family, the position of power spanned religion, local and official government, so the Pala manor was called the three lords of the noble manor. Most aristocratic families are like this, in the traditional feudal system, the nobles are not only the masters of the territory, but also necessarily serve as high-ranking officials in the government, and the high-ranking monks in the temples are mostly from the children of the nobility.
2. Pala Manor
The main body of the Pala estate is a large rectangular courtyard, the layout of this courtyard is a bit strange, on one side is a staggered high and low three floors that are closed inside and out, the other three sides are a regular two-story building with an inner corridor, and the rooms on the second floor are the same size, like a hotel.
There were no other tourists in the manor, and I wandered around the unpopular old mansion alone, and it took a while to figure out the functional structure of the courtyard and the surrounding buildings.
The first floor is mainly a warehouse, and the three-sided corridor building on the second floor is the room used by butlers and attendants, including warehouses and brewing rooms. The lowest-ranking slave in the manor was not eligible to live in the courtyard. On one side of the courtyard is a relatively closed three-story building, the second floor is the Protector Shrine and the valuable warehouse, and the third floor is the living space of the owner.
The structural layout of the houses, corridors, and stairs in the owner's living area is very different from that of the mainland, and I bumped around like a headless fly inside, going around and around, going upstairs for a while, going downstairs for a while, and finally not figuring out how many rooms there were, and what was the logic of the layout.
This is an empty castle, open to outsiders, two or three floors of several rooms, displaying the old objects left by the owner, reflecting the grandeur of the great aristocratic home, although not as golden as the Potala Palace, but the interior furnishings can also be regarded as gorgeous luxury. Each room is not too big, the furniture is Tibetan style, hardwood carvings, gold and silver, brilliant and bright painted on it. Along the wall are thick card mats, covered with embroidered blankets and animal skins.
There are no Chinese and Western single double beds in Tibetan furniture, and even the nobles sleep on card cushions along the wall, according to our understanding, sleeping on the sofa.
Through the dust floating in the sunlight, I walked from one room to another, and suddenly found that there were several men and women in Tibetan clothes. When you look at it, it is a simulated doll, three women and a man playing mahjong around a square table, and next to them stands a waitress who is ready to pour tea. The room is pulled with curtains, the light is already weak, in the dim corner of this empty and deserted manor, why do you want to do such a show?
I remembered that on the Zongshan Ancient Castle in Gyantse County, there was also such a hall, black and deposed, sitting on a number of dolls with missing fingers and paint, just like shooting a horror movie. It's scary because these places don't have many visitors a day, and space is silent.
This is a mahjong room, and the tables and chairs are all Chinese style. In Tibetan furniture, there are no high square tables and backrest chairs. Interestingly, the only man statue also had a bottle of foreign wine in front of him. While drinking, I played mahjong with three women, and if it was me, my pants would lose.
The furnishings and old objects of several rooms are particularly abrupt, especially the hostess's bedroom. The painted figure paintings on the rows of cabinets are Chinese classical paintings with a clear style, which is estimated to be "The Tale of the West Chamber" and "Dream of the Red Chamber". In the glass cabinet in the corner, next to the porcelain ornaments of Fulu Shou Sanxing, there are British cans and glassware. The small bag hanging on the coat rack turned out to be "LV"?
3. The story of a hundred years ago
These furnishings are simulated from seventy or eighty years ago. Seeing all this, I also understood something.
This is the main estate of the second local Pala family, and the former is said to be more luxurious and tall, but it was destroyed by war more than a hundred years ago.
Let's turn back the clock to 1904, when the British launched the Second Invasion of Tibet in the spring of that year, and the flames of war reached the Parra Manor.
Note: The war of aggression against Tibet and the story of the hero city of Gyantse are detailed in the article "Q.37 Gyantse, the History of the Hero City and the Romance of the Red River Valley".
The Old Parra Manor, located at the forefront of Gyantse's direction to India, was also a fortified castle that the Tibetan government acquired during the war as a forward position in the defense of Gyantse. As a result, the manor was completely burned down by the British.
The war caused the Pala family to be seriously injured, and the Pala manor was rebuilt in a different place, and it took decades to gradually recover its vitality, but it was far less than before. Therefore, this last aristocratic manor in Tibet has a history of not too long, and the quality level is not the highest.
As a result of the British invasion of Tibet, China lost a large area of land originally belonging to Tibet in the southern foothills of the Himalayas, and since then the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has opened its doors, major changes have taken place in the relationship between the central and local governments, and the transformation of the old society in Tibet has begun. One of the standout signs is that the three lords begin to favor the victors. The nobles sent their children to Study in England, enjoyed imported goods from India, and the Tibetan army purchased British weapons and equipment, and the tendency to split became more and more serious.
Not surprisingly, we lost the Sino-Japanese War very badly, and the Treaty of Maguan lost power and humiliated the country, but since then Japan has vigorously cultivated Chinese students and fully supported Chinese warlords and government agents, and its sinister purpose is self-evident. The effect is also good, the number of defectors during World War II who defected to the enemy as two dogs, we are alone in the world.
On the walls of one of the houses hung photographs of the old masters, which could be seen as the work of professional photographers. The middle-aged man in the photo is dressed in a smooth and slippery head, wearing a snow-white shirt and a wool lapel bomber jacket. Only the rich appearance also highlights the characteristics of the Tibetan and Han chinese peoples.
There is no name on the photo, and it is not known which one of the Pala family is. There were not many high-ranking houses in the Pala manor, and apparently only one branch of this nobility could be accommodated. The Pala family not only has a large number of manors, but also has an official residence in Lhasa because of their high-ranking officials in the Tibetan government, and most of the members also live in the political, economic, and cultural center of Tibet, and usually only one son guards this rural manor.
The same was true of the European aristocratic families of that time, the capital was the place of service, development and enjoyment, and the ancestral castle was inhabited by the older generation and the younger son.
Standing outside the sun on the third floor of the manor, overlooking this aristocratic manor, can you imagine the situation back then?
4. Hallucination or recurrence?
Eighty years ago today, it was also such a strong sunshine. Outside the courtyard, a herd of cattle and sheep were eating grass, occasionally "mooing" twice, and on the bluestone slabs in the courtyard, there were large piles of wool drying. Several female langsheng (house slaves) dressed in black are looking down at the tapestry.
At the other end of the corridor on the second floor, two young attendants sat on the floor basking in the sun, smiling and groaning at the female slaves in the courtyard. A burst of "pedaling" footsteps came, and there was the sound of the special metal crashing. The attendants withdrew their gaze and smiled. A tall middle-aged woman dressed in a gorgeous Tibetan dress, with long braids and a large red coral on her head, turned out of the second floor of the owner's house. She had a serious face, and the large silver and bronze shining key around her waist was heavy, shaking with her master's steps, and the collision between them clanged.
This was the housekeeper, the master and the lady who trusted her most, and all the valuables of the warehouse were under her management, and all the female Langsheng were driven by her.
The housekeeper walked into a room, a special kitchen for the master's cooking, the room was mixed with smoke and steam, several maids were busy, and in the stove, the dried cow dung swallowed dark red flames.
After a while, a young maid came out, dressed in a long black dress with a black, yellow and blue checkered apron around her waist. But I saw her holding a long-billed copper pot, and walked down the side of the master's side of the building with a low brow. As she stepped up the stairs leading to the third floor, she heard the chanting of Qingyue coming from the temple of the Protector of the Dharma, which was carved in gold and hung with layers of cloth curtains, accompanied by a steady and rhythmic drum.
The maid did not stop, and she headed toward the narrow staircase leading to the third floor. Upstairs, in the small Han Chinese-style living room, the hostess was playing mahjong with several female guests, and the hot butter tea in a copper pot was about to be delivered.
Not far away, on the balcony outside the daylight, someone was bending down to pour tea, a thin man fifty miles away, with two long beards, coiled hair on the top of his head, and wearing a crimson open right-sided robe. In his hand, he holds an English porcelain teapot painted with gold on a white background, which is not filled with butter tea, but the most authentic and top-quality Darjeeling black tea. The ancestors of the Pala family lived near Darjeeling.
The orange,yellow and red tea soup was poured into a white porcelain cup on the round tea table, and the manor steward bowed down. The middle-aged man sitting in a chair in a snow-white shirt and white trousers withdrew his gaze from the snow-capped mountain in the distance, and he held up his sunglasses, reached for the teacup, and nodded to the two guests next to the coffee table.
Both were also wearing sunglasses, one fat lama in robes, the other in a blue satin robe with a green pine stone ornament pinned in a bun of hair, which was typical of the Kashag (the old Tibetan local government) chieftain's attire.
The white-robed man cleared his throat: "I heard that the envoy sent by the British has left Gyantse." ”
The expressions of the two guests changed and they were much more serious.
"It's Shigatse." The man whispered meaningfully.
"Huh?" The lama and the officials were stunned.
Is this scene an illusion of the author or a recurrence of the past?
5. The ending
Life in the manor was always slow, the work downstairs was always repeated day after day, and the changes occurred on the third floor, but they were also much slower than the times.
However, on that day, everything came to an abrupt halt and the owner of the manor followed DL to escape. This was followed by confiscation, demobilization, reform and rehabilitation. In the past few years, more than a thousand manors in Tibet have been demolished, and only this Pala manor, somehow, has been preserved and become an educational base.
Over the past sixty years, the aristocratic families of Tibet have withered away, and the old owners of the Pala estate have finally settled and died in Switzerland.
What a pity? Of course not. Why is it that a very small number of people born to be superior people can enjoy a good life? Why should a people who are dozens of times larger than them bow down and be made cattle and horses? They should be overthrown, and sooner or later they will be overthrown.
However, if the old nobility is overthrown, will a new aristocracy be born?
Social inequality is permanent, the difference is only in the middle and lower classes of the quality of life, what is the proportion of social wealth that can be occupied? This is the simplest criterion for evaluating different societies.
In the summer sun, I left the empty and cold Pala estate, left the specimen of the last noble house in Tibet, and drove into the dusty road.
The road I took was the road invaded by the British and Indian soldiers during the Second Invasion of Tibet more than a hundred years ago, and along this road for two hundred kilometers, it was the Sino-Indian border.
postscript:
It took more than half a month to squeeze out this article, not only is there no time, but the main state of mind is too poor. The reason for this is not easy to explain. Because it was written for too long, the style of this article became less like a travelogue. That's it.