Synopses & Reviews
This autobiography of Tashi Tsering, a Tibetan nationalist with a burning desire to reform and modernize the "old society, presents for the first time a personal portrait of Tibet that is realistic -- neither a feudal hell, as Beijing would have it, nor Shangrila, as many sympathetic outsiders would have it. Tashi's moving story, beginning with his humble early circumstances, covers his search for education in Tibet and the United States, his return to China/Tibet in early 1964, and his life in China, especially during the Cultural Revolution when he was charged as an American spy and imprisoned. After being exonerated, Tashi became professor of English at Tibet University. Now retired, he devotes all his efforts to raising funds to build rural schools in his home province, where his still illiterate relatives live.