CHINA, NATIONAL, MINORITIES, SOCIETY, Being Tibetan at BFSU
By Shi Rui
When their peers are worried about what to eat at noon, what to wear to the party, several Tibetan girls have already considered their future and their people's future a thousand times.
On their way to the dining hall, some students of Beijing Foreign Studies University saw girls in traditional Tibetan dresses in front of a pile of books. A poster was up that read "They Need Your Help."
The girls were Tibetan students, and they were holding a donation program to collect books for Tibetan children. As a minority, they are more conscious of the future of their people, though they are far away from home.
Qiong Zhuoma, 21, a Tibetan student of BFSU majoring in English soon accepted our interview, and unfolded her life story over the next four hours to all of the gathered Han students, her schoolmates.
Zhuoma is the most typical name for Tibetan women, it means Bodhisattva. Her grandfather was a rich businessman, but gave up his fortune during the time of liberation.
"My mom always told me the story of her throwing Tangkas (pictures painted with the powder of gold, rubies sapphires and emeralds) into the river," Zhuoma said.
She went to primary school in Lhasa where her family lived; the graduation exam of the primary school changed her life--she got such a great grade that she won the chance to study in Shanghai.
"It's an aid-Tibet program run by the government," Zhuoma explained. "I stayed in Shanghai for four years for my junior high school, free of charge. I didn't go back home even once, because I was too young and my home was too far away. It was just impossible for me to travel alone"
"All the lessons in my primary school were taught in Tibetan, and we did not start learning Pinyin until grade 4, so when I first arrived in Shanghai I could not speak Mandarin," Zhuoma said. "We began to learn 'ABC' in the second semester of grade 8, in Shanghai. I feel lucky that my major is English now. Some of my friends were put into the French or German departments."
Another crucial exam was given to Zhuoma and other Tibetan children in Shanghai in 2000. Losers would be sent back home. Zhuoma passed again. She then came to Beijing for senior high school study. The tuition fee was 1500 Yuan ($183.6) per semester and she studied there for 3 years.
Zhuoma took the national college entrance exam in 2003, and was enrolled by BFSU. She admitted that there was a preference policy for the Tibetan graduates--they got a 100-point bonus when applying for universities. (The full mark of the college entrance exam is 750 points.)
When she first entered the university she felt regretful.
"Both of the high schools in Shanghai and Beijing were for minorities only, so it was my first time to stay with so many Hans when I came here," Zhuoma said. "I thought I should go to the Tibetan University. I was so lonely; I missed my parents and friends. I made long telephone calls every day in my freshman year."
"My classmates and I had little in common. Sometimes we simply could not understand each other. I told jokes but nobody laughed, or they laughed together at a joke that I could not get at all. So I just avoided talking."
Apart from the differences, Zhuoma also experienced discrimination; she thought all the biases were rooted in people's unfamiliarity with Tibet.
"I was surprised at people's ignorance about my hometown!" she said. "When we had PE lesson people would ask me whether I had ever seen a basketball before and some classmates even asked me whether I had lived in tents."
"Once a teacher praised me, 'your English is much better than I expected.' I felt happy at first, but then I was depressed and a little bit angry. She had judged me as a poor-English student even before she heard me speak English."
"Some of my Tibetan friends were doing part-time jobs as English tutors, but it was common that they got fired as soon as the parents knew they were Tibetan."
As a college student in grade three, Zhuoma thinks a lot about her future. She wants to go back to Tibet, but she also has some worries. Her brother was once a student of Tibetan University and he majored in water conservancy. After graduation he was assigned to the administration office of a small county where he did the "fussy" work and forgot his water conservancy day by day.
"All my friends want to go back," Zhuoma said. "But we need to know we can get the right job for our majors. I cannot waste what I learn in college. The government spent a large sum of money to educate us and I cannot let it sink. If an administration office is waiting for me, I'll have to flee."
"I did not like English in the past, but now I do, because it enables me to bridge two different kinds of culture," Zhuoma said. "There are many people who can speak Mandarin and Tibetan, or English and Tibetan, but few can speak all three. I can. I want to become the 'culture ambassador' to introduce the great foreign works to our people, and the great Tibetan art to the world. That will be the best usage of my major."
At the end of the interview, Qiong Zhuoma complained about the fallacies of the current education system in Tibet.
"All the lessons are given in Mandarin now, even math. Little children take pride in speaking Mandarin. Some of them refuse to learn Tibetan! How sad it is! If the language dies, the nation dies."
When their peers are worried about what to eat at noon, what to wear to the party, several Tibetan girls have already considered their future and their people's future a thousand times.
On their way to the dining hall, some students of Beijing Foreign Studies University saw girls in traditional Tibetan dresses in front of a pile of books. A poster was up that read "They Need Your Help."
The girls were Tibetan students, and they were holding a donation program to collect books for Tibetan children. As a minority, they are more conscious of the future of their people, though they are far away from home.
Qiong Zhuoma, 21, a Tibetan student of BFSU majoring in English soon accepted our interview, and unfolded her life story over the next four hours to all of the gathered Han students, her schoolmates.
Zhuoma is the most typical name for Tibetan women, it means Bodhisattva. Her grandfather was a rich businessman, but gave up his fortune during the time of liberation.
"My mom always told me the story of her throwing Tangkas (pictures painted with the powder of gold, rubies sapphires and emeralds) into the river," Zhuoma said.
She went to primary school in Lhasa where her family lived; the graduation exam of the primary school changed her life--she got such a great grade that she won the chance to study in Shanghai.
"It's an aid-Tibet program run by the government," Zhuoma explained. "I stayed in Shanghai for four years for my junior high school, free of charge. I didn't go back home even once, because I was too young and my home was too far away. It was just impossible for me to travel alone"
"All the lessons in my primary school were taught in Tibetan, and we did not start learning Pinyin until grade 4, so when I first arrived in Shanghai I could not speak Mandarin," Zhuoma said. "We began to learn 'ABC' in the second semester of grade 8, in Shanghai. I feel lucky that my major is English now. Some of my friends were put into the French or German departments."
Another crucial exam was given to Zhuoma and other Tibetan children in Shanghai in 2000. Losers would be sent back home. Zhuoma passed again. She then came to Beijing for senior high school study. The tuition fee was 1500 Yuan ($183.6) per semester and she studied there for 3 years.
Zhuoma took the national college entrance exam in 2003, and was enrolled by BFSU. She admitted that there was a preference policy for the Tibetan graduates--they got a 100-point bonus when applying for universities. (The full mark of the college entrance exam is 750 points.)
When she first entered the university she felt regretful.
"Both of the high schools in Shanghai and Beijing were for minorities only, so it was my first time to stay with so many Hans when I came here," Zhuoma said. "I thought I should go to the Tibetan University. I was so lonely; I missed my parents and friends. I made long telephone calls every day in my freshman year."
"My classmates and I had little in common. Sometimes we simply could not understand each other. I told jokes but nobody laughed, or they laughed together at a joke that I could not get at all. So I just avoided talking."
Apart from the differences, Zhuoma also experienced discrimination; she thought all the biases were rooted in people's unfamiliarity with Tibet.
"I was surprised at people's ignorance about my hometown!" she said. "When we had PE lesson people would ask me whether I had ever seen a basketball before and some classmates even asked me whether I had lived in tents."
"Once a teacher praised me, 'your English is much better than I expected.' I felt happy at first, but then I was depressed and a little bit angry. She had judged me as a poor-English student even before she heard me speak English."
"Some of my Tibetan friends were doing part-time jobs as English tutors, but it was common that they got fired as soon as the parents knew they were Tibetan."
As a college student in grade three, Zhuoma thinks a lot about her future. She wants to go back to Tibet, but she also has some worries. Her brother was once a student of Tibetan University and he majored in water conservancy. After graduation he was assigned to the administration office of a small county where he did the "fussy" work and forgot his water conservancy day by day.
"All my friends want to go back," Zhuoma said. "But we need to know we can get the right job for our majors. I cannot waste what I learn in college. The government spent a large sum of money to educate us and I cannot let it sink. If an administration office is waiting for me, I'll have to flee."
"I did not like English in the past, but now I do, because it enables me to bridge two different kinds of culture," Zhuoma said. "There are many people who can speak Mandarin and Tibetan, or English and Tibetan, but few can speak all three. I can. I want to become the 'culture ambassador' to introduce the great foreign works to our people, and the great Tibetan art to the world. That will be the best usage of my major."
At the end of the interview, Qiong Zhuoma complained about the fallacies of the current education system in Tibet.
"All the lessons are given in Mandarin now, even math. Little children take pride in speaking Mandarin. Some of them refuse to learn Tibetan! How sad it is! If the language dies, the nation dies."
1 Comments:
At 4:53 PM , davesgonechina said...
Interesting. I'm curious Shi Rui: did doing this interview change your perspective compared to the article you wrote about visiting Tibet last year?
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