Tsering Döndrup’s defiant reckoning with Tibet’s legacy of violence

I FIRST MET Tsering Döndrup at his home in Xining – the largest city on the Tibetan Plateau, located in Qinghai province in western China. This was in early 2016, when I interviewed him about the complex and contentious relationship between Chinese and Tibetan literatures. I was embarking on the research that would coalesce into my doctoral dissertation, and I had not yet begun translating literature in earnest.

Over several cups of tea and even more cigarettes, we discussed his famed short story ‘Ralo’. Tsering Döndrup is soft-spoken, with close-cropped hair and prominent straight sideburns. His eyes occasionally glimmered mischievously when he offered more caustic or cryptic responses. As our discussion veered away from his short story, he suggested I put away my recorder, and we carried on our conversation, no longer as interviewer and interviewee. 

This was the beginning of a fruitful partnership during which I have come to know the author as an astute, witty and deeply humane person who is also, in my limited estimation, perhaps the most important writer of Tibetan fiction working today.

Tsering Döndrup’s landmark work of fiction is arguably The Red Wind Howls, released (briefly) in 2006. Yet this novel is also something of an anomaly among his books, since its daring contents quickly led to it being banned by the Chinese authorities. Within the People’s Republic of China, it has long been unavailable to Tibetan readers, and it has been almost impossible to find a copy of it even outside of China. My English translation of the novel was published by Columbia University Press last month, hot on the heels of a recent French edition. Finally, through translation, this repressed masterpiece is once again seeing the light of day.

Tsering Döndrup was born in 1961 in Malho, known in Chinese as Henan, a Mongolian Autonomous County in Qinghai Province. Part of the broader Tibetan region of Amdo, a territory roughly the size of France that overlaps largely with present-day Qinghai Province, this is a place of great ethnic and cultural complexity. Despite his official Mongol ethnicity and potentially indeterminate position vis-a-vis identity politics, Tibetan is Tsering Döndrup’s mother tongue and he chooses to situate himself firmly within the Tibetan literary tradition.

The author’s early education was interrupted by the Cultural Revolution, a decade-long period of political and social upheaval rooted in Mao Zedong’s bid to reaffirm his ideology and reassert his control over the Communist Party of China. Tsering Döndrup was eventually able to continue his schooling in the late 1970s. Beginning around this time, there was an explosion of Tibetan-language writing centred on new literary journals. His literary career stands out for a number of reasons, foremost among which is his longevity. He published his first story in 1983, at the beginning of this period of new Tibetan literature, and he has not stopped writing since. 

‘Ralo’, the story that I went to discuss with Tsering Döndrup that day in 2016, is one of the most well-known works of fiction in the burgeoning canon of modern Tibetan literature. First published in the magazine Light Rain in 1991, with a longer “sequel” added in 1997, thus turning it into a novella, ‘Ralo’ is the story of a hapless, snot-nosed nomad who bumbles his way through life. The picaresque tale follows the protagonist through a seemingly endless string of failures: orphaned as a boy, Ralo is expelled from school, kicked out of a monastery, unsuccessfully tries his hand at herding, and even manages to fail at multiple marriages. 

It is a curious and compelling work of fiction and its influence has been significant. It has inspired a film adaptation, and there are even cafés named after the infamous character, where one can order a “Ralo milk tea”. But my interest in ‘Ralo’ was prompted as much by the conversation surrounding the story as by the story itself.

In 2001, the prominent scholar Dülha Gyel set out a detailed analysis of ‘Ralo’, concluding that the title character represents no less than a crystallisation of all the ills of Tibetan society. Foremost among Ralo’s faults, he argued, are a distinctly “Tibetan” reliance on superstition and faith to guide him through life, and an internalised Buddhist conviction in the absence of the self – traits that render Ralo passive, indolent and incapable of pursuing material or personal progress in the real world. 

Dülha Gyel’s analysis of ‘Ralo’ closely mirrored the Chinese discourse of “national character”, part of an era-defining debate centred around ‘The True Story of Ah Q’. This landmark work of literature, published in 1921 by modern China’s most renowned author, Lu Xun, charted the many failings of a similarly luckless protagonist, and was widely interpreted by Chinese intellectuals as a penetrating dissection of China’s cultural crisis. In the years since ‘Ralo’ was published, a similar debate has coalesced around Tsering Döndrup’s story, with numerous articles discussing Ralo’s failings and the deeper cultural currents behind them.

As fascinating and provocative as this surrounding debate may be, the story itself is another matter. The author is rightly ambivalent about these interpretations, and readers will surely come to their own conclusions. Ralo may be lazy and foolish, but he is also – initially, at least – skilled in a number of pursuits. He may be gullible and absurd, but he is also the victim of social forces far beyond his control. Regardless of how one reads it, I knew that this was a powerful work of fiction, one that deserved exposure to a broader audience. I polished the English version I had put together for my own research purposes, and this became the first of Tsering Döndrup’s works that I published in translation.

Not long after, the author pointed me towards another of his most well-received stories, ‘Black Fox Valley’. An expertly crafted tale that provokes tears and laughter in equal measure, it follows Sangyé and his family as they relocate from the grasslands to a settled life in a newly built town. The background to the story is a state-led campaign to “Return the Pastures and Restore the Grasslands”, part of the broader “Open up the West” campaign launched in 1999 to promote economic development in China’s western regions, some of the poorest in the country.

In ‘Black Fox Valley’, we see what happens to one family that undergoes this forced transition. In addition to the immediate problems caused by shoddily constructed housing, many resettled nomads have had to wrestle with alcoholism, gambling and prostitution – all perennial concerns in Tsering Döndrup’s piercing stories about Tibetan society.

Yet the story is much more than a critique of a specific government policy. Tibetan nomadic life is the heartbeat of Tsering Döndrup’s fiction, and ‘Black Fox Valley’ charts the forced decline of an entire way of existence that has persisted uninterrupted for centuries. In a sense, the story represents a microcosm of his most closely held literary concerns, crystallised into a virtuosic and deeply empathetic narrative: the corruption of both religion and officialdom, the degradation of traditional nomad life and its attendant social issues, the linguistic invasion of the Chinese language, and the threat to Tibet’s environment from industrial modernity.

My translations of ‘Ralo’, ‘Black Fox Valley’ and several other stories were published together in the collection The Handsome Monk and Other Stories. The book is a crash-course in Tsering Döndrup’s writing and a cross-section of his literary concerns. It features biting satire, and investigations of pressing social issues such as gambling, prostitution, alcoholism and AIDS. There are avant-garde experiments in form; there is a blend of traditional and modern techniques, including one story, told half in verse, narrating a round-trip to the underworld. There is even a proto-science fiction story. 

Across these varied styles, Tsering Döndrup’s concern with traditional nomadic life and the tumultuous changes it is undergoing in the modern world underpins almost all the stories. Above all, the collection reflects the author’s unwavering individualism and critical eye: no one escapes his satire, whether it is corrupt lamas or callous officials.

IN ADDITION to his short fiction, Tsering Döndrup has also penned four full-length novels, and The Red Wind Howls stands out above all. A work of incredible audacity, the novel spans some three decades and all of Mao’s rule. It traces the early encounters between Tibetans and Communist China, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and, perhaps most strikingly, events even more taboo: the Amdo uprising of 1958 and the brutal repression that followed. The uprising – a widespread revolt by Tibetan communities in eastern Tibet against collectivisation and Chinese rule – was met with a devastating military crackdown that remains largely unacknowledged in official histories or literature. 

After the publication of The Handsome Monk, I had little intention of immediately diving into another large translation project. Yet, the moment I began reading my (preciously rare) copy of The Red Wind Howls, I immediately knew that this was a book that needed to be brought to a wider readership. 

The Amdo Rebellion of 1958 is a subject that has only recently begun to receive attention outside of Tibet. In the region of Amdo, however, the mere mention of the year 1958 conjures up unimaginable horrors. As the prominent poet and political commentator Tsering Woeser, a rare outspoken critic of the Chinese government, describes it:

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the first decade of Chinese rule in Amdo had been characterised by a tense and fragile equilibrium between powers new and old. But as Mao Zedong’s vision for an immediate transition to socialism took hold, what the historian Benno Weiner calls the “subimperial compact” between the Chinese Communist Party and the traditional powerholders of Amdo gave way to a “revolutionary impatience”. Soon Tibetans rose in mass revolt against the impending overhaul of their society.

The Tibetan nomads never stood much chance. The conflict pitted a loose union of poorly outfitted, disparate and disorganised clans against the might of the People’s Liberation Army – numerically superior, battle hardened and heavily armed. Tens of thousands of Tibetans perished in the fighting, with tens of thousands more arrested. After the resistance was quelled, ruthless retaliation began. Those who survived the initial military crackdown were swiftly rounded up and taken away to labour camps, where many more perished from starvation, disease, suicide or forced labour. The fact that so few survived, or made it to exile to tell their stories, is part of the reason this history has remained largely unknown beyond Amdo.

The year 1958 was just the beginning. In a matter of months, Amdo’s traditional clan structures and religious hierarchies had been wiped out and the region was launched headlong into the Great Leap Forward. Mao’s plan to realise communism overnight entailed rapid collectivisation and outlandish experiments with rural industrialisation. The utter failure of these policies, exacerbated by natural disasters, resulted in the deadliest famine in history, with an estimated death toll in the tens of millions. 

For many Amdo Tibetans, incarceration and famine was their first experience of being fully governed by China. Then, in 1966, the Cultural Revolution began. In Tibetan regions, this ushered in a wave of brutal campaigns against former monks, lamas, “herdlords” and other perceived enemies of society. Monasteries that had already been emptied out in the previous decade were now destroyed entirely, along with centuries’ worth of religious artefacts, scripture and ritual objects.

The rebellion and its merciless suppression remain one of the bloodiest and least known chapters of the early history of the People’s Republic of China. Few inside China have dared broach the subject, including in fiction, where it has only ever been referenced fleetingly. Tsering Döndrup’s novel, however, tackles it unflinchingly.

Tsering Döndrup grew up tending his family’s herds and listening to the tales told by his blacksmith father. This early exposure to the art of oral storytelling would resonate throughout his work. In The Red Wind Howls, this tradition plays a particularly important role. In addition to archival sources, sometimes referenced directly by the narrator, the novel draws on countless oral narratives passed down within the author’s community, which he meticulously gathered and distilled into fictional form.

Though The Red Wind Howls is not a historical account in the strictest sense, Tsering Döndrup is keen to stress the truth of the events and testimonies relayed within the book. As he told the literary scholar Lama Jabb, “there are no lies in it, and I was prepared to tell them [the Chinese authorities] that if they questioned the historical veracity of my novel.”

One of the most striking features of the novel is its narrative structure. Unlike Tsering Döndrup’s short fiction, which is often divided into brief, numbered chapters, The Red Wind Howls unfolds in just two parts. Part One is set largely in the punitive labour camps, and Part Two outside the camps during the same period. Together, the two halves of the novel combine to form a full picture of the tumultuous history of Tibet’s forced incorporation into the People’s Republic of China. Each section comprises a lengthy, unbroken stream of narrative – and flow it does, despite a fragmented chronology in which events are presented out of order, with sudden flashbacks and flashforwards that interweave the characters’ contrasting fates before, during and after the years of Mao’s rule.

Despite the harrowing subject matter, Tsering Döndrup presents The Red Wind Howls in his own inimitable style, which has always been defined by black humour and sharp satire. Familiar elements recur throughout the novel, particularly with the setting – in the fictional county of Tsezhung – and the unpalatable protagonist of Part One. Alak Drong, a reincarnate lama, is a constant presence in Tsering Döndrup’s fictional world. “Alak” is an honorific title, and “Drong” the Tibetan word for a wild yak. The ludicrously unlikely name is designed to insulate the author from potential accusations that he is lampooning a real-life lama.

When reading Tsering Döndrup’s fiction, it is not hard to see why such shielding is needed: Alak Drong’s many cameos across the author’s stories paint a composite picture of a shallow, callous materialist, someone happy to abuse his revered status for personal gain. In The Red Wind Howls, Alak Drong plumbs even darker depths.

As Françoise Robin, the novel’s French translator, has observed, it would have been easy for Tsering Döndrup to concoct a sympathetic protagonist, an innocent victim of the horrors perpetrated by the Chinese state. But the author “does not like the obvious or easy way out, in life or in literature.” Instead, Tsering Döndrup’s predilection for satirising the Buddhist establishment is present in full force. The Red Wind Howls takes us in time up to the post-Mao landscape of the early 1980s, a time that, the novel informs us, “saw an increase in people’s quality of life, an increase in their freedom, and, at the same time, an increase in their avarice.” Part Two opens with the reconstruction of Tsezhung Monastery and the return of the faithful, and introduces us to the monk Lozang Tsültrim, Alak Drong’s right-hand man. Both now enjoy what the novel mordantly describes as “the highest living standards in all of Tsezhung.”

It becomes apparent that this is not necessarily a cause for celebration when Lozang Tsültrim is revealed as one of the novel’s primary antagonists. A petty, self-serving man, Lozang Tsültrim takes advantage of political campaigns to settle old scores, then returns to the monkhood when it suits him. Alak Drong’s transgressions inside the labour camp pale in comparison to Lozang Tsültrim’s actions on the outside. That both men are restored to positions of authority in the wake of the Cultural Revolution is hardly a flattering comment on Tibetan Buddhist institutions and their priorities.

In a sense, however, these critiques can be read as another form of resistance to the Chinese Communist Party’s monopoly over historical discourse in Tibet. The Chinese state continues to demonise pre-“liberation” Tibet as a feudalistic hellscape run by slave-owning aristocrats and tyrannical lamas, drawing a clear line between the utopian “New Society” and the pre-Communist “Old Society” in a manner long-since abandoned in most of the rest of China. Since the 1980s and the beginnings of what is considered modern Tibetan literature, writers critical of Buddhism and its religious institutions have risked accusations that they have internalised such propaganda narratives. 

Tsering Döndrup’s portrayal of the devastation wrought by the party’s policies in Tibet clearly absolves him of such suspicions. In fact, the novel frequently juxtaposes tired official narratives about the “Old Society” with tangible examples of how much worse off Tibetans are under the new one. But, at the same time, his view of traditional Tibet is far from rose-tinted, and its religious hierarchies are not spared from his satire. In this way, The Red Wind Howls not only challenges the state’s discursive dominance over suppressed tragedies, it also reclaims the right of Tibetans to critique their own society and culture, a right that has been usurped by the party’s attacks on religion and its self-appointment as the sole arbiter of Tibetan history.

This is not to suggest that monks and lamas are simply targets of ridicule or criticism in the novel. Some prove to be its most commendable characters. Part Two tells the story of Lozang Gyatso and Tashi Lhamo: the former a monk trying to preserve his faith, the latter a layperson who finds hers in the most unlikely of circumstances. Lozang Gyatso is Lozang Tsültrim’s cousin, and both were disciples of their uncle, the wise and noble lama Dranak Geshé, a rare source of steadfast morality in the story. Lozang Gyatso is almost a model Buddhist: he sticks doggedly to his principles through all the years of upheaval, refusing to kill his commune-allotted sheep when it would keep him from starvation and displaying boundless compassion even for his enemies. He is aided by a mysterious benefactor who one night tosses a copy of the Tibetan Buddhist text ‘Sutra of Great Liberation’ through his door – a sign of the community’s adherence to its traditions, despite the odds.

Lozang Tsültrim torments him for his refusal to renounce his religion, and most of all for the bond he forms with Tashi Lhamo, the object of Lozang Tsültrim’s lust. Lozang Gyatso teaches Tashi Lhamo to read and eventually introduces her to the basic teachings of Buddhism, and together they attempt to preserve their beliefs in the face of relentless persecution. Lozang Gyatso does undergo something of a crisis of faith, a recurring theme in other trauma narratives – Night, the 1960 Holocaust memoir by Elie Wiesel, for instance – but this, ironically, comes after the traumatic events themselves, when his cousin and other former tormentors resume their old roles as monks and devotees.

THE PERSONAL COST Tsering Döndrup has paid for this novel is further evidence, if it were needed, of just how taboo his tale is. Excerpts first appeared in Qinghai Tibetan News in 2002, but when the final draft was complete no publisher would risk taking it. In 2006, Tsering Döndrup was left with little choice but to print and release the novel himself. Enormous interest among Tibetan readers quickly drew the authorities’ attention. On the pretext that the book did not have an official International Standard Book Number, the remaining copies in the author’s possession were confiscated and he was warned not to try to publish it again. Today, copies continue to circulate privately, sometimes fetching steep prices online, even though Tsering Döndrup has pleaded with readers not to profit off the book.

In 2012, a Chinese translation of the novel was published in Hong Kong, featuring an introduction by the US-based historian Li Jianglin. The publication of both the original and the translation resulted in lasting repercussions. Tsering Döndrup was demoted from his post as head of the Henan county archives, he was no longer permitted to receive literary prizes, his salary and pension were reduced, and he was eventually forced into early retirement. Perhaps most serious of all, his passport was confiscated, and he has been unable to obtain one since, preventing him from leaving China. 

Tsering Döndrup continues to break boundaries. He is currently writing a fifth novel, a work of historical fiction dealing with the infamously brutal rule of Hui Muslim warlords in Republican-era Amdo – yet another topic that has remained largely unbroached in Tibetan or other literature. 

Beyond his books, I have continued to translate striking stories by the author, including ‘Baba Baoma’, a shocking account of Tibetan language loss and deculturation , and ‘Masks’, a cryptic, experimental tale set in Covid-era Tibet. When I first went to interview Tsering Döndrup back in 2016, I had little idea that I would still be translating his fiction almost a decade later. I continue to study his work as a scholar and to promote it as a translator – but more than anything, as a simple fan, I am excited to see where he takes readers next.