This is the second and last part of the diary written by Lin Tian in 1959 when he was personally involved in the democratic reform movement in Tibet. The first part appeared in our last issue, No.34

June 9

Lhasa's grand noble Kaimo's manor has over 1,100 ke of land (one ke is roughly equal to one-fifteenth of a hectare).

The 34 families living in the Kaimo Manor included 16 tralpas (share-croppers who inherit the status), and 18 duiquns (irre- gular slaves). There were also 21 nangzans (household slaves) and more than ten indentured servants. The indentured servants were taken from families with more hands than they needed and assigned to substitute for those families without enough labourers. They became, for all practical purposes, slaves working in the fields.

Among the 16 tralpas, one was slightly better off than the others. He had roughly two hectares of land and also rents additional land. During busy seasons he hired additional labourers. He had no nangzan serving him, nor did he charge high interest on money he lends. When people came to grind their zanba (roasted qingke barley flour) at his private water mill, he usually asks only for a little zanba. The remaining tralpa families are all poor. Some of the duiquns rented small plots of land and some acted as blacksmiths or coppersmiths. They had to pay the xidun (a steward) five to ten taels of Tibetan silver as poll taxes each year.

The steward of the Kaimo manor harvested more than 4,000 ke of grain from his own land each year (one ke is almost 14 kg). The work was done by 34 serfs as a means of paying ulas (corvee service), more than ten of them indentured servants. The steward also collected more than 1,000 ke of grain from land he rented out. He handed over 2,800 ke to his master, Kaimo, annually.

The steward would also collect for Kaimo roughly three kg of rapeseed oil a year from each tralpa. All tralpas were made to transport boards, grain, edible oil and other goods for the Kaimo family. Each tralpa household, including its livestock, had to serve the Kaimo family a collective total of 400 days every year. If the steward loaned money to a serf in the spring, the loan plus 15 percent interest was due in autumn.

One of the manor's two threshing grounds was used exclusively by the manor's owner, and the other was used by tralpas. Each year, the tralpa families had to use their newly harvested qingke (highland barley) to pay off debts. The result was that some tralpas would incur new debts as soon as they repaid the old ones. The steward used two different weights of dou (a unit of dry measure for grain) to conduct transactions. He would make a profit of one sheng (one-20th of a ke) from each dou both when it was lent and repaid.

We paid a visit to a poor tralpa named Gelsang. He is 72 years old and had been a duiqun at the Ragyipu Monastery. He began to weave pulu (woollen fabric) at the age of 15, but he never had a decent clothes. Later, when he was too old to work, he had to rely on his sister, a poor tralpa in the Kaimo manor.

When we found him, he was sitting on the ground in a small house, eating. With his dark red face topped with greyish white hair, half cut short and half combed into a small braid, he seemed sanguine and naive when he smiled. There were so many coarse patches on his short gown that they overlapped. He said the gown, made from cloth he had woven while his wife was still alive, was the last clothing he had acquired. At that time, his eldest daughter was only ten, and now she is a mother of seven children. While still a teenager, he began to serve as a ula at the Ragyipu Monastery, providing manual labour without pay during the autumn harvest. He had to pay an annual tax of eight zhangge (copper coin, one zhangge equals one-20th of a tael of Tibetan silver). In slack seasons, he went from village to village knitting woollen fabrics. At 60, he was too old to continue doing this work, so he returned to the monastery where he became a water carrier. To fulfill his duties, he had to climb over 500 metres up a steep slope to the mountain top where the monastery is located. Old and weak, he would climb the mountain grasping a walking stick in one hand and the tail of an ox in the other. Five or six times a day, "the pain would be so bad I felt I was losing my legs," he said. But there was nothing he could do about it.

His wife was a tralpa in another monastery. Since they belonged to two different masters, they could not live together. She left him with two daughters when she died. One was a regular ula at the monastery, and the other worked on rented land. Being destitute, they could not afford to support their aging father. At 70, Gelsang could no longer transport water for the monastery, so he had to become a beggar. "I've escaped from the jaws of the dog many times," he said. By the next year, he could no longer move himself from place to place and was finally forced to turn to his sister for help. He said that when he transported water for the monastery, he was given only one pi of zanba a day (one pi equals one-20th of a ke). How much is one pi? It's roughly 500 grams. Or it's supposed to be. He was often shorted, the nimba (a manor steward)wanting to save even such a small amount of food as this!

"It's all right now," Gelsang said. "I no longer need to serve as ula, nor am I disturbed by the bell of the gazong (a messenger delivering orders). Although I still don't have enough to eat, I can decide when to go to bed and when to rise. What a delight! "The old man was humorous. He hoped the reforms be implemented soon so that people would have enough to eat.

Nyima Cering is 24 years old. His father was a duiqun and his mother a tralpa. At eight he became an indentured servant. Even before this he had worked on a small piece of rented land, toiling five days a week for the manor steward. Later he became a serf irrigating fields. While working for the Zhaxi family, he was often beaten. Sometimes he cried about this to his mother,but when she asked his master for pity, the man blustered, "He belongs to my family. I can twist him up and throw him into a sack if I like! I may take him and wrap him around my waist if I like!" His mother flinched, her eyes filled with tears.

June 22

The Pozhang Manor, which was part of the Drepung Monastery in Lhasa and contained more than 1,000 ke of land, had many nangzans.

There were about 400 serfs and 150 households (a nangzan was not permitted to have a family)working for the manor. Two duibas (supervisor) from the Drepung Monastery were in charge of the manor. The larger tralpa famines had up to 50 nangzans working for them. The average tralpa family also had their own nangzans. This is evidence of how widespread was the exploitation of slave labour.

Life under the serf system was hard. Slaves did most of the manual work in the fields. There were more than 100 nangzans and indentured servants in the manor. A nangzan would receive 0.5 kg or less of zanba a day and had a yearly clothing allotment of one gown made from handspun cloth (a long robe one year, a short one the next). Some were also given a pair of cloth shoes once a year. Children aged three to eight collected cow dung. Nangzans aged eight to 15 herded sheep and cattle or did light manual labour. They began doing heavy labour at 15 and were driven out at 60. These people were stripped of all individual freedoms. Once when the husband of a family, a duiqun, was ill, his wife, a nangzan, asked for leave so she could take care of him. Her master refused. Only after she appealed to the democratic reform work group did her master give her a few days off. A cadre in the work group also told of a person who had more than ten nangzans. He forbade his female nangzans to have children, and those who became pregnant were forced to have abortions. He only conscripted strong nangzans over 15 years of age.

Julyl

Gyii Gya, chairman of the preparatory committee for the Kaisum Manor peasants' association, has now lived in her new home three days. We paid her a visit at breakfast time. She was sitting on a cushion on the floor, smiling as she served a cup of tea to a neighbour. Nyima, another committee chairman who had come to discuss something with Gyii, was eating zanba.

In one corner of the house there were a basket filled with qingke and some old boxes. The pot, jar, ladle and bowls in the kitchen were given free to her by the government. She remained reticent when we asked her what she thought about liberation.

This evening, Zholma, a member of the work group implementing reforms, stopped by.While preparing zanba gruel, Gyii Gya suddenly burst out, "We were born to suffer. We ate what others didn't like to eat, wore what other people gave us to wear and lived whatever life they let us live. We never dared think we could have a house and kitchen of our own. We didn't have the freedom to move around.

"Several years ago (she is now 20 years old), I decided to change my status from that of a nangzan to a duiqun since a duiqun can leave the manor and only has to pay taxes. I pleaded with the steward, and he promised to let me go the following year. When that year came, he promised to let me go the next year. Only this year did he live up to his words. I was permitted to leave, but had to continue to pay ten sheng of qingke and serve him 15 days a year. I took my bowl, my only property, and left the manor.

"Leaving the manor proved difficult, but starting a new life was even harder. I didn't even have a basin or a pot, and had only myself to depend on. After I found a place to live, I had to present a hada (a piece of silk used as a greeting gift among China's Tibetan and Mongolian ethnic groups) to my master and report my new residence to him. Now we've been liberated and the people's government has given us everything. The house, cushion, table, jugs and pots are all provided. We now have what we never dared dream we would have. All have been brought to us by the people's government!"

July 29-30

Today (July 30) I was present when the first land was redistributed. Early this morning, members of the peasants' association and the land redistribution group went to a field with a large group of villagers. On the way, old Lhazhub said the people's government had paid more consideration to them than parents pay to their daughters about to marry. The government was giving assistance wherever it was needed, including lending grain, helping them move to new houses and allotting land to them. And, she added, the methods for redistributing the land were fair. In the past, parents could only leave their children debts, but now the people's government is giving them land. People talked and laughed all the way. At a stream the women raised their skirts and waded across. Although the water was above their thighs, they couldn't have cared less.

At the foot of a mountain lay a small village called Kardog. Members of the land redistribution group held an on-site meeting. An old man proposed each household receive equal proportions of arable and barren land. If, for example, a household was to receive eight ke of land, five ke would be arable and three barren. Other people also agreed. This scheme for distribution was appropriate to local conditions. But who would be the first to get land? Priority was given to the more than ten households due larger pieces of land. Each household gave something as identification--a stone, a knife or a key, for example--to Ngawang, a member of the land redistribution group. Ngawang passed these to other people, who were also given a number to determine order. A short elderly man named Siog Bazhu received the first parcel. Cering Como came second. The first piece of land distributed to her was a good uncultivated field, one easy to irrigate. Filled with joy, she rushed into the thick grass with her baby on her back and asked Aogyan to tell her the boundaries. An old woman named Soinan Qungzhong was the third to receive land. She was also assigned fallow land. She chortled and marked her land with clumps of straw and stones. "My family has not had land for several generations, but now I have it," she said. She and her foster son were given seven ke of land. The land was divided into small plots arranged in pairs. To distribute it fairly so that everybody was happy, the land redistribution group had to be responsible and considerate. They walked over the area several times before assigning two households land. At two o'clock they took a break and rested at a tralpa's house. They ate their own zanba, and the host served them drinks. They resumed their work afterwards and did not stop till the land was shrouded in darkness. Those who had been allotted land were asked to give their opinions.

At night, the peasants' association held a meeting to discuss their work. Gyii Gya reported that Cering Como was very happy with their progress and had no suggestions. Yixi Zhima and Zham Zhang, both former duiquns, were also satisfied. They had never had any land, always having worked for others as hired labourers. Even if they could have rented small pieces of land, they would have had to hand over most of their harvests to landlords. Working year round they still had nothing to eat. Today they were given their own land, and they said the Communist Party and the people's government were showing them more consideration than even their parents had.

Nyima Cering said that Chag Kuog (a widow with two children) was especially happy today. Previously she had either worked alongside her children as hired labourers or had begged for her food. Since the government was now giving her grain and land, she no longer worried about how she would live. With her own land, she could work hard to better her life. Gyii Gya added that Chag Kuag also said, "Now that I have my own land, all I lack is a man to pump water." Everyone in the room burst into laughter. Gyii Gya laughed so hard her face turned red. She had the same idea! They turned to Nyima Cering. He had been with an older woman, but now they no longer live together. "Since that one is finished, Nyima Cering has a new target!" Ngawang claimed. Again, everyone burst out laughters. How happy these emancipated serfs are! How many high hopes they have!

The meeting adjourned after they discussed how they would distribute land tomorrow.

July 31

Members of the peasants' association and the land redistribution group rose early in the morning to continue their work.

Asked whether he felt happy distributing land, Ngawang,a duiqun in his sixties, said "Certainly I feel happy. The ground the aristocrats tread is subsiding, and the sky is opening up wider for us. The days seem to be getting brighter for us!"

A duiqun in her thirties named Bema Como came to claim her land with her baby on her back. "The piece of land we had was no bigger than the bridge of an ox's nose," she said. "Last night we learned that we could have some land. My husband got up early and went straight to the pigpen to stack fertilizer. We have to be quick to stack fertilizer since we have our own land this year and will have a harvest of our own.Hard work makes for a good harvest. Without hard work, it would be like throwing a stone into a canyon--we'd never hear a sound."

Danug, a middle-aged woman, had been a nangzan. She had just been reunited with her two sons, whom, as nangzans, she had seldom had the opportunity to see before. She said that now she could take a rest whenever she needed. She had land now, and likened the new government to a full bowl of zanba sitting in front of her. "In old days," she said, "if I or my sons wanted to have enough to eat, we would have to give up having enough to wear. Why? Because we did not have a piece of land such as we have now!"

(This article appears on page 17, No. 35, 1992)