Literally the entire district poured into Dzai Village for the occasion. Jubilant crowds, dressed in their best and playing traditional musical instruments, flocked to a rally in front of the local government office. Red banners and portraits of Chairman Mao were everywhere.

This was a festival of a special sort: emancipated Tibetan serfs were receiving land title deeds from the government giving legal confirmation to their ownership of the land they had taken over from the feudal lords. There were loud cheers and handclapping from the crowd as peasants, one after another, walked up to the rostrum to claim their land deeds. Choked with deep emotion, many spoke of the bitter past, of their gratitude to Chairman Mao and the Communist Party and of making added efforts to bring about a still happier future.

Dzai Village, locale of this stirring scene, was one among many in the Tibetan region that witnessed this momentous ceremony in the past weeks.

Carried out in accordance with a recent directive from the Preparatory Committee for the Tibet Autonomous Region, it is the final step in abolishing once and for all the centuries-old feudal system of land ownership. In the course of the agrarian reform the land of the serf-owners and their agents who took part in the rebellion was confiscated while surplus land of those serf-owners and their agents who had not participated was bought out. A total of more than 2.8 million ke of land was distributed to 800,000 former landless serfs and slaves in the rural farming areas.

(This article appears on page 3, No. 46, 1960)