A Year in Tibet

by Shuyun (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2009

  $3.25

  `A Year in Tibet' follows the author as she lives for eighteen months in a remote village in Tibet.

  Sun Shuyun, a Chinese writer and historian, takes the reader to a tiny and isolated village in Tibet, known for its anti-Chinese stance. She and a team who were half Chinese and half Tibetan, lived and worked there for eighteen months, filming and recording daily life. `A Year in Tibet' is an insight into the relationship between the Chinese and Tibetans, the history behind it, and the way the two interact in the 21st century. Written with Sun Shuyun's characteristic insight into relationships, this is social and political history with an emphasis on humanity.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2008

  $3.25

  'A Year in Tibet' follows the author as she lives for eighteen months in a remote village in Tibet. Sun Shuyun grew up in China and has always been fascinated by Tibet and Buddhism. Now, accompanied by a television crew of Chinese and Tibetans, she spent a year in a remote town in the Tibetan mountain area and recorded what life is like for the people there. After half a century of Communist rule, Gyantse, once celebrated by early twentieth-century British explorers, has like the rest of Tibet seen the return of religion and much of the traditional way of life-but for how long? Sun Shuyun explores the intimate details of the lives of a shaman and his family, or monks, a village doctor, a Party worker, a hotel manager, and a rickshaw driver. Through them she captures the tensions between Chinese and Tibetans, between an ancient and an alien culture, faith and science, continuity and modernisation. This is a book with a difference: unusually, a realistic Chinese voice is calling for better understanding of a people who try to carve out the path they desire, often against the odds, often with joy and hope. Vivid, fascinating and visually brilliant, a Year in Tibet provides a rare insight into a Tibetan community under the pressure of change: from centuries of isolation through a difficult past to an uncertain present.