The red door is the entrance to the farmhouse
We went to a
village house, more a small farm yard on our way from Gyantse to Shigatse, a
couple of kilometers before reaching Shalu, where Alexandra David-Neel had
stayed for a while. No show family, which would have been chosen in accordance
with the party; just a family willing to show and talk to foreigners. The
farmer's wife reported on a late love marriage; they have three daughters and
one son as well as five grandchildren. In the neighborhood lives a woman with
three husbands; polyandry and polygamy are still common, not encouraged but
tolerated. There is a compulsory schooling requirement of nine years, after six
years an important exam is taken. The husband is working in Lhasa; the same as
in Germany, some farms are too small to support all the needs of the family and
mostly the husband works somewhere else. The farmer's wife manages the farm,
which covers 26 mu (1 mu 666 m² / about 17.000 m² or about 21,000 yd²) of land.
The land isn’t owned but leased; the farmers have a crop they have to sell to
the government, and can manage the rest with crops they want. The family owns 12
cows, 2 horses, a guard dog (a fierce mastiff), sheep. I hadn’t seen any
chicken, which makes sense as the Tibetans rather take one life a larger animal
than take multiple lives of smaller animals.
I drank
several cups of butter tea, which was very good.
The yard with the dog and a cow
A buddhist symbol on the door
Room with granddaughter
Buttertea is ready - tastes really good,
not as some tourists try to convince the unillumined public
The state parlor
I admit, I'm a hopeless romantic
The Lady of the House
With her granddaughter
The less romantic part of rural life -
cow patties mixed with straw is
left to dry to serve as
combustible material during winter
.
cow patties mixed with straw ARE ...
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