Tuesday, August 21, 2018

On Visiting a Rural Home in Tibet

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

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