Interview: Stereotyped image of Tibet far from reality: German ethnologist

Many Westerners tend to overidealize and mystify Tibet, but German ethnologist Ingo Nentwig who spent over a month in Tibet, including living with a herdsman family for more than a week, said the stereotyped Western image of Tibet is a far cry from reality.

In a recent interview with Xinhua, Nentwig talked about his Tibet tour in June 2002. At that time, he was in charge of the East Asian content of exhibitions at the Leipzig Museum of Ethnology.

The museum's Tibetan collection was mainly on religion. In belief that Tibetan culture consists of more than religion, he went to Tibet for a field study.

In a small village of the Nagqu County at an altitude of about 4,800 meters, Nentwig experienced the everyday life of a herdsman by living with an eight-member family for more than a week.

The family had a herd of 20 yaks, about 80 sheep and goats, and two horses. He documented all their activities related to production and consumption of dairy products.

"What you hear about may be false, what you see is true," said Nentwig.

In order to get a comprehensive view of the way of thinking of Tibetans, he made efforts to engage people from all walks of life, including former aristocrats, Tibetan government officials, scholars, monks and drivers.

He went to Lhasa, capital city of the Tibet Autonomous Region, to meet with scholars of the Tibet University, the Tibetan Academy of Social Science, the Potala Palace Museum and the Tibet Museum.

The trip also gave him a chance to witness traditional Aga clay tamping, a celestial burial ceremony, during a renovation of the Jokhang Temple at the Maizhokunggar County and sutra debates at the Sera Monastery near Lhasa.

Through these contacts, he found that much of the hearsay about Tibet proved ridiculous.

Average Tibetans, like the people of other ethnic groups in China, are down to earth, have the same joys and sorrows as other people, Nentwig said. Differences mainly lie in cultural traditions and behaviors.

Apart from deliberate distortions and anti-China propaganda, there are also misconceptions in the West such as the confusion of modernization with "sinicization" when it comes to modern infrastructure projects or new publications, Nentwig said.

One example would be the Qinghai-Tibet railway that connects Xining, Qinghai Province, to Lhasa. Some critics claim it's a tool for a government-sponsored migration of a large number of Han Chinese. "But I found many Tibetan monks among the travellers," Nentwig said. "The roadway does make travel to Tibet much easier, but it also makes it much easier for Tibetan pilgrims to travel within Tibet."

"Construction of railway, factories and other local development projects are just part of a normal modernization process, not components of sinicization," Nentwig said.

For the German scholar, the so-called "cultural genocide" in Tibet is just nonsense.

"It is a fact that the Han ethnic group is the largest among the 56 ethnic groups in China. It's normal for China's modernization to have more or less some Han cultural elements. But the encounter of a variety of cultures actually benefits and inspires cultures of ethnic minorities," Nentwig said.

In 2008, Tibetan Tripitaka, a massive collection of 232 volumes of classic Buddhist scriptures, was published in Tibetan characters by the China Tibetology Press after more than 20 years of collation by experts.

Nentwig cited it as a good example of China's efforts to protect and promote the ancient Tibetan culture.

He noted that prior to the 1950s, Tibet has few books except religious classics, but now there are a variety of Tibetan publications in philosophy classics, Western literature and modern scientific literature.

"Culture is not only religion. Tibetans now have perfect conditions to enjoy a full-blown spiritual life with their own language. This is indeed a great development," Nentwig commented.

"For any culture, preservation for its own sake without renewal could only lead to its decay. For Tibetan culture, the encounter and exchange with cultures of all Chinese ethnic groups, including that of Han Chinese, just enables it to survive and prosper in the long term," Nentwig said. Endi