China Focus: Toys for Tibetan children: The changed and the unchanged

As five-year-old Tibetan boy Tenzin Jampel immerses himself in a toy house, his father is reminded of how different the son's childhood is from that three decades ago.

Pointing to the playing boy, the father, Gyatso, 38, said, "He could never imagine what I played with when I was about his age."

Monday marked the 65th anniversary of the peaceful liberation of Tibet, a time period which has witnessed dramatic changes across the plateau region.

MORE CHOICES, BETTER QUALITY

Gyatso was born in 1978, and both his parents were factory workers.

"I didn't have many toys, it meant I had to be creative," the man recalled.

One of his favorite games was cops and robbers. He would collect sticks, and secure them together with nails to make his own toy gun.

He would also make bows and arrows with twigs and rubber bands. Then two teams of kids would pit against each other.

Gyatso's family were by no means poor. "My mom and dad's combined income was 200 yuan a month (about 30 U.S. dollars) -- that was quite a sum in the 1980s," he recalled. By comparison, many people in Beijing took home less than 100 yuan a month.

Even if he was given pocket money, however, there was nowhere for Gyatso to buy toys. "There were no toy vendors in Lhasa until the early 1990s."x He told Xinhua that he was taught how to make his own toys by his uncle, Thubten, who is almost 70 years old now.

Thubten's favorite childhood toy was something called an "Aju," which was made from the shin bones of cows and sheep.

"We would place the sheep bones in a line on the ground, and hit them with the cow's bones," he explained.

Thubten and his pals got the bones from a local slaughterhouse.

"Sometimes I went to another village to collect bones discarded by farmers," he said. Then he would paint them.

In contrast, Tenzin Jampel's favorite games are a lot more hi-tech.

"He loves playing games such as Angry Birds or Plants vs Zombies on the iPad," said his father, adding that he limits his son's screen time to 20 minutes at a time.

Today, Gyatso and his wife earn more than 10,000 yuan a month, while the couple's parents collect a monthly pension of 15,000 yuan, 75 times their earnings in the 1980s.

With more toys at his son's disposal, Gyatso can pay more attention to quality.

"I ask myself: Are they produced by a big manufacturer? Are the materials safe for children? Is the toy good for my boy's emotional and physical development?" he said.

Statistics from the commerce department of Tibet showed that sales of social consumer goods exceeded 40 billion yuan (about 6.1 billion U.S. dollars) in the region last year. Of more than 14,000 packages received from abroad in 2015, more than 90 percent were online purchases, normally from Holland, Japan or the Republic of Korea.

THE UNCHANGED

Despite the influx of new toys, there are still items that have been handed down through the generations, like the kite.

According to Gyatso, kite is called "Gyabi" in Tibetan language, which literally means "a paper bird that can fly."

He remembers flying kites made by his mom. "At first the kites were made of paper and it was not unusual for them to break within an hour," he said.

His mother later made a more hardy version out of plastic, which he loved and used often.

In 2006, traditional kite flying competitions in Tibet were included on China's intangible cultural heritage list. This also coincided with Gyatso deciding to collect kites.

He told Xinhua that in Tibet there were close to 30 traditional kite patterns. "The red and black knife pattern symbolizes a brave man, while the pair of hook pattern means horrific devil teeth," he explained.

With social development, more patterns have appeared. "Someone even made kites featuring the Spider Man, which is very creative," he said.

Gyatso is now teaching his son how to fly a kite. The boy is already able to release and reel with ease.

"Kites are very good toys," Gyatso said. "They are fun and get the kids outside," he said. "Above all, it's great to see our children enjoy our traditional culture." Endi