Eat the Buddha
Life and Death in a Tibetan Town
(Sprache: Englisch)
A gripping portrait of modern Tibet told through the lives of its people, from the bestselling author of Nothing to Envy
“A brilliantly reported and eye-opening work of narrative nonfiction.”—The New York Times Book Review
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“A brilliantly reported and eye-opening work of narrative nonfiction.”—The New York Times Book Review
...
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Klappentext zu „Eat the Buddha “
A gripping portrait of modern Tibet told through the lives of its people, from the bestselling author of Nothing to Envy“A brilliantly reported and eye-opening work of narrative nonfiction.”—The New York Times Book Review
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Parul Sehgal, The New York Times • The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post • NPR • The Economist • Outside • Foreign Affairs
Just as she did with North Korea, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick explores one of the most hidden corners of the world. She tells the story of a Tibetan town perched eleven thousand feet above sea level that is one of the most difficult places in all of China for foreigners to visit. Ngaba was one of the first places where the Tibetans and the Chinese Communists encountered one another. In the 1930s, Mao Zedong’s Red Army fled into the Tibetan plateau to escape their adversaries in the Chinese Civil War. By the time the soldiers reached Ngaba, they were so hungry that they looted monasteries and ate religious statues made of flour and butter—to Tibetans, it was as if they were eating the Buddha. Their experiences would make Ngaba one of the engines of Tibetan resistance for decades to come, culminating in shocking acts of self-immolation.
Eat the Buddha spans decades of modern Tibetan and Chinese history, as told through the private lives of Demick’s subjects, among them a princess whose family is wiped out during the Cultural Revolution, a young Tibetan nomad who becomes radicalized in the storied monastery of Kirti, an upwardly mobile entrepreneur who falls in love with a Chinese woman, a poet and intellectual who risks everything to voice his resistance, and a Tibetan schoolgirl forced to choose at an early age between her family and the elusive lure of Chinese money. All of them face the same dilemma: Do they resist the Chinese, or do they join them? Do
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they adhere to Buddhist teachings of compassion and nonviolence, or do they fight?
Illuminating a culture that has long been romanticized by Westerners as deeply spiritual and peaceful, Demick reveals what it is really like to be a Tibetan in the twenty-first century, trying to preserve one’s culture, faith, and language against the depredations of a seemingly unstoppable, technologically all-seeing superpower. Her depiction is nuanced, unvarnished, and at times shocking.
Illuminating a culture that has long been romanticized by Westerners as deeply spiritual and peaceful, Demick reveals what it is really like to be a Tibetan in the twenty-first century, trying to preserve one’s culture, faith, and language against the depredations of a seemingly unstoppable, technologically all-seeing superpower. Her depiction is nuanced, unvarnished, and at times shocking.
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Lese-Probe zu „Eat the Buddha “
Chapter 1The Last Princess
1958
Gonpo could smell the smoke before she could see what was happening. Although she was just seven years old and not well versed in the politics of the day, it confirmed a nagging feeling she d had for weeks that something was amiss. She was on her way home with her mother, sister, an aunt, and a convoy of servants. They had been away, attending the funeral rituals for her uncle. It had been summer when they set out for her uncle s village, but they d been away for forty-nine days, the traditional mourning period between death and rebirth for Buddhists. Now it was early autumn, and the evening chill whispered of the snow that would soon creep down from the mountaintops. Gonpo wore a thick sheepskin robe trimmed with fur, but the wind whipped up from underneath her horse and made her shiver. Everybody was on horseback: Gonpo, like most Tibetans, was a seasoned equestrian at a young age. They followed the course of a road that had recently been laid out by Chinese military engineers, though not yet paved, heading due west, into the setting sun. Their route forked off at a stream that led north to Gonpo s home, and as they emerged from behind a thicket of shrubbery, Gonpo could see where the smoke was coming from. From her vantage point atop the horse, she had a clear view of half a dozen bonfires and a corresponding number of tents. As they approached, she could see that these weren t the black yak-hair tents used by Tibetans, but the small white tents of the People s Liberation Army.
This was 1958, nine years after Mao Zedong had proclaimed the People s Republic of China, so it was not unusual to see encampments of the Red Army around the countryside. But this was on the family property, and that was surprising. Gonpo had been fighting off sleep on the last leg of the two-day trek, but now she was jolted awake by curiosity and a touch of fear. She was one of the first to dismount, sliding off her horse without waiting for
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the servants to help her. She ran up to the gate, wondering why nobody had come out to greet the returning convoy. She banged hard on the gate a slab of wood twice as high as a grown man with a massive lintel across the top. There was no response, so she shouted at the top of her lungs.
Hello, hello. Where is everybody?
Her mother walked up behind her and called out as well.
Eventually, Gonpo s nanny came and unlocked the gate. Instead of a warm welcome, the maid leaned over the child as if she weren t there, bringing her face close enough to Gonpo s mother to whisper directly into her ear. Gonpo couldn t hear the words, but she discerned from her mother s reaction that it couldn t be good. Gonpo had seen her mother crying a lot lately; the uncle who died had been her favorite brother and Gonpo thought maybe her mother was crying again because she was still sad about his death. At least that s what Gonpo wanted to believe, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary the smoke, the tents, the stone-faced maid. Her instinct told her that this was the beginning of the end of the world as she knew it.
Gonpo was raised a princess. Her father, Palgon Rapten Tinley, a name that roughly translates as Honorable Enlightenment Steadfast, was the fourteenth in a line of rulers in what was known as the Mei kingdom. Its capital was Ngaba, in what is now Sichuan province. When Gonpo was born, in 1950, Ngaba was a nondescript market town where traders came to sell salt and tea and where herders came to sell their butter, skins, and wool. This entire region was a patchwork of small fiefdoms governed by various chieftains and kings, princes, khans, and warlords. The Chinese used the term tusi, often translated as landlord, to refer to local rulers like Gonpo s father, but the Tibetans called hi
Hello, hello. Where is everybody?
Her mother walked up behind her and called out as well.
Eventually, Gonpo s nanny came and unlocked the gate. Instead of a warm welcome, the maid leaned over the child as if she weren t there, bringing her face close enough to Gonpo s mother to whisper directly into her ear. Gonpo couldn t hear the words, but she discerned from her mother s reaction that it couldn t be good. Gonpo had seen her mother crying a lot lately; the uncle who died had been her favorite brother and Gonpo thought maybe her mother was crying again because she was still sad about his death. At least that s what Gonpo wanted to believe, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary the smoke, the tents, the stone-faced maid. Her instinct told her that this was the beginning of the end of the world as she knew it.
Gonpo was raised a princess. Her father, Palgon Rapten Tinley, a name that roughly translates as Honorable Enlightenment Steadfast, was the fourteenth in a line of rulers in what was known as the Mei kingdom. Its capital was Ngaba, in what is now Sichuan province. When Gonpo was born, in 1950, Ngaba was a nondescript market town where traders came to sell salt and tea and where herders came to sell their butter, skins, and wool. This entire region was a patchwork of small fiefdoms governed by various chieftains and kings, princes, khans, and warlords. The Chinese used the term tusi, often translated as landlord, to refer to local rulers like Gonpo s father, but the Tibetans called hi
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Autoren-Porträt von Barbara Demick
Barbara Demick
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Barbara Demick
- 2021, 352 Seiten, mit zahlreichen Abbildungen, Maße: 12,8 x 20,1 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: Random House Trade Paperbacks
- ISBN-10: 0812988116
- ISBN-13: 9780812988116
- Erscheinungsdatum: 05.08.2021
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
Outstanding . . . a book not only about modern Tibet but one that helps explain the current, poisonous moment in China. Financial Times[Demick s] method is programmatic openness, deep listening, a willingness to be waylaid; the effect, a prismatic picture of history as experienced and understood by individuals in their full amplitude and idiosyncrasy. Parul Sehgal, The New York Times
This remarkable book offers a unique insight into Tibet's plight, allowing the reader to understand what it is like for its people to be tossed about in a political storm they neither want nor understand. Daily Mail
You simply cannot understand China without reading Barbara Demick on Tibet. Her work is fair-minded, chilling, awe-inspiringly rigorous, and as vivid as cinema. Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition
Barbara Demick has produced an elegiac narrative of a frontier town that is a hotbed of resistance on the Tibetan plateau. With novelistic depth and through characteristically painstaking research, Demick offers a poignant reminder of the enduring power of memory to illuminate untold histories. Tsering Shakya, author of The Dragon in the Land of Snows
Barbara Demick s new book is essential reading for anyone interested in China and Tibet. The reporting is rich, the writing is beautiful, and the stories will stay with you. I couldn t put it down. John Pomfret, author of The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom
Deeply and meticulously researched, Eat the Buddha tells the story of the beautiful area of eastern Tibet . . . Demick is to be given highest honors for her unflinching account, and her readers will be rewarded with a transformative encounter with the real lives of some extraordinary people. Robert A. F. Thurman, Jey Tsong Khapa Professor Emeritus, Columbia University
Demick provides
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the missing human dimension in coverage of twenty-first-century Tibet, including the legacy of resistance that has engendered tragic protests by self-immolation, and all the anguish and paradoxes of lives heavily surveilled by the Chinese government, yet largely invisible to the greater world. Booklist
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