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"This brave manuscript is the first in any language to look at the Cultural Revolution in Tibet. The material is refreshingly new, coming from the authors' extensive interviews and oral histories collected in recent years. This is extremely valuable, as Tibet is not always accessible to western writers. It is indeed remarkable that the authors have been able to solicit views from both sides of the factional struggle, so that we have now a clear contour of the tragic 1969 Nyemo Incident. This contribution cannot be overstated."--Uradyn E. Bulag, author of The Mongolia-Tibet Interface: Opening New Research Terrains in Inner Asia"This is an important, accessible, and riveting description of a controversial and significant episode in modern Tibet history that scholars have not previously been able to access."--Robbie Barnett, Columbia University
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Among the conflicts to break out during the Cultural Revolution in Tibet, the most famous took place in the summer of 1969 in Nyemo, a county to the south and west of Lhasa. In this incident, hundreds of villagers formed a mob led by a young nun who was said to be possessed by a deity associated with the famous warrior-king Gesar. In their rampage the mob attacked, mutilated, and killed county officials and villagers as well as locally stationed People's Liberation Army troops. This groundbreaking book, the first on the Cultural Revolution in Tibet, revisits the Nyemo incident, which has long been romanticized as the epitome of Tibetan nationalist resistance against China. Melvyn C. Goldstein, Ben Jiao, and Tanzen Lhundrup demonstrate that far from being a spontaneous battle for independence, this violent event was actually part of a struggle between rival revolutionary groups and was not ethnically based. Drawing on extensive firsthand interviews with surviving participants as well as on unpublished Chinese documents, On the Cultural Revolution in Tibet proffers a sober assessment of human malleability and challenges the tendency to view every sign of unrest in Tibet in ethnonationalist terms.
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