In the 21st century China has moved decisively to ensure that the world recognizes the Tibetan Autonomous Region as an indivisible part of the People’s Republic. The highly publicized completion of the Beijing-Lhasa railway link in 2006 trumpeted the central government’s policy in a very concrete way, but the “3.14 Lhasa Riots” in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics presented a radically different and distinctly unharmonious narrative.
Alai's Tibetan travelogue creates a buzz
Since the riots and particularly in 2009, the Chinese media has been working overtime to position Tibet and its ancient culture as exotic and intriguingly spiritual, but most decidedly Chinese. A small mountain of new Tibet-themed publications has flooded the market, including the 7-volume Tibet Code (藏地密码) that ranked among China’s Top 30 Best Selling Novels for what seemed like forever.
Ironically, the commissioning of King Gesar (格萨尔王) by the British publisher Canongate may—albeit unwittingly—help a wee bit to strengthen China’s imprimatur on the modern world’s image of ancient Tibet. The talented author, Alai, born of a Tibetan mother and a Hui father, grew up in an ethnically Tibetan region of Sichuan and speaks Tibetan as his mother tongue. But he was educated in Mandarin and writes in the language. So when English-language readers do get a chance to read Alai’s fascinating re-imagining of this ancient epic passed down by Tibetan troubadours for centuries (scheduled for publication in 2011), they will be reading a translation not from the Tibetan, but from the modern Chinese.
As promised in a recent post, I plan to translate a number of texts relating to King Gesar, an interview with Alai (阿来), and perhaps do a book review of King Gesar too.
Here’s a translation from a Chinese article in China Publishing Today about the creative marketing plans for King Gesar:
King Gesar: Tibetan Culture’s Calling Card
By Tian Guo (田果)
Marketing Editor
Hongtu Huazhang (宏图华章策划编辑)
Alai’s King Gesar is one of a number of books comprising the “re-told Myth” series. Launched by the renowned publisher, Jamie Byrne, of the UK’s Canongate, the project commissions writers worldwide to rewrite a myth of the writer’s choice, with the resulting work published simultaneously by firms participating in the project, each in the language spoken in the country where it is located.
King Gesar is a hero of the ancient Tibetan people. Stories of his deeds—dating back to the 10th-11th centuries—have been passed down widely among dwellers of China’s Tibet region and the provinces of Sichuan and Yunnan. As a vernacular version of the traditional Epic of King Gesar, Alai’s King Gesar will contribute to a better understanding of Tibetan culture.
Alai is of Tibetan descent, and his earlier novel, “Red Poppies,” was critically acclaimed, so he is one of the most suitable candidates for re-telling King Gesar. Alai put considerable passion and energy into this project.
In his own words: “The essence of a re-telling is to render a myth concrete. To re-tell the Epic of King Gesar, I mainly did work in three areas: Firstly, I went into the Tibetan hinterlands to conduct research. King Gesar reflects the state of the Tibetan people from the time of primitive tribal alliances to the birth of a state, that is, the period of history that begins with King Gesar and encompasses the unique nature of Tibetan culture. Although I am a Tibetan writer and in the past I mastered some of this information, it wasn’t nearly enough, so I had to leave my desk for the areas where Tibetans reside.
The second task was to study the epic in depth. For more than a century [the story of] King Gesar has been orally transmitted. But to use contemporary techniques to convey it, there are very many research results, and quite mixed ones, so you have to put a lot of effort into studying and putting them in order.
Thirdly, historical data must be verified. The nation grew from a small one to a big one, and expanded, involving a number of wars. After the passage of such a long time, things must be re-checked.”
Upon publication [in China], King Gesar was widely endorsed and immediately become a bright spot in the fiction category in 2009.
This is a good product with real content, and to coincide with the launch of the book, we have planned a series of marketing activities, some of which are already underway.
Phase I
Traveling with Alai on a journey in search of King Gesar’s traces in the Tibetan Plateau
August 15-23: Starting out from Chengdu, Alai lead a motorcade of nearly 40 media professionals on a “Tour in Search of King Gesar’s Traces” that visited the king’s birthplace and historic sites. Audio and video recordings of these activities were featured at the September 4 2009 premiere of King Gesar. [Translator’s note: Alai’s detailed commentary on this journey, The Tibetan King’s Code (藏王密码), was published as the cover story of the November 2009 issue of the Chinese-language monthly, National Geographic (华夏地理)]
Phase II
Worldwide Book Launch
September 4, 2009: Artists were invited to perform Gesar pieces at the Beijing International Book Fair. Wu Shulin, Deputy Director of the General Administration of Press and Publication addressed the fair.
Phase III
A Series of Activities in Frankfurt [Book Fair]
1. October 14: At the Sino-German literary forum, Alai was to speak on the issue of how to maintain an ethnic group’s culture in the face of globalization. His topic: There is no Such Thing as a People’s ‘Immutable’ Culture.
2. October 10-17: A seminar was scheduled on the topic of the creation of King Gesar and Tibetan cultural development.
Phase IV
Follow-up Activities
1. A series of events in key Chinese cities.
2. Organize a series of celebratory events in conjunction with UNESCO’s designation of the Epic of King Gesar (格萨尔王传) as an Intangible Cultural Heritage item.
3. King Gesar promotion to continue at the [publishing industry’s] “China National Book Purchasing Fair” (January 2010).
It is particularly worth noting that on October 8, 2009, at the fourth convening of the Intergovernmental Committee, the Epic of King Gesar and Tibetan opera were both designated as items afforded protection under the United Nations World Intangible Cultural Heritage classification. This provides us with an excellent opportunity to continue publicizing King Gesar. [end]
November 29th, 2009 at 3:41 am
FYI: Alai’s native language is rGyalrong, which is linguistically non-Tibetan. (i.e. not descended from Written Tibetan, whereas mainstream Tibetan dialects are descended from WT in the same way as the Romance languages are from Latin) The rGyalrong people, though being culturally Tibetan, are usually Chinese-educated as they don’t automatically have WT as their natural written language.
November 29th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Thank you. A fascinating and very relevant detail!
The Wikipedia entry differs somewhat from your statement that rGyalrong is “linguistically non-Tibetan”, in that it classifies rGyalrong as a “Tibeto-Burman” language. The entry also states:
“Rgyalrongic is spoken in the province of Sichuan in the People’s Republic of China, mainly in the autonomous Tibetan/Qiang prefectures of Kar-mdzes (Garzê 甘孜) and Rnga-ba (Ngawa 阿坝). These languages are distinguished by their morphological complexity, and their archaisms. They are considered by linguists to be the living fossils of the Sino-Tibetan languages.”
For my purposes—i.e., understanding Alai’s cultural background and how his knowledge of the Tibetan language aids and/or limits his access to various versions of the King Gesar Epic—this detail about the form of Tibetan he speaks is fascinating but not “sufficient.”
I am still keen to know: Can he read written classical Tibetan? Has he heard the epic performed by traditional story-tellers, and can he understand most of what he hears?
Naturally, whether or not he can read/understand the various forms of the epic in written and recited Tibetan would have a major impact on his own re-telling of it in his recently published “King Gesar.”
November 29th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Two or three years ago, he didn’t understand Written Tibetan, so cheerfully mocked by Woeser & friends. (Woeser don’t understand WT either, kinda sad considering she and Alai are the few Tibetans active in the Chinese literary world)
November 29th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
To know if Alai could understand the non-rGyalrong storytellers (he certainly understands the rGyalrong ones), it may be imperative to interview the great Alai himself. In the rGyalrong country, sedentaries speak rGyalrong and nomads speak Amdo Tibetan. So Alai must have had knowledge of neighbouring Tibetanophone groups. Whether he understand it is another matter.
November 29th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Actually, Wikipedia said exactly what I said concerning the classification of rGyalrong. If we are to trust Wikipedia (we are not, the classification of TB langauges is a mess as nobody really knows how to make it, unlike in the 200-year-old Indogermanistik)…
Sino-Tibetan -> (Tibeto-Burman) -> Tibeto-Kanauri -> Bodish -> Tibetan
Sino-Tibetan -> (Tibeto-Burman) -> Jiarongic
Tibeto-Burman languages is a large, large and very diverse group. Any two subbranches aren’t quite more connected within each other than say Baltic and Slavic. Romas in England spoke an Indo-Aryan language heavily influenced by English vocabulary, it didn’t mean they spoke English in the same way as the Scots can be said to speak English.
December 9th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Do try to get an interview with Alai on all this! That would be extremely interesting!