BY SUO QIONG

  The hero of this story is Xiaochuan Ouzhu, male, of Tibetan ethnic group. He was born in 1946 in Meishe Cuoba, a town in the upper reaches of the Xiangquan River in Ngari Prefecture, Tibet. His father was called Dawa Duojie, who was born of a rich herdsman's family. His grandfather was once a low-rank tribal chief. Ouzhu's mother, Qu Ni, lost her parents when she was still a baby and was brought up by others. Ouzhu has eight brothers and sisters. When Ouzhu was a boy, his parents earned the family's livelihood by running errands for a herd owner.

  In 1960 democratic reforms started and people's governments at different levels were established in Ngari Prefecture. For the training of cadres of Tibetan nationality, the state was sending a batch of youngsters born of poor families to schools in the interior areas of the country. Ouzhu left Tibet to attend school despite opposition from his parents. He was 14 years old then. In August 1961, together with other youngsters from Ngari, Ouzhu set foot inside the Tibet School (renamed Tibet Nationality Institute later) in Xianyang, a city in Shaanxi province, and became quickly adapted to the local conditions. With good academic performance, Ouzhu completed four years of preparatory studies in 1964. In September of the same year he enrolled in a vocational school, majoring in veterinary medicine. In July 1970 Ouzhu and 14 of his classmates joined the army and were assigned to work at the Ngari Military Subarea Command of the People's Liberation Army. Thanks to his outstanding performance, he was promoted to be deputy political commissar of the People's Armed Forces Department of Ge'gyai County in 1977 when he was not yet 30 years old. From 1981 he served successively as deputy political commissar and deputy Party secretary of the People's Armed Forces Department of Burang County, political commissar of the People's Armed Forces Department of Gar County, and deputy director of the Political Department of the Ngari Military Subarea Command of the PLA. In 1990 Ouzhu was transferred to civilian work to be head of a department of the Tibet regional government. He has won a number of honors thanks to his outstanding work performance. Ouzhu retired in 2007. Recalling his life, Ouzhu says: "I've had many life experiences but the biggest turning point in my life was my study stint in the interior of the country 47 years ago. I'll never forget those years."

Ouzhu at college in 1960

Childhood

As Ouzhu recalls, his grandfather was a low-rank tribal chief. The family lived a fairly comfortable life thanks to the family having a strong labor force. But when his father married and began living separately, the family fortunes declined. He had just a few dozens of sheep and a dilapidated tent. Life was hard for the family. At the time, his father earned the family's livelihood mainly by going every year to three places, including a town at the Indian border, to exchange his sheep for grain and salt. As Ouzhu recalls, his father would be away for months on end, leaving the rest of the family worried. The kids would calculate the days of his absence with fingers and expected his return. "But just as everybody was about to lose patience, one day we saw a caravan of pack sheep appearing on a slope we had kept gazing at. Both men and sheep appeared worn out. Needless to say, our father and some of his fellow villagers had come home," Ouzhu says.

  But the happiness of family reunion was short-lived. The grain his father had brought back could last the family just several months. The family had to do something else to make ends meet. His parents would let Ouzhu's elder brothers and sisters work separately for local herd owners. Their job was to graze sheep on high mountain pastures. Each would take with him or her a small tent, some food and simple cooking utensils. Every month or so, Ouzhu's parents would take some food to the kids. And that is when they had the greatest fear. If, after climbing over the mountaintop, they saw the tent standing with smoke curling upwards, the scene indicated that everything was Okay, at least the kid they were visiting was still alive. If the tent had collapsed with no smoke, the omens would be too bad to contemplate. For the kids, natural and living conditions were so bad on the high mountains that a minor disease could easily cause death.

  Ouzhu recalls: "At the age of eight, I was supposed to be old enough to start work. As I was too small to graze sheep in a faraway place, my parents let me graze lambs for a rich herd owner called Enji Jiabu. The lambs were kept on a small pasture right in front of the herd owner's home. This was not dangerous work, of course. But wolves were extremely clever and knew how to cheat kids. Once in a while, they would steal some lambs under my nose. ‘Today, I saw a yellow dog playing with the lambs,' I said to the herd owner one day. He was both angered and amused. ‘The kid can't do the job. Let him go home,' he said. So I was fired."

Ouzhu recalls that, for working for a herd owner, members of his family received several bags of highland barley once in a while or, during the winter slaughtering season, a few head of weak and sick animals. In the months before summer harvest, the family had to borrow roasted highland barley to tide over difficulties.

  The kids grew up in half hunger. Gazing at silent mountains in the distance and looking at their small tent holding barely a thing, Ouzhu thought this perhaps was what grown-ups talked about "destiny." Well, one could not go against destiny, he thought.

  There is a town called Jianima near their home. At the time, the town hosted a small seasonal market where people did border trade with India. Once Ouzhu's father, driving some cattle to the market, took his son along. As he recalls now, the market was nothing more than several tents erected on an empty ground. But in Ouzhu's eyes at the time, the market was a sea of tents with such a great variety of merchandise that he could hardly believe his eyes. With several silver dollars and dozens of catties of wool, his father bought a pair of boots for his son as well as sugar and cotton cloth for the family. The pair of boots was a great luxury for Ouzhu. His visit to Jianima allowed him to see the big world. He couldn't hope to see more than that, he thought. No miracle could happen to him, he said to himself.

  "The Work Team Has Come!"

But he thought wrong. In 1952 PLA soldiers came to Ngari for garrison duty. Suddenly Ouzhu's field of vision broadened. He still remembers being perplexed by PLA soldiers's love of "kai shui," or boiled water. At the time, most of the Han Chinese he saw had dry, cracked lips and red-dark skin. When they went to Tibetan families as guests, they just wanted a little "kai shui" but did not eat anything. How strange these people were, Ouzhu thought then (Herdsmen in the Ngari area do not have the habit to drink boiled water).

  Years later, after the armed rebellion in Tibet was suppressed, an armed work team arrived at Ouzhu's hometown, Jiabu Zuoge. Ouzhu would go to where the team was stationed and looked around. He was curious about everything.

  Ouzhu says that, as a boy, he was naughty, fond of play and full of curiosity. He says: "I was the first in my hometown to eat fish and rabbit. My mother, who believed in Buddhism, didn't approve of this. She forbade me from using the family's cooking utensils to cook them. I had to erect a makeshift stove outside the house to cook rabbit meat."

One of the members of the work team is a Han Chinese surnamed Zhu. Another is a Tibetan interpreter named Ah Wang. Every day Old Zhu sat in his tent and kept writing in a notebook. As he looked on, Ouzhu was full of admiration for the writer. Ah Wang, who was a tall guy, patrolled around the station, a machine gun slung on his shoulder. Ouzhu never tired of watching the patrolman and his gun. When the soldiers were having a meeting or eating their meal, Ouzhu would stand at the tent opening, watching. Their food, quilt and towels were all things he saw for the first time. He was interested in whatever they did.

  When he heard that the work team would send a batch of herdsmen's kids to interior areas of the country as pupils, Ouzhu asked Ah Wang to help him get selected. Ah Wang said: "you are too young to be eligible." Ouzhu did not lose heart. He thought: "If I can study in the country's  interior, I can write and read like Old Zhu and have a gun like Ah Wang. That would be really great. I must get selected no matter what.?Perhaps because he seemed too vexed, Ah Wang said to him half-jokingly once: "If you really want to attend school, then take part in a wrestling contest. I'll let whoever wins go." Ouzhu says: "He might think I was too young and too short of stature to win. But I was serious. Without a word, I lifted a fellow kid beside me and threw him onto a heap of cattle dung, to the laughter of all around. Ah Wang said: Okay, go home and ask your parents whether or not they allow you to go. My parents both agreed. After some time, as we were about to depart, Ah Wang told me to once again ask my parents for permission to go. This time my mother hesitated. She hated to part with me. Why was his kid leaving Tibet to study in the country's interior? What was he going to study? Could he come back home? And When? At the time, she had no answer to all these questions. Later, after hearing that eight other kids of the village had applied, my mother finally agreed."

  "Finally I can attend school!" Ouzhu said to himself.

Ouzhu in Hagri in the 1970s

  Mother'sTears

  "In 1961 the eight kids who had applied at the same time went to Ge'er Kunsha, at the time seat of the Ngari prefecture government. After we were given Han Chinese clothes, we sent home our sheepskin Tibetan robes. We were also given butter and roasted highland barley," Ouzhu says. At Ge'er Kunsha, Ouzhu and five others had passed a physical checkup. Two kids failed the checkup and went home.

  Two days after their departure from Ge'er Kunsha, the future pupils arrived at the Duoma army service station, where for the first time Ouzhu had a Han Chinese-style meal he had long salivated over. There were roasted peanuts on the table. The group leader told the kids to enjoy their meal but said they couldn't take what they couldn't eat. Nevertheless, Ouzhu put a few peanuts into his pocket stealthily before leaving the table.

  On the first journey away from home, little Ouzhu would sometimes make a fool of himself. Once or twice, he was found to wear another kid's coat. At other times, he would leave one shoe behind. But their leader and older kids took good care of skinny-thin Ouzhu all along the way.

  Ouzhu recalls that, in Yecheng County, Xinjiang, he saw trees for the first time in his life. He was also fascinated by fruit trees, wheat fields and non-Tibetans riding donkeys. "Have we arrived in India I've often heard about? But this can't be India. Doesn't the teacher say we are going to ‘Jia Na' (the interior) to attend school?" Ouzhu recalls.

  The pupils were excited. It is extremely hot and dry in Yecheng located on the fringe of the Takilamakan Desert. The kids enjoyed playing a water splashing game. One day the teacher took them to the street for sightseeing. A girl wearing baggy trousers was performing a sword dance at a street corner. The kids thought the girl must have gone mad for, otherwise, how could she have gone about dancing with a sword? Their laughter frightened the girl away.

  After the group had got on board a train in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, Ouzhu still kept asking the group leader: "Ah Wada, isn't this ‘Jia Na'?" Ah Wada replied patiently: "Yes, this is part of ‘Jia Na'. But we are going to a city called Xianyang, which is quite far from here." The climate there is much better than it is here.?The carriage resounded with applause.

  At the Tibet Ethnic Institute in Xianyang, the kids began eight years of learning. Many of their teachers were graduates of the school. They spoke both Chinese and Tibetan, were skilled in teaching and easy of access. They and the students were like members of a family.

  During the first few months in Xianyang, Ouzhu was slow to adapt to the local climate and often fell ill, but he quickly recovered thanks to meticulous care he received from workers of the school clinic. 

  Problem is that, in the year they enrolled in the school, the nation was suffering great hardships owing to three consecutive years of natural calamities that had hit the country. In addition, the country was paying back debts it had owed the Soviet Union. The pigs raised by the school were sold for money. Students, all of whom were young men and girls, all had a good appetite. Ouzhu, who was younger than most and of short stature, could cope with the little food available. But for the bigger boys, food was not enough. Once, teachers and students discussed how to raise agricultural output and practice economy. Asked to give his opinion, Ouzhu said: "I don't know." Taking a piece of bread, the teacher asked: "Ouzhu, this is a piece of bread. Is half of this enough for you?" Ouzhu said: "Yes, I guess." The teacher then said: "Ouzhu, could you give away half of your piece of bread to a fellow student of yours?" Ouzhu answered petulantly: "Okay, I suppose." All laughed. Ouzhu did not understand this kind of education then. But as he grew up he came to understand many things. Gradually he began to have correct ideas on the meaning of life and a collective spirit.

  How time flew! The Tibetan pupils began receiving crack education from 1961. In 1964 they began training in different disciplines, including teaching, accounting, post and telecom business and agriculture. They knew they were going to contribute to the development of Tibet with what they were learning.

  In the autumn of 1967, during the height of the Cultural Revolution, Ouzhu paid a visit to his home in Tibet. That year one of his younger sisters contracted meningitis, a serious brain disease. The parents erected a tent near the local government offices to seek treatment for the girl. When the mother saw her son as if he had fallen from the heavens, she hugged him and wept for happiness. She had not thought she could see her son again.

  Seeing that her son had grown into a strapping lad, the mother felt immensely happy and proud.

  In 1970 Ouzhu came back to Tibet after years of study in the country's interior. He tempered himself and matured as he worked. He has had outstanding performance at various posts.

  In those special years, batches of the children of poverty-stricken, illiterate Tibetan peasants and herdsmen were sent to Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an and other cities to attend school there. Education has changed their life. Upon graduation, these Tibetan students volunteered to work in areas where conditions are hardest or to get tempered in grassroots organizations. Dozens of years on, they have become specialists in their respective fields and some have assumed posts of leadership at different levels. With their own hands, they have contributed to the rapid development of Tibet, their homeland. Ouzhu is one of them.

"All seem to have been a dream," Ouzhu says. "But incredible things have actually happened to me."