Liu Wei, a Tibetologist and a senior reporter of Xinhua News Agency, once stayed in Tibet for 26 years. This article, written in 1995, is selected from Liu's book "Tell You a Real Tibet," which was published in 2008 by Xinhua Publishing House.

"I have grown up with Tibet Autonomous Region," said Yeshe Rgyatso, who was born in 1965 when Tibet Autonomous Region was founded, "It's in the thirty years that the region has achieved initial prosperity and I myself have grown up under the care of the Chinese Communist Party. I have witnessed great changes taking place in Tibet. As a Tibetan journalist, I can record only a tip of an iceberg."

Yeshe, who served both Tibet Daily and Guangming Daily, was born into a nomadic family in northernmost Ngari, northern Tibet. In 1985, he went back home for the first time via Xinjiang after studying in a school in Beijing for nine years.

"I'm the first member of my family to receive education. When returning home, I was greatly impressed by the sharp contrasts between my hometown and capital of Beijing. Even so, I was still deeply moved by the changes that had taken place here."

"Before going to school at seven, I had just slept in an open-air sheepfold. My grandparents' tent and our Pulu (a Tibetan woolen cloth material) were all knit by ourselves. We had to barter our staple food with wool and mutton," Yeshi recalled.

In the 1980s, China introduced the initiative-based responsibility system in it rural areas. Diverse economic reforms focusing on family-based production were also launched in agricultural and pastoral areas in Tibet.

According to the policy that will remain unchanged for a long time to come, farmers can cultivate land on their own and herdsmen can own the domestic animals they raise and pursue their own management. As a result, the economy in Tibet's agricultural and pastoral areas was revitalized.

"Changes in my family were so great: we have rice, wheat flour and tasty dishes. We even built a permanent house with a dozen rooms and would never live a nomadic life any more as in the past. Now we raise 1,000 sheep, yaks and horses. Our neighboring herdsman families also have tape recorders and sewing machines and use electronic calculators to record accounts."

In 1988, upon graduating from the Chinese Department of the Central College for Nationalities (today's "Minzu University"), Yeshe was employed in Tibet Daily and sent to the paper's Ngari Office as a reporter.

"When I returned home for the second time, my first impression was that the traditional animal husbandry in Ngari, once backward and closed up, became more market-oriented. With trucks and tractors, many herdsmen began to engage in transportation besides grazing. As Lake Pangong abounds in fishes, the county government has built a factory to produce fishbone powder. Near the Deru Power Station, a pashm processing plant and a wool cleaning factory were set up. You know, "Cashmere" was originated from Rutog County, which is famous for white goat production and has built such animal breeding bases in recent years. "

Working as a reporter for four years, Yeshe has covered 300,000 sq km in this prefecture. Opening his article clipbook with hundreds of thousands of words, he said: "Facing the tremendous changes taking place in my hometown, how can I, a Tibetan reporter, keep from singing?"

Unlike Yeshe, Wangdu and Namgyai, both of whom are in their forties with boyhood spent in old Tibet, wrote more about their own experiences in Tibet's past and present.

Namgyai, who returned home upon his graduation from the Central College for Nationalities in 1975, recalled: "What great changes have taken place in my hometown! I'm the first college student in Lhamo Village, Dagze County, so all villagers rushed out to greet me, presented me Hada (a white silk scarf symbolizing good luck in the Tibetan language) and toasted me with barley liquor. My elder sister brought me dishes including scrambled eggs, mutton and rice. I had never had such a scrumptious lunch at home before. At night, I slept in the bed with a new woolen blanket and satin-covered quilt. I had thought only I myself enjoyed such privileges. Unexpectedly, all my family had the same quality blankets and quilts. Only some bedcovers were made of cotton prints."

Forced by living pressure, Namgyai's parents, once serfs, had to rent some land from nobles and borrowed the Gandain Monastery 14 kg of seeds. "My illiterate father never thought it was feneration and the snowballing interest created debts of 1,120 kg which could never be repaid by even succeeding generations. However, their life didn't improve a bit. They didn't know the original debts had increased from 14 kg to 3,500 kg until the Democratic Reform was initiated in 1959. But for Tibet's peaceful liberation, my parents would never have paid off the monastery's debts all their life," Namgyai recalled.

How about the Tibetan people's life today?

In Namgyai's article, he depicted their life like this: There are six members in my old family. They own 1.67 hectares of cultivated land with an annual grain output of 7,500 kg and nearly 100 sheep, 15 cows and cattle. They also have modern agricultural machinery such as a tractor, seed-sowers and threshers. In 1992, they expanded their house for the second time, which now has living rooms, bedrooms, a scripture hall, a kitchen and a store-room.

"It is the Communist Party of China that brought me up," Wangdu said with deep emotion.

"When I was five, my mother was seriously ill and my elder sister went to ask a lama to perform a religious dance which was considered as a way to drive off illness and thus to cure patients. The lama promised that my mother's life could be saved. However, my mother had died when my sister came back. My father died when I was at the age of 12. It was the party that sent me to Tibet's only middle school -- the Lhasa Middle School, and provided me the first-class scholarship."

It is by no means easy for Tibet to achieve today's prosperity and progress. Every Tibetan, as long as he/she is honest, can feel the party and the Central Government's concern with and sincere assistance to this region, said Wangdu. He wrote in his report: "I have seen my hometown experiencing tremendous changes. People's life has become more prosperous and education has been increasingly flourishing, improving the quality of the entire nation. All this has brought me delights as well as hopes, so that I could see Tibet's bright future.

Tseden was born into a Tibetan serf family in Batang County of southwest China's Sichuan Province. When the PLA 18th army marched into Tibet via Batang, he joined the troops, embarking on a road to revolution. "It was the way that led me and the miserable old Tibet to a new life."

After joining the army, Tseden was lucky enough to be chosen to study in the Central Newsreels and Documentary Film Studio based in Beijing. "After returning to Tibet, I went through several events such as crushing rebellion and Democratic Reform in Tibet, having shot its historical changes with my camera."

"During these years, I have visited almost every corner of Tibet. With my camera, I have recorded Tibet's continuous economic development and social progress. When the Tibet Autonomous Region was founded in 1965, we made a documentary film titled "Tibet Today," recording its historical stride into a socialist society from the feudal serfdom," Tseden said. 　

Source: Xinhuanet