Feature: former serf, refugee enjoys happy life

15:46, November 02, 2009

When Tibet Daily reporters first met in 2008 Danzeng Peijie, a senior citizen, he was living in a temporary dwelling in a shabby community in southwestern Tibet's Xigaze Prefecture.

This year, when the reporters paid a second visit to the senior, he had moved into a low-rent apartment the government built for him. The old man kept several flowerpots in the brand-new house.

"I am lucky enough to enjoy a happy life," Danzeng Peijie started telling his life story. He was born into a farmer's family in Xigaze Prefecture in 1927. The family of eight had never had enough to eat because of limited farmland.

The past is still fresh in the old man's memory. When he was 13, his parents had to sent him to be a serf in a manor in Xigaze, where he served as a serf till he was 17. Later, he was sent by his parents to be a slave in another manor, where he had to do heavier labor than in the previous one. Just like this, he had been a serf for about 20 years.

In 1959, the Democratic Reforms emancipated one million serfs in Tibet and enabled them to be the masters of new Tibet. For the first time ever, Danzeng Peijie enjoyed personal freedom and was distributed a plot of land by the government. He has always considered that his second birth in his mind.

For historical reasons, social production in Tibet was still backward back then, and the life was hard.

In 1964, Danzen heard that life was easier in foreign countries, so he went to Nepal with his wife. To their surprise, upon their arrival in Nepal, he learned that as other Tibetans who had fled to Nepal, he had to get a refugee card, for which he had been blackmailed by some local people and paid a lot of money.

Presuming that he would live a better life in Nepal, Danzen didn't expect that life was even tougher. The couple had to sell ghee butter for a living. To his great sorrow, his wife died at an early age of hardships and suffering of life overseas.

In 1979, the reform and open-up drive was launched in Danzeng' s homeland. His relatives wrote to him about the rosy future of China's development and the improvement of livelihood in his hometown. They hoped he would return home and ceased his life as a refugee in a foreign land. Therefore, in 1984, Danzeng returned back home.

In 1986, Danzeng settled down at the Fifth Neighborhood Committee of Xigaze. He married his second wife in the following year and they had a daughter. Later in 1994, he engaged in dealing in wheat flour, and didn't stop until he had to due to his poor health.

From then on, he had been living on government subsidies. The government also did its utmost to solve his problems such as housing for the senior. With assistance of the Prefetural United Front Work Department, Danzen moved into a low-rent house with a living room, a bedroom and a storage.

The senior now enjoys a minimum living guarantee subsidy of 400 yuan RMB each month. He said, "If I am sick, I can go to the hospital for free. If I am lonely, I can hang out in the entertainment center for the elderly." The senior is more than content with his present life, and he is happy with it. "Of course, I have to be grateful to the preferential policies of the Communist Party of China for what I have now," he said.

Source: Xinhuanet