Tibetan Diary-The First Impression of Shangri-La

In Diqing, I had the opportunity to buy real delicacies from Tibetan families, and had a home-cooked meal with Zhuo Ma, the hostess who can speak Mandarin at home, and chatted for a few days. Tibetan women are called Zhuo Ma and men are called handsome men. Oh,no. The man's name is Tashi.

When dining in Tibetan homes, Zhuo Ma methodically presented guests with homemade buttered tea, Baba and highland barley cakes, as well as three sets of Tibetan food. Buttered tea is not used to being drunk by most people. Butter is artificially extracted from your own milk and finally stirred repeatedly with strong tea juice. Ciba is highland barley powder, similar to northern fried noodles. Mix it with butter tea and knead it into a ball. It tastes good. The altitude and climate in Tibetan areas determine that the vegetables that can be planted are limited. The staple food is potatoes and highland barley, and of course there is also beef and mutton.

When you enter Tibet, someone will tell you that although Tibetans don't like bathing very much, they look dirty, but their hearts are clean. All the people kidnapped in tourist attractions are foreigners, and the local Tibetans are very simple. Moreover, although they look ragged, most of them don't worry about food and clothing, and some Tibetans even live a very rich life. Only a few of them will leave their homeland to live in Chinese-style places. The lifestyle of relying on mountains to eat mountains and devotion to Tibetan Buddhism make the so-called modern civilization dispensable to them.

Zhuo Ma is slender, with a neat low ponytail, and her typical plateau black skin sets off her physique. She said that when she was a child, the family conditions were ok. Her parents sent her to study in the Han nationality for two years. She often complained that the Han nationality didn't have enough to eat. At school, she only ate vegetables and had to bring yak meat to eat. Then her parents tricked her into going home. She got married at the age of 16 and gave birth to her eldest son at the age of 18. Now she has three sons.

As we all know, Tibetan areas are still polygamous and have no families, so although the family population is large, it is still quite United. The division of labor between men and women is also quite clear. Men are mainly responsible for herding cattle in the mountains for several months every year and digging herbs to take home. At other times, it seems that there is nothing they can do. Women are mainly responsible for taking care of children and farming at home. They can earn hundreds of thousands of yuan every year by selling wild medicinal materials, such as maca, notoginseng, Dendrobium and saffron. A yak at home can be worth1-20 thousand, but the growth cycle is slow, and it takes 5-6 years for an adult yak. Although they can earn a good income through hard work and gifts from nature every year, their money will not be deposited in banks, and of course they will not engage in financial investment. In fact, more than half of the income will be given to monks in temples, which means being brainwashed by monks in the eyes of laymen like me, but in their Buddhist beliefs, it means accumulating virtue; The rest of the money is used to repair our house.

When you go to a Tibetan family, you will find that their house looks a bit like a trapezoid (earthquake-resistant shape). Entering the yard, the first floor of the building is a storage room with steep wooden stairs, and the second floor is a living place. The interior of the hall on the second floor of Zhuoma's house is all finely carved wooden furniture-walls, closets, roofs and even chandeliers, all of which are artificially carved with solid wood, showing exquisite patterns. Although Zhuo Ma has always said that this is an old house, we can still see that the luster of the hollowed-out wood carving wardrobe is still bright and sincere.

In fact, it will not happen overnight if they want to have a guest house. Usually, they invite the best carpenters to their homes and pay for the daily accommodation. Some carpenters will even stay at home for three or four years to complete the whole fine and grand indoor woodcut art. According to Zhuo Ma, a beautiful house in Tibetan areas needs three or four million yuan to complete, and it is a long process.

Zhuo Ma said, this is the same as your Han nationality, working for the house all your life.

Then, she described her experience as a village women's director and went to other Tibetan families to popularize modern medicine and health construction. When most Tibetans are sick, they go to the mountains to collect medicine for treatment, instead of seeing a doctor; Women are all born at home and don't pay attention to hygiene. If something happens on the way, people will think that you owe it to your children in your last life. But in fact, Tibetans generally live a long life, which may be due to simple life, less desire and relaxed spirit; Materially, the environment and food are more natural, and there is less industrial pollution in cities. Hygienically speaking, it is poetic to have dandelion flowers on the way to the toilet, but in fact, the toilet is next to the pigsty.

I also took the initiative to gossip with her about a terrible topic that I have been curious about for a long time-the burial method of Tibetans after death.

There are no tombstones and graves on the mountains in Tibetan areas, because most civilians will be buried in the sky and water after death, and noble monks will be buried in towers after death.

Celestial burial is usually carried out on the celestial burial platform on the mountain. After death, people will leave it at home for about seven days, and then let the monks chant for seven days to sever all kinds of entanglements with the world. After that, it will be transported to the mountain by the celestial burial master for follow-up surgery, and the bones will be eaten by vultures, which means that the deceased will be reincarnated into heaven. Zhuo Ma said that relatives would plant a tree near the celestial burial platform to express their thoughts on the deceased. So you can see the densest place on the mountain in the distance, which is probably the location of the celestial burial platform. As the name implies, water burial is not for vultures, but for fish in the river. Tibetans do not eat fish. They think that fish are creatures without feelings and consciousness. Fortunately, I really don't like fish.

Ordinary Tibetans live a simple life and have few desires. Believing in Buddhism cares about the accumulation of virtue, and the perfection of merit can be liberated. Outsiders don't have to look forward to it. Religion is not to liberate people in essence, but a means for political power to control ordinary people. Of course, Tibetans really believe and have nothing to do with politics, so they rarely feel pain for secular things.

Finally, the real dried yak meat is eaten by Tibetans themselves at home and rarely sold in large quantities, so don't buy the so-called dried yak meat outside. In fact, most of them are ordinary beef.

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