Serfs and Freedom
We once heard our history teacher talk about the Democratic Reform in Tibet. This time, we visited the home of 75-year-old Solang Tenzin and listened to him personally recount that history — when light triumphed over darkness and the serfs regained their freedom.
Solang Tenzin’s father passed away when he was young, leaving the family to be supported by his mother, who raised him along with his younger brother and sister. Starting at age 8, Solang Tenzin performed “corvée labor” as a serf, working for the landlord’s household — fetching water, boiling water, herding cattle and sheep — all under extremely harsh conditions. The living quarters for the serfs were extremely rudimentary, no bigger than a cowshed, with a mud stove and a stone table making up the entire dwelling. Even this meager shelter did not belong to them; they had to toil endlessly just to have a place to stay. In contrast, the landlord’s children had everything done for them — clothes handed to them, meals served — and only learned to take care of themselves around the age of thirteen or fourteen.
The life of an ordinary serf was already incredibly hard, but the life of a slave was beyond imagination. Solang Tenzin mentioned that slaves were not allowed to look around, speak freely, or touch things casually. They were beaten and scolded at the slightest provocation, with no freedom whatsoever. He once witnessed a young monk who couldn’t pay his corvée duties stripped naked and beaten to death with sticks. The monk’s originally fair skin gradually turned blue and bruised during the beating, then became bloody and unrecognizable — a horrifying sight.
In those days, the lives of the poor had no sense of self. Almost everything they did was to repay debts that had accumulated over countless generations, multiplied many times over. They struggled their whole lives without ever finding liberation.
It wasn’t until the Democratic Reform that a ray of light pierced through this dark and sunless life — a light that grew brighter and brighter, almost driving all the darkness from the land.
Solang Tenzin’s life as a serf ended when he turned 18 — not because he had repaid his debts by then, but precisely because that year, the Democratic Reform reached his village. The landlords’ property was completely confiscated and their power stripped away. Records of common people borrowing items from the landlords were all destroyed, and Solang Tenzin no longer had to bear the unbearable corvée duties or work numbly for others. He could finally live for himself. He mentioned that at the moment of liberation, the shackles of forced labor were lifted, and the feeling of gaining freedom was like being reborn. “From birth until 18, I never had the concept of ‘what I want to do.’ After the reform, when land and livestock were distributed, I realized there could be something that was ‘mine,’ and that I could have my own desires.” He also said that when the reform first began and he saw the landlords’ property confiscated and some landlords taken away, people were still worried that the landlords might regain power and then force them to work even harder or torture them in revenge.
The truth is, the source of that light was the sun. And the sun does not set.
As for the Party that brought this light, Solang Tenzin speaks of it with deep gratitude. Alongside gratitude, there is also guilt — guilt that despite the Party bringing him such a good life, he feels he hasn’t been able to do anything for the country.
Compared to the related descriptions in history textbooks, what Solang Tenzin describes is a bloody historical truth, a firsthand experience of "the serfs singing upon their liberation," the indescribable gratitude of a freed serf, and also powerful proof that our motherland is growing ever better.