Nomadic Life of Northern Tibet

　　Tibet is one of the five largest grazing areas in China, and northern Tibet is the major pasture land of the region. But the extreme climate has meant that not a single modem dairy and meat processing plant has been built in Tibet. Those who have visited northern Tibet all agree that it is not easy place to even survive.

　　Many people compare the hard life of the northern Tibetan herdsmen to a life of exile. But some people think that the nomadic life is free and romantic. Tibetan herdsmen harbor no such notion - they know the kind of life they lead and wish to go on living as their ancestors did.

　　Unlike other pasturing areas, the intense cold makes any life style other than nomadic herding impossible on the plateau of northern Tibet.

　　The herdsmen live with and from their sheep and cattle, with the wind and snow for neighbors the year round. Their world is small, their lives simple. Except for transporting salt in spring and trading grain in the farming areas in autumn and winter, they spend all of their time on the ranch. All of their daily needs are met by their animals: they eat mutton and beef, drink sheep and cow milk, wear sheep and yak leather and woolen boots, live in tents made of wool and use woolen bags and ropes. From the outside world they need only tent posts, flatbottom tea pots and needles. Theirs is virtually a separate and self-supporting economy.

　　Everything the herdsmen do is determined by the season. January of the Tibetan calendar (February or March on the Gregorian calendar) is the season for birthing and herdsmen spend most of their time at the pens, attentive to help with a delivery. The third day of April is the Milking Festival. Then in mid-April it is time to shear the goats for cashmere. Sheep shearing occurs from the end of July to the beginning of August, and slaughter of cattle and sheep takes place in October of the Tibetan calendar.

　　Herdsmen have deep feelings for their cattle and sheep and treat them as part of the family. Each has a name. Many herdsmen don't really understand the concept of numbers, and to count their sheep they stand at the gate of the pen and set aside a sheep pellet for each animal that enters. When asked about the number of animals he owns, the herder will show the pile of pellets. But if any one of his hundreds of sheep is lost, he knows which one is missing at once. Herdsmen in the western part of the grazing area consider it cruel to kill the animals with a knife, so they wrap a rope around the sheep mouth and let it smother.

　　Tibetan herdsmen have utmost respect for horses. According to the primitive religion, the horse is the god in charge of roads. Although transportation has greatly improved throughout Tibet and horses have been replaced by more advanced means, the traditional thinking remains embedded in the culture. In Suo County studies have shown that the lo-cal horse population has the highest growth rate even though the horse is the animal with the lowest economic value. Peop-le will not eat their meat, drink their milk or use their skin:

　　they simply let them breed and die naturally. Moreover, horses eat a lot of grass, sometimes robbing good pasture from cattle and sheep.

　　Although herdsmen live on goats, they have a low opin-ion of them - they are not as beautiful as horses, their meat doesn't taste good and their skin cannot be made into good leather. But as a matter of fact, goats are hardy and herdsmen benefit a lot from them. For example, female goats can be milked from the first day they give birth. Yet herdsmen don't like goats, considering them problematic and troublesome as sometimes they even steal into the tents and eat whatever they find. Here the restrained horse is more popular than the shifty-eyed goat.
Meat and dairy products, high in protein but lacking var-iety, are the staples of life. The local people like to eat dried beef and mutton because they are easy to store and carry. But-tered tea is a specialty of Tibet. Fresh cow or goat milk is churned to get butter, hot tea and salt are added and the mixture is then stirred well. The first sip may not impress, but you'll soon develop a taste for it. Tibet also produces very good yogurt - that made in the central area is very smooth, while that made in Jiali in the east is so thick and stringy that it cannot even be stirred. Ziba - made by mixing barley flour with tea - is also very popular. Butter and sugar make it taste even better. Herdsmen often cook a kind of porridge called tuba, made of wheat flour, cubes of dried meat and salt. The northern herders seldom eat vegetables. When they first saw the Han (the majority of Chinese) people eating vegetables they thought they were eating grass.

　　Nomadic life by its very nature is very unstable and the pastures of northern Tibet may be the worst in the world. The western-most grazing areas are about 5,000 meters above sea level and practically barren. But they are blessed in one way
- the intense sunshine makes the grass very nutritious. Due to the lack of oxygen, cattle and sheep in the western pastures are generally smaller than animals raised at lower altitudes.
A tent and his animals are all that a herder owns. Tibetan herdsmen never complain about their roaming life, but they do pray for peace. Unfortunately, indomitable nature doesn't grant them much peace in northern Tibet. In addition to floods and volcanic eruptions, the grazing area is besieged by drought, insects, wind, hail, snow and earthquakes. On the exposed pastures herdsmen have no protection. Even the most beautiful sunny day hides perils - the intensity of the sun's rays in the thin atmosphere will rob a young girl of her youth and beauty very quickly.

　　In the autumn of 1985, a sudden blizzard brought hardship. The snow fell for more than 40 hours straight, leaving more than one meter on the ground. The herdsmen were still on the summer pastures and hadn't yet slaughtered their animals or traded for grain, and fuel was stored far away. The snow affected nearly 80,000 herdsmen and 3 million head of livestock over a 1 50,000-square-kilometer area in northern Tibet. The destruction was appalling. The larger animals such as the cows and horses fled in all directions; frightened goats huddled up around the tents meekly waiting for death; birds could find nowhere to perch; and wild antelope and Mongolian gazelle swarmed to the Qinghai-Tibet Highway in the hope of being rescued by human beings.

　　Local historical records show that snowstorms of this magnitude have occurred at least 50 times during the past century. Each storm has meant death for many herders and their animals. Sometimes an entire tribe is wiped out. But fortunately life in northern Tibet today is more organized than in the past when the herders lived scattered over the plateau. After the storm mentioned above, a rescue team was formed by cadres from the autonomous region, prefectures and autonomous counties. They plowed the roads and trucked in food, fuel and fodder. The PLA contributed by airlifting emergency supplies to the stricken area by helicopter. The snow didn't melt until six months later. Although tens of thousands of animals were found dead, not a single herder perished in the disaster.

　　Hard as life is in northern Tibet, few herdsmen ever look for another way of making a living because they consider this poor and barren grassland their home. One young man raised here had the opportunity to pursue a higher education in Lhasa, and then found a job there. But several years later he quit his work and returned home to herd animals. When asked why he made such a choice, he replied, "I feel that to be a herdsman is to be free."

　　In recent years some younger people, having received an education in town, have become unaccustomed to their old life. And once they leave home to work in some other place, they are faced with a different problem: returning home is difficult because they have no idea where their family tent may be pitched at any given time.

　　It is very hard to fully understand the Tibetan spirit. At times you may feel that you have managed to get inside it, but then you realize that you are still far from grasping its essence. In this unique land, a singular natural world has contributed to creating an ever-changing people.