Chanting Tibetan Children

This was a beguiling experience. This was my first trip (of 3 over 8 years) to Langmusi, a small Tibetan trading settlement on the border of Sichuan and Gansu provinces in China. My Chinese friends and I were on an adventure and looking for a story. We wondered into this primary school and the monks invited us into one of the classrooms. The boys were chanting from these ragged texts - what a sound. It can't be described. As with many things in China, there was a caveat in the ephemeral beauty of the moment when we realised there were pictures in the books depicting the Chinese national flag and of Chairman Mao, no less.

We went out for a class photo ([link]). The headmaster insisted on showing his face - he's the Han man on the right. The Han are the 90-something % ethnic majority who seal the fate of all others who fall within the Chinese geographic polity (and for whom Mao was the Great Helmsman). I'm trying to write without sensation, judgement, invective or cynacism, but failing drastically. I shall stop now.

Tibetan Primary School
Langmusi, Sichuan, China (1999)
Pentax MZ-5
Kodak T-Max 3200