Multicultural hub of Markham showcases variety in Tibet
After winding hundreds of miles through the QinghaiTibet Plateau, the Lancang (Mekong) and Jinsha (the upper section of Yangtze) rivers arrive in Markham county, in the south of Chamdo city, ready to leave the Tibet autonomous region.
Serving as major passageways for the ancient Tea Horse Road, the valleys of the two rivers have been vital channels for the flow of people and cargo for millennia. This has made Markham, in the southeast of Tibet, a major hub of cultural and economic exchanges in Southwest China.
One example of the frequent cultural exchanges is the great number of multiethnic families in the county, especially in its southern townships of Tsakhalho, Mogshod, Naxi and Chutsankha.
With his tanned face, Zhang Wei, a teacher at Tsakhalho Middle School, looks no different from the residents of the township of Tsakhalho, which features strong sunshine on the plateau and dry winds typical of the Lancang and Jinsha valleys.
Zhang is Han and from Guizhou province. His students say Zhang can be easily recognized because “he smiles almost every moment”.
When asked why he smiles so much, Zhang said he is satisfied with his life, especially his family. His smile is the broadest when he talks about his wife, Pema Wangmo, who is a native Tibetan in the township.
Zhang began to teach at Tsakhalho Middle School in 2006, where he met Pema Wangmo, who was a teacher in a local primary school.
“My wife looks prettier nowadays as she is increasingly good at makeup and dressing,” Zhang said.
“But I still remember her simple and pure beauty when I first met her, which is a kind of long-lasting thing in my memory,” Zhang recalled.
He said he fell in love with Pema Wangmo “the first time I saw her”. “As we got more familiar with each other, I discovered Pema Wangmo had similar feelings for me,” Zhang said. “So I proposed marriage in 2009 and she agreed.”
However, he said it took some effort to persuade his parents in Guizhou to agree to his marriage.
“My parents said I should marry a native girl in Guizhou,” Zhang said. “They thought that could avoid disagreements in life.”
Luckily, Pema Wangmo’s parents endorsed the marriage proposal immediately.
Pema Wangmo paid a visit to Zhang’s parents in Guizhou. “A face-to-face meeting enhanced the understanding between them,” Zhang said. “My parents told me Pema Wangmo is a nice girl and they like her very much.”
Finally, with the endorsement of both parents, Zhang and Pema Wangmo got married in 2009.
Zhang is an eager and fast learner of local culture. He mastered the Tibetan language quickly and became fond of the local food.
“Every time I visit my parents-in-law, it’s a great delight to taste the butter tea and tsamba — or roasted highland barley flour — they prepare for me,” Zhang said.
He noted that his parentsin-law had fallen in love with the spicy Guizhou dishes he cooks for them. “They said it took some time to get used to Guizhou dishes, but now they are really fond of them.”
Like Zhang, Lei Yunchun, a teacher in a primary school in Mogshod, was an immigrant to Markham county.
As an ethnic Bai from Yunnan province, Lei moved to Markham with his uncle when he was a teenager. After graduating from a school in Chamdo, he worked as a teacher in Mogshod Primary School in 2006, where he met Sonam Wangmo.
They developed a fondness for each other over the following six years and decided to get married in 2012.
Their parents were happy at the news. “That was an attitude we didn’t expect,” Lei said. “We had worried that our differences in ethnicities and cultures might be an obstacle.”
Lei recalled Sonam Wangmo’s parents told him they valued family piety, kindness and a hardworking spirit — and they had already found such things in him.
But Lei said there was one
obstacle when he began to court Sonam Wangmo. “That was how to speak in local Tibetan fluently,” he said.
Once he realized that he was going to live with a Tibetan family, he was keen to learn Tibetan and mastered the language quickly.
“I used to think that my parents-in-law were silent people,” Lei said. “Later, I found this was not true when I could talk with them in fluent Tibetan.”
Unlike Zhang and Lei, Tsering Nyizin in Naxi township has a family whose members are all native. Despite that, the family is multi-ethnic and multifaith.
Such families are common in Naxi, which, bordering Yunnan, is home to a number of ethnic groups.
Tsering Nyizin is a Naxi and a believer of Tibetan Buddhism. Her husband is a Tibetan and a Catholic.
Despite their different faiths, they got married in the late 1990s.
“We respect each other’s religion and endure the differences in cultures and customs,” Tsering Nyizin said. “That’s how we have kept our family united for more than two decades.”
She admitted there have been disagreements on trivial matters.
“I remembered there was a quarrel on what kind of clothes to wear during a Tibetan New Year celebration,” Tsering Nyizin recalled.
“I said I’d like to wear traditional Naxi clothes to visit my husband’s relatives.
“But my husband insisted that I should wear Tibetan clothes and we had a big quarrel. I was so angry that I refused to eat my dinner.”
Tsering Nyizin said her husband later explained that she looked prettier when wearing Tibetan clothes and he just wanted to show her best looking to his relatives.
“His explanation turned my tears into smiles,” she said.
Tsering Nyizin is a mother of three children. Her family was not rich in the early years, but she made great efforts to raise her children and support their education.
Thanks to her and the free compulsory education offered by the government, her children all went on to university.
On her parents’ side, Tsering Nyizin has a large multiethnic and multicultural family. Her elder brother married an ethnic Hui girl who is a Muslim and her younger brother married a Han girl.