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Ever since the Dalai Lama’s first visit to Taiwan in 1997, discussions and studies of issues related to Tibet have gradually increased. Among these discussions and studies, some have focused on the complicated 20th-century history involving Taiwan, Tibet and China, such as Lin Chao-Chen’s The Lama Killing (1999) and Lin Hsiao-Ting’s Tibet and Nationalist China’s Frontier: Intrigues and Ethnopolitics, 1928-49 (2006). Also, movements for supporting Tibet also unfolded slowly in Taiwan, and have formed strategic alliances in recent years with non-governmental organizations engaging in other human rights issues. Moreover, Taiwan and the Central Tibetan Administration have broken the ice and attempted to establish a normalized relationship, for example, the Taiwan Parliament Group for Tibet (2016-), the Taipei City Council Tibet Caucus (2016-), etc.
As a matter of fact, there have been Tibet-related literature and activities organized by the private sector for supporting the Tibet movement before 1997. For example, the travelogue of a missionary traveling through Tibet in 1927, which was written in “Pe̍h-ōe-jī” (Romanized Taiwanese).(註1) Due to underlying issues related to the Taiwanese identity, this written language was banned by both the Japanese colonial government and the Kuomintang (KMT) government. , Furthermore, doctor and Taiwanese literary movement advocate Ngôo Sin-îng(吳新榮), who was also oppressed later in the February 28 Incident, recorded in his diary the activity for supporting Tibet in 1959 (註2), which was organized by the Taiwanese people and local religious groups. Yet, after different colonial regimes, in particular, a series of “sinicization” policies implemented by the KMT after its retreat to Taiwan, records as such have not been preserved systematically, and the remaining archives still await further organization.
As of today, interactions between the Central Tibetan Administration and the Beijing administration have long been in a standstill; Taiwan’s Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission was officially dissolved in 2017; and early archives related to Tibet have been gradually released and open for public viewing. Therefore, we are in desperate need of new viewpoints that can help us sidestep viewpoints informed by the Han and Tibetan nationalist discourses. Through re-reading archives and re-exploring the history, perhaps a viable path for the China-Taiwan-Tibet relations could be found. Since 2021, I have been interviewing some Tibetan seniors living in Taiwan, and have written articles in this series based on some of the selected interviews. Through their stories, it might be possible to piece together a map leading to potential coexistence.(註3)
The Leave Behind
Rinzin is her name. She lives in a rooftop addition in Taipei City. Judging from the way she dressed, she appeared no different from any other elder women one could see in Taipei. Every morning, she gets up at three o’clock in the morning to recite sutras. From Mondays to Fridays, she works part-time at a local McDonald’s. When she speaks Mandarin, people might notice her accent and guess that she comes from some rural region, but rarely do people hit the mark and figure that she is from Tibet. Perhaps, on this island with a population largely made up of immigrants, people have grown accustomed not to think too much about others’ background out of courtesy. As long as one has a National Health Insurance IC card, and pays the rent and utility bills duly, it is incredibly easy to survive and remain incognito here.
Rinzin was born in Dbus gtsang in 1958, and spent her childhood with her parents living in exile in India. Around the age of three or four, she entered the Central School for Tibetans, Mussoorie. Her parents were the first group of Tibetans in exile who worked on the construction of the northern Indian highways. Later, they joined the reclamation team of the southern Indian community of Tibetans in exile, and had a temporary home in Mundgod. Before she was eighteen, she spent most of her time in boarding schools. Living in groups without much material comfort has made her independent and self-reliant. As far as she could remember, she has only cried twice in front of her family: the first time was when she went from the boarding school to visit her parents at the highway construction site. She cried upon seeing the terrible environment that her mother had to endure. The second time was when she left her family to study in an academy in Kolkata.
She is one of the few female Tibetans in exile that came to Taiwan not because of marriage or Kuomintang’s policy. However, the reason for her migration was no different to that of the most Tibetans in exile who moved from one place to another in the world today – to improve their financial condition. When she was in her twenties, her wages as a public servant at the local government in southern India was not enough to cover her aged mother’s medical bills and the living expenses of her family. Once again, she had no choice but to leave her family, and worked as an English teacher in a private school and a clinic clerk in Nepal. A while after the Dalai Lama received the Nobel Peace Prize (1986), with her friend’s assistance, she came to Taiwan via Hong Kong, with all of her savings – one hundred US dollars.
It was not a long after she came to Taiwan that Rinzin met Thinley Puntsok, who was also Tibetan and her soon husband-to-be. In related Taiwanese archives, her husband is known as Che Er-mei. He was almost forty years older than Rinzin, and was one of the Tibetans in exile who left India by airplane and came to Taiwan. At that time, there were eight Tibetans on that plane, including Chama Samphe and his family, Mingyur Rinpoche, and Asha.(註4)
In early photos of Chama Samphe, who was invited to take part in Taiwan’s political and military activities, Che Er-mei could always be seen in Mingyur Rinpoche’s company. Some of these photos were taken in military controlled zones restricted to the public.(註5)(註6)(註7)
She did not know much about her husband’s work, only that it had something to do with gathering intelligence. After all, her husband’s Mandarin was not fluent, and she only started learning Mandarin after she came to Taiwan. She would even need to rely on others for grocery shopping. So, she had no way of understanding the convoluted political struggles involved in his work. At first, they lived in a Japanese-style dormitory assigned by the KMT government in Tianmu, which was close to the National Security Bureau. The neighborhood named after Dai Yu-nong (also known as Dai Li) was nearby. Dai was the director of the KMT intelligence agency before the party retreated to Taiwan. The neighborhood was inhabited by families of intelligence officers. Those who wanted to live in the neighborhood would have to go through identity inspection. The dormitory assigned to Chama Samphe’s family was also nearby, and his daughters were students at the American School, which mainly accepted children of Taiwan’s diplomatic personnel at that time.
Later, the dormitory was repurposed for dilapidation, so Rinzin and Che Er-mei moved to a new-style apartment allocated by the government. It was located in the present-day Xinyi district, next to the Tibetan Children’s Home established by the Free China Relief Association to help the Tibetan children in exile in Taiwan (related affairs were transferred to the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission later). She worked as a teacher at the Tibetan Children’s Home, and was responsible for teaching the Tibetan language. According to her, some of the children did not understand Tibetan at that time, and only responded when she asked them questions in Nepalese. Suddenly, she realized that some of them were probably local Nepalese.
She tried to teach the Tibetan national anthem at the Tibetan Children’s Home, but was stopped by other civil service workers who worried their supervisor would disapprove. They were mostly the first and second generations immigrants retreated to Taiwan with the KMT. A few of their supervisors came from regions close to the Tibetan borders, and could understand some Tibetan. When the Tibet uprising broke out following Lhasa protests in 1987, she was taking computer lessons offered by a career training program for overseas Tibetans provided by the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission. Other Tibetans in exile told her to keep quiet and just be patient about it.
After Che Er-mei passed away, Rinzin was evicted from the allocated apartment by the government because she lacked the qualification of a civil service worker. She had worked as a private English teacher in the area inhabited by the largest number of diplomatic families in Taiwan, and used to clean Mingyur Rinpoche’s home shrine. She had met many people that were recorded in or forgotten by Taiwan’s Tibetan archives and cooked for their gatherings, which might have been joined by those who went back to Tibet for intelligence work, and had never returned to India, Nepal or Taiwan. She knew their real nicknames and dietary preferences. Comparing to the archives compiled and kept for all sorts of political struggles and for fulfilling the purpose of political propaganda by the authorities, she was perhaps the one who knew the most authentic facts, although they might be insignificant everyday trivia.