Li Kuei-pi, Clement Town (screenshot), 2023; image courtesy of artist

“There are no gods nor ghosts in this world. Human beings are the most horrible ghosts in this world. We are living in hell,” said Tashi.(註1) This is what he says most frequently. In this life, he has lots of names. None of his names have ever been remembered, but this is perhaps the reason why has survived until now. 

Tashi was born in Tibet in the 1960s. Strictly speaking, he is neither Tibetan nor Han Chinese. His paternal great grandfather had lived in Beijing, and was exiled to the peripheries due to a criminal offense. He was fortunate to have encountered the procession of the Prince of Khoshuud (ཨེ་རྟི་ནི་ཇུ་ནང། སོག་པོ་མངའ་ཚན་དཔོན།, or མདའ་ཚན),(註2) and was recruited as part of the Prince of Khoshuud’s staff before following the group to settle down in Amdo. Tashi’s father had a Tibetan name, and his mother was from a local Tibetan family. 

As far as he can remember, almost all of the adult men in both his paternal and maternal families had served in the Kuomintang (KMT) army, and could speak Mandarin and Tibetan fluently. He has never denied that his grandfather’s death in 1958 was a relief in some way—this is because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began settling score with his family after the death of his grandfather, and all their properties were seized by the authority, which sealed his fate for a struggling childhood inflicted by poverty.

In the early 1980s, he decided to leave this futureless life, and hitchhiked from the Qinghai and Gansu region all the way to Lhasa. After twists and turns, he arrived in India from a center for Tibetans in exile in Nepal. At first, he was assigned to study at the Central School for Tibetans, Mussoorie. Unfortunately, without sufficient financial support and having been deprived of education at a young age, he was not able to catch up in school, and dropped out soon. It was when he was loitering near the school that he met Phuntsok, who was working for the KMT.

案名: 西藏問題及藏胞抗暴, 全宗名A200000000A/0028/32105/1, 檔案號A200000000A=0028=32105=1=1=400=0021; 國家檔案管理局授權使用

(Image: “The new communities and schools of Tibetan residence in India” is a 22 pages paper consist of 37 photos and 1 essay. In this paper, it shows “Under the guidance of my comrades working (KMT in Republic of China), eighteen new communities have been established in India… hoping to achieve self-sufficiency, strengthen the anti-communist will, and in order to cultivate the next generation of Tibetan and spread religion, so that they can counterattack the mainland and served the country… ” )

In the existing early Tibetan files, Phuntsok was called Tsai Chih-chung (蔡執中). His elder brother was named Tsai Yung-chung (蔡永中), and his eldest younger brother Tsai Ting-chung (蔡定中), whose Tibetan name was Tsepal Dorjee. Phuntsok’s eldest younger sister Karmo was married to a regional leader of the Tibetans in exile named Gungthang Tsering, and his second younger brother Gonpo Dhondup had exiled in India, and was killed in a drunk fight shortly after returning to Tibet with his mother. Currently, there are many files about Tsepal Dorjee, but it is difficult to determine their authenticity. In one of the file, he claimed to be the son of a local Tibetan tribe in the region of guoluo. According to him in this file, he was born in 1932, and his father and Lobsang Drewang had purchased military aircrafts (Mandarin name: Huang Cheng-ching) as a gift to Chiang Kai-shek. When he was twelve years old, he was accepted into the program of the 5th Lanzhou Special Training, with the recommendation of Dai Yu-nong (Dai Li), the leader of intelligence affairs for the KMT. He later enjoyed a recommended admission into the Air Force Academy. According to A Brief History of the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission, he began working at the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission in the October of 1967, and his titles were pilot, liaison officer of the 2nd Division in the Qinghai, Tibet and Gansu regions, and supervisor and advisor in the Tibet region. In the declassified internal files of the KMT(註3), he was an underground worker assisting the “resistance against the CCP.” He had stationed in Kalimpong, India, and had approached important figures in the Tibetan community in exile, such as the Parliament of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA).

At that time, Tsepal Dorjee had long-term residences in both Dehradun and Delhi, India, and Phuntsok was running a tavern and a restaurant in Kathmandu, Nepal. Both of them had visited Taiwan, but only the former settled down in Taiwan. Tashi worked as a busboy in Phuntsok’s tavern and restaurant in Nepal, and served as a bodyguard for specific visitors. 

As early as the 1960s, the KMT had already attempted at using Tibetans in exile living in India and Nepal to fight against the CCP for proving the KMT administration as the rightful legal sovereignty representing the New China, which also included Tibet. However, in the 1980s, the KMT forces in the South Asian region, whose main purpose was to approach and influence Tibetans in exile, already split up throughout a long-lasting internal strife. Three organizations were involved in this internal strife: the Free China Relief Association, the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission, and the intelligence agency, which were competing against each other, and engaged in collaboration with Tibetans from different groups, as well as those who had lived in areas under Tibetan cultural influences and therefore knew Tibetan or Mandarin, whose ethnic identity remained difficult to determine. In fact, no matter which organizations this group of KMT collaborators worked for – maybe they had sought maximum benefit and worked for more than one organization – they all antagonized the Tibetan community in exile due to opposing pollical stances.

When Tashi was still working for Phuntsok in the 1980s, he had encountered two deaths by assassination: one involved a person named kelsang from Jonê Zong in Gansu Province, and the other Gungthang Tsering. Both were assassinated by Tibetans in exile. In early Tibetan documents in Taiwan, the latter had tried to send nearly two hundred Tibetans from India to Taiwan in the name of a dance and singing group. Nevertheless, the plan was never approved, and there was no record of its actualization. In a declassified file from Taiwan’s Military Intelligence Bureau, it is stated that Gungthang Tsering was an unregenerate supporter of the “Tibetan independence,” and could not be trusted. To these people, who had established relations with but were never truly trusted by the KMT, and eventually died by the hand of Tibetans in exile, what was it that had made them strive so painstakingly for a better future?

Still, there were some who were able to get away unscathed. Khochok from Jainca, Qinghai used to work for Kao Chien-kui (高千貴) from the Free China Relief Association. Kao had used Pempa Lhagyal as his Tibetan name to approach the Tibetan community in exile, but he could not speak fluent Tibetan. It is said that he ran a minor newspaper catering to the local Mandarin-speaking community in Nepal, which was the most circulating Mandarin newspaper only second to the Central Daily News. Khochok would sometimes copy faked intelligence from the BBC Radio and feed it to public officials from Taiwan in exchange for payment. He died of an old age in the foreign land in the end. 

Having worked for Phuntsok for a while, Tashi met Lobsang Chompel, who was born in Dawu Zong, Kandze, Gansu Province, and was also called Dawu Compel. He was one of the Tibetan soldiers who retreated to Taiwan with the KMT. So, it can be inferred that he probably did not belong to the air force or the navy, both of which required special training. It is possible that he is recorded in related files under his Mandarin name. Lobsang Chompel and his younger brother worked for the KMT for many years, and the latter was assassinated in Kalimpong. In Nepal, Tashi would receive assignments from Lobsang Chompel to help confirm the authenticity of intelligence provided by different organizations, which became the beginning of Tashi’s involvement in and understanding of Taiwan’s politics.

案名: 西藏問題及藏胞抗暴, 全宗名A200000000A/0028/32105/1, 檔案號A200000000A=0028=32105=1=1=400=0021; 國家檔案管理局授權使用

The intelligence that Tashi needed to verify came from a wide range of sources, among which was his own boss, Phuntsok. As a matter of fact, Phuntsok would copy some news from Hong Kong and paste newspapers from China on the walls in his own home to stage a scene pretending that it was in China before taking photos to concoct fake intelligence.(註5) Moreover, Phuntsok also participated in blowing up a bridge in Nepal, and had the locals worn the clothes of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to stage scenes of counterattacking China for faked intelligence photos as well. This event is also mentioned in The Lama Killing.

Part of the Tibetan intelligence provided to the KMT came from groups, who had been collaborating with the KMT to seek their own benefit. Some intelligence was fabricated, and some was authentic information from Tibet. At that time, some Tibetan soldiers, who had served in the PLA and fled Tibet, brought authentic military intelligence, hoping to exchange the information for pollical asylum. However, before they could reach real contacts, profiteering brokers would already clear up potential benefits during the process, leaving these people with no substantial assistance.

Fluent in both Mandarin and Tibetan, these people hiding and moving among different groups and communities possessed information needed by the CCP as well as the CTA. Consequently, they became people that the CCP, the KMT, and the Tibetans community in exile had wrestled to recruit or use. Sometimes, it might look like they worked for all three sides at the same time, yet it is also very likely that they had no clue as to for whom they were working for. There were some special cases: one individual was recruited by the Department of Security of the CTA after he exiled to India, and was then sent back to Lhasa to carry out a mission. However, when the mission failed, he was incarcerated. Eventually, he managed to escape back to India, carrying with him large sums of cash and wearing nice clothes. He was consequently suspected of being a spy, and was investigated by the Indian police, leaving him no choice but to flee to Europe. In another case, one Tibetan interpreter, who had worked for the PLA, later joined the army in Mustang after he exiled to India. Also being suspected of espionage, he was forced into exile again. These people had no choice but to use Nepal as a transfer hub, and had probably passed by Phuntsok or Tashi in the streets of Nepal.

In one of the file from the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau(註6), it is recorded that Tsepal Dorjee acted strangely in Taiwan after returning from a mission in China, including expressing his longing for his hometown and the CCP, using aliases, and faking proofs of staying at hotels in Taiwan to avoid being followed. Before this incident, he was the person in charge of a USA-funded program, which involved selecting Tibetans born in India and Nepal to receive military training in Taiwan. His nieces were also among the selectees for military training in Taiwan. 

In the 1990s, Tashi was arrested for participating in protests organized by Tibetans in exile in front of the Chinese Embassy in India. After he was released, he sought the opportunity to come to Taiwan. On the other hand, in his late years, Lobsang Chompel was fed up with increasing bureaucratic trivialities and corruptions within the KMT system, to which his organization was affiliated., and consequently turned to support the New Party, a new political party in Taiwan that more radically pursues the realization of the “Three Principles of the People” in China, the unification of races, as well as the Cross-Strait unification. After Lobsang Chompel’s younger brother died in the assassination, Tashi asked him if he would need Tashi’s help to avenge his brother, but he only shook his head and said forget it. Later, Tashi was granted residency in Taiwan, and met some of the Tibetans living in Taiwan, including Thubten, whose children were studying at the Tibetan Children’s Home.

According to Tashi’s recollection, one time, he was taking a walk with Thubten near the Taipei Main Station. A propagandist bandwagon with the portrait of Mao Zedong and broadcasting “L’Internationale” (The International) slowly drove towards them. Thubten suddenly acted crazy, and began shouting praises of Mao and damning bureaucracy and capitalism to hell. This caught people’s attention, and at that exact moment, Tashi thought, “we are living in hell.” 

(The completion of this series of article is indebted to many people’s assistance, for which I am deeply grateful.)

案名: 西藏問題及藏胞抗暴, 全宗名A200000000A/0028/32105/1, 檔案號A200000000A=0028=32105=1=1=400=0021; 國家檔案管理局授權使用

The Tibet-related policies and propped-up systems by the KMT: 

(The following tables are based on publications and files from the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission. However, due to the propagandist nature of these files, and the fact that early files are now incomplete because of the tumultuous warring period, the tables are for reference only.)

After 1949:

圖片來源：Photo by Raimond Klavins on Unsplash、國家發展委員會檔案管理局