Eat the Buddha by Barbara Demick

Author:Barbara Demick
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2020-07-28T00:00:00+00:00

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IN HER FORTIES, Pema in effect became a foster mother. One of her cousins, a relatively well-to-do man who owned a bar and shop in Lhasa, came to confide in her about the difficulties he was having with his twelve-year-old daughter, Dechen. The girl was the only child from his first marriage, which had ended badly. Now he was remarried and the girl was always fighting with her stepmother, a woman Pema knew from the market. The cousin offered Pema financial assistance if she would help him with this troublesome child. He warned that the girl was stubborn and argumentative. But even without the money, Pema was willing. With her husband dead, she needed somebody to care for; and her heart went out to this scorned child.

Dechen was as tiny as Pema with a downy heart-shaped face, wispy baby eyebrows, and bangs that hung in a curtain over her eyes. She wore her hair Chinese-style, pulled back in a ponytail. Dechen attached herself quickly to Pema, pouring out her woes. Her own mother had been sent away by her father soon after Dechen was born, leaving Dechen to be raised mainly by the hated stepmother. Dechen saw her mother just once afterward when she was about ten years old and her friends brought her to the village where her mother was living to arrange a reunion. Her mother, who had a younger child in her arms, burst into tears when she saw Dechen. She cried and cried and couldn’t stop. Dechen wasn’t able to ask her any of the questions she’d intended. So after thirty minutes of watching this sobbing stranger, Dechen went home.

In Ngaba, it was common for children to be raised by a single mother, but not for a child to be motherless. Dechen’s unusual situation, along with her small size and scrappy personality, made her a magnet for bullies.

“Mei you mama,” they taunted her. You have no mother.

Dechen attended the Ngaba #2 primary school, which taught only in Chinese and had mostly Chinese students. By that time, parents in Ngaba had the option of sending their children to a Tibetan-language primary school, but Dechen’s father had chosen the Chinese school, thinking his daughter might land a secure government job if she spoke fluent Chinese. Working in the civil service was the preferred career path for Tibetans who didn’t want to be farmers or herders, since large private employers were mostly Chinese and tended not to hire Tibetans. Dechen was a strong-willed girl who didn’t always take direction from her father, but on this point she agreed. Besides, Dechen was relieved to be studying Chinese rather than Tibetan, which she thought far more difficult with its intricate writing system and grammar.

Also, Dechen was, by her own admission, a television junkie and there was limited programming in Tibetan. All her favorite cartoons were in Chinese. She also loved the war movies, thinly disguised Communist Party propaganda that were a staple of Chinese television. They usually featured

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