60 years of changes

Study shows that before the liberation in 1951, there was one monk out of every five Tibetan males. Buddhism was flourishing at the cost of a low birth rate and poor productivity.

Serious scholars are convinced that old Tibet was not the heaven-like Shangrila that many Westerners imagined.

Living Buddha Demo had been a witness. During his time living in a cave in the suburbs of Lhasa in 1925, he lent a helping hand to a Nepalese, and was given a camera in return.

By the time of his death in 1973, the living Buddha had taken thousands of photos, though only about 300 negatives survived. On them, well-dressed aristocratic ladies and coolies in ragged clothes stood in sharp contrast, and the Potala was surrounded by ramshackle huts, infertile land and dirt roads crowded with beggars.

"Lhasa has experienced its greatest changes since the 1950s," said his son, Wangchuk Dorje, who followed his father into photography.

Lhasa in his lens is a modern city with four-lane cement roads, neat Tibetan-style homes, fast cars and smiling faces of residents who look happy and content, wearing custom-tailored Tibetan robes or stylish North Face and Columbia jackets.

One noticeable change is the increase of population.

Austrian author and mountaineer Heinrich Harrer said in his book "Seven Years in Tibet" that 1.2 million Tibetans lost their lives following the PLA arrival in 1951. Figures provided by the Tibetan government at the time, however, indicated the entire population was less than 1 million.

By 1959, the year the central government launched democratic reforms, Tibet's population had increased to 1.23 million.

Latest figures published after the sixth national census, however, showed Tibet's population has topped 3 million, at least 90 percent of whom are native Tibetans. Tibet's population growth, averaging 1.4 percent annually, was much faster than China's national average growth of 0.57 percent, according to the regional government.

This might at least be attributed to the improved medical care and social welfare. Tibetans' average life expectancy has risen to the current 67 years from 35.5 years in the 1950s.

Also, the maternal mortality rate has dropped from 50 deaths per 1,000 live births in the early 1950s to 1.75 per 1,000, while the infant mortality rate has dropped from 430 deaths per 1,000 births to 20.69 per 1,000.

Health officials in Tibet attributed the decline in deaths to better medical care and births in hospitals.

Starting in 1999, a joint project was launched by the local government and the United Nations Children s Fund (UNICEF) to encourage Tibetan women to give births at hospital, since they used to cut themselves off from the world from the time of their pregnancy through their delivery.

Under this program, a new mother who gives birth in a hospital now receives a 30-yuan subsidy for herself and 20 yuan for her caregiver, and her medical bills are paid for.

Though the 14th Dalai Lama claimed, in a speech delivered in 2009, that China had brought "untold suffering and destruction" to the Tibetans who "literally experienced hell on earth," German tourist Kristen Odnun, at the end of her first trip to Tibet last month, was convinced the Tibetans were happy.

"People here are even friendlier than I expected. They love smiling. Even if they're not talking to you, they'll smile at you. I get a feeling that, from the bottom of their heart, they are happy," Odnun said.

Trinley Dondrup, the young serf who was secretly delighted at the PLA's arrival, remembers with fondness how the PLA soldiers magically turned waste land into cropland and built the region's first roads, schools and hospitals.

The democratic reform starting in 1959 brought even larger changes, putting an end to feudal serfdom and emancipating more than 1 million slaves.

In the 1960s, iron ploughs replaced wooden ploughs to increase productivity, followed by tractors and other modern machinery. Trinley Dondrup secured a job at a collectively-owned grocery store, making 18 yuan a month. "It was so much money that I could buy mountains of food."

For the first time in his life, Trinley Dondrup enjoyed his political rights after the reform. Since general elections began in Tibet in 1961, he has been casting ballots once every few years with pride and a strong sense of responsibility.

Beginning in 1992, Tibetan farmers and herders have enjoyed more autonomy in grassroots elections -- no secret ballots have to be cast and the entire process is performed in the open.

In a typical Tibetan election for village head, for example, each candidate gives a brief presentation, after which the villagers present hada -- a traditional white ceremonial scarf. The candidate who gets the most hadas wins the election.

Since the Tibet Autonomous Region was founded in 1965, native Tibetans have taken Tibet's top jobs -- including chairman of the regional government and chairman of the regional People's Congress.

Tibetan and other ethnic minorities now constitute 78 percent of all government employees at regional, municipal and county levels across Tibet, according to figures released by the regional government.

For the Tibetans, reform has improved their livelihoods and broadened their vision.

This year, Trinley Dondrup and his family moved into a new home built by the local government. The three-bedroom house has a chapel and a bathroom.

Trinley Dondrup has only one son but eight grandchildren from ages 10 to 37.

China's one child policy does not apply to rural Tibetans, though polices are in place to encourage Tibetans to have fewer children.

If a couple has no more than two children, they receive 750 yuan per child each year until the child turns 18 years old.

Four of Trinley Dondrup's grandchildren have grown up and had children of their own, while the younger four are still at school.

The fifth child, a business administration major at Tibet University, is the first in the family to enter college. When she comes home on vacation, she always brings novelties: a blockbuster movie poster, a bottle of perfume or nail polish for her mother.

The family's seventh grandchild, 13-year-old Tasang, said his idol was his primary school Tibetan language teacher, but the Republic of Korea was the country he was most eager to visit.

Like many of his city peers, the boy speaks fluent Mandarin and enjoys watching Korean soap operas.

Nine-year-old Qogco, the third of four children from a rural family in Damxung county in the suburbs of Tibet, said her favorite TV series also included the popular Chinese cartoon "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf," and the Tibetan version of "Journey to the West," a Chinese classic about a high monk's pilgrimage to India escorted by the monkey king.

Qogco speaks fluent Mandarin, though at school she has daily Tibetan language classes and Mandarin class only every other day. She also has two English classes every week.

Now Qogco's family is preparing to pull down their 13-year-old mud house and build a new house of stone. They have bought a mini-van and a truck. They use the truck for bulk cargo transport and the van to carry the family to Lhasa for pilgrimages.

Qogco can only go on pilgrimages with her parents during school vacations. She said she usually prays before Sakyamuni for good grades. "I hope I can enter a university in other provinces and train to be a Chinese language teacher."