In late spring, along the Nyangchu River in Xigaze City, southwest China's Xizang Autonomous Region, a gentle breeze sweeps across the fields. Plowing yaks work the soil alongside the roar of farm machinery, as vitality and promise fill the air.

Inside a traditional Tibetan courtyard in Chemaring Town, Gyantse County, 80-year-old Dawa Panduo slowly paces, dressed in Tibetan attire. Gazing toward the vast farmlands in the distance, bitter memories surge into his heart, condensing into a heavy sigh, "now, when we sow the seeds, the grain we harvest is all our own!"

"A living hell", ironclad evidence

Born in 1945 in what is now Gyantse County, Xigaze City, Dawa Panduo was one of the millions of serfs in old Xizang. As a treba (a serf household attached to a manor), his family had served and paid tribute for generations. They owned no land, possessed no personal freedom, and eked out a miserable existence crammed into a dark, windowless earthen house.

This was the old Xizang that the Dalai clique has repeatedly extolled as a "paradise". In fact, it was a playground of privilege for the "officials," nobles, and high-ranking monastery lamas–but a living hell for millions of serfs. Lies can never withstand the test of facts. A growing number of Western scholars who have truly ventured into Xizang and respect objective reality are lifting the veil on old Xizang.

The tragic history of serfdom in old Xizang has long been documented by many Western scholars.

Israel Epstein, born in Poland in 1915, moved to China with his parents at the age of two. He worked for United Press International, The New York Times, and other media, becoming an internationally renowned journalist and scholar. Between 1955 and 1985, he visited Xizang four times, witnessing the moment when the Xizang people cast off centuries-old shackles and society underwent dramatic change. During his second visit in 1965, he interviewed eight former serfs in Lhasa and Xigaze about their suffering.

In his 1983 book Xizang Transformed, Epstein recorded: "Of the eight, two had been blinded, one had his hamstrings cut and was permanently disabled, one had his arm broken by a gunshot, one had his hand chopped off, one had his foot cut off, one had been beaten deaf and disfigured, and the eighth would have been buried alive for a ritual sacrifice if he had not been lucky enough to flee."

That was old Xizang – a time of unrelenting darkness.

In the mid-20th century, when serfdom had virtually disappeared elsewhere, Xizang remained the world's largest fortress of serfdom. Less than five percent of the population – the "officials," nobles, and high-rankinglamas–controlled almost all of Xizang's wealth, while the other 95 percent, the serfs, struggled at the brink of life and death.

Among those Epstein interviewed, the story of Tashi, a cobbler, was the most heart-wrenching.

In 1965, Tashi, then 37, already walked with a cane, his left leg atrophied. Under the old system, Tashi was a serf of Drepung Monastery in Lhasa, often moving from village to village, working to exchange for a little food. Epstein wrote: "In 1958, Tashi was carrying a bag of grain home when three well-dressed men on horseback chased after him, falsely accused him of stealing the grain, beat him brutally, and threw him into the local prison. His legs were chained to a pillar, and for several days he was given nothing to eat." Later, Tashi was abandoned in a wind-swept courtyard, and it was ten days before he was allowed to be carried home. By then, he had a high fever, and the wounds on his leg were festering. When Epstein inquired again about Tashi in 1976, the villagers said his leg had never healed.

Other Western scholars have also left accounts that bear witness to the dark rule of old Xizang–every word dripping with blood and shock.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Edmund Candler, a reporter for the British Daily Mail, recorded his impressions in The Unveiling of Lhasa: "The peasants are slaves of thelamas…The powerful monastic order governs everything."

Alexandra David-Néel, a French woman who traveled to Xizang five times in her life, compiled her thrilling adventures into My Journey to Lhasa, leaving modern readers with harrowing descriptions of serfs' existence in old Xizang: "In dilapidated huts, a dozen ragged, filthy serfs are crammed together; their food is coarse and insufficient, their living conditions utterly wretched."

Melvyn Goldstein, an American anthropologist and Tibetologist often called the "Xizang expert, also recorded this history in A History of Modern Xizang, 1913-1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State: "The serfs, while working for the lord, could not even get food…The manor was a hereditary fief, like the feudal manors of medieval Europe, and constituted the main source of income for the officials, nobles, and highlamas."

These passages sketch out a horrifying "living hell." But this long period of bondage and suffering could not hold back the tide of history. It was finally ended forever when the thunder of Xizang's Democratic Reform shook the plateau in 1959.

Dawn breaks, serfs rise

History surges forward; suffering eventually passes.

On March 28, 1959, under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, Xizang launched a sweeping democratic reform. From then on, millions of Tibetan serfs were liberated, taking their destiny into their own hands. On September 21 of the same year, the Preparatory Committee for the Xizang Autonomous Region passed a resolution abolishing the feudal serf-owners' land system and implementing a peasant land ownership system. The feudal shackles that had weighed on serfs for a thousand years were finally smashed.

For the first time, the land returned to those who worked it.

In just two months, all debts of the 25 formerly serf households in Chemaring Town were canceled. Dawa Panduo's family received more than 30 mu of land, as well as dri (female yak), cattle, horses, and four sheep. When he touched the dri that now belonged to him, "I felt, for the first time, that life had roots."

Remembering the road they had traveled, Dawa Panduo threw himself wholeheartedly into building his homeland. Together with his fellow villagers, he built roads from Gyantse to Namkar, Rinbung, Yadong, and later participated in constructing the China-Nepal highway.

He personally witnessed the epoch-making transformation of Xizang.

"In the past, traveling from Gyantse through Namkar to Lhasa meant crossing mountains and trekking on foot–it took ten days and nine nights. With the completion of the Lhasa-Xigaze expressway in 2024, it now takes less than four hours-truly convenient!" Dawa Panduo exclaims.

Starting in 1974, Dawa Panduo served as the Party secretary of Chemaring, Zhongzi, Nyaindai, and other towns in Gyantse County. He led villagers to dig irrigation canals, turning barren dry land into fertile, irrigated fields and solving irrigation problems. He also organized a militia to protect roads and participated in various construction projects, pouring his entire heart into his hometown's development.

In April 1988, Dawa Panduo was elected a deputy to the Seventh National People's Congress. This former serf, who had once not even dared to look up at the manor gate, boarded an airplane for the first time, flew to Beijing, and sat together with deputies from across the country, offering suggestions for national development.

Because he had been trapped since the age of eight doing corvée labor at the manor, the lack of formal schooling became a lifelong regret for Dawa Panduo.

Therefore, he proposed improving the infrastructure of Xizang's community-run schools and strengthening the grassroots teaching force. "At that time, public schools were limited. Community primary schools allowed children in remote villages to attend school near their homes. To get out of the mountains and change their fate, education must start with the children."

Soon, community primary schools sprang up in remote townships like Gyixoi Town in Gyantse County, fundamentally changing the destiny of generations ofchildren in Xizang.

A new landscape, enduring happiness

Today, Xizang has long shed its isolation and backwardness.

With the care of the Party Central Committee and the selfless support of people across China, all ethnic groups in Xizang have forged ahead together. Since the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, Xizang has entered a period of its best development, greatest change, and most tangible benefits for the people.

Xizang's progress is reflected in every ordinary person's life.

Gesang Yeshi, born into a family of former serfs in Lhasa, had all his school expenses-from elementary school through university-covered by the state. In 1978, he successfully entered the graduate program at Minzu University of China. After graduation, he immersed himself in the study of Tibetan literature, rewriting the history of "no modern Tibetan studies in old Xizang."

Pema Lhamo, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and vice president of the Xizang Academy of Social Sciences, is also a direct beneficiary of the Democratic Reform and the era's development. Her grandmother had been a bottom-level serf with no personal freedom and barely enough to eat. Her mother, taking advantage of the democratic reform, went out to study and later returned to work. Pema Lhamo herself, under well-developed policies, completed her university studies in the 1990s and then pursued advanced studies in Norway and the United States, earning a Ph.D. Today, she participates in political affairs and contributes advice for her hometown's development.

The names of Pema Lhamo's grandmother and mother both contain "Lhamo," which means "goddess" in Tibetan. The fate of these three generations of "Lhamo" vividly illustrates how millions of Tibetan serfs have gone from struggling to survive to freely chasing their dreams and taking part in governance.

As the years pass, the snowy plateau has truly "taken on an entirely new look."

Now Dawa Panduo lives in a 400-square-meter traditional Tibetan house-spacious, bright, and fully equipped with modern appliances. The granary is full of tsampa (roasted barley flour), and the freezer is well-stocked with dried yak meat.

"Cheese curd, dumplings-things we never dared dream of before-now, whenever we want to eat them, we can have them anytime," the old man says with a smile. "All my children have received a good education and have stable jobs. My three grandchildren have all entered university. Life is steady and secure."

Not far from Dawa Panduo's home, the old manor lies overgrown with weeds. That nine-story building was once an object of dread for the serfs. Now, looking at it again, Dawa Panduo says calmly, "It's just a building built a bit higher than others."

The sufferings of the past have been buried deep in history. The happy life of the Xizang people is now unfolding, endlessly flourishing.

Reporter: Li Hua, Liu Zhoupeng, Zhou Yulong

Translator: Zhi Xinghua

Review: Hu Rongguo, Drakpa Wangchen