Such gatherings were ubiquitous daily events throughout the city in 1966. The public humiliation of three prominent Tibetans Pomdatsang Topgyal, Tsoekor Dhondup Tsering, and Sambo Tsewang Rinzin (from left to right).Ī typical struggle session, organised by a Lhasa neighbourhood committee. Notably, the statue of Shakyamuni, said to have been brought by the Chinese Princess Wrenching, was carefully preserved. The Temple’s ground floor hallway was later converted into a pigsty. The Red Guards smashed religious symbols, icons, and artefacts. The front courtyard of the Joking Temple, on August 24, 1966, after the first day of destruction. The space became not only a major site of incineration, but also, later public struggle sessions. The burning of many pechas (religious books and scripts) taking place at Sungchorawa, a sacred space adjacent to the Jokhang Temple. Here they carry a billboard cartoon of the Dalai Lama with a shovel symbolising their determination to bury the “Four Olds” – Old Thoughts, Old Culture, Old Customs and Old Habits. On August 18, 1966, three months after Mao’s call for a Cultural Revolution, students from the local college, high schools, and elementary schools marched on the streets of Lhasa. This picture was taken by Woeser’s father, a Tibetan People’s Liberation Army’s officer.
![public humiliation cultural revolution struggle session public humiliation cultural revolution struggle session](https://seaghkehoe.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/screen-shot-2016-01-31-at-9-53-56-a-m.png)
Children were frequently used to mobilise the crowds, sometimes against their own parents. Taking Meysken’s project as a source of inspiration, I am hoping to put together a few collections of photographs and images over the next few months, all capturing various events, movements, time periods across the Tibetan plateau.Ī quick search through Baidu today turned up several images from the Cultural Revolution, so let’s start there…Ī child leads the sloganeering at a public struggle session. It got me wondering what images I might find across Chinese cyberspace of Tibetan areas during the Mao years and beyond… I was struck by the fact that all the images he has obtained have come from the internet. This morning I read a great interview with Covell Meyskens, the historian behind the fantastic Everyday Life in Mao’s China, a blog dedicated to photos and paintings of everyday life in China from roughly the 1930s through to the 1980s.