TALES OF TIBET
Sky Burials, Prayer Wheels, and Wind Horses
Edited and translated by HERBERT J. BATT
Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2001. 269 pages, $75 (hardcover), $24.95 (paperback)

reviewed by Patricia Schiaffini

Western readers may find it odd that a book called Tales of Tibet, which some could assume to mean Tibetan tales, presents stories originally written in Chinese by both Tibetan and Chinese (Han) writers. One of the many interesting and certainly most unusual aspects of Tales of Tibet is that all stories featured belong to a little-known genre of modern Chinese literature called "Tibet Literature" (Xizang wenxue in Chinese), which groups under this label all literature about Tibet written in Chinese in the last twenty years, disregarding the ethnic background of the authors or their literary styles. Without getting into the controversy of whether this genre should exist or notsome believe that encouraging Tibetans to write in Chinese damages Tibetan language and culture, others criticize Xizang wenxue as not authentically Tibetan because it is written in Chinese and for a Chinese audienceby featuring works of writers with different ethnic, cultural, and literary backgrounds, Tales of Tibet reflects the real and heterogeneous composition of the modern literary scene in Tibet after decades of Chinese presence in the region.

Herbert Batt, editor and translator of the volume, has chosen some of the best stories about Tibet produced in the Chinese language during the 1980s and 1990s. Besides the works of writers like Geyang and Yangdon, who were born and raised in Tibet, and Alai, a Tibetan writer born in Sichuan's Tibetan territories, the book features stories by two half-Tibetan, half-Han authorsTashi Dawa and Sebowho were raised among Chinese and became acquainted with Tibet only as young adults. There are several works by Ma Yuan, a Han intellectual who lived in Tibet for quite some time, and Feng Liang, a half-Han, half-Yi writer who worked in Tibet for several years. The book also includes stories by other Han authorsYan Geling, who traveled around Tibet for more than a year, and Ma Jian and Ge Fei, who visited Tibet as tourists. With topics ranging from the spiritual and mystical side of Buddhism, to the supernatural occurrences of circular time and time reversal, from the sensuality of naked bodies, to the vision of lepers and corpse mutilation, from tales about Tibet's past glories, to tales of a surrealistic Tibetan future, this collection seems to have the right ingredients to captivate most audiences.

Without diminishing the excellent literary value of the stories, it is interesting to point out that, as fascinating as they may be, some of them abound in stereotypes and misrepresentations of Tibet. This is due to the fact that most of the writers featured are not experts on Tibetan customs and beliefs. The most obvious and controversial case of misrepresentations of Tibetan traditions is "Stick Out the Fur on Your Tongue or It's All a Void" by Ma Jian, which describes the religious initiation of a teenage Tibetan nun through a violent sexual encounter with an older monk that eventually causes her death. The irreverent attitude of the narrator, as well as the obvious errors in the representation of Tibetan Buddhism, prompted virulent protests by Tibetan intellectuals and caused the Chinese government to finally ban the work in the 1980s.

Most writers featured, both Han and Tibetan, write about events inspired by the "old Tibet," stories about traditional religious or aristocratic characters that outsiders (either Han or Western) would surely find fascinating. This tendency also seems to be present in the selection criteria used for Tales of Tibet. Although most of the stories excel from a literary point of view, they seem to have been chosen with the Western reader in mind: these are stories that reflect a mysterious, exotic, and religious Tibet. Stories that present the other side of today's Tibetthat of Karaoke bars, youngsters in jeans dancing to rock-and-roll tunes and getting into trouble, and young monks wearing sunglasses and playing pool are conspicuously absent from this book.

A splendid foreword by Tsering Shakya introduces the difficult and almost unstudied subject of modern literature produced in the Tibetan territories. Shakya, a London-based Tibetan scholar, discusses the language situation in Tibet: the imposition of Chinese as the language of power, the division between Tibetan writers who write in Chinese and those who write in Tibetan, and how Tibetan language and culture have been affected by the Chinese occupation. An introduction by Herbert Batt, together with an appendix that includes the biographies of the writers, provides valuable information about the authors, their backgrounds, and their ideas regarding Tibet. Nevertheless, it would have been helpful if the critical sections of the book told readers more about the Tibetan writers featured in this collection. Why do they write in Chinese? How do other Tibetans regard them for writing in the language of the "colonial power"? Is the "authenticity" of their stories compromised by the fact they are written for a Chinese audience and subject to Chinese censorship?

Tales of Tibet is an exciting anthology that will not disappoint literature lovers. Herbert Batt has translated into English for the first time some of the best stories about Tibet written in Chinese. His solid translations meet the challenge of rendering in English such varied literary styles as realism, magical realism, and even surrealism. But before getting lost in this mesmerizing world of "sky burials, prayer wheels, and wind horses," it may be useful to bear in mind that the stories featured in Tales of Tibet tell us more about the Tibet imagined by (or for) the Chinese, than about the real Tibet.