阿坝镇

choi

Barbara Demick, Immolations Are Just One Sign of Tension Over Communist Rule. Los Angeles Times, Aug 23, 2015
http://www.latimes.com/world/asi ... 20150823-story.html

Quote:

"In few places are the tensions so palpable, or the resistance so stubborn, as in Aba, known as Ngaba 四川省阿坝藏族羌族自治州阿坝县阿坝镇 in Tibetan. With only 65,000 people, Aba has been an outsized source of trouble for the Chinese Communist Party for almost as long as the party has been in existence.

"Aba is located in China's Sichuan province, outside what is known as the Tibet Autonomous Region but inextricably part of what Tibetans consider their homeland. The 10-hour drive from the provincial capital, Chengdu, follows winding canyons that eventually open up, at 12,000 feet, to grassland

"Aba has a long history as a town of troublemakers. For centuries, it was ruled by tribal kings who reported neither to the Tibetan government in Lhasa nor to the Chinese. In the 1930s, Aba was the first place where Tibetans collided with Mao Tse-tung's Red Army, which was fleeing Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists in what became known as the 'Long March.'

“Aba became famous in the 1980s for exporting entrepreneurs, who spread out across China and beyond, selling Tibetan products such as wool and medicinal herbs and introducing Tibetans to bluejeans, coffee and the Sony Walkman.  Even as they prospered, the Tibetans couldn't help but notice the Chinese were getting even richer. And the divide grew as the government began denying travel permits to Tibetans. * * * ‘We don't have passports so we can't travel across borders," complained one envious businessman.

"The undercurrent of unhappiness with Chinese rule exploded on a Sunday morning in March 2008, in the courtyard in front of the Kirti Monastery 格尔登寺 [founded by Kirti Rinpoche 格尔登 仁波切], where monks were conducting prayers for the upcoming Tibetan New Year.  In the middle of the chants, one monk started speaking about independence. People shouted along, raising their fists in the air, ignoring the entreaties of older monks. It degenerated into a riot, with Tibetans hurling rocks at the police and trashing Chinese-owned shops, including the fanciest department store, which happened to be owned by a former People's Liberation Army soldier.  Chinese troops used tear gas and smoke bombs, then switched to live ammunition.  At least 18 Tibetans were killed, including a 16-year-old schoolgirl. It was a galvanizing moment for a small town in which almost everybody knew somebody who died.  Dhukar, now 18, a slip of a teenager with a ponytail and chipped nail polish, was a student at a Chinese-language public school and so pro-Chinese that she could have been a poster child for the Communist Party. She spoke Chinese better than Tibetan, rarely wore traditional clothing and loved the war movies on television with the matinee idols playing Chinese soldiers.

"Many of those who died [of self-immolations] were the descendants of Tibetans who had fought the Chinese in earlier generations. Phuntsog, 20, was the grandson of a resistance leader who fought the Chinese Communists in the late 1950s.

Note:
(a) slip (n): "
2a :  a long narrow strip of material
* * *
3:  a young and slender person <a slip of a girl>"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slip
(b) matinée idol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matinée_idol