Tibetan recalls a time when there was no pressure to conform and education was freer
Yang Zong, who owns a string of Yunnan-Tibetan restaurants in Shenzhen, says she is yearning to return to Yunnan 20 years after she left it to see the wider world
Paradise lost I was born in 1977 and raised in Zhongdian, northwest Yunnan, in the Himalayan foothills. In those days, there were only two real streets. The ancient quarter was quiet and peaceful, with few tourists, and I remember the old grandmothers sitting in doorways, basking in the sun. Rivers and streams flowed through the grasslands, surrounded by cattle and sheep grazing alongside black-necked cranes. We’d often go to pick flowers in the summertime.
Now Zhongdian is called Shangri-La, there is an airport, the old city is full of inns and tourists, and the streets are lit with neon signs. It’s changed so much I often get lost in the place where I grew up.
Song and dance From a young age, I loved performing. I was always singing and dancing in the kitchen, so my parents put me in a school that specialised in the arts. I studied Tibetan folk music and traditional dance.
In Tibetan areas, at least in those days, education was freer and there wasn’t so much pressure to compete or conform. Having said that, we were educated in Mandarin, not Khams Tibetan, which we spoke with our families and friends. If the teacher heard a word of Tibetan we were fined one jiao and maybe got a clip across the head, even though most of the teachers were locals.
Bright lights, big city After finishing school I wanted to study at the Central Conservatory of Music, in Beijing, but I needed to make some money first as my parents are both lowly civil servants who couldn’t afford to finance such a prestigious education. I had a brother and a sister both working in Zhuhai, so, in 1999, I resolved to head to the Pearl River Delta. It was a time when many country folk across China were gravitating to the cities and I was excited to see the wider world.