Tiny Tibetan group happy its voice is heard
Print Edition
TASHI Yangjen is the only deputy to the 12th National People’s Congress from the Luoba ethnic group. Luoba is one of the smallest ethnic minorities in China.
Tashi Yangjen, 36, grew up in a mountainous Luoba village in Shannan Prefecture in southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region.
As an NPC deputy, the first suggestion Tashi Yangjen submitted to the NPC session in 2013 was on retaining the traditional design of Luoba homes, which are usually thatched with straw.
She was worried that the outlook of the village would change as the government revamped and rebuilt village homes, mostly built with stone, wood and straw. Her proposal was a success. In May 2014, the government approved a plan to preserve the Luoba village.
Now there are 23 new homes built with reinforced concrete in the village that look almost the same as traditional Luoba homes. Their roofs are not covered by straw, but metal that resembles straw.
“I am proud my home village has preserved its traditional style,” she says.
Tashi Yangjen’s suggestions as an NPC deputy were not just about housing. She also proposed that Luoba culture be protected, including language and clothing, as well as improved infrastructure.
Things are getting better for Luoba people. There is a sewage treatment service in her home village, in addition to a garbage disposal facility.
The Luoba ethnic group has no written language. “The spoken language of the Luoba is also protected, as traditional words are collected and Luoba children are able to learn them from preschool education,” Tashi Yangjen says.
Tashi Yangjen’s suggestions also include improving the subsidies offered to residents living in border regions. This year she plans to submit a proposal to build more public facilities, including small parks where people can get together for events.
“The people’s congresses are good because deputies’ motions and suggestions are responded to,” she says, adding the system is sound because it entitles ethnic minorities, however small, to have at least one NPC deputy.
NPC deputies are part-time, and a deputy to the NPC can be the country’s president or a farmer, a tycoon or a migrant worker, a lawyer or an official.
Tashi Yangjen was born into a poor family of wheat and barley farmers, and is currently a township official in Shannan. She was educated in a Tibetan school in Changzhou City in eastern Jiangsu Province and a college in Yueyang City in central Hunan Province, before becoming a primary school teacher in 2004. The government has been sending students from Tibet to study at high schools in inland cities since 1985.
Currently about 20,000 students from the region are studying in high schools in inland regions. The free education has enabled hard-working Tibetan children to attend school.
Tibet has a huge task to lift 690,000 people out of poverty between 2016 and 2020. During the five years starting 2011, Tibet lifted over 600,000 people from poverty. Tashi Yangjen says she is happy that all the residents in her home village were lifted out poverty last year.
There are 56 ethnic groups in China, with Han people representing the bulk of population. Each ethnic minority is entitled to have at least one deputy to the NPC, and Tashi Yangjen is one of about 400 ethnic minority deputies to the 12th NPC.
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