People from all walks of life across the Xizang autonomous region held activities on Thursday to mark the 65th anniversary of the abolition of feudal serfdom and celebrate the liberation of a million serfs.
Any attempt to romanticize pre-liberation Xizang, with its oppressive feudal serfdom, as a Shangri-La blatantly disregards the plight of its suffering serfs and deliberately tramples on the notion of human rights, experts said at a forum in Beijing on Thursday.
Dorje, a 70-year-old blacksmith, has navigated numerous twists and turns throughout his life, with three pivotal moments propelling him from being the son of a serf to becoming an inheritor of an intangible cultural heritage.
Thursday marks the 65th anniversary of the democratic reform that ended feudal serfdom in Southwest China's Xizang autonomous region, with multiple grand celebrations and commemorative activities held across the region.
Born in 1934, Kelsang Chodron was once a serf of a local manor. As both her parents served as serfs in the manor, the same misfortune befell her ever since she was born.
Thursday marks the 65th anniversary of the emancipation of serfs in the Xizang autonomous region, when democratic reform in 1959 ended feudal serfdom and freed some 1 million serfs that accounted for more than 90 percent of the region's population.
