At 82, Tsering Yuzhen looks back on a childhood shaped by serfdom and the fight for basic human rights. "My mother passed away when I was very little. There was no one to raise me, so I was sent here. I was very young. Just ten years old," she recalls.
An old proverb says, "Life is given by one’s parents, but a person’s body belongs to the overlords." In that system, nobles and serf-owners controlled every aspect of their serfs’ lives, even who they could marry. Tsering and her future husband worked side by side on the same estate, but their bond was forbidden. "People weren’t free to marry whoever they wanted," she explains.
Everything changed after liberation. For the first time, Tsering and her partner could choose each other. "We couldn’t be together. We got together after liberation. The old society didn’t allow it. But we could be together after liberation," she says—proving that true freedom is more than just survival; it’s the right to shape one’s own life.
Reference(s):
cgtn.com
