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Paper short abstract

Through a detailed study of Alai’s re-telling of the Gesar epic, this paper examines how contemporary Tibetan folk narratives frame the urban landscape as the destroyer of traditional Tibetan lifeways.

Paper long abstract

Through a study of Alai’s re-telling of the Gesar epic, this paper examines how contemporary Tibetan folk narratives frame the urban landscape as the destroyer of traditional lifeways. A Tibetan author writing in Chinese, Alai retells the Gesar epic alongside the narrative of contemporary bard Jigmed in The Song of King Gesar (2009; English translation, 2013). Born in a rural village, Jigmed encounters the epic-hero Gesar in his dreams and begins reciting the Gesar epic in moments of ecstatic possession. As a result, Jigmed is quickly identified as a bard, or grungkan (Tib. sgrung mkhan). While highly respected in traditional Tibetan society, bards are also celebrated in the contemporary People’s Republic of China, where government policy identifies their work as Intangible Cultural Heritage and offers salaries in exchange for their talents.

As Jigmed’s fame grows, local Chinese government officials host him in increasingly larger cities, where he interacts with scholars, politicians, and Communist party leaders. However, as he travels further away from Tibetan regions of China and into larger cities, Jigmed finds himself losing the ability to accurately re-tell the epic. Gesar himself chastises Jigmed, complaining about the urban environs and asking how to return to his grassland home. Interwoven with the death of King Gesar himself, Jigmed eventually loses the ability to sing the epic entirely. As represented by the increasingly urban environments Jigmed moves through, therefore, King Gesar suggests that the Chinese government’s efforts to protect traditional Tibetan folklore like the Gesar epic is, in reality, destroying it.