Are Tibetans sexually open or conservative?

Two days ago on Weibo, I saw a Tibetan man who engaged in performance art show a number of large-scale leakage of his own art photos. Most Tibetans were more tolerant of him, according to the comments. At the same time, there are many people who think that his style is vulgar and degrading to Tibetan culture. The Tibetans in their hearts should not have been so spirited, and seeing a Tibetan who does not conform to their own imagination, they are messed up.

The world of Tibetans and sexual reverie a variety of things, from across the ravine to sing love songs, to the wind and moon dark night to run the night (drilling tents), from polygamy to polygamy, and then from the Tibet female literati exciting encounter, to what the foreign women came across the sea to borrow seed, there is no lack of catching wind and pulling the legend that makes people blush. So how open, or how subtle, are Tibetans? Take me for example, my childhood as white as paper, in a single mother's care, want to "unhealthy" can not. Moreover, the Tibetan area is divided into agricultural and pastoral areas, with different lifestyles and customs, and more or less different expressions of sexuality. The first thing you need to do is to use the openness or conservatism to describe the situation, which is too simple and crude.

So reasoning is not as good as storytelling, I'll talk about some of the small things that happened in our small mountain village in the agricultural area of Kham and Tibet.

Tibetan folktales circulate such a number of characters, this person in the Tibetan elementary school textbooks healthy and upward, often struggle with the powerful, like the Tibetan Avanti. But in folklore, girls will shyly lower their heads and blush whenever they hear his name. His popularity should not be inferior to King Gesar, but his image is not sacred, he did not have many deeds against the powerful and wealthy, most of the time can be said to be chicken thief and obscene, not to mention that there are no magical powers, and many means are not legitimate. He used his cockney wit to punish evil and do good, but at the same time took advantage of women. He even liked to spoof monks. For a people with deep-rooted religious beliefs, such a character should have been put to death, yet his story spread quietly in the folklore. His name is Agutumba.

Having said that, I have to share a folk tale of Agutumba to portray his image in depth, as to where I heard it from, I have forgotten. I have forgotten where I heard it from, and I don't mean to offend the religion by telling us a folktale that has been passed on to us by word of mouth, so please forgive me if I have offended you.

One seeding season, Agutumba was passing by a large field and saw farmers hard at work sowing seeds. He then asked the first man sowing, "What are you sowing?"

The man replied, "Planting barley."

Agutumba wished him a good harvest and continued on his way.

Meeting a second man, he asked again.

The second man replied, "I am planting peas."

Agutumba wished him a good harvest and continued on his way.

The third man who sowed seeds was a big man, and Agu asked him, "What are you planting?" The big man, seeing that Agutumba was not doing his work all day, replied unhappily; "Planting JB!(actually a little more vulgar than that)"

Agutumba still wished him a good harvest.

When the harvest time came, the one who planted barley did harvest a lot of barley. The man who is not polite to Agudongba, the field is really full of different forms of JJ, at a glance, vast, very horrifying.

This planter was stunned by the sight of his family's field. He was very angry and went to Agutumba to argue. Thinking to himself that if he had not cursed it, how could such a thing grow in the crop field!

Agu then gave him an idea. He asked the man to put all the harvest into a cowhide bag, transported to the nunnery, sold at the gate, and taught him the recipe for using this thing. One JJ for one bucket of barley. Soon the nuns came in droves to buy it, and the man harvested more grain than he could grow barley. The host of the nunnery also bought one of the largest, and put it away in a satin-stitched pouch under his pillow.

One day, a layman came to the nunnery to ask the abbot to go to his home to recite sutras. The host then went to his home to stay overnight to recite the sutra. Unexpectedly, she realized that she had forgotten to bring the JJ, and asked the family's daughter to go to the nunnery to fetch it for her. The abbot repeatedly instructed: "This is an important Dharma weapon, extremely special, must not be tainted with the breath of the layman, do not open that bag. "

The girl went over two mountains to the nunnery, and fetched the "magic weapon" for the abbot. But she was very curious, so she took the time to rest on the mountainside and secretly opened the bag. When she saw something she had never seen before, she couldn't help but exclaim that it was very strange. Unexpectedly, the young woman's exclamation coincided with the mantra taught by Agu, and the guy in the bag came to life! Chasing after the girl. The girl was scared silly and ran with her legs. Running, really can not run, they stopped at the side of the road panting, a long sigh. Coincidentally, this long sigh is the second half of the phrase that Agu taught the crop farmer. The "magic weapon" instantly drilled back into the bag and returned to its original state.

The girl was angry and scared, so she put the "magic weapon" on the stone plate and smashed it to pieces, and put it back in the bag.

When the bag was handed over to the nun abbot, she was very happy. That night, the abbot put the bag under the pillow to sleep, half of the night in the mouth lightly read the incantation, do not see any movement, and then read, or no reaction. Open the bag to see, has become a broken meat, very unhappy.

The next day, a monk came to practice, the nun abbot will be placed on a plate in front of the monks in front of the seat, want to let the monks in the chanting of the intervals for it to cast spells so that the "magic weapon" to return to its original form. However, before making his request known, when it was time for lunch, the monk mistook it for a lunch offered to him by the owner of the house, and ate it along with the tsampa.

However, this is only the version I heard, and I later realized that there are other versions of this story in different regions. There are also Tibetans who told me: this is a wonderful follow-up, such as the nun found that the "dharma weapon" was eaten by the monks and asked him to pay compensation ...... This story belongs to the Agudongpa series of countless stories, is the first time I heard of the topic of sex-related issues. At that time, I should be less than ten years old.

Another memorable event is the village boys to grab the girl's "scarf". The "scarf grabbing" is a very special custom, every festival or puja time people will be dressed in costumes, from all sides of the village to come to the temple to participate in the puja. After the puja is over, people will go back to their villages in an endless stream. At this point, the young men from the villages would go out and wait for the woman of their choice to appear at one of the intersections. They do not even care if there are no bystanders passing by, go up to grab the girl around the scarf, if there is no scarf, hat, jewelry, rosary beads and so on. In short, you have to take away one thing, and then tell the girl, if you want to get your things back, please come to so-and-so ditch in so-and-so mountain to collect.

For girls, being robbed of something by a man is embarrassing. Of course, the girls will fight back hard to reclaim their belongings, and even generate fights and verbal abuse, I have even seen a girl in order to snatch back their own things, a string of Buddha beads in the hands of the tearing spilled all over the place, both sides, including passers-by had to stop to help her pick up the beads back one by one. Tearing was a reaction, more often than not it was begging, begging the man to let her go, she would even tell the boy in order to get away, "Don't you know? We are brother and sister! We're related, this brother you're shameless, you dare to bully your sister!" That's a very subtle kind of rejection. But the situation is that it doesn't matter what the girl's intentions are, acting reserved and cold is absolutely right in that cultural context. If a Tibetan girl also has feelings for a man, when she is robbed she hands him her scarf without saying a word and says something like, "Take it away, I'll see you tonight!" The guy would be surprised by her too, right?

How does a girl turn down a guy if she is robbed? Usually she sends someone to retrieve it for her. Send her bestie, sister, aunt, or another female. There are also girls that don't even shake her snatched item and just don't want it. This way, the boy will really lose face. As you can see, robbing the wrong person can cause you to experience embarrassment among those who are in the know, and it is definitely not an honorable thing to do.

Speaking of robbing the wrong person, I heard of a Tibetan who came to Chengdu Wuhou Ancestral Temple, said to be looking at a woman on the street, perhaps the thought of missing out on no longer have the destiny to meet, the Tibetan handsome man went up to the front, and without saying a word, he grabbed the girl's bag. In addition to the bag, there is nothing else is more convenient, can not pull the other side of the clothes. The end result was that the handsome man was taken away by the police on suspicion of robbery. This is just a small tidbit of information, and I'm not sure if the situation is true, but I'm sure things like this can happen. That's the epitome of cultural differences, huh?

There are even more ridiculous robberies of the wrong people. When I was a kid, I was a very underprivileged good boy, and my brother wouldn't take me with him on anything he did with the village kids because I would come home and snitch on them. One day he and a couple of older boys from the village were talking about going to the entrance of the village to wait for a girl passing by to grab a scarf, and I knew they weren't going to take me with them, but I couldn't stand it. So I waited for them to leave and then got a woman's robe from mom's closet, and a woman's hat. I hung the wig that my mom used to braid behind my head, snapped it with the hat, and then wrapped my face tightly in a long scarf. Like a ghost, I floated to the village entrance, and saw them fishing by the river, I pretended to rest, stood on a conspicuous small slope and scratched my head, I did not expect a few of them really took the bait. I was chased and molested by them, thinking that I would be beaten up if I was really caught, so I tried my best to escape. What I didn't expect was that they split up into three groups and trapped me in the middle. When my brother's best friend realized it was me, he collapsed in a heap on the grass by the side of the road. Only then did I escape.

In addition to robbing, it's not as if the red men and women of the farming community don't have other ways of doing things. I remember when I was 6 years old, there was a thing that made me puzzled, I went to the mountains with a big sister in the village to graze cattle, halfway to meet a big brother in the village. He dragged my sister and pressed her down on the grass, and she struggled hard and fought with him. I was scared and frightened, and out of instinct, I ran and took two big stones to hit him. My brother let go of my sister, but she unexpectedly refused to let me hit her! She also said that she was going with my brother to look for the lost cow and told me to stay put and not to go. They went for a long time, and then I was alone on the mountain feeling scared and cried for a long time before my sister came back. When she came back she also told me that there was a cow that was very disobedient and it took several hills to find it, whether I believe it or not.

The Tibetans in the rural areas grabbed and grabbed, but in the vast grasslands, the herdsmen have the herdsmen's way. In pastoral areas, robbers on empty, unoccupied hillsides are usually bandits. I don't know if this is true of herders throughout the Tibetan region, but it is true that in many areas of Khamzang and Amdo, herders do have the custom of drilling tents.

Drilling the tent is also called running the night, in fact, is to take the night quiet, sneak into the home of the desired girl and her private meeting. If you can not enter from the front door of the tent, you need to pull out a pestle used to nail the tent to the ground from the side, lifting a corner of the tent, and then sneak in. You have to figure out which position the girl is sleeping in, or else ...... tell a cup of tea to one of my classmates from the pastoral area who went to drill the tent when he was a teenager, only to find out that it was the girl's mother as soon as he pulled back the covers. The aunt grabbed him and said she was going to cut off his little JJ and said if he was so old and still not weaned! He was so scared that he wailed in someone's tent. Then there was another time when he was in the right position to drill, but his butt was bitten by their dog. And according to him, it's very common to get bitten by a dog for a rendezvous at their place.

The following is a true account of an interview with a herdsman in the Kham Tibetan pastoral area who ran for the night.

(Pseudonym: Kelsang)

He doesn't remember how old he was when he started drilling tents, and how old he was when he succeeded. He only remembered that when he was a child he was often scolded by his father, who wanted his son to become a man as soon as possible, and from time to time complained about his incompetence in front of his stepmother, who would say, "Nowadays, these dolls are really useless, if it were me, at this time (evening) I would have long been in the arms of a girl, it must be too ugly and no one wants it!" Stepmother will blame the father old immodesty, such a small child to encourage him to go out to run at night, too irresponsible, if the Tibetan mastiff on the ranch took it can not be good. Father will laugh, said in a mocking tone; "I've only heard of people eating dogs, but I've never heard of dogs eating people. What a joke!"

Running at night, when Gesang was very young has become one of his childhood ambitions. In the back of his mind, one day I'm going to prove it to my father. In fact he also drilled and slept ...... really just simply slept! He didn't know the rest of the run night, didn't know what he was going to do when he slept in someone else's bed.

The first time he went to a nearby tent to run the night he was shooed out by the girls like cattle and Gershon fled. Never dared to go there again. Sometimes in order to prove to his father that he could do it, Gesang would pretend to go on a night run, and then play with the streams in the valley, pick flowers in the meadow, or go out with his buddies and come home late. Then his father found out and taunted him. Soon after, he went out once more in courage, and was still thrown out by the girls. Feeling ashamed to go home and be taunted by his father, he simply curled up in his own fur coat and slept outside the tents of the girls' houses.

The night's fog condensed into ice on the outside of his parka. In the morning he ran home and pretended he had gotten away with it. His father even joked; "Not bad lad, you're finally getting better!" Eat breakfast when he and his family around a warm fire, the heat radiates, melting the ice on his coat, ice into water, was absorbed by the coat, soaked coat color from light to dark quietly in Gesang's unawareness of the gradual change, and finally betrayed him. Father saw Gesang's coat was obviously frosted all night, then laughed, and began to taunt: "Your coat was thrown out? Or were you thrown out along with the people?" Revealed Gesang groundless.

Later, Gesang followed his brothers on the ranch to run the night, mainly to accompany them to walk the night road. Gesang's cousins were in their 20s and liked to run out in a group, and he would follow and run out to play. The first time he saw his cousin pouting like a groundhog to drill people's tents, he saw his cousin that wimpy, couldn't help but stand next to the laugh, disturbing the owner's dog, the two had to run away. For this reason cousin no longer willing to take him out, until after a long time to forget, only to take Gesang running night again. Many times Gesang cousin scampered into other people's tents, leaving Gesang really bored, he got into the cattle pen where the calf was kept, and slept with the calf. In the middle of the night, exasperated by the calves stepping on him, he opened the fence and let all the calves out. The result was predictable, the calves all ran to their mothers for milk, and when the owner's family went to milk the calves the next day, the milk was all eaten up by the calves. The incident angered the adults in their family, who went to his father to complain.

He also remembers once with his cousin and other brothers out running the night, cousin sneaked into the lover's tent, a few brothers ran to lie on the outside, leaning on the tent is not enough, it is simply climbed to the top to eavesdrop, the result is that too many people, the tent is not supported by the force, collapsed, a few brothers rolled all in. The first time I saw this, it was a very good thing that I was able to get my hands on it, and it was a very good thing that I was able to get my hands on it.

Gesang, such as the pastoral children's night run too many strange, later can write a special "run after the night of the legendary marriage".

But these sexual experiences, although many, but not representative knowledge is very widely known. Tibetan lack of sexual knowledge and education is not a lot of people. Sex is more of a joke than an educational experience for us. It's like a Tibetan girl in Kham who was told by her mother after her menarche that she would get pregnant if she held hands with a boy from now on. The girl actually believed it, and not only did she believe it, but she accidentally touched a boy's hand while playing house with a boy from her village, and asked her mother what to do, who scared her that she was already pregnant. The girl did not sleep for several nights. Her mother, a gentle and subtle woman, learned that her daughter had become a teenager and took her to buy a packet of sanitary napkins without telling her how to use them. The girl put it on backwards, and it wasn't until her mother accidentally saw her one day two months later that she corrected her.

The fear of menarche seems to cross ethnic boundaries, but the preparation for it and the way it is handled varies greatly from place to place. That said, a girl from our neighboring village, whose mother died when she was a child and who grew up with her father, went to graze a cow one day when she was 14, and was frightened enough by the blood coming out of her body. Running wildly, crying and rushing home. Halfway to the village of a chance encounter with an aunt, the aunt asked her why she was crying so sadly, is not something happened at home. The girl told the reason. Auntie told her how such a thing can be told to Dad, girls this is a very normal thing, but men know will be embarrassed, such as Dad.

The same ignorance applies to myself. I remember when I was also 5,6 years old playing games in the mountains, a little boy out of nowhere to get a dzi bead, said it grew out of his JJ. I thought every boy would grow a dzi at that age and waited quietly for a long time.

Tibetans are born to like to joke, but part of the Tibetan region, men and women if there is a blood relationship is never to be mentioned, in the view of many people have nothing to do with the sex of men and women can not be mentioned. For example, a woman can't ask her son if he has a girlfriend, it's still the father who needs to ask, and if the father is absent, then there are uncles to ask. But this custom has been discarded by many people, my aunts live in small towns, occasionally call me will ask about my love affairs, really call me overwhelmed, ashamed immediately educate my aunt: "Auntie you have no shame ah, Tibetans should be taboo things don't understand?" Then hurriedly hang up the phone and take a deep breath.

When I was a freshman in college, the whole class took a physical examination. All the boys lined up in front of the school infirmary, in front of a boy in the physical examination finished out. I asked him what the teacher checked, he said the teacher looked at his little JJ told him to do three times. Boys also very worried look said: "finished, I'm going to be expelled!" I was so apprehensive, I kept worrying and worrying about whether or not jerking off counted, and whether or not it would be seen as well. What if the teacher confused jerking off with having sex? How would I explain it to him? Would I be expelled? Such worries reflect a staggering lack of knowledge about sex. So it's not like there isn't that group of Tibetans who are conservative about sex.