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Notes
1 Tibetans generally divide the plateau into three general cultural and dialectical areas: A mdo, Dbus gtsang, and Khams. Dbus gtsang largely conforms to the boundaries of the present Tibet Autonomous Region. A mdo refers to the Tibetan areas of Qinghai (excepting Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture), Southern Gansu, and Northern Sichuan. Khams includes Ganzi Prefecture (Sichuan), Eastern Tibet Autonomous Region (Chab mdo, changduo), Northwest Yunnan (Shangrila area), and Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai.
2 This name is clearly fictitious; many say it is allegorical and refers to the entirety of Tibet.
3 David Moser, “Reflexivity in the Humor of Xiangsheng,” CHINOPERL Papers 15 (1990): 45–68, p. 45, has suggested that a more accurate translation of xiangsheng would be “face and voice routines.”
4 This paper uses the extended Wylie transcription system to render all Tibetan terms and names. Wylie is based on the Tibetan orthography and does not represent pronunciation in any dialect. An A mdo Tibetan pronunciation-based romanization might render his name Hmen la hjyab, while a romanization based on the Lhasa dialect would render it as Men la kyab (see http://www.thlib.org/reference/transliteration/phconverter.php). Another way of romanizing his name would be Man la jab.
5 As we will see in the title of the piece written in Chinese on the history of the genre cited below, the genre is often referred to as “xiangsheng in Tibetan language” (Zangyu xiangsheng 藏語相聲) in Chinese.
6 Moser, “Reflexivity in the Humor of Xiangsheng,” pp. 45–46.
7 See Suoci 索次, “Lun Zangyu xiangsheng de lishi he xianzhuang” 論藏語相聲的歷史和現狀 (On the history and current state of xiangsheng in Tibetan language), Xizang yishu yanjiu 西藏藝術研究 (Research on the arts of Tibet) 2003·3: 12–24 and Phuntshog Tashi and Patricia Schiaffini, “Realism, Humor, and Social Commitment: An Interview,” Manoa 18·1 (2006): 119–24.
8 For examples of this emphasis on literature, film, and music, see Lama Jabb, “Singing the Nation: Modern Tibetan Music and National Identity,” Revue d’Etudes Tibétains 21 (2011): 1–29; Lauran Hartley and Patricia Schiaffini-Vedani, eds., Modern Tibetan Literature and Social Change (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 2008); Anna Morcom, “Modernity, Power, and the Reconstruction of Dance in Post-1950s Tibet,” Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 3 (2007): 1–42; Françoise Robin, “Performing Compassion: A Counter-Hegemonic Strategy in Tibetan Cinema?” in Tibetan Arts in Transition: A Journey through Theatre, Cinema and Painting, Seminar Proceedings (Rome and Naples 2008–2009), www.asia-ngo.org/en/images/eas/handbook%20arts.pdf#page = 38, accessed 29 September 2011; Vincanne Adams, “Karaoke as Modern Lhasa, Tibet: Western Encounters with Cultural Politics,” Cultural Anthropology 11·4 (1996): 510–46; and Yangdon Dhondup, “Dancing to the Beat of Modernity: The Rise and Development of Tibetan Pop Music,” in Robert Barnett and Ronald Schwartz, eds., Tibetan Modernities: Notes from the Field on Cultural and Social Change (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 285–304.
9 Suoci, “Lun Zangyu xiangsheng de lishi he xianzhuang,” pp. 14–15.
10 Phuntshog Tashi and Patricia Schiaffini, “Realism, Humor, and Social Commitment: An Interview,” p. 122. I have to date, unfortunately, been unable to unearth the kind of evidence necessary to produce a definitive timeline for the development of kha shags in the A mdo region. I have seen dialogues that were written in 1980, and am sure that the tradition in the region predates then, but have not been able to find evidence to prove that.
11 Per K. Sørenson, “Divinity Secularized: An Inquiry into the Nature and Form of the Songs Ascribed to the Sixth Dalai Lama,” Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhistmuskunde, heft 26 (Wien: Areitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien, Universität Wien, 1990), p. 18, describes glu shags thus: “As a pendant to the Central Tibetan tshig rgyag type of repartee song, this Eastern Tibetan glu shags type of song is an extremely popular form of alternate sarcastic songs aiming at teasing (glu shags rgyag pa) a counterpart with words, often traded in regular song competition on wits, as e.g. a mating banter between the two sexes or as a bout of social criticism. These songs evince a metrical structure identical to the cognate glu of which it may also be considered a sub-type.”
12 Gdugs dkar tshe ring, Bod rig pa’i dpyad ‘bras thor bu (Various fruits of the analysis of the Tibetans; Pe cin: mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 2007), p. 319.
13 Sman bla skyabs, “Sgyu rtsal pa” (The artist), Mtsho sngon mang tshogs sgyu rtsal (Qinghai folk art) 1985·1: 70–75.
14 Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986 [1974]), p. 21.
15 Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (New York: Ballantine, 1972), p. 188.
16 All turns of speech (from one performer to the other) taken in the performance are numbered between 1 and 267 to facilitate reference.
17 As opposed to the secular oratorical frame in which words are to be taken at face value and are believed to have real-world consequences due to the connection between speech and the Tibetan concept of rten ‘brel (dependent origination). See Timothy Thurston, “An Introduction to Tibetan Sa bstod Speeches in A mdo,” Asian Ethnology 71·1 (2012): 47–75.
18 Moser, “Reflexivity in the Humor of Xiangsheng,” p. 47.
19 Richard Baumann, A World of Others’ Words: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Intertextuality (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), p. 3.
20 On the potential consequences of alienating an audience in an American context, see Barry Alan Morris, “The Communal Constraints on Parody: The Symbolic Death of Joe Bob Briggs,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 73 (1987): 460–73.
21 R. Jeffrey Green, “Amdo Tibetan Media Intelligibility,” SIL Electronic Survey Reports 2012–019.
22 On these, see Fernanda Pirie, “The Horse with Two Saddles: Tamxhwe in Modern Golok,” Asian Highlands Perspectives 1 (2009): 213–36 and Nicolas Tournadre and Françoise Robin, Le Grande Livre des Proverbes Tibétains (Paris: Presses du Châtelet, 2006).
23 On the conventions of formal oratory, see Thurston, “An Introduction to Tibetan Sa bstod Speeches in A mdo” and Victoria Sujata, Tibetan Songs of Realization: Echoes from a Seventeenth-Century Scholar and Siddha in Amdo (Leiden: Brill, 2005).
24 For instance, Dzorge Guru, “Jahzong: Tibetan Tribal Leader,” Asian Highlands Perspectives (forthcoming in 2013), cites this one: “A person who can’t take revenge has no seat among others.”
25 For a similar case involving satirical songs sung in Lhasa prior to liberation, see Melvyn C. Goldstein, “Lhasa Street Songs: Political and Social Satire in Traditional Tibet,” The Tibet Journal 7·1 (1982): 56–66.
26 Perry Link, “The Genie and the Lamp: Revolutionary Xiangsheng,” in Bonnie S. MacDougall, ed., Popular Chinese Literature and the Performing Arts in the People’s Republic of China, 1949–1979 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 84.
27 On other politically satirical Tibetan performance genres and speech events, see Charlene Makley, “The Power of the Drunk: Humor and Resistance in China’s Tibet,” Michigan Discussions in Anthropology 13 (1998): 39–79 and Goldstein, “Lhasa Street Songs: Political and Social Satire in Traditional Tibet.”
28 Dkon mchog dge legs, “China’s Pastoral Development Policies and Tibetan Plateau Nomad Communities,” in Dbang ‘dus sgrol ma, Dkon mchog dge legs, Mgon po tshe ring, and Dpal ldan chos dbyings, “Environmental Issues Facing Tibetan Pastoral Communities,” C. K. Stuart and G. Roche, eds. Asian Highlands Perspectives 18 (2012): 37–72, pp. 51–52.
29 Emily T. Yeh, “Tibetan Range Wars: Spatial Politics and Authority on the Grasslands,” Development and Change 34·3 (2003): 499–523, p. 520.
30 Bla ma (pronounced, and frequently written as lama) refers to a highly respected holy person and spiritual teacher. It is the Tibetan translation of the Sanskrit guru. See Giuseppe Tucci, The Religions of Tibet, Geoffrey Samuel, tr. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), pp. 42–44.
31 See Fernanda Pirie, “Legal Complexity on the Tibetan Plateau,” Journal of Legal Pluralism 53–54 (2006): 77–100; idem., “Legal Dramas on the Amdo Grasslands: Abolition, Transformation or Survival,” in Katia Buffetrille, ed., Revisiting Rituals in a Changing Tibetan World (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 83–107; idem., “The Limits of the State: Coercion and Consent in Chinese Tibet,” Journal of Asian Studies 72·1 (2013): 69–90; Shinjilt, “Pasture Fights, Mediation, and Ethnic Narrations: Aspects of the Ethnic Relationship Between the Mongols and Tibetans in Qinghai and Gansu,” in Uradyn E. Bulag and Hildegard G. M. Diemberger, eds., The Mongolia–Tibet Interface: Opening New Research Terrains in Inner Asia (Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 337–62; Dkon mchog skyabs, ed., Rma lho sog shog gi lo rgyus rgyu cha phyogs bsgrigs pod gnyis pa be si che chung (Edited historical materials on the Henan Mongols, volume 2; Be si che chung: N.p., 2009), pp. 36–41; and Yeh, “Tibetan Range Wars.”
32 Pirie, “Legal Complexity on the Tibetan Plateau,” pp. 77–78.
33 Robert B. Ekvall, “The Tibetan Self Image,” Pacific Affairs 33·4 (1960): 375–82.
34 Don grub rgyal, “Sprul sku,” in Dpal Don grub rgyal gyi gsung ‘bum (The collected works of Don grub rgyal), Vol. 2 (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1997), pp. 119–55. For more on Don grub rgyal, see Riika Virtanen, “Tibetan Written Images: A Study of Imagery in the Writings of Dhondup Gyal,” Ph.D. diss., University of Helsinki, 2011.
35 Charlene Makley, The Violence of Liberation: Gender and Tibetan Buddhist Revival in Post-Mao China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), p. 276.
36 Sujata, Tibetan Songs of Realization,” p. 98.
37 I am grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers for astutely pointing out this aspect of the performance.
38 See, for instance, Liss Glebatis Perks, “A Sketch Comedy of Errors: Chappelle’s Show, Stereotypes, and Viewers,” Ph.D. diss., The University of Texas at Austin, 2008, p. 217.
39 Lauran Hartley, “‘Inventing Modernity’ in A mdo: Views on the Role of Traditional Tibetan Culture in a Developing Society,” in Toni Huber, ed., Amdo Tibetans in Transition: Society and Culture in the Post-Mao Era (Leiden: Brill. 2002), p. 1.
40 Wang Shiyong 王士勇, “The Failure of Vocational Training in Tibetan Areas of China,” Asian Highlands Perspectives 10 (2011): 129–52. For more on education in Tibetan areas, see Rebecca Clothey and Elena McKinlay, “A Space for the Possible: Globalization and English Language Learning for Tibetan Students in China,” Asian Highlands Perspectives 21 (2012): 7–32; Ellen Bangsbo, “Schooling for Knowledge and Cultural Survival: Tibetan Community Schools in Nomadic Herding Areas,” Educational Review 60·1 (2008): 69–84; Catriona Bass “Tibetan Primary Curriculum and Its Role in Nation Building,” Educational Review 60·1 (2008): 39–50; and Gerard A. Postiglione, “Making Tibetans in China: The Educational Challenges of Harmonious Multiculturalism,” Educational Review 60·1 (2008): 1–20.
41 My use of this diacritical follows the usage of Ray Cashman, Storytelling on the Northern Irish Border: Characters and Community (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008) and Henry Glassie, Passing the Time in Ballymenone: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982).
42 Sman bla skyabs, “Sems chung sde ba’i sa rtsod” (Careful Village’s Grassland Dispute) http://www.qhtb.cn/music/xiangsheng/2011-07-23/74.html#ecms, last accessed 18 February 2013 (click on the first link).
43 On this term, see Mark Bender’s review of Jiang Jing’s Women Playing Men: Yue Opera and Social Change in Twentieth-Century Shanghai, The Chinese Historical Review 17·1: (2010): 120–22.
44 See the introduction for details about the performance being translated and conventions used in the translation. “A” is performed by Sman bla skyabs and “B” by Phag mo bkra shis.
45 This statement plays on the shared terms sems (heart/mind) in both “careful” (sems chung, lit. small heart) and kindhearted (sems bzang), which share an initial syllable.
46 Kha btags (silk scarves) are often white or yellow and given to guests.
47 The term translated as “shrine” is labtse, religious structures that embody local mountain deities (see Tsemdo, “Lazi [Lab rtse] Construction in Karmatang [Skar ma tahng] Village,” Asian Highlands Perspectives 1 [2009]: 349–66).
48 A ma’i bu (lit. Mother’s boy) is an expression meaning that someone is very impressive.
49 I am grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers for pointing out that the mention of putting the scarf in his pocket might call up the idea of bribery in the listeners’ minds.
50 Mgo skor: a leather tether with a piece of metal on the end that might be used to fend off both menacing animals and people.
51 This part of Sman bla skyabs’ name refers to the Medicine Buddha.
52 Tibetan medicine practitioners check a patient’s pulse at the wrist as part of the diagnosis procedure.
53 Here “A” is swearing by Picasso. Tibetans swear oaths frequently as a way of lending truth to their statements, but a person who swears too many oaths is considered to undermine any claim to being truthful by doing that.
54 This suggests that the village leader believes him, despite what he says.
55 Thang ka are Tibetan scroll paintings, frequently featuring a deity at the center.
56 Khri ral pa can (ca. 805–ca. 838), also known as Khri gtsug lde btsan, was one of the three dharma kings of Tibet, and the penultimate king of the Tibetan empire.
57 Rgya lwa (lit. Chinese clothes), is a term used to refer to Western-style clothing.
58 A lags is a term of respect used for bla ma in A mdo.
59 Here the village leader is suggesting that the dispute cannot be resolved and is, in effect, suggesting that there will be consequences.
60 This place is known in Chinese as Gonghe 共和 and is not far from the provincial capital of Qinghai. I am grateful to Dr. C. K. Stuart for pointing out to me that there was a large earthquake in Chabcha in 1990, during which a dam broke, and that this and similar phrases below allude to this event (on the quake, see http://articles.latimes.com/1990-04-27/news/mn-349_1_quakes-kills-china).
61 This phrase is used to suggest village women who have married and those who have not, and therefore all the women of the village. Tibetan weddings tend, in most situations, to be exogamous.
62 Since only men would have fought, this indicates all the men, both those injured and those who remained unscathed.
63 I thank an anonymous reviewer for kindly pointing out that their mjal srol (way of meeting/receiving) will be incorrect because they are so disorderly and chaotic. An alternative interpretation would be that they were unwittingly worshipping a false bla ma.
64 This refers to an older form of currency in circulation at the time of performance and still in circulation, but not commonly in use in the PRC as of the time of this article’s publication.
65 See the last part of the introduction for why the original phrase bya lam ma ‘gro rgyu’o, has been translated here as “virtuous people.”
66 The audience knows that he means he must get the knowledge to write the kha shags. The villagers think this means he must make peace between the villagers.
67 The implication is that because he is a bla ma, no one will dare interrupt him.
68 This refers to traditional society before the advent of Chinese Communist Party control.
69 ‘Old world’ refers to life on the Tibetan plateau prior to the failed uprising that resulted in the traditional leadership fleeing to India in 1959 and the installation of more direct Chinese control. ‘New Society’ refers to the post-1958 period.
70 ’58 refers to the failed uprising that came to an end the following year. The Cultural Revolution was a time of great social turmoil. For more information on the cultural importance of 1958 on the Tibetan plateau, see Gerald Roche and Wen Xiangcheng, “Modernist Iconoclasm, Resilience, and Divine Power among the Mangghuer of the Northeast Tibetan Plateau,” Asian Ethnology 72·1: 90 and Makley, The Violence of Liberation, p. 107.
71 This refers to the grassland privatization policies in pastoral areas in the 1990s. For more on the link between these policies and grassland disputes in A mdo, see the introduction.
72 This can be read as a tacit indictment of the poor medical treatment available in rural areas.
73 Tibetans generally practice patrilocal marriage, although if a family has no sons, uxorilocal marriage can happen. Such live-in-son-in-laws are called mag pa and do not have a very good reputation.
74 Meaning that they must be equals.
75 This gtam dpe, set off as verse, is used to suggest that the man is brave and unafraid of death.
76 Sman bla skyabs as bla ma is using religious terminology here. Bdud skal (karmic enemy), refers to someone who either owes you or whom you owe a karmic debt from a previous life that has to be worked out in this life. His intention is to effectively stop the man from fighting. He already knows that the description fits someone the man knows, and is manipulating people’s religious concepts and beliefs to get them to stop fighting.
77 Bu skal: when a family has too many children and cannot afford to care for them all, they may give one or more of them to childless families to raise as their own. These children are called bu skal.
78 This refers to the Tibetan creation myth in which Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva of compassion, assumed the form of an ape and mated with a rock demoness (brag srin). Their offspring were the first humans.
79 This mantra is said in the hope goodness will prevail in this world. Here, however, it is simply used as a phrase that illiterate villagers would be impressed by.
80 Illiteracy remains high in Tibetan areas, and even more so in the realm of religious scriptures. Scriptures are written in classical Tibetan, using archaic language heavy with the religious idiolect. As a result, those who are illiterate and therefore uninitiated into this register frequently cannot even understand the scriptures that they sometimes chant.