Download or read book The Struggle for Modern Tibet written by Melvyn Goldstein and published by M.E. Sharpe. This book was released on 1997-02-21 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This autobiography of a Tibetan nationalist with a burning desire to reform and modernize the old society presents for the first time a personal portrait of Tibet that is realistic -- neither a feudal hell, as Beijing would have it, nor Shangrila, as many sympathetic outsiders would have it. Tashi's moving story, beginning with his humble early circumstances, covers his search for education in Tibet and the United States, his return to China/Tibet in early 1964, and his life in China, especially during the Cultural Revolution when he was charged as an American spy and imprisoned. Finally exonerated, Tashi became a professor of English at Tibet University and went on to found in 1985 the first English night school in Lhasa. Now retired, he devotes all his efforts to raising funds to build rural schools in his home province, where his still illiterate relatives live.