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Tibetans believe that stone is the only hard material on earth that does not get wet, rust, rot, destroy or destroy. It is a symbol of permanence. Once inscribed on a stone, it means that the Dhamma is immortal and not to be destroyed, meaning that the faith in your heart is as eternal as a rock. Not every stone can be turned into a stone wall SLATE, it must be a green SLATE from the Zharang mountain, clean and stain-free, and there are three specified sizes. The stone wall described in this paper is located in Gamba Village, Darihara, Guoluo Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province. After four generations and 126 years, It was finally completed in 2016 by Ge Mazhaxi’s family. This is his dictation.
1
My full name is Wangshidhai – Duran – Garmazzasi, and my name comes from an old tribe.
At the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, the Tubo empire rose, and my family was called into the Tubo army to march eastward into the Tang Domain. When they reached the semi-peasant and semi-pastoral area in the east of Qinghai Lake, they failed to march eastward successively. After staying for two or three years, the soldiers were dissolved on the spot, and the ancestors melted into the local Tubo ethnic group and evolved into the present Tibetan group and settled in Huangnan.
According to legend, my ancestors were stonemasons, who carved road signs, Buddha statues and built stone houses on the grasslands for merchants on the Southern Silk Road. After settling in Huangnan, the ancestors returned to their old trades. It is not clear what kind of business he had with The Living Buddha of The Fifth Chamar Lama Of Guoluo, anyway, from then on, he came to Guoluo with his wife, children and children, and began to build the stone wall.
I was born in Gamba Village, Golodari Grassland in 1940. I am 76 years old this year. I am the fourth generation craftsman after my family came to Guoluo.
To be exact, when my mother was pregnant with me, she started with the carving of her SLATE day after day. No one taught me. This is probably fate.
The fourth generation of The Garmazhaxi family built a stone wall. (Photo: courtesy of the author) The stone wall of The Fourth generation of The Garmazhaxi family. (Photo: provided by the author)
I have a dim memory of my mother telling me the story of my birth when I was a child.
At noon one winter day in 1940, while she and Abba were carving stone sutras, their tummy began to ache. Abba helped her into the nearby black tent, their makeshift, airy, makeshift shelter.
Mother kissed my forehead, which still smelled of blood, washed my body in a pot of water that Abba had just boiled, and sat down by the fire to drink milk tea. Just a aqua (editor’s note: aqua, amdo Tibetan of Tibetan buddhist monks in a call, Chinese transliteration of aqua) to send stone, the temple of aqua is voluntary carry stones, he saw the newborn lamb by mother in my purse in the, continued to struggle, smiled and said, “don’t have to go to the temple name, just call algor hemp tashi, meaning auspicious masons.”
Hearing this, my mother hastened to offer hada milk tea to express her thanks. After drinking the boiling milk tea, she took me into her bosom like a little mouse, walked out of the black tent, and continued to carve stone scriptures in the wind with Abba as if nothing had happened.
In fact, this is exactly what Tibetan women do when they give birth. After two hours’ rest, they can go to the river to fetch water and do housework.
I don’t know when I learned this craft, maybe there is no system to learn those knife skills, those Tibetan letters are all in the chanting of Abba, like the wind into my head, and then through the iron chisel, like blood flow to the large and small tablets, solidified into letters.
2
In 1946, Abba died. He was killed by a scimitar by a cavalry colonel named Ma Hongde when the northwest warlord Ma Bufang was massacring Guoro in Qinghai for the second time.
Later, my family told me, that year, par sent his cavalry go luo did to cattle and sheep, rob gold, a woman, first we GangBa because remote dodge a bullet, but this time, go luo there is no thing can be robbed, they came to the GangBa writing wall, when see here of buddhist scripture tall stone walls, do not have the thing of Islam, ordered the young cavalry to put on the spot has good wall all overthrew the bases, also with a big hammer smashing can the green flag to hit, hit the whole seven days, the village of decades of work destroyed craftsmen.
After smashing the stone plate, the horse head let Dad hand over one hundred and two gold to save his life, can build the stone wall funds have always been the great Living Buddha and his housekeeper in management, craftsmen just accept the stone officer sent to butter Zanba tea daily necessities, there is no extra money. The property of all the craftsmen in the Gamba village would not have been worth a hundred ounces of gold.
Ma Hongde become angry from embarrassment, knife splitting dead are carving buddhist scriptures abba, at that time, mother stood behind abba, looked at the Shouting, the dozen dog hammer from the pocket – that is the shepherd dogs bite prevention and grasslands of weapons, is a square iron bumps, a long cowhide rope tied to the other side, my mother pulled cowhide rope iron pimple fly to Ma Hongde, dancing in the air before Ma Hongde reaction to come over, with his head hit the iron monster, issued a depressing “poof bursts” sound, then, Ma Hongde a crashing to the ground, officers stood still looking at a joke, this just hurry to call up.
My mother kept cursing and flying to another officer with a swinging sledgehammer. As he hid, he took out a pistol and shot my mother several times. My mother’s body and the hammer she was dancing in fell to the ground…
They were in their forties, the prime age for carving tablets of scripture. And I did not die, is that abba had a mind, in those murderous Ma Jiajun smashed the stone warboard, let my brother-in-law took me to 30 kilometers away to take the stone to avoid the mountain nest, eventually survived.
3
In 1947, Ma Bufang’s cavalry bloodied Guoluo for the third time. More than 90% of the herdsmen on the grassland fled to Tibet, Yunnan, Sichuan and other places, and even the sixth Living Buddha fled to Markang. It was not until half a year later that they returned to Guoluo.
The living Buddha thought that any wealth might be taken away by the horse family, but they would not take the cold stone, so he gave what he had and his temple had not been taken away, and appointed a new stone officer, and wanted to build a new stone wall in Dor.
From Gamba to Dolle, I went there for 30 years and finished carving the 103-volume Kangyul and the 234-volume Danjul.
Ever since I went to Daul, the herdsmen on the grassland have indeed been bringing yaks from the mountains again, carrying pieces of stone of different sizes. It would have been impossible to do this without being a devout human being — a mountain of stone was still more than forty kilometres from Doler. In those days, there were no stone roads, let alone roads, and all the stones were carried by yaks. Cattle carry up to four or five tablets on their backs on narrow trails, and even then, most of the time it is difficult to complete the journey in a day, let alone those herdsmen who do not have yaks at home and carry one or two tablets on their backs for 40 kilometers of mountain roads.
In those 30 years, I have seen many people die for the height of the stone wall.
One day, a 40-something herdsman was driving a yak loaded with stones to unload the stones. Somehow, the yak was suddenly frightened and ran around. The man rushed to pull the rope of the ox’s nose, but the ox rushed at him, and the sharp edge of the stones on the ox’s back bumped into his head, bursting his brain with blood… Hundreds of vultures queued up to eat his flesh and carry him to heaven, where he was buried by a living Buddha on a hillside not far from the Wall of Dolerite.
Another herdsman, carrying two pieces of stone on his back, came from the mountain to Daul, and was probably too hungry to go on, so that the stone was crushed down and he did not rise again, until the next day, when the herdsman passing by found him dead.
The fourth generation of The Garmazhaxi family built a stone wall. (Photo: courtesy of the author) The stone wall of The Fourth generation of The Garmazhaxi family. (Photo: provided by the author)
After a few years, in 1952, one day Shi Guan came to deliver highland barley butter, he said that the Communist Party of China’s Za Xiwangxu led the Northwest Military and political Committee of Guoluo working group to guoluo grassland. The men of the regiment were polite enough to come to Dolle.
One day in the summer of 1958, a dozen people like Tibetans and Han Chinese came from Aba, Sichuan province. They drove a group of yaks with a lot of things on their backs and set up camp on the grass land not far from the wall of Doler Stone. When they saw me, they talked to me in half-baked Tibetan and asked me for cow dung, fried noodles and mutton. I gave them a lot of fuel and food, but when I brought them to their tent, I found a dozen rifles stacked in a pile.
I suddenly remembered what Huang Daxing, the director of the public security Bureau, had told me the other day to be on the alert for bandits in the grasslands and to report them to the government as soon as I found them. I found the group very suspicious. During tea mixing zanba, another man told me in Aba Tibetan that he had killed two Han Chinese yesterday.
I guessed that I must have met the bandits, so I sat down to make them more tea to calm them down, while my wife rode off to report to Huang daxing. When it was dark, my wife came back and said That Huang Daxing told me not to disturb them. Of course, I continued to eat mutton and drink barley wine with them. In the middle of the night, the police and the People’s Liberation Army surrounded the tent and caught them all without firing a shot.
The Dargis government gave me a prize of 100 yuan for this, which at that time was a huge sum of money, and I gave it to the stone officer, who invested the money in the cost of the carving stone.
Later, Director Huang Daxing came to me and said that I was politically reliable and could speak Both Tibetan and Chinese. The government was short of such cadres from ethnic minorities and wanted me to work in the public security bureau, but I refused.
“All my life I’ve been carving stones through walls. That’s why my grandfather and my father died, and that’s why I have to die, too.” I remember replying to him.
4
At the beginning of 1967, much changed in my life.
One day some young men in PLA clothes came to Doler, holding red flags in their hands, and asked me to report to the county. When I came back, they gave me a yak to ride on a horse. Unlike a horse, the yak does not listen to anyone. It is not meant to be ridden, but to be eaten. I had to take the yak to the county.
A living Buddha told me in private that the “Cultural Revolution” had begun, and that all over the world materialism and atheism had to be practiced. But I had been carving scriptures for half my life. Then, in the county interrogates conference, red guards off, hide my suit to bare body, with a rope to a few jins of heavy slab hanging around his neck, a hanging is half a day, the neck is worn red, red guards also Sam Browne belt with sackcloth aluminum buckle, smoke I bloodied, let me explain how to living Buddha head partnership exploitation the nomads of the masses.
At that time, I was imprisoned in a cow dung shed in the primary school. Next door was Du Bingguang, the county party secretary of Dayi, who was a Han Chinese. He quietly said to me, “You have to find a way to hide yourself in the Doler mountains. As it happens, you can continue to carve the stone warps at ease. You need to finish the stone warps through the walls, but you can’t give up halfway.”
I took note of his words, so I stole away in the middle of the night after one day when the Red guards were not very strict. I returned to The Wall at Dolerstone and took my wife and hid in the mountains 50 kilometers away.
My wife brought a herd of yaks and sheep from her mother’s house. These animals were enough for our normal life. During the day, I pulled back the stones from the mountain, and at night, I carved a SLATE with butter lamp and hid it in a ditch at the top of a mountain.
In 1972, I carved so much that I had to go to the county to find The secretary Du Bingguang. At that time, he was sent to the farm machinery factory to work as a blacksmith to make a sickle to cut highland barley. I had carved hundreds of thousands of stone tablets, and had to haul them over the walls of Doler, but I didn’t have a car, and I didn’t know what to do.
Du Book let me not publicity, he thought for a long time, told me: “you go first, I will think of a way to help you carry, as long as the stone wall to build up, it will be safe.
After a while, Secretary Du came to me with a three-wheeled tractor. I called my wife and eight or nine members of her family, and it took me two months to pull my SLATE scriptures to the Wall of Dooler stone and build them in order.
By 1976, prairie pastoral people started to the faith, I also do not need to hide in the fruit, to move back to more than writing workshops of the wall, and the usual fair, continue day after day carved in 1983, Du Bingguang transferred to the state administration for religious affairs when the chief secretary, one day also came to see me, more said: “you in the” cultural revolution “so hard environment created so much Shi Jingban, now good, can want to stiffening finish that big project.” Later, without my knowledge, Secretary Du coordinated the relationship between all sides and appointed me to the religious bureau of the county.
5
Time floated away like a cloud in the sky.
In 1986, I was approached by the leaders of the Religious bureau in Dari County, who wanted me to return to the Gangba Stone wall and learn the art of stone carving with young men recruited from all over Guoluo. It happened that the old house in gamba village was still empty, so I went back to my relatives and enjoyed my family. My apprentices were also open-minded and eager to learn, and they made rapid progress. After several years of training, they were better and faster than I was at that time. This job took another 30 years.
In 1993, Qinghai Province held a contest to select provincial inheritors of intangible culture. Several people from Xining, who were Also Tibetans, asked me where my hometown was. When I said Gangba, they said, “Aren’t you from Huang Nan?
I replied, “Huang Nan is my grandfather’s hometown. I was born and grew up in Gonba. This is my hometown.” Although my Gaozu had an agreement with the five living Buddhas of Guoluo for four generations, which meant that I could leave Guoluo and return to Huangnan in my lifetime, I decided to stay here forever. When I die, I will be buried among the graves of my grandfather and my father.
This is a promise that four generations of our family have made to faith and stone wall, which has been erected in the depths of guoluo grassland for more than a hundred years like a flag to call stray souls to return home.
In October 1889, Gaozu, with all his possessions and carving tools, took his wife and children to say goodbye to the old people in his hometown, and set out from Huangnan on five fine horses provided by Shiguan Jianyanni appointed by the Living Buddha to cross the Great Snow-capped Mountain of Animaqing. When crossing the Yellow River at the mouth of the Laga Gorge to the south, the horses on the sheep raft floating into the turbulent river suddenly got scared and pulled him into the Yellow River and drowned.
Just as the Buddha tested my grandfather’s will to go south, the Stone official asked my grandfather after crossing the Yellow River, “What should I do? Should I go or not?” The grandfather, sitting on the sheepskin raft, said to him, “Let abpa be buried in water. He is the foundation stone of the birth of the whole guolostone through the wall.”
As if all these were the meaning of Buddha, grandpa obeyed silently and understood the great significance of carving stone to save all sentient beings. He went on his way with his mother without looking back and finally reached the Goologomba grassland in the summer of 1890.
At the beginning, The fifth Buddha lama Sang-O-Tenzin was going to build a stone wall in the small square in front of a six or seven tents and temple. But my grandfather did not agree. He told the Living Buddha that he should not choose any place in order to save labor and quarry, but should choose an open place with good feng shui.
“Think of the vast emptiness of Guolao grassland, where there are few people, and the lonely and undulating hills beside it, which makes people depressed and desperate. How can the empty world and the empty heart of the herdsman suffer in the empty shell without soul? But as long as the solitary herdsmen can lift their eyes on the stone wall standing in the wide world on the grassland, they can receive the powerful spiritual warmth, which is the holy place of the soul that the Buddha calls to roam on the grassland.”
Thus, in what is now Gamba Village, this prominent place in the open became the first place where stones were born through walls in Guoluo.
My grandfather and grandmother became the first residents of the first black tent set up in the initial gamba cold wind. More than a hundred years later, it has become one of the highest villages in Guoluo.
After our family settled down in Gamba, my grandfather and my father came back to Huangnan at different times to invite skilled relatives to Gamba. Then they were invited by relatives and relatives, and became the current 20 or 30 families, and finally became the famous Masons village of Guoluo. When he and his grandmother first lit a cow dung fire and raised the first smoke, the serfs had already brought the first stone slabs, the cornerstone of the wall, from mount Charang, 30 kilometers away.
They told me that grandpa did only three things in a day and those were the three things he did in his life. One is mix zanba drink milk tea to eat; The other is to sit cross-legged to carve the stone tablets. Even in winter when there is a heavy snow, I will sit in the workshop in front of the stone wall, and the iron chisel will not be struck by the hammer when thunder strikes. The third is to carry the carved SLATE to the stone wall and build the stone wall by yourself.
He was once standing on a stone wall more than two metres high, and was making a smooth, backward step, when the tip of a stone caught his foot, and he tottered and lost his balance, and fell headlong into the wall. Fortunately, the grass was below, and only his leg bones broke. In the days when he was recovering from his injury, he let his grandmother carry him to the workshop, still hitting the iron chisel as before.
Generations of craftsmen buried under stone walls
In 1939, when he was 70 years old, he was sitting at a small table carving one morning as usual. At noon, his grandma went to bring him milk tea. Seeing him holding the iron chisel firmly, she pushed him and said, if he couldn’t work any more, he was going to rest.
He died in the post he had worked all his life, clutching the hammer and chisel.
It is the custom of Tibetans to bury him in heaven after death, but grandpa was an exception. His grandma buried him on the grassy beach not far from the Stone wall, and let him continue to accompany his growth. At that time, the stone wall only grew tens of centimeters high from the ground. Later, my grandmother, my father and my mother were all buried there, and when I die, I will be buried here next to my father.
6
This is the story of our family of four generations of stone carvers growing up as a stone wall.
I was very old, and my eyes were dim, and I continued to carve the stone warps. I can only do one thing in my life, that is carving a SLATE, and I don’t want to do anything else, I guess grandpa, Abba is the same. Up to my generation, I have basically fulfilled the great wishes of my grandfather and the great living Buddha.
This is the law of the cycle of birth and death. Although I feel a little sad in my heart, I will not be reluctant to leave the world for which I have devoted my whole life, because I have finished my work in this world.
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