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Tibetans take on modernization
From CNN Beijing Bureau Chief Jaime FlorCruz
LHASA, Tibet (CNN) -- In the lush valley flanked by Tibet's rugged mountains, it's harvest time. A combine rented from a local monastery brings some efficiency to a backbreaking chore. Still, farmer Laba Zhouma makes sure every single ear of grain left behind is picked up. Such thrift and hard work has paid off. She built a four-room house with cash savings equivalent to $2,400 -- a fortune in this remote village. She even owns a TV set. "I don't speak Chinese, so I watch Tibetan programs," she said. Laba Zhouma is a beneficiary of the new Tibet. In the kitchen, she now uses an electric blender to prepare yak-butter tea. For cooking, she uses bottled gas, instead of the traditional dried dung burned in iron stoves. In the same village, 70-year-old Tsampa Tsuzu winnows her wheat in the middle of the main road. She says she has witnessed startling changes since the Communists took over more than 50 years ago -- but says it's the little things that matter. "Now I can take the bus to go to the city center. I don't need to walk anymore," she told CNN. China's rush for development is dragging many Tibetans to new life and lifestyles. In a bazaar just outside an old monastery, female shoppers try out the unconventional -- trousers. As old pastimes endure (men drink barley liquor), new forms of recreation also attract men of leisure (they shoot pool tables on the side). Beijing's bold experiments with capitalism are taking Tibetans to markets they have never seen before. The big board at Lhasa's stock brokerage maps the trading. As in the rest of socialist China, red here means gains. Green signals losses. The market is bearish, but the die-hards remain. A former teacher, who has been trading stocks for 10 years, says she learned trading from books and then from experience. She built a big house from the bonanza she made in the 1990s. Now she also offers stock tips to friends. "The market is down lately, so it's time to buy. Later you sell," she said. The so-called socialist modernization is taking place all across China, and Tibet is no exception. Tibet faces the challenge of modernizing, while clinging to its past -- a past which for the very young Tibetans seems to be increasingly blurred and irrelevant.
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