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July 29, 2015

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A nun’s life: pizza and online chats

Source: Xinhua | July 29, 2015, Wednesday | Print Edition

A PIZZA place in Shangri-la County is Buddhist nun Tashi Yungdrung’s favorite eating place.

Like many young people, the 29-year-old Tibetan woman enjoys sharing her life by posting pictures of meetings with friends and chatting online.

Tashi was 16 when she first donned the magenta robe of Tharpaling Nunnery, the only Tibetan Buddhist nunnery in southwest China’s Yunnan Province. She began her lessons there, just 20 kilometers from her hometown in a village in the Dechen Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.

There are more than 100 nuns practicing Buddhism at the nunnery. Some of them, including Tashi, study scripture; others study Tibetan grammar.

They get up and chant at a hall at around 6am every day, take courses in the morning and debate Buddhist scripture from afternoon till night.

They have a day off every 10 days and summer and winter holidays.

Tashi says people are mistaken if they think a nun’s life is boring and isolated from outside world.

She and her peers like to visit the nunnery’s library — which is equipped with computers and printers — when they have time, cook in kitchens using the latest equipment, or just scan the news on their mobile phones in their dormitory.

The local government recently began to offer an annual subsidy of 3,000 yuan (US$480) to every nun in an effort to improve their lives.

In order to increase the income of the nunnery and enrich their lives at the same time, nuns are encouraged to learn new skills such as Tibetan medicine and tailoring.

The 300-year-old nunnery looked pretty dilapidated, with cracking walls and decaying components just five years ago.

“Whenever it rained the roof leaked, we had to repair the roof, though we are women,” said a nun called Drolma.

With the help of the local government and society, the main hall has been strengthened, new dormitories and kitchens have been built, and the road linking the nunnery with outside world has been improved.

Tashi has just begun a 25-day summer vacation after taking exams, and returned to her home for the break.

She arrived home with the money she saved up and shared a video clip of her mother cutting grass online.

“We don’t have homework to do in the vacation,” Tashi said.

“I will pick mushrooms on the mountain to provide some help for my parents.”

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