Tibet

 This book focuses on the traditional ecological knowledge of Tibetan pastoralists in Smug po, a community on the northeast Tibetan Plateau. Following an introduction to the community, its territory, history, and other salient features, local pastoral production and the annual pastoral cycle are described. Remaining chapters deal with the naming, breeding, and management of livestock; wildlife; grassland plants; pasture management; weather prediction; rituals to ensure good fortune; and the treatment of livestock illnesses. Includes two maps, fifteen tables, sixty-six figures, a list of non-English terms with original orthography, and an index.

Li Xiaoqiong (Drolma), a Namuyi Tibetan from Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province describes her childhood; parents; paternal grandmother's early life and death; village life including children's games, tending horses, and herding yaks; her experiences at primary school; a surrogate grandfather; her youngest brother; local lunar New Year festivities; her time at middle school including a special friend and love letters; her schooling at Qinghai Normal University in Xining City; her time in India including college experiences, travels, working in an NGO, and working at a call center in Delhi; and her return to China. Also included are two original poems, three stories by Li Xiaoqiong's grandmother, and photographs of Li Xiaoqiong's village and of her time in India.

Tsering Bum (b. 1985) describes his early life in Amdo in terms of dreams, herding, punishment from a lama, schooling experiences, attending a Kalachakra teaching, a lhatzi gathering, irrigation, his grandfather, archery, and other important moments and influences.

Karma Donrub's (Kar+ma don 'grub) life begins on the boundless Tibetan grassland in 1983 in Yushu (Yul shul) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai (Mtsho sgnon) Province. Living in a black yak hair tent, Karma Dondrub begins tending his family's yak calves as soon as he can walk, in a grassland so barren that he is startled upon first seeing a tree at the age of eight. Charlatan livestock-stealing monks, anthrax, death, birth, happiness, and encounters with modern education create a powerful, unparalleled account of Tibetan nomad childhood in the late twentieth century - a way of life that will soon be forever gone.