Kerong does not remember what life was like 50 years ago.

Not because the 83-year-old is losing his memory. Rather, it was an inhuman time he wants to forget.

"I consider myself dead then," Kerong said.

As a teenager in Tibet then, Kerong never liked, let alone romanticized, the life in any one of the ubiquitous monasteries of the region. Being born into the Tibetan Buddhism way of life that was nestled amid the Himalayas, Kerong, like most of his peers, was religious. But the monastery always invoked fear and despair in him.

That was because Kerong was a Tralpa, a member of the hereditary "middle-class" of serf families in the Old Tibet. As the only son in his family, Kerong was spared the compulsory temple service demanded by the authorities for all boy serfs from families with two or more sons as a form of "atonement". But Kerong was still forced to provide free labor at the renowned Drepung Monastery after he turned 15.

"I was too young and weak to lift even a scoop used for stirring tea in those huge pots they had for brewing tea," Kerong said. "I just couldn't do it. But each time I failed to perform my duties, I would be brutally caned, day in and day out," he said.

"Just like that, I was gradually forced and beaten into a Tralpa. It was my life, my fate and my destiny."

Kerong's life is just one of the countless stories of servitude and suffering seen throughout the Old Tibet, existing for more than a millennium and brought to an end only in 1959, when the central government abolished slavery in the region on March 28 with the historic policy of Democratic Reform.

Serfs' Emancipation Day every March 28 is also the designated holiday for celebrating the end of serfdom in Tibet, following a bill passed on Monday at the autonomous region's People's Congress in its capital, Lhasa.

Before March 1959, serfs made up 95 percent of the Tibetan population. They were expected to serve the interests of the few lords and lamas who held an iron grip on the theocratic Himalayan region, both spiritually and for all practical purposes.

Contrary to what many believed and as cases such as Kerong's have shown, religion was never the sole force that advocated the tens of thousands of Tibetan serfs and beggars to "voluntarily" observe the laws of karma that bound them to such servitude.

Instead, a wide-ranging network of control was known to have been at play to tie the Tralpas and Duiqoins - serfs with a lower status and lesser land allocation than the Tralpas - to their limited share of land, and rule the Nangzan, or household slaves, through sheer violence.

All these groups were known to have been at the mercy of not more than 200 wealthy families and a handful of powerful temples. Kerong himself was only one of 25,000 serfs at the Drepung, which controlled 185 manors, 300 major pastures and 16,000 herdsmen in the 1950s.

"Every society progresses, but not the Old Tibet then," said Salung Phunlha, deputy chief of the influential Tashilhunpo Monastery in Xigaze, Bailang county. "Ordinary people had to pay heavy taxes if they wanted to visit monasteries. Not many people had that luxury. Beggars were everywhere."

Salung entered the monastery aged 9 in 1951 and toiled for the senior lamas for nearly a decade. "Nobody cared, not even if you fell down and died from exhaustion," he said.

"That was the life of all serfs before 1959, not for one year, but for hundreds and thousands of years.

"You were a damned slave."

Like all the slaves in Tibet, Kerong suffered in the monastery. But he did not know where, or who to turn to. No one knew the true name of their master - it could have been a wealthy north Tibetan lama who earned the nickname "Apota", or "the Big Tiger", among Drepung's serfs.

"My parents, two elder sisters, wife and I lived in a low, damp and dark room measured out by a pole (about 20 sq m)," Kerong said. "We were all Tralpas; my mother and sisters were slaves carrying out transportation tasks for the monastery."

Yeshe Lodro was born to share Kerong's fate, but his mother was too poor to raise him. He was sent to Drepung by a local lama when he was 2. Three years later, Yeshe became a monk and, like Salung and most other young monks, became servants to a senior lama.

"My biggest hope as a child was not to be beaten and scolded. But it was futile," he said. "I could deal with the scolding, but I could only take so many beatings."

"I couldn't possibly live in the monastery," Yeshe said. "I had to escape."

Then in 1954, Yeshe learned of the 17-Article Agreement between the Central People's Government and the Local Government of Tibet that had been signed three years before.

"I heard it from a batch of People's Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers on my way back from a trip to Qamdo," he said. "It was the first time I heard about it because people had no access to radio and could not read any newspapers."

"So I fled the monastery and became a servant of an aristocrat," Yeshe said. "Even slave labor for a lord felt better than working in Drepung."

Three years later, he joined the revolution and was assigned to study the Tibetan language for the first time in the PLA's Tibetan Cadre School. After the Democratic Reform, Yeshe became one of Lhasa's first batch of 25 traffic police officers.

Now 74, Yeshe has been a People's Congress delegate for the city's Chengguan district for five years.

Kerong was assigned a house the size of about 60 sq m (0.4 of a hectare) of farmland, a pregnant cow, a donkey and two bulls he shared with three other serf families during the Democratic Reform.

"I had nothing before the Democratic Reform. But I was assigned such a large house later, with my own fields, cow and even seeds that were provided by the government. I was thrilled," he said. "That gratitude is shared by all."

After years of servitude as a Tralpa, Kerong had time to learn how to grow crops. "And then the good years began," he said.

Today, Kerong is living in a house 600 sq m in his native village in Lhasa's Todlung Dechen county. He will soon move into a fully renovated house close by, as part of a government-initiated settlement project for rural residents.

"It has been a different world for me in the past 50 years," he said. "I spend most of my days boiling water and cooking for my kids. In my spare time, I pray and watch a little TV. I am very happy and I feel my life is fulfilled."

Kerong's only regret is that his parents did not live to witness the end of the slavery. But he is thankful enough.

"I occasionally think of the past when we have family reunions now. It wasn't possible to have a family reunion then."

"I hope my kids know this," Kerong said.

Some youngsters do know. Phubu Tsering is a guide for Xigaze's Pala Manor, a place infamous for the suffering serfs experienced under it. Phubu grew up in a local Nangzan family and his parents, now 69, were both former slaves of the Phakue Lhakhang family, whose core members included the 14th Dalai Lama's closest associates.

"March 28, 1959, was the most important day in the lives of my parents," Phubu, 24, said.

"It marked the start of their real lives because they were emancipated from that day on. If anything, March 28 is their new 'birthday'."

LHASA: For years, a ray of sunshine was all the little poor girl could hope for, when she laid half-naked beside her 10 siblings on the grass inside a barn. Her fate was already better than many others at society’s bottom here on top of the world. But still, her father, a shoemaker who worked around the clock, was never able to make shoes for himself or his family.

Like the rest of Tibetan society who suffered under serfdom, Dechen Rnam could never have envisioned that slavery be abandoned in this land of the lords and lamas. A day to commemorate the system’s abolishment was a far remoter dream.

The 74-year-old said she has already lived the dream of dispossessed people here for half a century. Now, relaxing comfortably in her recently renovated, spacious Tibetan house with buttered tea and a handful of fried highland barley, Dechen is calmly expecting her biggest day.

A landmark bill that sets March 28 to mark the abolishment of slavery in Tibet, which until 50 years ago was dictated by a feudal serf system, will be tabled today during the 2^nd annual session of the 9^th Tibet Regional People’s Congress (RPC).

The holiday will be decided on Monday, Legqog, chair of the regional congress standing committee, told a press briefing yesterday.

The abandonment of slavery in March 1959 was simultaneous with the central government’s Democratic Reform in the region, which emancipated serfs – who made up 95 percent of old Tibet’s 1 million population – and allowed them to work their own fields for the very first time.

“Tibet has since embarked on a glorious path from darkness to light, from backwardness to progress, from poverty to prosperity, from dictatorship to democracy and from isolation to openness,” announced Legqog, who himself grew up in a serf family in Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR)’s Gyangze county.

“The celebration of this day has extremely important implications both practically and historically,” the 65-year-old stressed.

Tibet is widely believed to be the last place to have abolished serfdom, after the central government foiled an attempted armed rebellion led by the 14^th Dalai Lama and his upper class supporters on March 10, 1959.

Then Premier Zhou Enlai issued a decree of the State Council on Mach 28 of that year, dissolving the region’s aristocratic government and ordering the Preparatory Committee for the Founding of the TAR to exercise local power.

“Until then, although Tibet was peacefully liberated in 1951, the evil Statue of old Tibet had still been in place as per the 17-Article Agreement between the Central People’s Government and the Local Government of Tibet,” recalled Dechen.

“Those were the days when people were born into one of the nine social classes, and where lives were defined by law according to those classes. We the ‘lowly people’ had nothing to look forward to,” she said.

“After all these happy years for us, it’s a shame that the Dalai Lama is still trying to ruin things and reinstall serfdom,” Dechen said.

For his part, Legqog noted that “through vivid contrast between the cruelties of feudal serfdom and the people-centered approach of our Party, and especially since the March 14 riot, all peoples in Tibet have recognized the reactionary nature of the Dalai Clique and confirmed their confidence and determination in being with the Party.”

Despite tremendous losses after the riot, Tibet’s GDP in 2008 was still estimated at 39.2 billion yuan (US$5.7 billion), 65 times more than that in 1959, according to Qiangba Puncog, chairman of the regional government. Its per capita GDP amounted to more than 14,000 yuan (US$2,048) in 2008, 27 times more than 50 years ago.

The region’s fixed-assets investment has totaled more than 200 billion yuan (US$29.3 billion) since the Democratic Reform. About 90 percent of the funds were invested in the past 15 years, Qiangba said.

“The Tibetan ethnic group is an important member of the Chinese nation. People of all ethnicities in Tibet will do best in contributing their share to the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” he said.

LHASA: March 28 will be set a day to mark the abolishment of slavery in Tibet, which until 50 years ago was dictated by a feudal serf system, a top regional leader said yesterday.

The holiday will be decided at the end of the five-day 2^nd annual session of the 9^th Tibet Regional People’s Congress (RPC) on Monday, Legqog, chair of the regional congress standing committee, told a press briefing.

The abandonment of slavery in March 1959 was simultaneous with the central government’s Democratic Reform in the region, which emancipated serfs – who made up 95 percent of old Tibet’s 1 million population – and allowed them to work their own fields for the very first time.

“Tibet has since embarked on a glorious path from darkness to light, from backwardness to progress, from poverty to prosperity, from dictatorship to democracy and from isolation to openness,” said the 65-year-old official, who himself grew up in a serf family in TAR’s Gyangze county.

“The celebration of this day has extremely important implications both practically and historically,” Legqog stressed.

Tibet is widely believed to be the last place to have abolished serfdom, after the central government foiled an attempted armed rebellion led by the 14^th Dalai Lama and his upper class supporters on March 10, 1959.

Then Premier Zhou Enlai issued a decree of the State Council on Mach 28 of that year, dissolving the region’s aristocratic government and ordering the Preparatory Committee for the Founding of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) to exercise local power.

"Until then, although Tibet was peacefully liberated in 1951, the evil Statue of old Tibet had still been in place as per the 17-Article Agreement between the Central People’s Government and the Local Government of Tibet,” recalled Dechen Rnam, a 74-year-old native of TAR’s Qamdo Prefecture.

“Those were the days when people were born into one of the nine social classes, and where lives were defined by law according to those classes. We who were at society’s bottom line had nothing to look forward to,” she said.

Her father, a shoemaker, worked around the clock but was never able to make shoes for himself or his family. Even in the coldest of winters, Dechen had to sleep in the open, half-naked on the grass inside a barn.

“The only hope we had was some sunshine during the day,” she said. “Who could have envisioned then that something like the Democratic Reform would be initiated some day?”

Relaxing comfortably in her recently renovated, spacious Tibetan house in Lhasa with buttered tea and a handful of fried highland barley, Dechen said she, as with the rest of Tibetan society who suffered under serfdom, have lived the dream of dispossessed people for half a century.

“It’s a shame that the Dalai Lama is still trying to ruin it,” she said.

“Through vivid contrast between the cruelties of feudal serfdom and the people-centered approach of our Party, and especially since the March 14 riot of last year, all peoples in Tibet have recognized the reactionary nature of the Dalai Clique and confirmed their confidence and determination in being with the Party,” Legqog noted.

Despite tremendous losses after the riot, Tibet’s GDP in 2008 was still estimated at 39.2 billion yuan (US$5.7 billion), 65 times more than that in 1959, according to Qiangba Puncog, chairman of the regional government. Its per capita GDP amounted to more than 14,000 yuan (US$2,048) in 2008, 27 times more than 50 years ago.

The region’s fixed-assets investment has totaled more than 200 billion yuan (US$29.3 billion) since the Democratic Reform. About 90 percent of the funds were invested in the past 15 years, Qiangba said.

“The Tibetan ethnic group is an important member of the Chinese nation. People of all ethnicities in Tibet will do best in contributing their share to the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” he said.