Hashi, Tashi Dorjie

"Tador"

Guardian of the Headwaters of China's Three Rivers

Sanjiangyuan (三江源)—Headwaters of China's Three Rivers

Sanjiangyuan is an area in southern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau where the glacial headwaters of China's three great rivers originate:Yangtze,Yellow River and Lancangjiang/Mekong.

Covering a total area of 363,000 square kilometers, it is larger than twice the size of England and Wales combined.

At an average of 4,000 meters above sea level, its environment is one of the bleakest and most fragile in the world where temperature may drop to minus forty Celius in the winter. Infested with rivers, lakes, pasturelands and wetlands adjacent to the "no-men's land" of Kekexili, the area is richest in biodiversity and wild life that are unique to the rarefied climate of the high plateau: numerous protected species of plants, birds and animals: Tibetan antelope (Chiru in Tibetan), wild donkey, wild yak, white-lip deer, snow leopard and brown bear.

After China's economic reform in the early 1980s, illegal gold prospectors and poachers of Tibetan antelopes infested the area, causing widespread damage to the environment and its wildlife. The Tibetan antelopes were driven to near extinction for their underwool pelts for making of shahtoosh shawls for the ladies—its population reduced from its peak of nearly a million to not quite ten thousand by late 1990s.

Today, the fragile environment is threatened by global warming causing the drying up of lakes and wetlands, and the loss of top soil turning grasslands into sandy deserts. The degradation of the environment can no longer support the indigenous population as the size of the herd had not recovered from the last great snow storm of 1985 when many yaks, sheep and horses perished.

Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve (the "SNNR") was established in 2000 covering an area of 152,353 sq. kilometers with a population of 200,000 of which 70% subsist below the poverty line of US$300/person/year.

Pioneering the protection of Sanjiangyuan since 1992 was Sounam Targyai then party secretary of Soujie Village, and Hashi, Tashi Dorjie ("Tador" for short), his secretary and loyal follower. In 1994, Sounam Targyai was killed by poachers resisting arrest.

Succeeding Sounam Targyai, Tador dedicated himself for the last seventeen years to the protection of Sanjiangyuan's environment and the welfare of the inhabitants. Tador's contribution to the protection of Sanjiangyuan's environment and the improvement of the livelihood of the local herdsmen is widely recognized. In April 2004, Tador was awarded the "Earth Prize", and in 2007 the "Public Welfare Award" by CCTV.

This is a short account of the life story of this most remarkable Tibetan. A "local boy" born in Sanjiangyuan, orphaned at the age of ten, raised by a kind-hearted old woman, he by pure luck or karma was offered a "free" education which changed his life forever.

The Defender of Kekexili

Born and raised in Zhiduo, Sounam Targyai remains a legend of Kekexili. Graduating from Qinghai Nationality College, he chose to return to his homeland as a teacher, then rising to become the vice party secretary of Zhiduo County. He was an atheist, not believing in Tibetan Buddhism.

In the late 1980s, Sounam Targyai, then party secretary of Suojia Village of Zhiduo County founded the "Western Working Commission" whose aim was to help to relieve the local population from dire poverty. Together with Tador, he went into Kekexili only to discover to his absolute horror that poachers were killing the Tibetan antelopes by the hundreds. His campaigning led to the formation of a small police patrol for the search and arrest of illegal poachers. In the eighteen months of their police work, they caught hundreds of poachers.

On 18^thJanuary1994, Sounam Targyai was killed by poachers resisting arrest. Tador was spared as he was sent away to take the wounded prisoners back to town for hospitalization. When widely propagated by the media, Sounam Targyai's sacrifice shocked the nation. Later, the episode was made into a film, Kekexili, which helped to spread the awareness of environmental protection and the plight of the most-rare Tibetan antelopes which were driven to near extinction.

Sounam Targyai's sacrifice and the relentless work of Tador eventually led to the establishment of the SNNR in 2000—eight years after the passing of Sounam Targyai who was posthumously awarded the honor as the "Defender of the Environment". 

The Orphan Boy

Tador was born in 1962 into a nomadic herdsman family in Zhiduo County—Zhiduo in Tibetan meaning "Headwater of Yangtze River". His father passed away when Tador was four years old. His mother moved to Soujia Village, a new resettlement 265 kilometers away at the edge of Kekexili where she later remarried.

When Tador was ten years old, his mother fell ill and was taken to the county for hospitalization. When Step Father returned the next spring without Mother, Tador thought Mother must have been sold by Step Father. Heart-broken, Step Father left the village leaving Tador with a distant relative. Homesick, Tador ran away returning to his birthplace. There he was raised by a kind-hearted old woman who sent him to the local school by contributing to the school a cow she owned.

It was then he first met Sounam Targyai, the son of the local school teacher, who was attending middle school in Xining, the capital of Qinghai. Tador adorned Sounam Targyai, taking him as the hero he wanted to emulate—not knowing fate would have had their lives intertwined for the remainder of his life.

In 1979, Sounam Targyai who had returned to Zhiduo as a teacher of the middle school came to Soujia to recruit students. Chosen as one of the four scholarship students, Tador left his village to attend school at Zhiduo and went on to middle school at Yushu, then technical college at Xining which changed his life forever.

Native Son of Sanjiangyuan

In 1987 after taking on various jobs, Tador returned home to Zhiduo to teach at the local school. He married his childhood sweetheart, Bolai. Together with several fellow returnees from Xining, Tador organized a local magazine advocating change and reform. For this, he and his cohorts were criticized by the party cadres. Disgusted and disillusioned, he left Zhiduo in early 1992 wandering in Kekexili.

Later in the same year, Sounam Targyai then deputy party secretary of Zhiduo County established the "Western Working Commission" recruiting co-workers. On learning that his "savior" who lifted him out of dire poverty and hopelessness was now devoted to efforts of developing Kekexili for the benefits of the local herdsmen, Tador joined Sounam without hesitation.

After Sounam was killed by poachers, Tador continued his unfinished work, succeeding him in 1998 as party secretary of Suojia Township. In 1999, Tador founded China's first local NGO on environmental protection of Qinghai-Tibet plateau. Resigning from his official post in 2002, he co-founded and became the director of the Snowland Great Rivers Environmental Protection Association.

His and his cohorts' work contributed to the formation of the SNNR in 2000. For the last seventeen year up to the present, Tador dedicates relentlessly his life and work to the protection of the environment and the improvement of the livelihood of the local inhabitants.

'Scientific' Management of the Economics of the Environment

Tador recognizes at the onset that environmental protection is sustainable only if it involves the active and voluntary participation of the local herdsmen, taking into consideration their welfare and improvement of their livelihood—that such may be achieved through 'scientific' management of the economics of the environment, and not only that the two goals are not incompatible, but complement each such that one cannot be sustained without the other.

During his tenure as party secretary of Suojia Township back in the late 1990s, he began to educate the local inhabitants of ways to improve the 'yield' of their herd while conducive to the preservation of the environment. Five wildlife reserves were established for Tibetan antelopes, snow leopards, wild donkeys, black-neck cranes and wetland.

Recognizing overgrazing by mixed herd is the main cause of degradation of pastureland, he instituted programs of rotation and withdrawal of herding zones, separating yaks, sheep and horses which feed on different types of grass and shrubs. He encourages active and voluntary participation of the herdsmen by creating incentives for meeting designated targets of natural preservation.

Through the research of the foundation, it was discovered the rapid growth of pika—ground-burrowing field mice that are destructive to pastureland—was due to the widespread destruction of pastures and shrubs resulting from over-harvesting of worm grass and gold-mining. By limiting such activities and replacing the widespread use of chemical poisoning, the population of pika is controlled, serving as a part of nature's food chain for foxes, crows and golden eagles.

As results led to positive improvement of their livelihood, the herdsmen have since taken ownership of such policies.

Today due to global warming and climatic changes, Tador's work faces ever-escalating challenges as degradation of Sanjiangyuan's environment continues.

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Sources (in Chinese):

Ding Bin, An Interview with Hashi, Tashi Dorjie.

Liu Jianqiang, Gzi-Tibetan Sky Beads: The Book of Tibetans.