ABSTRACT
When Tashi Tsering left for India in 1957 he had the equivalent of more than 20,000 Indian rupees. These were the profits from his trading plus a small personal loan from Wangdu. He didn't want to have to carry that much cash all the way to India, so he approached the Chinese trade office, which was always working with Tibetan traders to arrange for purchases in India. With the help of the Tibetan wife and several other Tibetan traders living there, he was able to exchange my check for Indian rupees and buy the supplies his brother was going to take back to Tibet. Twenty-five years earlier he had been running around naked in my native village, catching fish in the mountain streams and waiting for the time when he could be trusted to tend the family's flocks. Now there he was about to leave for America in pursuit of an education that would lead him who knew where.
