ABSTRACT
Ngodup Dolma knew little of her biological family and was unsure of the year of her birth. She was probably in her early seventies when she died in 2001. She was an unmarried peasant, mother to three daughters and foster mother to the daughter of a relative. Ngodup Dolma lived her entire life in the Yarlung Valley, said to have been the cradle of Tibetan civilisation, and the rhythms of her daily life as she worked a small plot for a basic subsistence reflected those of countless generations of peasants before her. The little in her life that changed for her after 1949 was for the better.
