ABSTRACT
This chapter tells of Dundrop Lhamo, the first Tibetan woman to be appointed a university professor. Born in 1918 to a Chinese father and Tibetan mother, by birth and in her professional life, she is seen as a bridge between Tibetan and Han cultures. Visiting American missionaries encouraged her mother to send her at the age of nine to school and were instrumental in her enrolling in Jinling (Ginling) Women’s College in Nanjing in the 1930s. In the 1940s, she worked with the Tibetan government as an interpreter and translator and liaised at a high level with the Nationalist government. Her work as a language specialist and folklorist was recognised by a university appointment as an associate professor of Tibetan language. She chose to remain in China rather than evacuate to Taiwan with the Nationalists in 1949, but her translation work and her close association with the Nationalist Party, and in particular Madame Chiang Kai-shek (Soong Mei-ling, 1898–2003), made her a political target. Imprisoned for a period at the start of the Cultural Revolution, she remained under a cloud for almost 20 years, from 1957 until her rehabilitation in 1978.
