ABSTRACT
This chapter is about a woman born in 1930 into the Tibetan nobility. Her brother was the powerful leader (bon) of Gêrzê locality, an inherited position that carried many special privileges, including access to dalai lamas. As the daughter of a wealthy family of traders, Dechen Drolma received an education and in her teens travelled outside Tibet with her Han Chinese husband. Because of her familial relationships and her fluency in both Han Chinese and Tibetan, in the early 1950s, she was seconded to the Nationalities Affairs Committee. She interpreted for the Chinese government and for the sister of the Dalai Lama and had personal access to the leadership of the new Chinese government. She was well regarded as a broadcaster in Tibetan on Chinese radio from Chongqing and Beijing, and later in Lhasa, but at the start of the Cultural Revolution was attacked under the pretext of having mistranslated Cultural Revolution slogans. She suffered further during that period and was never reinstated to positions at her former level.
