Two Reporters, One Destination

This March 28 marked the 63rd anniversary of the emancipation of serfs in Tibet. Chen Zonglie, born in 1932, was a photojournalist who worked for Tibet Daily from 1956 to 1980, then Beijing Review from 1981 to 1996. He witnessed and recorded the changes in local people’s lives before and after the 1959 democratic reform in the region. Li Nan, born in 1982, is a reporter with Beijing Review. She visited Tibet Autonomous Region every year from 2017 to 2020.

The two Beijing Review journalists, with an age gap of half a century, both talked to people in the same place, namely Nyingchi, a city 391 km east of Lhasa. Both have set foot on all major parts of Tibet. In a reporting relay spanning more than 60 years, they have portrayed life in Tibet before and after the democratic reform, and in the new era. Excerpts of their accounts on their Tibetan adventures follow:

Chen Zonglie

I volunteered to work for the then newly founded in July 1956. They were short of hands, especially photographers. I had taken photos for the Central Newsreel and