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Copyright

Menla Jyab

Published On

2025-09-16

Page Range

pp. 271–298

Language

  • English
  • Tibetan

Print Length

28 pages

11. Careful Village’s Thief སེེམས་ཆུང་སྡེེ་བའིི་རྐུན་མ།

Chapter of: Careful Village and Other 'Khashag' from Tibet: The Amdo Comedies of Menla Jyab(pp. 271–298)
In this performance, the village again asks the comedian’s help, this time to fend off a rash of thievery besetting the village. The village had previously asked another “lama” for help, only to find out that this lama, whose name Ra dzu na ma literally spells out the Tibetan word for “fake” (rdzun ma རྫུན་མ།), was expensive and allowed the fake cleric to steal a lot of money from the village. Menla Jyab, however, does his best to help by convincing most of the villagers to confess their own prior misdeeds (some hilarious for how minor they are and how embarrassed the villagers seem).

Contributors

Menla Jyab

(author)

Menla Jyab was born in 1963 in a pastoral community called Lutsang, located in Mangra (མང་ར། Ch, Guinan 贵南) County, Tsholho (མཚོ་ལྷོ། Ch, Hainan 海南) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, PR China. Growing up in the chaotic years of the Cultural Revolution, he attended primary school in a tent at the age of seven. His studies were good, and he eventually matriculated to the renowned Tsholho Normal School, which served as an incubator for several of the post-Mao period’s most famous Tibetan intellectual and cultural talent. Then, in the 1980s he joined the Hainan Prefectural Song and Dance troupe (མཚོ་ལྷོ་ཁུལ་གླུ་གར་ཚོགས་པ།), and embarked on what would become a storied career as a comedian and public intellectual. Also publishing under the pseudonyms “Pleasure Bringing Snow Child” (T, གངས་བུ་དགའ་སྐྱེད།), and Burning Pebble (T, འབར་རྡེའུ།)—the latter being his childhood nickname and a reference to the childhood injury he received that causes him to conceal his right hand at all times (Anon. 2010)—Menla Jyabb has developed a strong reputation not only as a comedian but as an accomplished poet and essayist as well.

Timothy Thurston

(translator)
Future Leaders Fellow and Associate Professor in the study of Contemporary China at UK Research and Innovation
Associate Professor in the study of Contemporary China at University of Leeds
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3671-641X

Timothy Thurston is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and Associate Professor in the study of Contemporary China at the University of Leeds. His research to date has looked extensively at Tibetan comedic dialogues. His book Satirical Tibet: the Politics of Humor in Contemporary Amdo (2025, University of Washington Press) and publications in peer reviewed journals like Journal of Asian Studies and CHINOPERL have all examined some of the comedies translated in this volume. Thurston is also editor of Western Folklore.

Tsering Samdrup

(translator)
Assistant Professor of Instruction at Northwestern University
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5468-2180

Tsering Samdrup is from an area of Amdo near to where Menla Jyabb called home in childhood. He completed a PhD at SOAS, a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Leeds, and is an assistant professor of instruction at Northwestern University. With research primarily focusing on Tibetan linguistics, key publications that support his volume include “Humilifics in Ma bzhi Pastoralist Speech of Amdo Tibet” in Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 42(2): 222-259, and his translation of the Menla Jyabb’s “The Dream” was published in Yeshe: A Journal of Tibetan Arts and Literature and Humanities.