Eat the Buddha is a historical book about Life and Death in a Tibetan Town by Barbara Demick.
A fascinating portrait of modern Tibet told through the lives of its people.
She tells the story of a Tibetan town located 11,000 feet above sea level that is one of the most difficult places in China for foreigners to visit.
Ngaba was one of the first places where Tibetans and Chinese Communists encountered each other. In the 1930s, Mao Zedong’s Red Army fled into the Tibetan Plateau to hide from their enemies during the Chinese Civil War. By the time the soldiers reached Ngaba, they were so hungry that they looted monasteries and ate religious statues made of flour and butter – to the Tibetans, it was like eating the Buddha.
Eating Buddha fruit spans decades of modern Tibetan and Chinese history. A young Tibetan nomad turned radical in the Kirti Institute, a rising mobile business entrepreneur falls in love with a Chinese woman, a poet and a position risks everything to voice his dissent, and a Tibetan schoolgirl forced to choose at an early age between her family and the elusive pull of Chinese money. They face the same dilemma: Are they against the Chinese, or are they joining them? Do they follow the Buddhist theory of compassion and real estate, or do they fight?
