Ocean, as Much as Rain presents for the first time in the English-language world a collection of masterfully translated literary writings by prominent Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser. In these stories, lyrical essays, and poetry, Woeser interweaves texts, photographs, silences, and documentary details. Featuring a distinctively imaginative use of satire and digressive rhetoric, Woeser’s stories bring to life Tibetan characters whose lives are entwined with politics, history, and religion. Woeser illuminates the ruins and places that she has come across during her various sojourns in Chinese-ruled Tibet, reviving sites from the past of her parents and their generation. These writings range from ingenious retellings of cultural encounters and confrontation to insightful commentaries on ecological issues and tourism in Tibet that never shun contradictions, dilemmas, or questions about the future. With an introduction by Fiona Sze-Lorrain and an author interview by editors-translators Sze-Lorrain and Dechen Pemba, Ocean, as Much as Rain is a landmark publication that celebrates the work of a steadfast dissident and a leading Tibetan literary figure of our times.

Tsering Woeser is a Tibetan writer, poet, activist, and the author of numerous books of poetry and prose.

Fiona Sze-Lorrain is a writer, poet, translator, and the author of, most recently, Dear Chrysanthemums: A Novel in Stories.

Dechen Pemba is the editor of High Peaks Pure Earth.

Foreword / Pankaj Mishra  vii
Introduction. Ocean Can Be Rain: Woeser’s Poetry, Fiction, and Lyrical Prose / Fiona Sze-Lorrain  1
Translation Credits  1
1. A Sheet of Paper Can Also Become a Knife  13
2. My Tongue Surgery  14
3. Spring  18
4. Rinchen the Sky-Burial Master  19
5. Tibet  35
6. Garpon La’s Offerings  38
7. On the Fifteenth Midnight of the Fourth Month in the Tibetan Calendar  49
8. Two Excerpts from The Prayer Beads of Fate  51
9. The King of Dzi  54
10. “Do Not Forget the Past . . .”  73
11. Celebrity Street Toilets in Lhasa  74
12. Ocean, as Much as Rain  87
13. Remembering a Smashed Buddha  106
14. The Ruins of Lhasa: Yabzhi Taktser  108
15. Let Me Write, the Fear of Lhasa Breaks My Heart  131
16. Only This Useless Poem—for Lobsang Tsepak  133
17. Back of Lhasa, Day One, from Seven Days in Lhasa  136
18. The Killing Trip  147
19. A Few Years Later  163
20. Masks and Tea  165
21. An Eye for History and Reality: Woeser and Her Story of Tibet / Dechen Pemba and Fiona Sze-Lorrain  167
Acknowledgments  181
Glossary of Place Names  183
Bibliography  185
Biographies  189
Index  191