S1E9 - China's Heaven & Hell: Mystic Tibet - Part 2/5

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Few travel experiences have challenged my worldview like my journey to a remote Tibetan mountain temple. Arriving after a bone-jarring twelve-hour drive through rugged terrain, I expected to find an ornate religious structure. Instead, I encountered hundreds of orphaned children living as young monks, their curious faces lighting up at the sight of my camera.

The high priest's quarters—a simple wooden shack reinforced with stones—shattered my preconceptions about religious leadership. But nothing prepared me for what came next: discovering that two brothers in his family shared one wife. This practice of polyandry, virtually unknown in Western society, initially shocked me. Yet as I learned about the harsh realities of life at high elevation—where agriculture yields only potatoes, barley and buckwheat, where medical care is inaccessible, and where family resources must be carefully preserved—I began to understand this marriage system as an ingenious adaptation to extreme circumstances rather than an exotic curiosity.

The social dynamics fascinated me most. Children always call the older brother "dad" regardless of biological parentage, while the wife holds significant power in the household. Brothers coordinate their marital time using the simple signal of a hat on the doorknob. In a place where most homes lacked electricity, running water, or natural gas during my 2010 visit, these pragmatic family arrangements ensured survival. This experience taught me that cultural practices can only be properly understood within their contexts, and that human ingenuity finds remarkable ways to adapt to challenging environments.

The next time you encounter a cultural practice that seems incomprehensible, I encourage you to dig deeper. What environmental challenges might have shaped it? What practical problems does it solve? Share your experiences with unfamiliar cultural practices in the comments below, and subscribe for more stories that expand our understanding of our diverse world.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We finally arrived at the temple later in the evening
.
I would say the drive wasaround 12 hours or so.
We left around 7 o'clock in themorning.
We got there right beforesundown.
I was already tired, not fromthe drive alone, but from the
bumpiness of the roads.
We were going at most 20 milesan hour the entire time.

(00:21):
It wasn't far, but nonethelessyou couldn't drive fast.
When we finally got there, Ididn't see anything.
I was imagining a grand temple,but we weren't at the temple
yet.
Instead, I saw a bunch oflittle monks All 12 Like 5, 6,

(00:42):
12 year olds, like little kids,not 5, 6, 12 year olds, like
little kids, not 5, 6 of them,hundreds of them.
I would later find out thatthere are over 100 orphans in
that temple alone and some ofthem were left there by their
parents because they couldn'tafford having a child or if both

(01:06):
parents were deceased due toillness.
That was fairly commonaccidents illness because you
were so far away from anyhospitals or medical treatment
that if you did get sick orended up bleeding or injured,
your life would be at risk.
They would greet me with thehadas.
Hada is a color silk, like ascarf.

(01:30):
Tibetans put it around yourneck as a sign of welcome and
respect.
The little monks were adorable.
Some were as young as 5, mostof them were under 12.
I had never seen so many orphansor even kids in my entire life,
and so, as I made my way to themountain, they took me to the

(01:54):
high priest's room.
It was a wood shack reinforcedby some rocks.
It wasn't what I imagined.
I thought he would live in agrand temple, but instead he
lived on the outskirts, and bythen the sun had already gone
down, so I couldn't see veryclearly.
And when the wooden door openedinto the room, I saw a bunch of

(02:18):
monks sitting around a smallfire right next to the high
priest.
They all smiled and greeted mewarmly.
I could tell the younger monkshad their eyes on my camera.
For some reason, these monksthe Tibetans in general are
always so curious abouttechnology in general,
especially cameras.

(02:38):
So I gave it to them, I handedit to them to borrow to take
pictures as they like, and Ishowed them how to use it, and
they grabbed it and hurried outto test.
It was pretty cool.
They did take some very nicepictures, by the way, and so I
sat quietly next to the highpriest and some of his family
members and a lady was pouringtea for us.

(03:00):
I was quietly sitting next toLB and some of his family
members and a young lady waspouring tea for us and I was
introduced to her.
She is the sister-in-law of thehigh priest and she is the wife
of the man who drove me to thetemple, so that linked it up and

(03:21):
of course I smiled back and sheleft shortly after and another
man came in.
Apparently, he was the youngerbrother of the driver.
So these were three brothers.
Lb was the middle child.
He had an older brother and ayounger one.
What happened next absolutelyblew my mind.

(03:43):
I was not ready for it.
The younger brother broughtback the same lady that just
poured us tea yes, the driver'swife, his older brother's wife
and said of course it wastranslated, but he said this is
my wife.
I was like what you mean totell me that you and your older

(04:07):
brother have twins, wives, orwhat do you mean Apparently?
It's probably my headache.
It never even occurred to methat they were practicing
polyandry.
And what does that mean?
It means that these twosiblings, these two brothers,

(04:28):
share the same wife.
This is in a society whereresources are limited and women
have more than one husband at atime and normally are married to
siblings and they're placed ona higher level or higher class
in society.
I was determined to know more.
This was something I've nevereven heard of.

(04:48):
I thought to myself was this acommon practice within Tibetans?
But it wasn't, because in fact,only a few places or a few
cultural backgrounds practicedit, and I was lucky enough to be
there, to be in one of them, toexperience it.
To tell you the story, like Iknow, for most of you, if you're

(05:11):
conservative especially, itmight sound a little awkward,
okay, especially at first.
But believe me, once youunderstand the reasoning behind
it, the social structure, you'llkind of understand why.
And it really isn't what mostpeople think.
Tibet and most of itsprefectures are all located in
high elevated areas, harshclimate, and they were not

(05:36):
centralized districts.
There were some cities, likeLhasa, but most of them were
scattered all around.
Most resources were scatteredall around, so it became hard to
obtain medicine, it became hardto obtain food, it became hard
to obtain food, education thatwas all lacking.
And another thing too is,because of the high elevation
and the harsh climate,agriculture was nearly

(05:59):
impossible.
So what do they grow there?
They grow potatoes, barley,buckwheat and a variety of other
roots.
For meat.
They have yaks.
They're kind of like cows, butthey're not, and it's really
tasty.
By the way, it's kind of likebeef without any game, any that
gamey taste which beef does have.

(06:20):
Sometimes it does not have atall.
I've eaten it raw before.
It is just amazing, amazing.
But most monks there don't eatmeat or anything Of a byproduct
of meat.
They're vegans.
So imagine making a meal out ofthose ingredients.
I know a lot of you are vegansout there, vegetarians.

(06:41):
It's hard enough for us Imaginethem.
Imagine with only threeingredients Potato, barley and
buckwheat.
Now, how many of you even knowwhat buckwheat is?
I didn't even know until Iresearched it.
Oh, this is what it is.
On present day, most of itsprefectures in Tibet remain in
poverty and people did trade forthe most part as a job.

(07:03):
And even when I visited myfirst time there in 2010, there
was not electricity yet in theentire temple, except for the
high priest's room.
He had a little power generator.
There was no running water andthere was no natural gas.
So, dude, you cooked with woodthat you had to chop yourself

(07:23):
right water pump.
There was a small pump but theit wasn't.
It was just a pipe leading downfrom the top of the mountain it
um from the glaciers, so itwasn't consistent.
It wasn't.
It was probably very clean, butit wasn't somewhere like.
It wasn't advanced.
There's no technology behind it, so they live very distant.

(07:47):
Having said that, life there,even with new technology, was so
hard that most families there,impoverished families especially
, could not one afford to have asingle wife, or even wives in
general, or two, could notafford to split family assets,

(08:08):
and that became something veryimportant in their culture.
What I mean by not splittingthe family asset or the family
wealth is because survival wasso hard, resources were so
scarce that whenever youobtained some you wanted to make
sure it didn't leave the family.
And especially males, siblings.

(08:28):
They tend to marry and thenthey leave home and that's a way
for them to keep it insidewithin the family.
This practice was only betweenbrothers.
You're not going to have anoutsider or your cousin.
This is strictly between twoblood brothers.
This became part of theirculture for centuries upon

(08:49):
centuries.
For us Westerners we wouldautomatically think that
siblings sharing a wife wouldcause probably more problems,
but in their culture,surprisingly, it doesn't.
The family structure is a lotdifferent.
For instance, the eldest or theolder one is mostly running

(09:12):
business, driving truckswhatever he's doing, even
driving a cab and not around thehouse.
Like I mentioned before, if youwant to make money you have to
leave home, and the youngesttends to the family and does all
the farming, including pickingthe cordyceps out back up at

(09:32):
high elevations.
These are called caterpillarfungi, and these are
caterpillars that dig themselvesinto the ground, into the cold,
and then it starts to spore andturns into fungi.
There's actually no clinicalproof of these being good

(09:54):
supplements for your body, butnonetheless they're seen as
luxury products in China andthey're sold for a very, very
high price.
Anyways, interestingly enough,the next question is what about
their kids?
So here it is.
If they had kids, no matterwhose it is, the child would

(10:14):
always call the older dad andthe younger uncle.
The child would always call theolder dad and the younger uncle
.
Okay, the wife decides whojoins her in her chambers, and
mostly giving way to the olderwhen he returns from a long trip
.
Does that make sense?
So the high priest lb, his, hisbrothers had shared the same

(10:35):
wife and he did have kidsthemselves, and their kids would
call the older one dad, youngerone uncle, regardless of whose
it is.
And do they know whose it is?
That's for the women to decide.
In Tibetan culture, women, likeI said before, are placed in a
very higher class.
Now there's deities that arewomen.

(10:56):
They respected women a lot, sotherefore it was up to the woman
to decide whether or not shetold, and for the most part,
they didn't.
They abide by the culture.
The older one is the dad,younger one is the uncle, and
that was it.
So how would you know ifsomebody's in there, for
instance, when the older brothercomes home or when the younger

(11:16):
brother comes back and the olderbrother's in there?
How would you know if somebody'sin there, for instance, when
the older brother comes home orwhen the younger brother comes
back and the older brother's inthere?
How would he know?
Well, his hat would hang on thedoorknob and that would be a
signal that somebody's in thereor your brother's in there.
I'm going to just give you asecond to let that sink in.
So I know it's a little bitweird, a very awkward tradition,

(11:37):
something that we might not beable to accept as of now, but it
does have its reason and infact polyandry is not only
limited to Tibetan culture.
There are some weird culturesall over the world, for instance
Manchurians.
We would marry the wives of ourbrothers if he were ill or died
in combat.
Marry the wives of our brothersif he were ill or died in

(12:00):
combat.
There will always be ways fornomadic tribes especially, or
tribes that or a population withless people, to be able to hold
in their resources that makesense.
We could cut that out if itdoesn't sound too good.