The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong

The Untold Story of My Struggle for Tibet

De: Gyalo Thondup, Anne F. Thurston

Narrado por: Lane Nishikawa, Bernadette Dunne

In December 2010 residents of Kalimpong, a town on the Indian border with Tibet, turned out en masse to welcome the Dalai Lama. It was only then they realized for the first time that the neighbor they knew as the noodle maker of Kalimpong was also the Dalai Lama's older brother. The Tibetan spiritual leader had come to visit the Gaden Tharpa Choling monastery and join his brother for lunch in the family compound.

Gyalo Thondup has long lived out of the spotlight and hidden from view, but his whole life has been dedicated to the cause of his younger brother and Tibet. He served for decades as the Dalai Lama's special envoy, the trusted interlocutor between Tibet and foreign leaders from Chiang Kai-shek to Jawaharlal Nehru, Zhou Enlai to Deng Xiaoping. Traveling the globe and meeting behind closed doors, Thondup has been an important witness to some of the epochal events of the 20th century. No one has a better grasp of the ongoing great game as the divergent interests of China, India, Russia, and the United States continue to play themselves out over the Tibetan plateau. Only the Dalai Lama himself has played a more important role in the political history of modern, tragedy-ridden Tibet. Indeed, the Dalai Lama's dramatic escape from Lhasa to exile in India would not have been possible without his brother's behind-the-scenes help.

Now, together with Anne F. Thurston, who cowrote the international best seller The Private Life of Chairman Mao, Gyalo Thondup is finally telling his story.

The settings are exotic - the Tibetan province of Amdo, where the two brothers spent their early childhood; Tibet's legendary capital of Lhasa; Nanjing, where Thondup received a Chinese education; Taiwan, where he fled when he could not return to Tibet; Calcutta, Delhi, and the Himalayan hill towns of India, where he finally made his home....

©2015 Gyalo Thondup and Anne F. Thurston (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Excellent

Good narrator. Fascinating story. Well written. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it and couldn't wait to go on my walk again so I could continue.

EXCELLENT

An excellent book, which I highly recommend.
If you are interested in the history of China’s occupation of Tibet, the Dalai Lama and all the persons around him, you have to read this book.
The narrator, mr. Nishikawa, did an excellent job.
My thank
Is to all involved, JK.

Would be better to read the book...

An interesting account from one particular point of view. The author lived through and participated in the key events so there is much of interest here, however, the content is presented from his point of view only. The remarks at the end by Anne Thurston are helpful. What is totally unacceptable is the narrator Lane Nishikawa. He is an awful narrator, so bad that it makes it difficult to get through the whole book. He mispronounces "rinpoche" every single time; he emphasizes the wrong word in virtually every sentence. It is grating to listen to him. Buy the book or borrow it from a library!

Important historical understanding

This book is very important if you want to learn more about the history of the Tibetan conflict with China. The names of the people are complex and not easy to keep track of for this American reader but the political timeline and perspective of the writer, who is the older brother of His Holiness, is important to understand.

Worst Narrator I have heard to date

Interesting subject matter. A good autobiography, but oh my god, the man reading the book gives a terrible performance. Don't know if I will be able to make it through to the end. He accents every 4th or 5th syllable whether or not it is needed. He mispronounces English and Tibetan words. A robot could do a better job of reading