The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong
The Untold Story of My Struggle for Tibet
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Narrated by:
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Lane Nishikawa
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Bernadette Dunne
About this listen
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.Listeners also enjoyed...
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- By Shah Alam on 02-18-14
By: Michael Darlow, and others
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The Lemon Tree
- By: Sandy Tolan
- Narrated by: Sandy Tolan
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1967, not long after the Six-Day War, three young Arab men ventured into the town of Ramle, in what is now Jewish Israel. They were cousins, on a pilgrimage to see their childhood homes; their families had been driven out of Palestine nearly 20 years earlier. One cousin had a door slammed in his face, and another found his old house had been converted into a school. But the third, Bashir Al-Khairi, was met at the door by a young woman called Dalia, who invited them in.
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Steeping The Lemon Tree
- By Faithfull Fan on 04-11-18
By: Sandy Tolan
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Thirteen Days in September
- Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David
- By: Lawrence Wright
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall, Lawrence Wright
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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A gripping day-by-day account of the 1978 Camp David conference, when President Jimmy Carter persuaded Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat to sign the first peace treaty in the modern Middle East, one which endures to this day.
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Lessons in Negotiation
- By David on 06-18-15
By: Lawrence Wright
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There Was a Country
- A Personal History of Biafra
- By: Chinua Achebe
- Narrated by: Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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The defining experience of Chinua Achebe's life was the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967-1970. The conflict was infamous for its savage impact on the Biafran people, Chinua Achebe's people, many of whom were starved to death after the Nigerian government blockaded their borders. Immediately after, Achebe took refuge in an academic post in the United States, and for more than 40 years he has maintained a considered silence on the events of those terrible years. Now, decades in the making, comes a towering reckoning with one of modern Africa's most fateful events.
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The Audible Edition Is a Disaster
- By Olu on 11-28-12
By: Chinua Achebe
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The Empire Must Die
- Russia's Revolutionary Collapse, 1900 - 1917
- By: Mikhail Zygar
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 22 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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The window between two equally stifling autocracies - the imperial family and the communists - was open only briefly, in the last couple of years of the 19th century until the end of WWI, by which time the revolution was in full fury. From the last years of Tolstoy until the death of the Tsar and his family, however, Russia experimented with liberalism and cultural openness. Novelists and playwrights blossomed and political ideas were swapped in coffee houses.
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An excellent look at an interesting history.
- By brian on 06-22-18
By: Mikhail Zygar
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The General's Son
- Journey of an Israeli in Palestine
- By: Miko Peled
- Narrated by: Miko Peled
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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The journey that Peled traces in this groundbreaking memoir echoed the trajectory taken 40 years earlier by his father, renowned Israeli general Matti Peled. In The General's Son, Miko Peled tells us about growing up in Jerusalem in the heart of the group that ruled the then-young country, Israel. He takes us with him through his service in the country's military and his subsequent global travels...and then, after his niece's killing, back into the heart of Israel's conflict with the Palestinians.
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Thought Provoking and Powerful
- By FatherRobC on 05-10-16
By: Miko Peled
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Indian Summer
- The Secret History of the End of an Empire
- By: Alex von Tunzelmann
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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At the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the British Empire withdrew from India, igniting the exhilaration and turmoil of a newly free society. In this vivid, atmospheric popular history, Alex von Tunzelmann chronicles these times through the most prominent figures.
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Such an interesting piece of History made easy
- By Diego on 01-23-12
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Dancing in the Glory of Monsters
- The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa
- By: Jason Stearns
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 15 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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At the heart of Africa is Congo, a country the size of Western Europe, bordering nine other nations, that since 1996 has been wracked by a brutal and unstaunchable war in which millions have died. And yet, despite its epic proportions, it has received little sustained media attention. In this deeply reported book, Jason K. Stearns vividly tells the story of this misunderstood conflict through the experiences of those who engineered and perpetrated it.
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First book I've found that explains DRC
- By Amazon Customer on 09-09-17
By: Jason Stearns
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Churchill's Secret War
- The British Empire and the Ravaging of India During World War II
- By: Madhusree Mukarjee
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1943 Winston Churchill and the British Empire needed millions of Indian troops, all of India's industrial output, and tons of Indian grain to support the Allied war effort. Such massive contributions were certain to trigger famine in India. Because Churchill believed that the fate of the British Empire hung in the balance, he proceeded, sacrificing millions of Indian lives in order to preserve what he held most dear. The result: the Bengal Famine of 1943-44, in which millions of villagers starved to death.
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Churchill and the case of 3 million dead Indians.
- By Rajesh on 11-04-11
What listeners say about The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Luv2Sew
- 12-16-22
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!
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- Kim Brenneman
- 10-16-20
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.
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- JK
- 03-22-24
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.
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- pamela dresser
- 10-03-19
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.
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- R. mckenzie
- 09-25-23
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
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- BlueSky
- 12-07-15
Very interesting
I think all of Dalai Lama's brothers are interesting, though not always for good reasons. Gyalo Thondup in particular is a fascinating character because of his role in more than half a century when Tibet was in complete turmoil. I think he wrote this to the best of his memory and it gives the reader a good picture of Tibet recent history through the lens of Gyalo Thondup.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Cherilyn Parsons
- 06-12-18
Fascinating story, frustrating male narrator
This was a terrific and informative story, and the framing by the writer who was hired by Gyalo Thondup was thought-provoking. The female narrator was good. The male narrator was very frustrating. He hardly knew how to pronounce the Tibetan names, and “Takster” and “Rinpoche” in particular were forcibly and awkwardly pronounced the entire time, which broke into the experience of the story because the narrator In a first person story would have pronounced these words as naturally as breathing. Instead, they were laboriously pronounced, and it really interrupted the story. I almost didn’t keep listening because it bugged me so much, but I managed to get past it and enjoy the rest. It’s well worth reading, but I do wish they paid more attention to the narrator.
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- Bruce Cline
- 11-19-22
Disappointing
I do not pretend to know much about Tibet, but this memoir of the Dalai Lama’s brother comes across as a politically naive, self-serving, and a not totally credible history of modern Tibet and it’s dysfunctional relationship with Communist China. The author’s education in China, his relationships there, and his understanding of Chinese culture (as flawed as it was) might have been of great benefit to Tibet, but it appears to me that together they compromised his loyalties to his country and culture. Note: the narration of this audiobook was stilted and detracted from the content.
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- Ming
- 01-02-22
Polemic blaming everyone. Not believable
Thondup is not a religious fanatic. He is an unhappy and angry power-wealth fanatic. He is boastful, critical of others, and laudatory of himself. He blames the CIA, China, India, but not the shamefully cruel Tibetan theocracy of which he was a part, from which he had greatly benefited financially, and for which he desperately wished to continue. There are so many internal contradictions to his story that even his ghost writer had to go on record in saying she did not believing his story. For instance, while saying he was "just a poor Tibetan", he boasted that his family owned the largest house in town and feted all the theocratic luminaries that came to town. He boasted his uncle was connected to the previous Dalai Lama, had "10,000 camels", and that his grandmother was so sure that her son would be chosen as the next Dalai Lama, that she "died of grief", when that did not happen. Of course, Thondup made the choosing of his younger brother, as the 14th Dalai Lama, to be a divine, fair, redistributive, and egalitarian process; rather than a clearly opaque, phantasmagoric, and corrupt process, likely fought out among the Tibetan theocratic elites whose cruelty, greed, and dishonesty he described in detail at other times in the book when he chose to be critical and when he considered them his enemies.
While he said that China's "military invasion" of Tibet was an incomparable cruelty against the Tibetan theocratic elites, wherein "ordinary people" sadly lost hundreds of serfs and huge tracts of land and luxurious estates; he also said only around 120 of those resisting elites were injured or died in the process. He said that the majority of the Tibetans were joyous of the China's land reform, redistributing land to the 99%, and joyous of the outlawing of serfdom, and the government's forgiving of all debt contracts, most of which extended generations into the future. Contradicting his previous assertion, Thondup did let slip that a historic agreement was signed, months earlier in Beijing by the Dalai Lama, that allowed for a peaceful entry into Lhassa of the government troops, without a single shot being fired.
While saying that China was "lying" and that there had never been any imperialist power in Tibet, he also detailed British and CIA operatives living in the area, manning the only wireless connection to British India and from whom he had derived assistance in getting to and from India.
Although Thundup admitted to being a poor student most of his life, who enjoyed spending money on luxuries; it seems he would have at least done a few Google searches in preparation in writing a "historic book". He claimed that Tibet has always been independent of China and of all foreign powers. He claimed the Tibetans are completely different genetically and by language from the Chinese. Robert Ford, who lived in Tibet at that time and who was mentioned in the book, had blamed the Tibetans for never having asked to be "independent" or declared Tibet to be independent (see youtube). Genetically and language-wise, Tibetans are the closest relatives to the Han Chinese in the world. The first King of Tibet had married the niece of the emperor of China, in the 7th century, and had declared on a stele, which is still in Lhasa today, that "the two peoples will forever be one". That first Tibetan-Chinese empress also brought Buddhism to the Tibetan king, and is now considered a Buddhist deity in Tibet. Thondup also missed that Britain had invade Tibet in 1903 leaving in 1904 with an coerced, unfair, signed treaty from Tibetan elites, requiring a large extraction of silver.
I watched many of a huge trove of private Youtube, Tiktok, and Bilibili productions about Tibet. It seems to me Tibetans in China, are living a much more modern, egalitarian, secular, educated, and prosperous lives than the resisting Tibetans still living under theocratic rule in India. While it may be true that centuries of Buddhism indoctrination, made the common Tibetans, in the 1950's, unable to accept any denigration of the Tibetan theocratic elites whom they had been taught to revere and to obey; denigration of Han elites was probably even more common and more severe, in those day, in an extremely impoverished China, after a century of foreign military aggression and foreign financial extraction, desperate for egalitarianism. I think history has already spoken in favor of the 1950's the government's decisions in land redistribution to the Tibetan serfs, and its decision in bringing Tibetan theocracy under modern secular laws.
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