Tibet sets "Serfs Emancipation Day"

"My parents, who were both serfs, didn't live to see the day. They died several years ago." he said.

The entrepreneur was born to the family of tralpa (a kind of Tibetan serf) in Bilang County, Xigaze. His childhood memories were bare feet, patched clothes and a leather whip as thick as a finger.

"If you dared to offend the lord, what was in store for you was at least 50 lashes," he said.

The low point for him came in 1954, when the nearby Nianchu River flooded, inundating crops.

"Thousands of kilograms of grain rotted in the warehouses of the aristocrats, while serfs died from starvation," he recalled.

According to Gaisang, serfs then were bought and sold like animals.

His aunt, Canggyoi, was sold from Xigaze to Lhasa in her teens, and his parents didn't even know.

Gaisang's parents found his aunt, whose name had been changed by her new owner, after a week-long search in Lhasa and they cried for joy.

Now Canggyoi has a daughter and two grandchildren. Like other people above 80, she gets a pension of 300 yuan (about 44 U.S. dollars) a year. Her family's annual net income is about 5,000 yuan.