On Serfs Emancipation Day, celebration, recollection, and wishes from across China

"At that time, only the aristocrats had tooth paste, tooth brush, biscuit, wool and fruits. The majority of people, or the serfs, could only wish not to be starved," he said.

Sun Huanxun, a PLA veteran who went to Tibet also in 1950 and stayed there, recalled what he saw in Lhasa before the democratic reform.

"Serfs wailed and begged from passers-by, some of whom had their legs chopped by the landlords, some have their eyes gouged out and some without hands," he said.

In contrast, the landlords were in luxurious dress, some riding on the backs of their slaves. "In their houses there hung whips, knives and shackles," he added.

Qi Jiguang, a historian from the Deqen Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, recited the sentences he read from slave contracts: "I would be your slave so long as the snow-capped mountain didn't collapse, the water from rivers didn't dry up."

The Khesum village in Shannan Prefecture was hailed as the first village to implement the democratic reform. Before the Serfs Emancipation Day, residents in the village wrote an open letter: