The Year of the Tiger

Though fiction about eighty five percent of the events in this story are based on real happenings which took place in 1949 when the communist took over the tribal areas of Yunan, China. Many on the hunting stories are again based on real events many which were experienced by my father and other family members, but the majority of them took place twenty years earlier when it was still even wilder along the Burma China border. The last major man eating tiger belongs to that era. The story follows a Christian Lahu family at the time the communists take over the area where they are living in 1949 until they flee out into Burma some nine months later and their lives are made much more difficult by the presence of a man eating tiger. The story presents a way of life, tribal beliefs, and folk stories while authentic have already largely disappeared in much of this area due to the onslaught of civilization. Communism wiped away much of the tribal culture, though many elements still remain. For example, the usual home is no longer bamboo with thatched roofs, but cement and tile in the area where the story takes place. Instead of rice for the morning meal, noodles have become the mainstay. Chinese is the main language taught in the schools and many no longer remember many of their own traditions. But some of the tiger stories presented in this book are still told.