Crazy Shagdar

Who was Crazy Shagdar?

Crazy Shagdar was a wandering lama from the Baarin banner in Inner Mongolia. He is the hero of a number of, usually quite critical, tales, in which he mocks corrupt nobles, other lamas etc. One tale deals with how he rebuked Chinese traders on a temple fair:

The annual Baarin temple fair had always attracted many traders from Inner China. Shagdar came very close to the side of the tent of one of these traders, made a fireplace from three stones, pulled a Tibetan cooking pot from his bundle, then he helped himself to the water from the traders' clay ton and made a fire from their wood. When the eldest of the traders scolded him and called him crazy, Shagdar replied

A collection of tales about him appeared in Mukden in 1959, and some of those have been translated into German.