Tseren’s father, Bada Mandzhiev, was a carpenter and made various implements for watering crops and household implements. He also built houses or moved them from one corner of the village to another. Tseren himself was born in the village of Bolshaya Moga in Privolzhskiy rayon of Kalmykia. After he finished grade 5, he was sent to dig trenches. Until the mass deportation of the Kalmyks, Tseren also worked as a fisherman. When Kalmyks were rounded up for deportation, Tseren and his mother were in the village of Kyuktya. His older brother was serving in the Red Army. Their father had died. The family was sent to the city of Abakan, from where they were transported to Minusinsk rayon. Those who lived in Minusinsk were sent to the Far North to work in fisheries and go fishing in the Laptev Sea. People who were old or had high blood pressure died first. In Siberia, Tseren got married to a girl who was originally from the neighboring village of Nitsyan in Kalmykia. After the Kalmyks were allowed to return to Kalmykia, Tseren first lived in his native village, then moved to the state farm Molodezhnyi, from where he moved to another state farm called Solnechnyi which was near Elista. When Tseren worked as a tractor driver in the village of Zulturgan, he was sent to Elista where he has been living since. In his family, Tseren had monks who were repressed in the early Soviet period.