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Tibet today, as I saw it

By Tashi Phuntsok | Tibet Sun

Tashi Phuntsok Photographer unknown

Just as every pious Muslim dreams of seeing Mecca once in his lifetime, every exiled born Tibetan dreams to see Tibet once in his lifetime. I held that dream for years and first attempted to realise my dream in 1996, right after my graduation from the graduate school. Unfortunately, I had to abandon my plan, because a fellow Fulbright Scholar, Ngawang Choephel, was captured by the Chinese authority during his trip to Tibet. Like Choephel, my political status at the time was stateless — which meant that I’d have no country looking for me if I were arrested by the Chinese Security Police for real or perceived for suspicions.

Eleven years later, in the summer of 2007, now equipped with an American Passport, I travelled in Tibet. To respect the wishes of my co-travellers, I will not mention their names or their experience of travelling with me for forty days in Tibet. When I say Tibet, I don’t just mean the truncated half of Tibet that the Chinese Government calls Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). To us Tibetans, Tibet always consists of three provinces, Dotoe (Kham), Dome (Amdo) and U-tsang (the Central Tibet), territory expanding 2.1 million square kilometres, nearly half of which has been incorporated into the neighbouring Chinese provinces after the Chinese occupation of Tibet in the 1950s.

My first entry point in Tibet was the eastern border town, Dartsedo, which now goes by the Chinese name, Kanding. A regular tourist, ignorant of Tibetan history, could never be able to tell that this town was a thriving Tibetan trading centre only fifty years ago, because the town, except for a few monasteries, carries little sign of its Tibetan origins. Trade still flourished, but there were hardly any Tibetans, who have become an insignificant minority. A handful of Tibetans in the town, in their last ditch effort to save their dying customs and culture, gather every evening, seven days a week, at the edge of the town and dance; men, women, and children form a big circle and just dance to the tune of their old folk songs. When I foolishly tried to enquire what the idea of gathering and dancing every day was, they suspected me of being a Chinese informer, and snubbed me.

I later learned that I had to introduce myself by showing my American passport to convince them that I was a fellow Tibetan from exile. The moment they learned that I was a genuine fellow brother from exile, unvented emotions poured out. My guide in Kardze introduced me to a young man who spent two years in prison for taking part in a peaceful demonstration; he’d witnessed the execution of two of his friends who were accused of organising the demonstration. A nomad in Tromgyal, a village several hours from Kardze, moaned that his son was still serving in prison for participating in a demonstration in Kardze. On our way from Tromgyal to Nyishul, plain-clothed Chinese police stopped our minibus and searched the bus for a Tibetan woman, whose photo was held in one policeman’s hand.

We arrived at the Nyishul Monastery. There were no Chinese in this remote and 4500-metre elevated region. I distributed Chaney, holy grains blessed by the Nechung Oracle in India, to the monks and nuns in Nyishul monastery. As they scrambled for the Chaney, they asked me how His Holiness the Dalai Lama was. Amidst the rugged Khampa vernacular, I heard a nun speaking to me in an immaculate Lhasan dialect. I later asked her how she ended up in this part of Tibet. She’s one of the singing nuns, who defied the Chinese authority by singing a song declaring their allegiance to the Dalai Lama in the Draphci prison in Lhasa. With pressure from the Chinese authority, she was not accepted back to her nunnery after being released from the prison. In pursuit of her spiritual quest, secretly she moved to eastern Tibet, outside of TAR, where there is slightly more freedom to practice religion. I heard similar sad stories from individuals in Lithang, Nyarong, and Nagchukha. These are regions outside of TAR.

The situation in Lhasa, the capital city of Tibet, was even more tense. This tension was not noticeable until I began interacting with the local Tibetan communities, which I wouldn’t have been able to do without my faithful guide. Tibetans were desperate and frustrated to see that they are becoming second class citizens in their own country. The majority of Tibetan youths are illiterate or semi-literate. Except for Barkor Circuit Bazaar, major portion of the city was overtaken by the migrant Chinese. When I asked my guide why Tibetans didn’t take loans from the government to start up businesses to compete with the Chinese settlers, he grumbled, “That’s easy for you to say, you live in a free country.” He took me to the new Lhasa Railway Station; it was an impressive structure that you would think any resident of Lhasa would be proud of. “This used to be residences and an agricultural field,” said my guide. “They were thrown out of here with a compensation of only twenty-eight thousand yuans. They’re now begging in the streets of Lhasa. The Chinese called this a development, but for us Tibetans it is a nail in the coffin. The train brings over three thousand Han Chinese to Lhasa a week, and most of them will stay here for good, because of the government subsidy.”

Lhasa is not alone where Tibetans are marginalised; I visited Tsethang, the capital of the ancient Yarlung Empire. The legend says this is where the first Tibetan race was born. But my first impression of the city was that I was in China, not in Tibet. Hotels, shopping complexes, residents, and streets are remarkably modern, but there was an eerie absence of Tibetans. Sensing my discomfort, my guide took to the Tibetan sector of the city, which is far less developed. I told my guide that I want to visit Kongpo, my parents’ home county. “You need a special permit to go there,” my guide said. “You’ll not like it. There are even Chinese, more than here.”

In exile, the campaign by both the Tibetan government-in-exile and non government organisations focused primarily on China’s suppression of political and religious freedom inside Tibet. What I gathered was that China’s shrewd ethnic cleansing policy of promoting a massive Han population transfer into Tibet in their attempt to turn the Tibetans into an insignificant minority in their own country and eliminating the original Tibetan names of places is more dangerous than denying political and religious freedom. If the Han migration to Tibet continues at the present rate, it won’t be too long before Tibetan struggle from exile will become meaningless. Tibetans inside Tibet are resilient; they have resisted and survived the Chinese repression for the past fifty years, but this new onslaught cannot be resisted with willpower alone.

I asked questions about how to tackle this problem to former Tibetan Prime Minster-in-exile, Samdhong Rinpoche, and other Tibetan intellectuals at the seminars and conferences I’ve attended. They all agreed with the gravity of the situation, but, like me, none of them seem to have the answer. Considering the enormity of the problem, and bereft of a solution, the issue falls into the background of the human rights abuse, religious and political repression.

Although he has rarely used it to address this problem specifically, I believe the Dalai Lama’s “Middle-way” approach is his endeavour to tackle this problem. The Tibetan government-in-exile, headed by the new Tibetan Prime Minster, Lobsang Sangay, and Tibet Support Groups around the world, should be more vocal and bring this issue to the forefront of their campaigns. This issue is neither political nor religious, but rather a question of the survival of a race.

Copyright © 2011 Tashi Phuntsok

Published in Tibet Sun