In Exile From the Land of Snows (62 page)

At ten o’clock, the delegation left the guest house and walked to the gate. The Tibetans who had slept the night beside it were waiting. Behind them, lining the road to Ashikhile Monastery a mile and a quarter away, stood almost 10,000 people. While a Chinese official filmed and took notes (a task he performed every day of the trip), the delegates walked eagerly through the gates to greet the crowd. As they did a nearby police officer ordered his waiting detachment to surround them. Simultaneously, the officials from the meeting converged on the five men hoping as well to block them off. The attempt lasted no more than a moment. Like a wave, the Tibetans surged in from all sides straining to reach the delegation. “It all happened just like before,” said Lobsang Samten. “Everyone rushed at us, weeping and calling for His Holiness. People were crying hysterically. There were some who just collapsed in tears on the ground. The others pulled our hair and tore our clothes for mementos—blessings in fact. From that time on, I lost so much hair, my hands were always cut and my voice was constantly hoarse from shouting to crowds. Altogether one overcoat, a raincoat, two shirts and a cap were torn off my back during the trip.”

The delegation had brought a few hundred small photos of the Dalai Lama, as well as a number of red protection cords personally blessed by him. After the second stop on their tour, the supply of both was exhausted, compelling the men to distribute their own rosaries, a bead at a time. On this first morning, the forty pictures they carried disappeared well before reaching the entrance to Tashikhiel Monastery. Lobsang Samten had seen the cloister in 1955, while returning with the Dalai Lama from his trip to China. Then, its massive gold-roofed assembly hall had presided over a city of whitewashed hostels and shrines, whose streets were filled with a cavalcade of monks and pilgrims. Now 90 percent of the monastery was gone, razed to the ground, with only a few fenced-in buildings remaining. On a vacant field, newly created before the surviving structures, a few hundred elderly Tibetans had arranged themselves into a long line. Holding white scarves and flowers, they wept profusely as the delegation walked by. “God! They were crying so much,” recounted Samten. “ ‘Now we have nothing left,’ they kept saying. ‘Everything has been destroyed!’ What
could we say? Once Tashikhiel was a fantastic, a beautiful place. Now everything is finished. The Chinese just tore it all down.”

Eleven aged monks, dressed in brand-new robes, welcomed the delegates before the main building. Shown within, the men were surprised to find butter lamps burning, religious paintings neatly arranged on the walls and fresh offerings before the images. Then, over tea and biscuits in a reception room, a well-dressed cadre who had been waiting at the monastery stood up and made a speech. “You can see from these temples how the Communist Party ensures freedom of religion,” he began. “In the old society there was no such freedom. The monks never worked. They only exploited the people. But now, after land reform and the Party’s rule, all of that has been abolished. Conditions have become extremely good.” One of the Cabinet ministers in the delegation asked, “What happened to all the buildings?” “Unfortunately, under the left-deviationist policies of the Gang of Four, some excesses occurred,” replied the cadre. “And where are the five thousands monks?” inquired the minister. “Following the 1959 uprising, they voluntarily chose to leave and take up new lives as farmers. Today none wish to return.”

In reality, as Lobsang Samten knew from talking quietly to a monk during the tour, Labrang Tashikhiel had been destroyed a full decade before the Cultural Revolution. Prior to the 1959 revolt its riches had been shipped to China, its scholars, physicians and artists sent to prison camps, from which only a handful returned alive. Only the empty buildings had been demolished during the Cultural Revolution. A month earlier, the eleven monks present had been collected from various communes in the neighboring countryside, along with images, scriptures and butter lamps scavenged from other ruins. Brought to the abandoned monastery, they had been ordered to create a facsimile of its previous state in time for the exiles’ visit.

The delegates spent four days in Tashikhiel. On the second day Tibetans began to collect by the guest house, asking Chinese guards for permission to speak with the visitors. From them came the first broad sampling of the Tibetan people’s sentiments. “Whenever we asked people what had happened since the revolt,” related Lobsang Samten, “they would just start crying. Then, after composing themselves, they’d reply, ‘Our country has nothing now. Everthing is finished. But we Tibetans who are still alive, our spirit is strong. We’ll never lose it. As long as His Holiness the Dalai Lama is not in the hands of the Chinese we have hope. Please let him know whatever he is doing for our freedom, we are grateful.’ This is all they said, over and over again. Very few wanted to discuss their personal problems.” On one occasion, though, an old friend of Lobsang
Samten’s came to visit. Formerly an important tribal leader in Amdo, he had been arrested after the uprising and imprisoned for twenty years at hard labor. He had been released, in a limited amnesty, only a few days before the delegation’s arrival. “He looked unbelievable,” said Samten. “He had been such a strong, heavily built man. Now I could barely recognize him. The fellow was just broken. He said everything he owned, his land, his home and possessions, were taken. His family had been separated. He had never seen them again. He had just heard a few days before that his son had died in prison. ‘Look at me, Lobsang,’ he said. ‘I have nothing left except this one suit of clothes they gave me.’ It was very upsetting. When we finally did get people to talk about themselves,” concluded Lobsang Samten, “there wasn’t a single family without some kind of story like this one.”

Between visitors, the delegation toured Tashikhiel itself. Here they found two entirely separate worlds: the original city, still inhabited by Tibetans, and a Chinese “new town” surrounding it. The Tibetan section was little better than an open grave. Its buildings were in total disrepair, its streets muddy and impassable. The people lived in dark, decaying rooms with barely any furniture or utensils and no running water and only intermittent electricity. On the other hand, the Chinese quarter, though itself showing signs of neglect, was newly built, its inhabitants far better fed and clothed than the Tibetans. Seeing one impoverished home after another, the delegates began to find themselves overwhelmed.

“We were so shocked that after a few days none of us could eat or sleep,” related Lobsang Samten. “We remembered life in the old Tibet. We thought of our freedom in India and we compared this to what had occurred in our country. All the while, the Chinese kept shamelessly repeating propaganda about improved conditions and how joyful the people were. We were furious about this, and on top of it all we had this mixed feeling of joy and sadness on seeing our people again. It was too much. When I reached Hong Kong at the end of the tour, I actually slept day and night for a week.”

The delegation remained in Amdo for three weeks more. Twenty towns and dozens of villages, communes and nomad stations, spanning thousands of square miles, were visited. Drives lasting an entire day were common, always across barren windswept tundra, a network of Chinese military roads and telegraph lines having replaced the old caravan routes. Somehow, word of the delegation’s approach preceded it, and invariably resulted in tumultuous greetings. By mid-September, after only a month in Tibet, the exiles had been mobbed by tens of thousands of Tibetans. The necessity of appearing liberal prevented the Chinese from calling on the
PLA to suppress the near-riots, yet it was clear that some action had to be taken. As a result, word was sent by Mr. Kao to the leaders of the Tibet Autonomous Region in Lhasa concerning the difficulties being encountered. Following this, last-minute efforts were made to prevent the flood inundating the countryside from pouring into the capital itself.

At Lhasa’s nightly meetings Chinese cadres departed from their policy of secrecy, and announced that representatives of the Dalai Lama would soon arrive in the city. The men were
logchoepas
—“reactionaries”—it was said. Nevertheless, the facades of the buildings lining Lhasa’s major thoroughfares were to be washed and the streets kept free of puddles and rubble. Lhasans were to wear their best clothes and if, by chance, they encountered visitors, were to maintain a cheerful demeanor. They were to talk only if spoken to first, and then in a firm, convincing tone, they should relate how good life was under the new order. Families whom the authorities thought might be visited by the delegation were issued coupons for new worker’s suits as well as gaudy pink and blue ribbons to be braided in the women’s hair. Tea thermoses, blankets and quilts were given to the most important and their rooms were inspected to make sure that portraits of Mao and Party Chairman Hua Guofeng were prominently displayed on the walls. A few days before the delegation’s arrival, Chinese officials conveyed a final set of instructions. It was now revealed that the delegation had already been in Amdo. Tibetans there, unable to suppress their natural hatred for all
logchoepas
, had, it was claimed, openly attacked the group. Wherever the men appeared, hundreds turned out to throw dirt and stones and denounce and spit on them. Party workers were adamant: similar behavior would not be tolerated in the capital—though it seemed this was precisely what was being sought. As a gesture to the delegation itself, the Revolutionary Committee that had administered Tibet since 1968 was abruptly replaced by a new People’s Government of the Autonomous Region of Tibet, headed by Tien Bao, a Tibetan. Ren Rong, however, retained his position as first party secretary of the regional CCP, the true repository of power in Tibet.

On the morning of September 26, the delegation left Langzhou on a three-hour flight to Central Tibet. At Gongkar Airport they were met by new minibuses and two hours later, entering the western end of the Lhasan Valley, they caught their first glimpse of the Potala’s golden rooftops shining in the distance. “I always believed that one day I would see my home again,” recalled Lobsang Samten. “When I did, I was overwhelmed by memories. My whole childhood, living with His Holiness in that beautiful building, came into my mind. Then it was full of life; people worked in the offices, prayed in the chapels, walked on the outside stairways and
on the rooftops and at night its windows were always lit by hundreds of butter lamps. Now it looked completely dead—empty and cold. All of its dignity was gone.” Before reaching the Potala, the delegation was surprised to find itself routed away from the city and driven to a remote guest house four miles west of Lhasa. “This is the best residence available,” local officials informed the party on their arrival. “Everything here is quiet and clean. Whatever you need we’ll be happy to bring to you.” The group demanded to be taken to Lhasa immediately, where the Tibetan people could see them, but were refused. A standoff ensued, until Lobsang Samten attempted to ease the tension with a joke. “Actually, my home is in Lhasa,” he mentioned wryly. “I don’t need to stay in a military guest house. I am just going over to stay in my mother’s place right now.” “The Chinese all had a good laugh when I said that,” he remarked. “Then they said, ‘Lobsang, your home doesn’t exist anymore. Now it belongs to the public.’ ‘What public?’ I couldn’t help asking. ‘Tibetans or Chinese?’ ‘Oh, just the ordinary public,’ they said. After that everyone was quiet.”

Three days later the delegation was transferred to Guest House No. 2 in the old city itself. By then it was amply clear that a new level of discord had been reached. On September 29, the delegates’ first morning in Lhasa, 17,000 Tibetans stormed the Central Cathedral, where the group had come to worship. Chinese security personnel were trampled, the cathedral’s front gates broken open and the delegates mobbed in a wild frenzy that profoundly shocked Tibet’s highest authorities. That night meetings were convened and a strict warning issued to the city’s population not to engage in demonstrations. Regardless, the very next day Lhasans openly defied the orders, taking to the streets by the thousands whenever the delegates ventured out. Before dawn each morning long lines formed in the courtyard of Guest House No. 2. Many of those waiting were close friends whom the men hadn’t seen since 1959. From them, they learned that despite the general mood of defiance, hundreds of people were still too frightened to appear. Thereafter, they took long walks through Lhasa’s narrow streets, where the size of the accompanying crowds made surveillance difficult. In this way they were able to visit many people directly in their homes.

On October 1, China’s liberation day, officials of the Tibet Autonomous Region insisted they attend a celebration at the Norbulingka or “People’s Park.” The event was a crucial test for Ren Rong, Tien Bao and the TAR’s other chief administrators. Having failed to check an increasingly unstable situation, they hoped under controlled conditions and on the most important holiday of the year to present a convincingly different view of Tibet. Accordingly, scores of Tibetan cadres and their families were instructed
to picnic at the Jewel Park, their best clothes, thermoses, radios and mah-jong tiles prominently on display. By 10 a.m., however, almost 8,000 uninvited guests had gathered in the park. Like all the others, the crowd erupted and a phalanx of police was required to clear the way to a building beside the Takten Mingyur, the Dalai Lama’s residence, built, under Lobsang Samten’s own supervision, in 1956. There, greeted by the TAR’s leading officials, the exile group was served tea and biscuits, and requested not to venture into the gathering; as one of their hosts put it, they “might get lost.”

The delegation had already toured the Norbulingka a few days before. Its gardens, save for the immediate area surrounding the Takten Mingyur, were a jungle. Among the ramshackle shells of old temples and pavilions, the only improvement had been an odd zoo of artificial rocks and monkey cages. Guided by a Chinese man and woman through the Dalai Lama’s modest two-story residence, they had been treated to a description, given to the palace’s few visitors, of the Tibetan leader’s lifestyle. “This is where the Dalai slept. This is where he ate. This is where the Dalai met his mother. This is his record player and his electric fan,” they were told. Finally, Lobsang Samten interjected, “I understand very well what you are saying, but don’t you think I should tell you people where you are? I built this palace and worked here every day.” “Oh yes, Lobsang knows better than we do,” they replied, laughing, before going on with their account. Shortly afterwards the delegation had walked past the Kalsang Phodrang, a large palace in the Norbulingka, once used for state occasions. Finding the front doors locked, they mounted the building by exterior steps and peered through a bay of broken windows into the main hall. Inside, the temple was filled to a height of twenty-five feet with a mass of shattered heads, limbs and pedestals, the mangled remains of centuries-old statuues. “We saved these from the people,” the guides explained. “It was the people themselves who destroyed them, not us, during the Cultural Revolution. They robbed the jewels and gold. In fact, if we hadn’t protected these statues, they would have been stolen as well.”