In Exile From the Land of Snows (64 page)

On June 1, as the second delegation headed across Kham toward Central Tibet, the third delegation entered Canton. Sent to investigate educational standards, its seven members were led by Pema Gyalpo, the Dalai Lama’s younger sister and head of the Tibetan Children’s Village in Dharamsala. “You can’t imagine what our first sight of China was like,” she recalled, describing the negative impressions which beset her group from the start of its journey. “It was a miserable rainy day. Outside our train hundreds of people were queued up behind a high wire fence in the Canton train station. A line of policemen held them back, and they were all pushing to get out of the country. I mean, as Tibetan refugees we’ve learned so many bad things about the Chinese Communists and now the very first thing we saw in China, after all these years, was crowds of people trying to escape. It put a chill into all of us.”

The third delegation’s personal discomfort was accented by a pronounced shift in the behavior of their hosts. Aware of the second delegation’s tumultuous greeting in Tibet, officials of the Nationalities Affairs Commission’s “Third,” or Tibetan, department dropped the veneer of hospitality the earlier hosts had assumed. Quartered in the same military guest house that the first delegation had stayed in, the third delegation was maneuvered away from foreigners in Peking’s streets, taken on circuitous routes to their destinations—to discourage them, they assumed, from venturing out on their own—and on the few occasions they did take unguided walks, openly trailed by undercover police. “From the start the Chinese were studying us,” observed Pema Gyalpo. “In the guest house in Peking, the Tibetan interpreters who worked for them came one at a time to our rooms, knocked on the door, stepped inside and said, ‘How are you today?’ Then, without waiting for an answer, they would just sit down and begin asking questions. ‘How do the Tibetans in India live? What are their feelings about the Dalai Lama? How are they employed? What are their schools like? What are the children studying?’ It was clear that their intentions were not good.” On receiving answers from one delegate, the interpreters would go to a second, ask the same questions, and then, if the replies varied, return to the first to inquire why he had given one answer while his colleague employed another. As Pema Gyalpo explained, “Because of this cross-examination they soon knew each of our characters perfectly. I’m a very blunt, straightforward person. Not at all diplomatic. They couldn’t get anything but an argument out of me, but with the others they directly tried to manipulate some of them and cause trouble.” On one occasion, a Swiss-raised Tibetan photographer with the group was missing for three hours. When he returned the other delegates discovered that he had been subjected to an intensive grilling. “Our photographer didn’t
understand what the Chinese were getting at when they asked if the Tibetans in exile were disunited,” said Pema Gyalpo. “He just answered candidly concerning the differences that do exist, which is exactly what they sought in order to make trouble.” At the time, the questions themselves created dissension among the delegates, as the pressure of appraising different responses led to divisiveness. The photographer’s replies became the subject of a heated argument and he was finally told “just to take photos and keep quiet.”

But though all the delegates from then on behaved with the utmost care, the questions never ceased. “By the time our stay was coming to an end,” said Pema Gyalpo, “they were trying to get as much information from us as possible. The cadres from Peking would go so far as to have teachers in schools we visited ask exactly how much aid the refugees receive from the government of India. What the budget for individual schools are, and who gives money to them. I couldn’t believe how devious their thinking was.”

In this strained atmosphere, the first untoward occurrence inevitably produced a breakdown in relations. Shortly after entering Tibet, while driving to a destination near Tashikhiel, in Amdo, the delegation suddenly found the road blocked by 7,000 people. In a rage, one of the officials from Peking leaped from the lead car, in which Pema Gyalpo was sitting, and began to beat the Tibetans back. Deluged by their numbers, he soon retreated to the jeep, locked the door and pushed Pema Gyalpo between himself and a Chinese woman cadre, who in turn forbade her to open the windows. “It took us three hours to get out of that crowd,” Pema Gyalpo related. “The people were tearing bits of canvas from the jeep’s roof. They were calling to meet me, but the Chinese kept me like a prisoner in the jeep. I was furious. A while after lunch we came to another large crowd on the road, and this time I opened the window myself. The Chinese woman ordered me to close it, and then I really blew my top. I told the interpreter in the front seat to translate every word I said and I let her have it. I told her that if I chose to greet my own people, that was my wish, and that I would not tolerate her dictating to me. His Holiness the Dalai Lama had sent us to meet the people and if she persisted in blocking this, I said that I would return to India immediately. Then everything I thought finally came out. There were our people in rags, half starving, in tears, calling out all around the jeep, and I said to this lady, ‘Everywhere we’ve gone you’ve claimed that you’ve made so much progress. Look at these people. Is that progress? I want you to ask them when they had their last taste of meat like we had for lunch. What have you achieved in twenty years but this?’ Then all she said was: ‘Why are these people acting so
wildly? Do the Tibetans in India behave like that?’ I couldn’t believe it. I said, ‘Of course not.’ And she said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘In India we are free. These people are acting like this because you have suppressed them too much. This is the result of your cruelty.’ Then they just kept quiet. I was really in tears. When the Tibetan interpreter tried to calm me down, I turned on him and shouted, ‘What are you doing for your people? Just look at them!’ ”

That evening Pema Gyalpo decided to cancel the tour. Apprised of her decision, the Chinese approached Rabten Chazotsang, the rector of the Mussoorie school, and tried to apologize. The woman, they explained, suffered from arthritis and could not bear a draft on her shoulder. For this reason—and no other—she had ordered Pema Gyalpo to keep the jeep’s window closed. Promised that henceforth they would not be interfered with, the delegation continued its tour. From that time on, though, a state of open hostility threatened to break relations at any time.

After traveling for almost two months, the second delegation entered Lhasa in the last week of July 1980. On the morning of July 25, they were mobbed by 10,000 people while en route to the Central Cathedral. It took half an hour to drive the few blocks from the guest house and an hour to cross the short distance from where the bus stopped to the cathedral’s entrance. Offered a white scarf by the temple’s caretaker (fired that same day for his action), the delegation toured the interior and emerged on the roof to make a brief speech to the crowd, which had quietly seated itself in Tsuglakhang front courtyard. During their talk a group of young Tibetan men shouted in unison three times, “Tibet is fully independent!” The Chinese took no action, nor did they the next day, when, during a speech to a gathering of 3,500 at the base of the Potala, a man stood up and again yelled, “Tibet is independent!” On the following day, however, July 27, the most volatile demonstration to date exhausted their restraint.

Driving out of Lhasa at nine in the morning, the delegation crossed the Kyichu River and headed northeast. Thirty miles up the valley, they rounded the end of a long scarp in the mountains and began to climb upwards. At the first turn in the road a Tibetan family stood waiting to greet them holding sticks of incense, scarves and a thermos of tea. After halting their minibus for a brief talk, the delegation proceeded to the next turn, where two more groups waited. Stopping again, they then resumed driving until, turning a final bend, they caught sight of their destination: Ganden Monastery. Thirty-two years before, on the eve of the Chinese invasion, the renowned Tibetan scholar Giuseppe Tucci had described the traveler’s first view of Ganden as “a sight out of this world.” Its “freshly whitewashed walls framing the blazing red of the temples and the garish
gold of the roofs … looked bodiless,” he had written, “a mere outline silhouetted against the spotlessly blue sky.” Now, where over a hundred great buildings had once stood, only long lines of jagged ruins remained. Ganden had literally been blown to pieces. “We’d heard about Ganden’s destruction before,” recalled Tenzin Tethong, “but no words could ever describe the sight. Ganden means ‘the Joyful Paradise,’ and it truly used to be a shining city on a hill. Now it’s a blasted, bombed-out hulk. It looks as though it was destroyed five hundred years ago, not twelve.”

At the last turn, more than eighty trucks, parked up to the first of the broken walls, blocked the road. Five thousand people waited beside them. “The moment we arrived, the crowd simply couldn’t contain itself,” related Tenzin Tethong. “Everyone came running down the hill, crying and calling out. I remember a few young boys and girls, teen-agers, grabbing on to my jacket. They were practically howling in tears. They refused to let go. People beside them were saying, ‘Please, you mustn’t cry so much,’ but then they started crying as well, pointing up the hill and saying, ‘Look. There is our Ganden. See what they’ve done to it!’ ”

The Tibetans had gathered at Ganden not merely to welcome the delegation but to undertake the seemingly impossible task of reconstructing it. Using stones and lumber pilfered from construction sites around Lhasa, groups of volunteers had begun to work a few weeks before. Before dawn each Sunday they would assemble at designated spots to be picked up by Tibetan truck drivers. With their materials piled on board Chinese trucks, they set out on what, with repeated stops for new groups, amounted to a four-hour drive to the ruins of the monastery. Arriving at the foot of the hill below Ganden, all would dismount and help to push the overladen vehicles up the slope. Their labor, on the one free day in the week, continued until after dark. Supervised by a group of monks, carpenters and masons, the workers had already begun to rebuild a residence for the Dalai Lama and the temple which once housed Je Tsongkhapa’s tomb. Not merely a defiance of Chinese ideology, the effort represented the essence of the Tibetan people’s will to pursue their own vision of life, and, on the day of the delegation’s visit—the 571st anniversary of Ganden’s founding—the underground meant to mark it as such, by openly escorting the exiles through the demolished monastery to three tents in which monks, wearing robes they had kept hidden for decades, waited to conduct religious services before outdoor altars fashioned from images preserved until then in secret caches. After reciting the Dalai Lama’s prayers for a free Tibet, the delegates made lengthy, impassioned speeches, during which thousands, emboldened by both the moment and the distance from Lhasa, raised their hands in clenched fists, shouting for Tibet’s freedom.

Receiving reports of the day’s event, Chinese authorities in Lhasa finally decided to act—regardless of its effect on relations with the Dalai Lama. Rumors of a demonstration at which the Tibetan flag was to be raised were circulating through the capital. Moreover a group of twenty-one Western correspondents, each representing a major periodical and only the second such party permitted into Tibet, were staying at the same guest house as the delegation. So far they had successfully been kept away from the visitors. Their presence, though, plainly threatened to turn an as yet unknown internal disturbance into an international publicity disaster.

At 4:00 p.m. on July 28, a few reporters noticed Tibetans beginning to gather in the courtyard of Guest House No. 2. Within an hour, over 2,000 people were standing shoulder to shoulder in the yard. As the sun set, the familiar white minibus appeared and the crowd went wild. Men raised clenched fists; women and children cried. Those closest to the bus stormed its occupants, placing their hands on top of their own heads in blessing, embracing them, tearing their clothes. Amazed, the correspondents began photographing while Phuntso Wangyal, chairman of the Tibetan community in Great Britain, addressed the gathering from the steps of the Guest House, “May the Dalai Lama’s hopes and aspirations be fulfilled,” he began, but before he could continue, a young man leapt up crying, “Long live His Holiness, the Dalai Lama,” a call the crowd began to chant in unison, raising their fists with each repetition. As the delegation retired indoors, correspondents rushed to speak with them, but were prevented from doing so by the Chinese.

The next morning the bus failed to arrive as usual. By 11:30, a meeting of sixteen officials was convened in the sitting room of the guest house. Here, the second delegation was informed that its tour had been canceled. They were to pack immediately and return to Peking. “By your actions,” Sonam Norbu, a Tibetan vice-chairman of the TAR, stated, “you have deliberately incited the Tibetan people to break with the motherland, and to sever their ties with their elder brothers, the Han Chinese. This amounts to a grave breach in relations between the Dalai and Peking and will not be tolerated.” Hustled three hours later out the building’s back door, having, in the interim, been detained in their rooms, the second delegation was driven from Lhasa. Their route was watched over by cadres of the Public Security Bureau, soon to be reinforced by PLA squads, who had been meticulously held on their bases until now. Taken to Gongkar Airport, the delegation spent the night, and the next day was flown out of the country to Chengdu and thence to Peking.

On hearing of the second delegation’s expulsion, the third delegation cabled Dharamsala from Shigatse. They received instructions to complete
the remaining six weeks of their tour. A fourth delegation, however, scheduled to depart in August, never left India. Put off by Peking until the spring of 1981, it was then told that, although Ngabo Ngawang Jigme had replaced Tien Bao as the head of the TAR government (a further gesture of Chinese conciliation), their visit was postponed indefinitely. Nothing substantial occurred for another year until, in April 1982, a three-member team—comprised of Juchen Thubten Namgyal, the senior minister in the Dalai Lama’s Cabinet; P. T. Takla, Minister of Security; and Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari, Chairman of the renamed Assembly of the Tibetan People’s Deputies—flew to Peking. There they met with Xi Zhongxun, Secretary of the Party Central Secretariat, Ulanfu, longtime head of the Nationalities Affairs Commission, and Yang Jiren, a Vice Premier. In several weeks of discussion, the highest level exchange to date, both sides sought to clarify their positions on Tibet’s status while exploring possible compromise solutions. Unfortunately, these talks ended in a stalemate. Their contents, though, were kept secret until a November editorial in
Beijing Review
claimed that the exiles had requested China to incorporate all Tibetan areas into a “unified big Tibetan Autonomous Region” which would be granted the same status offered by the PRC to Taiwan in its 9-point reunification proposal of October 1, 1981. It also noted that the most recent entreaty from the Tibetans had been automatically rejected since Tibet had been “liberated for more than three decades.” Ongoing calls for its independence were, it said, nothing more than “a dirty allegation of imperialist aggression … opposed by the Chinese people and most strenuously by the Tibetan people.”