In Exile From the Land of Snows (8 page)

“He seemed to me like a person who had for years brooded in solitude over different problems, and now that he had at last someone to talk to, wanted to know all the answers at once,” wrote Harrer, recalling his first meeting with the then fourteen-year-old Dalai Lama. Through an intermediary, the Dalai Lama had requested Harrer to construct a film hall in the Norbulingka. On its completion, he unexpectedly invited the Austrian to meet with him in person. “I went towards the cinema, but before I could enter the door opened from the inside and I was standing before the Living Buddha,” Harrer recounted. “Come, let us see the capitulation of Japan,” said the Dalai Lama, pushing his guest into the projection booth. Nervously Harrer started to thread the projector, but was “nudged aside” by the Dalai Lama, who completed the task in a moment. Following the film showing, Tenzin Gyatso dismissed his rather distraught abbots, and ushering Harrer into the now sun-filled theater, pulled him down by the sleeve onto the maroon carpet. Confessing that he had long planned a meeting, as he could think of no other way to become acquainted with the outside world, the Dalai Lama poured forth a flood of questions. “Do you like it here in the Holy City? Can you operate an army tank? An airplane? How do jet airplanes fly? Why do you have hair on your hands like a monkey?” Feeling the “attraction of his personality,” Harrer stared at the young man. He sat cross-legged before him, hands folded peacefully in his lap, cheeks glowing with excitement, his whole body swaying from side to side. His complexion was considerably lighter than that of most Tibetans. He was tall and well formed, with “beautiful aristocratic hands” and eyes full of “expression, charm and vivacity.” Rather bashfully, the Dalai Lama took out his notebook of English words and said, “Heinrich. You will teach me this language. We will start now.”

Their lessons continued for months. Mathematics, geography and natural science were studied, including topics ranging from the structure of the atom to why Lhasa was eleven hours behind New York. Much time was also spent in the new movie theater watching films, the Dalai Lama’s favorites being a documentary on the life of Gandhi, Castle newsreels and
Henry V
, painstakingly translated by Harrer from Shakespearean English into Tibetan. “He continually astonished me by his powers of comprehension, his pertinacity and his industry,” observed Harrer. “When I gave him for homework ten sentences to translate, he usually showed up with twenty.” The Austrian was also taken by the Dalai Lama’s unusual character. He described his native modesty as a “source of perpetual wonder,” the “average child of a rich tradesman being far more spoiled than he was.” Decisiveness emerged as another distinguishing trait, the Dalai Lama possessing “a clear-cut individual will capable of imposing itself on others.”
He sensed in him—and was confirmed in this by the ruler’s mother—an inner loneliness. Yet, as their friendship grew, the young Dalai Lama continually brought up the subject closest to his heart: religion. Confiding that he was practicing techniques by which consciousness could be separated from the body, he told Harrer that, on completing them, he intended to send him seven hundred miles west to Gartok, from where he would guide his actions directly from the Potala. “When you can do that,” said Harrer to his student, “I will become a Buddhist too.” Unfortunately, the experiment, and along with it the burgeoning friendship, was abruptly brought to an end.

O
N THE EVENING
of August 15, 1950, while Tenzin Gyatso was taking a small meal of tea, yogurt and homemade bread delivered once a week by his mother, an earth tremor suddenly shook the Norbulingka. It was followed by forty tremendous reports resounding in rapid succession across the sky. The Dalai Lama and his attendants ran out into the garden of his residence, looking east toward Sera Monastery, from where the explosions had come. At the time they imagined them to be artillery fired near Sera, but shortly afterwards people arrived from Lhasa saying that the blasts had originated even farther east. A day later it was heard over All India Radio that a massive earthquake had rumbled across southeastern Tibet; a quake so powerful that while moviegoers in Calcutta fled theaters in terror, the sound of the aftershocks traveled twelve hundred miles across Tibet, all the way to its western borders.

“This was no ordinary earthquake; it felt like the end of the world,” wrote Robert Ford, an English radio operator working for the Tibetan government in Chamdo, the provincial capital of Kham. In fact, it was the fifth-largest quake in history; mountains and valleys exchanged places in an instant, hundreds of villages were swallowed up, the Brahmaputra River was completely rerouted and for hours afterwards the sky over southeastern Tibet glowed with an infernal red light, suffused with the pungent scent of sulfur.

Coming when it did, the quake was viewed by all Tibetans, the Dalai Lama included, as something more than just a geological phenomenon. In its devastating destruction, they saw a harbinger of their nation’s fate.

As early as 1945, four years before the end of China’s civil war and with it the inevitable renewal of aggression against Tibet by the victor, the State Oracle had faced eastward in a trance, wildly shaking his head in warning. In 1947, he had prophesied that in the Year of the Iron Tiger—1950—Tibet would face “great difficulty.” Two years later, in 1949, his caution had been
accented by the appearance of a bright horse-tailed comet. Hanging in the heavens day and night for several weeks, it was viewed by older Tibetans in particular as an indubitable omen of war, the 1910 invasion by China having been preceded by just such a comet. The next summer, the unfavorable signs turned from the natural to the uncanny. On a bright, cloudless summer’s day, in full view of downtown Lhasa, water poured from one of the golden gargoyles inaccessibly located on the roof of the Central Cathedral. The capital of a tall stone column, erected in
A.D.
763 to commemorate Tibet’s conquest of China, was found shattered one morning at the foot of the Potala.

Just as the Thirteenth Dalai Lama had prophesied, once more the external threat was matched by signs of internal decay. In 1941, Reting Rinpoché had given the Regency to the senior tutor of the Dalai Lama, Taktra Rinpoché, a mutual pact ensuring that on completion of the religious retreat for which he had retired, Reting Rinpoché would return to power. Six years later, in the spring of 1947, Taktra Rinpoché’s entourage was all but ready to relinquish control. During their rule, bribery and bureaucratic negligence had run rampant. To restore Tibet’s government to more capable hands, Reting Rinpoché’s followers attempted a coup. Requesting support from Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Nyungne Lama, the ex-Regent’s private secretary, dispatched a hand grenade concealed in a package addressed to Taktra Rinpoché. The grenade exploded prematurely, the plot was uncovered and Nyungne Lama shot himself in the bathroom of a friend’s house in Lhasa. Reting Rinpoché was then arrested and detained in the Potala, an act which, in turn, sparked a revolt by the monks of the Je College of Sera Monastery, to which he belonged. In twelve days of fighting with government troops, two hundred monks perished before the rest surrendered. Little more than a week later Reting Rinpoché died mysteriously in prison, a small collection of blue marks on his buttocks the only abnormal sign.

The brief civil war left Tibet profoundly demoralized. In addition, fifteen years after the arrival of the Kuomintang mission, their attempts at subterfuge had grown to include Tibetans in all segments of society. It was not until July 1949 that the Tibetan government realized the extent of the infiltration and, fearful that the newly victorious Communists would take advantage of it, closed the “liaison” office, deporting its staff, along with some twenty-five known agents and their Tibetan accomplices. Banishing the Chinese from Lhasa, however, could not extinguish their irredentist claims.

On New Year’s Day 1950, three months after the creation of the new People’s Republic of China, Radio Peking announced to its people and the
world that “the tasks for the People’s Liberation Army for 1950 are to liberate Taiwan, Hainan and Tibet.” A slew of broadcasts from Xining and Chengdu, capital of Sichuan, followed, each asserting that Tibet was “an integral part of Chinese territory.” Tibet had fallen under the “influence of foreign imperialists,” the announcements stated. As a result, it required “liberation” to “secure China’s western borders.”

Though the language was novel, the implications were clear. With four decades in which to have prepared defenses now lost, Lhasa finally moved to protect itself. The Tibetan government turned first to the army. Since the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s death its improvement had been ignored. No more than a glorified border patrol, the 8,500 troops possessed fifty pieces of artillery and only a few hundred mortars and machine guns. Enlisted men often traveled in the company of their wives and children; officers, primarily noble officials on brief tours of duty, had no prior military training. Nevertheless, fresh troops and ammunition were soon deployed to a thin chain of garrison towns lining the western bank of the Upper Yangtze River, Tibet’s de facto border with China. Both the men and their commanders were confident that, with the aid of the country’s greatest natural asset, its lofty ranges, they could hold off the seasoned troops of the PLA.

Diplomatic expectations were not so sanguine. Aware that there was no possibility of a lasting self-defense against China, the government telegraphed India, Nepal, Great Britain and the United States requesting them to receive missions seeking support. Lacking official relations with all but India—Tibet never having deemed it necessary to establish ties to a world with which it had no contact—it received, in the main, polite but negative replies. India, for whom Tibet served as a vital buffer state, proved the greatest disappointment. By the terms of the 1914 Simla Agreement, which had devolved on him, India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, was required to deny recognition of Chinese suzerainty over Tibet until China itself acknowledged Tibet’s strictly defined autonomy. Instead, he repeatedly spoke of this suzerainty, though “vague and shadowy” as being a generally recognized fact, thereby signaling Peking that India’s new government would not, as its British predecessor had, come to the aid of Tibet. On hearing of Tibet’s request, China immediately warned New Delhi that receiving “an illegal delegation” would be tantamount to “entertaining hostile intentions against the Chinese People’s Republic.” A few months later, the Chinese government offered assurances to the Indian ambassador in Peking that China had no intention of using force against Tibet. Thereafter, Nehru encouraged Lhasa to negotiate alone on the basis of the Simla Convention. Compelled thus to deal directly with the Communists,
Tibet’s government dispatched a delegation to Peking to secure, as its instructions stated, “an assurance that the territorial integrity of Tibet will not be violated” and to “inform the government of China that the people and government of Tibet … will maintain their independence.” En route the delegation contacted Chinese officials in New Delhi, who suggested they wait for the arrival of the newly appointed ambassador to India. They did; but in the furtherance of their own designs, the Chinese did not.

By early spring, advance units of the PLA had climbed up from the plain of China deep into the highland gorges of eastern Kham, until then nominally controlled by the Nationalists. Similar moves occurring in late 1949 had already secured much of Amdo. On April 16, Lin Biao, China’s famed “Red Marshal,” led his Fourth Field Army across the narrow strait separating mainland China from the island of Hainan in the Gulf of Tongking, and within a few days defeated its Kuomintang command, thereby fulfilling the second of the PLA’s “goals” for 1950. Radio Peking’s May Day message now mentioned only Taiwan and Tibet as remaining to be “liberated.” Broadcasts three weeks later proposed “regional autonomy” and “religious freedom” if the Tibetans would agree to “peaceful liberation.” Within a few days of the message, however, the PLA launched a probing attack across the Yangtze and took the poorly defended town of Dengkog. Two weeks later seven hundred Tibetan troops, led by the capable Muja Dapon, recaptured Dengkog, their overzealous Khampa recruits slaughtering to a man the Chinese force of around six hundred soldiers. Though victorious, the outcome of this first and bloodiest engagement of the burgeoning conflict—taking place little more than a week before the onset of the Korean War—could not dispel the confusion that plagued Tibet’s outnumbered and disparate ranks.

Even before news of the attack on Dengkog reached Chamdo, headquarters of Tibet’s eastern front, the city had been plunged into chaos. A Central Tibetan soldier had forced his affections on a Khampa girl, resulting in a demonstration by hundreds of Khampa irregulars before the army barracks. Distinguished by their robust stature and independent bearing, the men of Kham had always, despite their Buddhist convictions, been quick to avenge a wrong—a trait that had kept Kham embroiled in clan rivalries and bitter vendettas for much of its history. Brandishing their long swords and rifles, they now demanded that the army come out and settle the issue en masse. The two colonels in command had actually ordered bayonets fixed in preparation for a melee when a senior government official, in the good graces of the Khampas, arrived to defuse the crisis. Dispersing for the time being, the Khampa recruits nonetheless redoubled their daily habit, as Ford described it, of galloping through Chamdo “firing
shots into the air, flourishing their swords and letting out bloodcurdling screams. The girls were kept indoors, and some of the Lhasa officials also kept out of the way.”

Regional rivalry threatened more than just the municipal peace of Chamdo. The very roots of Tibet’s defense were precariously pinioned on it. Nowhere was this more evident than in the choice of the city itself for the army’s headquarters. Roughly one hundred miles from the border of Sikang, the eastern portion of Kham (appended to China as a province in 1939), Chamdo lay on a promontory at the confluence of the Dzachu and Womchu rivers which, joining at the town’s base, formed the headwaters of the Mekong. Chinese forces had been driven from it in October of 1917; since then, Kham’s taxes to Lhasa had paid for the presence of regular troops—the principal service received from the central government. Politically, therefore, Chamdo’s defense was indispensable, being intimately linked with the allegiance of Kham. Yet strategically it was a useless point for resistance. Outflanked from the north, it could easily be cut off from Lhasa. To deal with this dilemma, Kham’s Governor-General, Lhalu Shapé, resolved to hold Chamdo until the last moment. Then, assuming that at first the Chinese would not attack in substantial numbers, he would withdraw—the Khampa allegiance held intact—to the high, easily defended passes by Riwoché, fifty miles to Chamdo’s rear on a tributary of the upper Salween.