Sweet Innocent Killer and The Joyful Paradise

  Ganden, China
Friday, August 18, 2006

Tibet and China shall abide by the frontiers of which they are now in occupation. All to the east is the country of Great China; and all to the west is, without question, the country of Great Tibet. Henceforth on neither side shall there be waging of war nor stealing of territory. Between the two countries, neither smoke nor dust shall be seen. There shall be no sudden alarms and the very word "enemy" shall not be spoken...All shall live in peace and share the blessings of happiness for ten thousand years.
~821 A.D. Peace Treaty inscription between China and Tibet.

The night will be long and dark
~13th Dalai Lama shortly before his death. He was refering to the Bolshevik Red Army killing of 70,000 monks in Mongolia and the potential for that to happen to Tibet as well.

To right a wrong it is necessary to exceed proper limits, and the wrong cannot be righted without the proper limits being exceeded.
~Mao Zedong

My country has not been sold, it has been stolen
For that we have shed so many tears
Oh so many tears!
~A song sung by nuns in prison. For singing it, they were tortured.

They would tread on our hands with their huge iron-tipped boots, kick us in the face and stomach. They put buckets of urine and shit on our heads and guards hit the buckets with sticks, roaring with laughter as the excrement streamed down our face and bodies...They would take the momo which was our lunch, dip it in the filth and force us to eat it.
~Gyaltsen Chodon, a 23 year old nun, remembering her time in prison.

Now I am in Nepal, a land with many troubles of its own, yet one where I have the freedom to read the books I want to read and visit Wikipedia.com or other websites without getting blocked by the Paranoid Androids and the Great Firewall of China. I am relieved to have left Tibet for these and other reasons, yet at the same time feel attached to Tibet and its people as well as the good people of China. At the same time, I have developed a dislike for the government of China, despite their modernization and improvements for millions of its people.

Being in Nepal now allows me to fully express myself as well as to fully digest what I have experienced over the last fifteen months. As I was in remote areas for much of the time and met amazing people along the way, most of my memories are good. But I wasn't walking around Tibet blindfolded...

Because of the ruthless nature of the paranoid and violent Chinese Government, however, I must begin by saying this: all Tibetan people photographed in this travelog over the last few months did not discuss any politics with me at any time. I purposely kept conversations with these people at a friendly level, and they were going about their business as usual.

Here's the story:

Ganden Monastery
Sweet Innocent Killer and I arrived at Ganden monastery to explore its temples, where the Communist Party extracted some of our tourism dollars at the entrance. We watched as the monks chanted and prayed in their newly-rebuilt temple and walked around the steep monastery grounds. Afterwards, we engaged in a healthy debate about culture, expansionism, history, economics, propaganda, and resource extraction.

Killer had arrived in Lhasa a few days earlier, flying from a conference in Shangri-la. From the beginning, I was worried because of pent-up frustrations about what I had been seeing in Tibet, the brutal history of Chinese rule, and my troubles with the Public Security Bureau, government employees, and travel restrictions. I found my sense of humor had diminished, and I was emotionally exhausted.

Now she was here, in Tibet, a Beijing woman, a Han Nationalist of sorts, and a history major who knew the history of Tibet from the Chinese point of view and how it fit into the motherland and would strategically fit into the future.

She firmly believed that Tibet was historically part of China, the motherland. What became clear was that Chinese people have been taught that Tibet was liberated...peacefully. As tourists, they travel around Tibet thinking that the Tibetan people are a great part of Chinese heritage: one big happy family living in peace.

"Perhaps if China allowed the Tibetan autonomous areas to be truly autonomous, with control over their natural resources, their monasteries, and their lives, then Tibetans may accept that they are part of China," I said as we sat on a stone wall near a side temple overlooking the sunny valley below. The key words are may and perhaps.

I then compared what the Chinese are doing in Tibet to what the Japanese did when they controlled the puppet state of Manchukuo in northern China during World War II.

"In essence it's really no different."

"But we've built their roads and helped them with developing."

Looking at the ruins around Ganden, Killer said, "Tibetan youths destroyed Ganden," referring to the the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution.

The real story, however, is much more complicated, which I began to learn about years ago.

A few highlights:

Eight years ago at the Tibetan Freedom Festival, Kevin and I joined my college friend Amy in Washington D.C. to listen to some of the most influential musicians, monks, and philosophers, including dissidents from Tiananmen Square. Despite a lightning storm that struck the crowd, millions of dollars were raised for the Milarepa fund, to help Tibet in its Freedom movement.

Three years ago, in Litang, a small town on the plateau of Eastern Tibet, I ate dinner with two Tibetans in a Chinese restaurant. We talked a little about how terrible they felt about the Chinese moving into town. They wanted to move to the United States where there was freedom. Meanwhile, the Chinese cooking our meals gave us terrible looks from the kitchen.

Litang was where it all began. After the peaceful liberation of Tibet by thousands of PLA soldiers, Khampa fighters continued to rebel. Under the force of superior firepower, they fled with their families to their monastery. The Chinese Air Force then bombed the monastery, killing 4,000 people, begining a wave of torture, murder, and genocide that still continues today in a more insidious yet effective manner.

Ganden Monastery, also known as Joyful Paradise, was once one of the primary university centers in Tibet, with several thousands of monks studying thangka painting, mandala creation, Tangyur teachings, Tibetan literature, astronomy, medicine, and more.

Today, as in all monasteries of Tibet, Ganden was an empty shell of its former self, with 300 monks restricted by quotas enforced by the Religious Affairs Bureau and "re-educated" under the Patriotic Education Campaign. All monks and nuns had to pass an examination that, among other things, required them to denounce the Dalai Lama as a criminal and that Tibet has always been a part of China. They were also required to sign an affidavit of loyalty to the Chinese government.

Ganden monks, as well as monks and nuns all over Tibet, however, have a history of civil disobedience, staging peaceful protests, such as posting Dalai Lama pictures (which have been banned since 1996), chanting "Free Tibet!" while encircling the Jokhang, or singing songs of freedom. In retribution for these awful crimes, they were arrested, shot, gang raped (in the case of nuns), forced to fornicate and break their celebacy vows, and tortured along with tens of thousands of other Tibetans, all of which are well documented throughout the entire period of Chinese occupation (not just the Cultural Revolution). In some cases monks had been shot immediately, such as in Ganden on May 7, 1996 when two monks were shot dead for displaying a photograph of the Dalai Lama and protesting its ban. In many cases, families had to pay approximately one year's pay to retrieve their relative's body and even had to pay for the cost of the bullets.

From the beginning of the Chinese occupation, the Joyful Paradise known as Ganden was slowly destroyed, beginning with the flight of many monks to India, where a smaller version of Ganden was rebuilt. Monks that remained were arrested, tortured, and killed, with few survivors.

Next, during a timber famine, altars, window sills, beams, and ancient scriptures were removed by the truckload at Ganden.

During the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guard, composed of Chinese and re-educated Tibetan youth took apart the monastery, removing tons of precious objects to be sold in the markets of Hong Kong and elsewhere. Most monasteries in Tibet were destroyed before the Cultural Revolution even started. During this time, the Panchen Lama estimated that between 10 to 15 percent of the still-surviving Tibetan population were in prison.

Finally, soldiers destroyed hundreds of structures at Ganden with dynamite, leaving nothing but ruins.

Luckily, I had also visited of one the few monasteries that survived--the Dolma Lankhang. It was saved at the request of the Communist Bengali government, as its artisans had lovingly crafted it hundreds of years ago (see photographs).

Killer and I left Ganden with a better understanding of one another and the politics and problems of China and Tibet. I left realizing that a big issue is the ignorance of the Chinese people about the true story in Tibet: they had been miseducated (and who hasn't in some form!). For years they have been told things such as "...the rebels are spilling blood and destroying everything...the PLA...did not fire a single shot at the rebels..." after the PLA killed about 32,000 people during the 1959 uprisings.

This was a story I felt that they should know.

At the same time, however, I saw that many of the Chinese people love Tibetans and their Buddhist culture. The Tibetans also share many similar issues with the pro-democracy movement and Chinese peasant revolutionaries.

Killer left realizing that, perhaps, the Tibetan people feel like she does when she thinks about the atrocities the Japanese comitted against China during World War II: "I hadn't thought about that before." She's told me those stories of her family's pain, of her grandfather being the only survivor making it home.

Maybe the problems in Tibet were not just restricted to the Cultural Revolution.

Maybe the Tibetans don't want our help.

Travel Plans
We would have more debates and such later, but foremost on our mind were our travel plans and enjoying each other's company. Where would we go? What would we do?

At this point, having traveled all over Tibet, I was more interested in letting Killer choose where she wanted to go, although preferably somewhere I hadn't gone before and preferably somewhere outside of Lhasa, whose atmosphere was one of oppression, conversion, and crowded streets.

The people in the streets of Lhasa were often walking and driving around seemingly in a daze. Twice we were almost run over in a pedstrian zone; the second time, I kicked the car, seemingly losing my mind. Many times I was almost poked in the face by people's parasols. Killer was hit in the head by a woman sweeping the streets; she continued to sweep, clueless, as Killer held her head in pain.

The military and police were here in large numbers: approximately 60,000 compared to 100,000 Tibetans and about 100,000 Han settlers. Outside the city, towards Nam tso, were large guns and more army camps, ready for any further uprisings from the unarmed Tibetans.

Essentially, except for the Jokhang area, Lhasa was now a Chinese city and tourist attraction complete with new boutiques, wide avenues, and monuments commemorating the peaceful liberation of Tibet: Mao had achieved his goal of turning Tibet into another Chinese province, at least in most urban areas like Lhasa.

The conversion to a Chinese city continued in the Jokhang area as old buildings were torn down and replaced. Catherina, German woman I met, had interviewed the construction crew in Tibetan:

"The money was available to build decent replacement housing, but the local officials took 20% of it. Now, the buildings cannot have running water, according to the contractor."

"The building program in Lhasa is just superficial change designed to deceive people into thinking the Communists are helping us. It's all part of their main aim: to wipe out Buddhism and destroy our spirit. If it goes on like this, not just our houses will go, but Tibetans as a race will become extinct," says a Tibetan monk in UK Newsletter, 1991.

John, a U.S. tourist, who I met in Tibet, saw the future of Lhasa on a Chinese poster, hung on the wall of a government building:

"There were skyscrapers all over, with all the names of the top Chinese corporations--Bank of China, China Mobile. The only way I knew it was Lhasa was that in the center of the skyscrapers was the Potala Palace."

Not only is the city being converted, but the atmosphere is one of paranoia. In addition to videocameras in the streets, the Potala, the Barkhor, spies are found throughout the tour guide community, within the monasteries themselves, and just about anywhere else.

"This is a grave manner. Be careful of everything you say and do in Tibet as someone could be listening. You may be able to go home safely, but the Tibetans you talk to may disappear once you leave," a US professor of Tibetan Politics whispered to me in a restaurant.

"I cannot invite you into my home. If I do, the next day I will be interrogated, my house searched, and I could be arrested," a Tibetan man told me.

Because of all these things and more, I found Lhasa to be one of the most frustrating cities in the world aside from the Barkhor and Jokhang areas.

As we looked through stores of Thangka paintings, ate good meals together, and looked at the Potala Palace (under the eyes of another videocamera of Big Brother, which blocked the best view), we finally decided on our destination: Kekexili, a place now known because of the movie Kekexili: Mountain Patrol, played throughout China. It is one of the most popular places that Chinese people want to visit in Tibet...only two problems: 1) they aren't allowed to visit and 2) it's virtually uninhabited. Still, we were going to go there and explore, looking for wildlife.

Preparations involved purchasing gear and clothing for Killer, making her more ready for the cold weather and extreme conditions that lay ahead. We also purchased food for many days of backpacking with no chances of resupply. I estimated we had about 12 days of food for two people after we had finished dehydrating potatoes and other veggies in the hot Lhasa sun.

Finally we were ready to go and left the comforts of the Yak Hotel to find transportation north to Kekexili. I was thankful to leave Lhasa.