Kailash Calling

Like many last summer my mom was planning a trip to Mount Kailash. At her age, she had to do it sooner than later: The circuit is best done in the year of the horse, which happened to be in 2014. And the lunar horse year comes only once in a twelve-year cycle. So, together with two of her lady friends my mother prepared anxiously for this once-in-a-lifetime, holy trip to maximise on her Karma.

The three ladies are part of a new generation of Tibetan elders: Polyglot, physically fit, socially active and financially well funded too. Active senior citizens ready to explore the world on their own hook. “Grey Panthers” as Westerners call them – Mo trogtro as my partner calls them jokingly. The only unknown in the project: Would our "fancy grannies" receive the green light from China?

As usual it was a lot of waiting and hoping for the China visa and more specifically the Tibet permit to come through. No Tibet permit, no Kailash.

There were ominous signs from the beginning. In May my uncle in Lhasa confided over the phone that they had sealed off the mountain due to the rush of pilgrims and tourists. Several large Indian groups were also cancelled, media reported. Whatever the reasons, we could only wait and see, make calls from time to time and work on alternative plans in case the permit didn't come through. Hope dies last.

By experience from earlier trips, inauspicious signs should never be a reason for discouragement. During my mom's previous visa application two years earlier a gruesome self-immolation had taken place in front of the Jokhang in Lhasa. As a consequence, they sealed off the Autonomous Region even for Tibetans from the outlying areas. I thought, "That's it, Amala, if people from Tibetan areas outside the TAR can't get into Lhasa, you as someone from overseas can definitely forget your Tibet permit."

But miraculously she got it at the very last minute, just a few days before her scheduled departure. The price of her flight ticket had nearly doubled by then. But my mother had learned to remain flexible and detached when dealing with the Chinese. They are experts in teaching people a lesson in patience and anger management.

She was hoping for a similar unexpected green light this time around. China doesn't make it easy on Tibetans. Even on harmless grannies with no political agenda. Last time although my mother had the proper China visa stamp saying "is allowed to enter the Tibet autonomous region", they still stopped her for several hours at Gongkar airport asking for the notorious "Tibet permit". It’s a requirement that is regularly written off and equally regularly makes a comeback most often in spring when everyone gets ready to go Tibet. In the meantime her brother in Lhasa ran from one department to the next to plead for their help with the airport officials.

Getting to Lhasa and Mount Kailash last summer was not only difficult for overseas Tibetans, but also for those living in the Tibetan areas outside the Autonomous Region like my cousins in far east Kham. Beijing-based writer Woeser also discussed the surreal situation in a recent article. If my cousins wanted to accompany my mom on this pilgrimage, they too had to apply for a permit. In their case, issued by the local authorities in Ngari, where Mount Kailash is located. The Chinese overlords are paranoid about Tibetans from outlying areas visiting Lhasa. Each and every one of them is seen as a potential self-immolator.

Meanwhile Lhasans had their passports revoked just so nobody accidentally crossed the border to attend the Kalachakra teachings by the Dalai Lama in Ladakh. The only ones, who are free to enter and exit the Tibetan areas as they please, are Chinese tourists. Pure cynicism.

Finally a confirmation came: Lhasa to be closed until July-end. At least some concrete word despite the disappointment. In addition to being nontransparent, they always wait until the last minute to let the cat out of the bag. We know their tactics however and instinctively prepare for all eventualities. The process to receive a visa for China and Tibet can become surreal for Tibetans living abroad. We only survive the madness because over the years we have come to look at it as some kind of sport taking it with gallows humor. Each time the process is a little bit different. The sporty part is to anticipate as much as possible and prepare a matching reaction from our side. So if Kailash and the Tibet Autonomous Region are closed, we go to another Tibetan place that is open. Even they can’t close down the whole country. With every application we grow more hard-nosed. But you can't win all the time. We learned that too.

An article in the China Daily of 8^th December 2014 painted a totally different picture of the Kailash situation. The headline read: "Tibet welcomes tourists to holy mountain, lake", and said the Ngari Prefecture "is opening its arms wide to foreign visitors". – What a travesty! - They reported 470’000 visitors to Kailash, a 50 % increase from the previous year. And the TAR on the whole, the article said, received 12,8 million visitors in 2014. But of these only roughly 2 % or 256’000 were foreigners. That’s an incredibly low number given the official fanfare. The data suggests to me that the tourist welcome is a façade. In practice, foreign visitors are not welcome at all. The most telling figure therefore would be how many applications from foreign passport holders they received and rejected in 2014. But this story remains untold.

Some time back I had a meeting with a lady who does field research on Tibetan medicine in Amdo. We exchanged our experiences of working in Tibetan areas and specifically the challenges faced from authorities and ways to deal with them. Annual renewal of your work permit for example could become a little odyssey as my partner regularly experiences. Totally unexpected, I learned that she, like other academics, were now going to Tibetan areas on tourist visas, working "undercover" so to speak. She said the prospect of receiving a research permit was nil and that even some of the better-known Tibetologists whom the exiles usually view as pro-Chinese, could not obtain it. Well, at least the Chinese give everyone a hard time in obtaining permits and not just Tibetan Molas!

The Tibetan visa officer at the Chinese embassy instructed us to get in touch with the nelenkhang in my dad's Tibetan hometown for help with the Tibet permit. There was nothing else he could do to speed up the process from his end, he said.

This term for the office that handles entry permits for Tibetan expats has a misleadingly warm and welcoming flavour in Tibetan - which is actually the greatest hoax in all this: Your friendly "reception office" is the very unit known in Chinese as the Tongzhanbu and has an unmistakably martial taste to it. It literally means the "together-fight-office". The English "United Front" sounds equally belligerent. If you look for warm hospitality, look some place else. My experience of the Nelenkhang is that they do anything in their might to ward you off rather than “receiving” you with open arms. But what can you do? They have all the power. You have none.

My mom’s Tibet permit still wasn’t out when the departure date arrived. So she pragmatically took the regular China visa and headed straight into the lion's den: First Shanghai, then Suzhou and third Hong Kong. Then she made a pilgrimage to Mount Emei near Chengdu in Sichuan. It is associated with Shantideva aka Shiwa-lha in Tibetan and is one of four famous Buddhist peaks in China. Pilgrimage at my mom's age is always a good idea, is it not? And getting to know China better, although not a top priority, is a good use of time until the Tibet permit is processed.

Next she toured Wutai Shan in Shanxi, another famous Buddhist peak. Known in Tibetan as rgyanag riwo tsenga, the mountain is associated with Manjushri and even our ageing Dalai Lama in India repeatedly expresses his wish to visit the peak. But unlike my mom he has not been let in and it doesn’t look like he will be allowed to enter any time soon. Sometimes it pays off to be just an untitled average soul.

Last but not least, when the permit still hadn’t come through, my mom went to Jizu Shan, yet another holy Buddhist peak located in Yunnan. The Chicken Foot Mountain, riwo jakang in Tibetan, famous site where Kashyapa, one of the Buddha's disciples, meditated and eventually gained enlightenment.

That was a whole lot of mountain touring my mom did in China. But still no news on the Tibet permit. Without it there was no way of getting to Kailash. Being patient my mother then turned her attention to Labrang and Kumbum, the two largest Tibetan monasteries of Amdo. She was not impressed with the local food. The “pulled noodles soup” Thenthuk served everywhere, which is usually popular among all Tibetans, was an indefinable Gulash with everything thrown in the cook could get his hands on. But she was full of praise of how neat and well run the monasteries were and how the monks seemed so disciplined and devoted – unlike in some areas in Kham she knew well.

Although you do not need an additional permit for the Tibetan areas of Qinghai and Gansu, the region displays the inevitable signs of anomaly that have become so typical of the Tibetan areas under China. My cousin from Kham, who acted as their guide, had to separate from my mom and her friends and stay at a different hotel. The official explanation was that foreign guests had to be given better quality accommodation. The unofficial explanation was Tibetans could suddenly self-immolate and they don’t want people from overseas creating a fuss.

Eventually September came and went. My brave mother had been holding out patiently for three long months outside the gates of the Tibet Autonomous Region. When the bureaucrats in Lhasa finally told us over the phone that “the permit will definitely come out next month", my mom had grown tired of all the waiting and empty promises. So in the end Kailash for her didn't materialise. It was the year of the horse, considered most auspicious for a circumambulation, and her own Tibetan sign also happens to be the horse.  Maybe it was just too good to be true?

My Amala’s disappointment faded quickly. She experienced Amdo culture and was able to visit Labrang and Kumbum. Would she have had the opportunity had she gone to Lhasa instead? Most expat Tibetans, if they get to visit, are on a tight schedule and focus on their hometown. They are unlikely to experience other parts of the highlands.

She also got to do pilgrimages to famous Buddhist peaks in China, that's precious too. Of course the irony is not lost on her. While she is free to tour the mountains in China as much as she likes and until her feet hurt, she cannot set a single foot to a mountain in Tibet. That’s the bizarre situation.

With the right mindset, however, her pilgrimage tours in China can become as meritorious as circumambulating Kailash. My mother knows that. And she also knows it won’t be her last trip. As long as the doctor doesn’t advise her to avoid travelling in high altitude, she will make another attempt to get to Kailash, that's for sure. Let’s see who wins the next round.

It looks like the Tibetans’ fate that those who live outside have trouble getting in and those who live inside have trouble getting out. More recently, internal mobility for Tibetans has been throttled further. People are now doomed to stay put, doomed to immobility or forced to find other ways and means. This year my little family is planning a trip to Tibet. I get stomach cramps when I think of the visa work ahead. Still we end up making the attempt because the reward is worth the effort.

When I saw my mother emerging from the airport gate, she was as light-footed as a young girl pulling a set of brand-new fancy wheeled suitcases. She didn't buy them in Shanghai as I suspected but had someone in my dad’s hometown order them for her on Taobao, the Chinese E-Bay.

"Much cheaper, everyone orders online," she announced triumphantly.

That's my old lady, such a bragger. I love every piece of normalcy coming out of Tibet even if it's as trivial as online shopping or fancy air-travel gear. And I love cheeky Tibetan Molas who surprise you with their wits.

Mountain Phoenix Over Tibet

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The "Visard" Of Oz

Enter The Dragon

The "Visard" Of Oz

It’s that time of the year again when Tibetans run into each other at the Chinese embassy. Not proudly in front of the building in order to demonstrate but embarrassingly inside the building to apply for a visa to Tibet. - Welcome to hell. For a Tibetan born free this is probably one of the more humiliating tasks to go through in life: Dealing with the brutal reality that we lost control of our country and others now pull the strings. Not my hour of glory.

If you don't go to Tibet then that's that. But if you do then there is no way to avoid the ordeal. 

I thought I could spare myself the humiliating trip to the Chinese embassy this year because we decided to spend our summer family vacation elsewhere. But when my mom declared all of a sudden that she had to see Lhasa one last time before she would be too old to travel, that’s when I knew I had to make the cursed trip into the lion’s den.

Time to dig out the invisible armour.

It helps protect your mental sanity because when you wear it nothing will get to you and when you take it off, you are again at peace with yourself. The invisible armour is built from nerves of steel, Buddhist “egolessness”, and the single-minded focus of an archer. Wearing the armour you are less prone to become impatient, take things personally or forget your goal in a dash of anger.

Where can one find such an invisible armour?

I saw people in Tibet wear it. It seems they are keenly aware that each time they have to deal with the authorities they are in a disadvantaged position by default and so they always stay focused on what they actually want to achieve from an interaction. Whether it is obtaining an ID, a driver’s licence, a marriage certificate, just any kind of credentials: They try their best to skillfully manoeuver around corrupt officials and the bureaucratic cliffs and whirls because that is the only way they can hope to come closer to their goal.

It took a while until I could recognise it. But after I caught a glimpse of the invisible armour, I tried to put it on when the situation required it. Applying for a visa to Tibet at the Chinese embassy was such a situation. It was one of the biggest challenges. The armour wouldn’t fit from the start. After a while though, it felt less awkward.

Humor helps too.

If Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz”, which I loved watching as a child, had her pair of sparkling red shoes that would carry her home to Kansas, I had the invisible armour that would help me get to Tibet. And while Dorothy had to battle a mean, green-faced witch, I had to overcome miserable bureaucrats and weird procedures. It was “Mountain Phoenix in the Visard of Oz" :--)

Chinese consulates and embassies in areas with a larger Tibetan population sometimes have a special officer attached to the visa section who specifically deals with applications from people of Tibetan descent. This officer is usually not part of the foreign relations department but from an internal office called “United Front” or Tongzhanbu. They are in charge of “overseas Tibetans” even when the latter are bona fide citizens of a third country. 

This time, when the clerk finally showed up, a young Asian man leapfrogged me. I clearly heard him say in Tibetan: “Gen-la, I brought a gift.” Then the clerk noticed me standing behind the youngster and so he waved both of us to the back door.

While we were made to wait again in another room, I said I hoped to receive a visa for Lhasa. The youngster said he wanted to go to Dege and visit his parents. Then he fumbled in his pocket, which made me offer him a pen. I thought he wanted to fill in the empty visa form before him. But to my surprise the Degewa said: “I can’t write. I have to ask him to fill in the form for me.”

Poor fellow!

Maybe he already made a trip here and was sent back to get a gift for the extra work? The travel document I saw lying on the table when we both entered the room, was it his? Uneducated, nyamchung Tibetans were at a higher risk to be exploited by corrupt officials.

With his hair dyed pitch-black and styled in Kunga manner, the Degewa reminded me a lot of the lads back in my hometown. Some tried to obtain identity cards which they needed to buy domestic flight tickets. The police told them to come the next day since they were busy. They marched miles back to their village. On the second day, they were told that the machine producing the ID cards was broken and they didn’t know when the person to fix it would get in. On the third day, when they brought fresh butter, cheese and eggs, the machine was miraculously working again.

My only comforting thought with regard to the young man was that he probably was “street-smart” and experienced in dealing with corrupt officials from back in Dege. He would certainly manage to get his permit even if he couldn't read or write and didn’t have proper papers.

Make sure you have your relatives’ contact details down, best of all in Chinese or Pinyin. Their names and address, their profession, their work place - add it even when they are retired – and list a telephone number so the local office at the other end can contact them to verify the information you hand in over here. Use an extra sheet if the form provides insufficient space.

It is also a good idea to ensure the family members you are hoping to visit, can be reached by phone on the day you are in the embassy. In case the bureaucrat asks you a question about them you’re unable to answer, you can ring them up right then and there in his very presence and get the required information first-hand. I sometimes also get asked irrelevant stuff in the style of: "What's your relative’s uncle’s friend’s daughter’s second child’s name? One phone call and I can tell him: "Dolma Yangkyi!” – A waltz! Et voilà jack-in-office, eat this!

Relief: There were no formal issues with my mom’s application. It was graciously deemed “complete”. Now started the real anxiety: Will she get a visa for Lhasa or not? When will they let us know? 

Since the visa procedure for Tibetans can be intransparent, it is up to you to try and figure out where your application stands. Pull out all the stops you have. I learned the hard way. Once I didn’t get a permit on time because the dork never forwarded my application. Laziness? Oversight? Evil intention? Just acting important at my cost? Maybe a hint to bring a “gift” and I didn’t get it?  I’ll never know but here’s the lesson learned:

When you don’t hear back from the embassy within two weeks, ring your relatives in Tibet and ask whether they were contacted by the local United Front. If they have, the process is on its way. If they haven’t, ring the clerk without delay and ask in a friendly manner where your application stands, adding an innocent “it seems like the local office hasn’t received the request”. Remind him of the planned departure date. It’s advisable to give him an earlier date than planned. Don’t give in to your impulse to complain about how slow the process is. Keep up the farce.

For people who aren’t used to this kind of culture this is probably the hardest part: To play along and jump through hoops. Often it took me a month and longer, multiple calls and at least three trips to get a permit. That's if I was lucky. If I was unlucky, it took even longer, more calls and I still wouldn’t get it. Don't forget you wear the armour.

On my way out from the embassy I crossed a group of Tibetans. They looked like they just recently came from Tibet. We waved a friendly “hello” to each other. There was no time to exchange a few words as I was already on the phone with my mom’s relatives in Lhasa. They said things were especially dampo as a consequence of the Kalachakra in India last winter and that they believe I’d better not “insist” (udzugs ma brgyab) if they wouldn’t give me the permit. – What a funny thought! As if there was a way to insist!

Leaving a bad impression could backfire on your relatives and result in rejection of future visa requests so it would never occur to me to insist :--) The internal area-specific procedure may vary from place to place, but it's important to be aware that it's likely your relatives are made to stand bail for you. They have to fill in forms and get up to five stamps from different administrative levels before they can receive you. Some are also required to give a hand-written guarantee that their visitors aren’t up to creating political trouble.

Once you have your tourist visa for Lhasa in your pocket though, the visual difference to a regular Chinese visa is minimal. There is a line “special remarks” at the bottom left of your China visa. In the normal case, that line is empty. The line is also empty if you go to Tibetan areas outside the TAR. But if you want go to Lhasa or the TAR the visa must contain a specific remark as marked red:

"The holder of this visa is entitled to enter/exit via the ports of Lhasa and Zhangmu".

If you made it to a Tibetan place outside the TAR on a regular Chinese visa - which can also be a challenge to obtain for expat Tibetans - and now want to go to Lhasa, as guowai zangpao or Tibetan from abroad, you still must obtain a “special permit” to enter the TAR which is issued by the United Front office of the Tibet Autonomous Region. It could look as follows:

Issued by the TAR Commission of the United Front, the title of the form is "Oversea's Tibetans Permit to Enter Tibetan Areas". It lists the number of entries, your passport number, your name, and the duration of your stay. The seal is from the same Commission and carries the date. 

Every now and again you can read in the news that the Tibet permit is going to be abolished. But there are people in offices in Chengdu and other entry points acting important and making money on these anachronistic scraps of paper, so that even when they make big announcements up in Beijing, down on the local level they can act as if that doesn’t apply to them. Sometimes you can’t tell whether it’s vested interest or big politics that gives you trouble and, ironically, once you're through with all the hassle and made it to Lhasa, nobody asks to see the piece of bumph.

In my experience, it’s not a good idea to try and “sneak” into the TAR overland in case some are contemplating this alternative. Once I made a trip to Lhasa with Tibetan pilgrims on the back of a truck. It was “don’t ask, don’t tell”: There was no need to identify myself since the driver and the other passengers seemed to assume I was a local. I must say I made every effort. I even wore an ugly Chinese army dayi green coat which could be bought in every market plus a Mao cap to bring my local look to perfection. It was also my luck that the pilgrims camped outdoors for the night in order to save money during the journey so I never had to book into a hotel where I would have had to show my papers.

Everything went well until we drove through the forests of Kongpo. I knew very well this was a restricted area for foreigners. All of a sudden two armed men in uniforms appeared in the middle of the narrow, bumpy road and made us stop. They began to search the truck, which made me extremely nervous. What would I do if I were discovered?

The next moment our blue Dongfeng was beginning to move again. They were not looking for illegal foreigners as I feared; they were hunting down fugitive prisoners who sometimes hid in those trucks. I had heard of Chinese prisons in Kongpo. Now I knew.

I don’t recommend travelling to Lhasa this way. The risk of getting caught is real and the consequences could be serious and furthermore, the driver could also be punished for taking you along.

Actually there never really is a good time to visit Tibet: From January to March they routinely restrict travel due to the Tibetan New Year and the 10^th March people’s uprising of 1959. During the second quarter, travel is restricted again due to Saka Dawa and the Dalai Lama’s birthday. And whenever there is political unrest in an area, it’s soon off limit too. The whole country is closed on and off throughout the year which makes it really cumbersome for a visitor, especially if you are from the West.

But if you are determined to go, you can't take "bad timing" into account nor will any "visa attrition policy" deter you because you wear the invisible armour. 

Give it a shot: News reports about travel restrictions can sometimes be misleading. Travel restrictions for foreigners are usually delivered orally to tourism industry leaders, so local tour companies and hotel operators may tell you the authorities imposed a ban on travel permits for foreign tourists in groups or individually. But it’s also possible that while one area has such a travel ban, another Tibetan area may not. And to confuse prospective visitors further, state media and the Tibet Tourism Bureau may at the same time say foreign tourists are welcome even though there are de facto travel restrictions in some areas.

It’s also possible that the travel ban does not fully apply to people of Tibetan descent even when they are foreign passport holders because their applications may not go through the usual consular channel under foreign relations as with regular Western tourists but via the internal United Front office, which is the decision-maker in this case.

In my latest visa quest, the United Front man said my mom could only hope to receive the permit for Lhasa if she had relatives there. - Did he cook this up? Did he receive orders from wherever? I have no clue. It's outrageous. Lhasa is the capital city of all Tibetans, not just the ones who have relatives there. But in addition to all the written and unwritten visa rules, in my mom’s case there now was rule which said “travel restriction for people of Tibetan descent with no relatives in Lhasa”.

What these uncoordinated and sometimes arbitrary regulations, interpretations, announcements and implementations show is that visa handling is in a state of flux, and so the only way to find out for sure is by applying. That's the bottom line.

Outside the embassy gate I ran into yet another Tibetan who gave me a friendly smile. Whether I had seen a group of Tibetans going into the embassy?

I said: “Yes, where are they from?”

“Nangchen“, the man replied, whether I got my permit? 

“Nomads,” I thought and hoped the Drogpas would do okay in there. Imagine the clerk’s face if they came with rancid butter and moldy cheese as gifts - and Khatas to really overdo the ridiculous situation, ha, ha! Humor does help.

What a drag, this permit.

“What is it with these Chinese?” I complained to my partner over Skype in the evening. “So far every person they’ve sent to handle visa requests was a strange guy. Doesn’t famous China bring forth any better officials than that? What inefficiency and what a public relations disaster!”

“It’s like that wherever you go over here as well,” my partner replied. He was in Tibet as usual during this time of the year. "I have to go to the police tomorrow to extend my work permit. It’s people like that wherever you go, what to do?” - He basically said what I already knew: That it was the reality and that we had to deal with it if we wanted to be in Tibet and do work there or visit relatives as in my mom’s case.

He was right. I always felt better after talking to him. He was to me what the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Lion were to Dorothy: A reliable companion when times got rough, someone who helped me get a perspective when things started to become blurred.

We Tibetans are hopeless romantics. “Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high” as Dorothy sings in the musical, there really is such a special land. They can pile up hurdles as high as the sky. People will still try to overcome them if that’s what’s required.

Good luck to everyone who has to make the trip to the Chinese embassy. Make sure your application is airtight. If you feel revulsion, remind yourself that your urge to be in Tibet is stronger than your antipathy towards China, put on the invisible armour and then go and do what needs to be done.

Mountain Phoenix

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Enter The Dragon

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Enter The Dragon

Yes! After weeks of uncertainty, the China visa is finally stuck in my passport! Now there’s nothing that could possibly keep me from boarding that plane taking me and my two little ones towards Tibet this summer. Unless one of us unexpectedly dies, I will drag each and everyone of us onto that plane, come what may, serious!

They don’t say for nothing that you can take a person out of his phayul but you can’t take the phayul out of the person. I tell you I’ve been so homesick.

My eyes hurt from longing to gaze at those snow-capped mountains around my parents’ hometown; my nose is so eager to smell the aroma from the local farmers’ market in the middle of town; my ears want to hear the antique Tibetan dialect spoken; my lungs want to breathe the clear mountain air. I’ve been starving with all my senses and now it’s going to happen.

I’m so happy.

I’m so happy I completely forget the humiliating trips to the Chinese embassy it usually takes in the forefront.

Although I’m a bona fide citizen of this country, I can’t line up with the regular folks at the visa counter of the Chinese embassy. I need to call in advance and make an appointment with that specific guy who is in charge of handling visa requests from Tibetan expats.

Visa applications by regular folks get handled at the counter by clerks from the Foreign Affairs Office. It normally takes four days to issue a regular tourist visa. If you pay an express fee, you get it the same day.

Visa applications by Tibetan expats get handled by a bureaucrat from the Tongzhanbu, somewhere in the back office of the embassy. In my case, the United Front bureaucrat is not even an ethnic Chinese; he’s one of us, probably the saddest part in this whole thing.

So I called the guy up and fixed the appointment. Then I went to the embassy on the agreed day, to apply to be allowed to apply for a permit.

I handed in my application forms plus the sheet providing exact details where I would go, where I would stay, who I would visit, how I was related to them and the telephone numbers to contact.

I asked him when I could expect his call that I could come for the visa application.

“Well, that is not possible to say in advance”, the bureaucrat tells me without looking up from his paperwork.

My head is going: “Don’t mess with me, wannabe.”

But my mouth says: “Oh, just tell me roughly based on your long experience, Gen-la.”

“20 days”, he says again without looking up from the paperwork.

I know he has to refer my application back to the Tongzhanbu headquarter, and the headquarter would refer it to the Tongzhanbu regional office, and the regional office would refer it to the local office, and all the way down the ladder, until it lands on the Tongzhanbu desk of my parents’ hometown. That’s the procedure. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s the way it is.

Let me tell you what is wrong.

The guy is a pervert. He loves to be intransparent, enjoys keeping people in uncertainty and, worst of all, is corrupt.

Two years ago, when I went through the same procedure he said I could only get a visa if I bought the air ticket from him. That would be the new procedure.

I innocently asked why it was considered necessary to introduce a new procedure.

Don’t fall off your chairs.

He said a lot of Tibetans would either not return or not arrive properly, that’s why they introduced this new rule with everyone having to fly with a Chinese airline.

I bet you the Chinese ambassador had no clue what our little zangbao was doing right under his nose. Abuse of authority in its purest form.

Luckily I could talk myself out of the situation by telling him I needed to travel a certain route which would not be covered by “his” ticket. He grudgingly said, ok for this time, but next time, don’t do it like that.

Well, when I went back this time, there was no mentioning of the air ticket. I trust he realised it’s wiser not to engage in irregular activities.

Once when I was living in Tibet, I was summoned by the police.

They came into my classroom in the middle of a lesson. No idea what the students thought when the teacher was taken away by Public Security people.

There were three of them Gong An’s behind a huge desk in that office and I was by myself seated on the opposite side of the desk. I got a severe scolding in Chinese from the fat boss and his two side-kicks for working on a tourist visa. How come I did that? His fist came smashing down on the table. For sure I must know that’s against the law?

Actually the school had told me they would sort the visa thing out when they hired me. But obviously they had not done it at that point. That’s all I could try to say to the police and ask them to speak to the school principal.

Thinking back it could have been a stereotype scene straight from a Bollywood movie, making the police look really shabby: Three of them ganging up on a somewhat naïve young woman who couldn’t even speak well enough to explain herself. The story only got sorted out because a knight-in-shining-armour came to my rescue and managed to explain the whole “case”.

And believe it or not, the villain in my story, the fat police guy, got stabbed in the stomach a few weeks later during a fight in a night club. Bollywood again!

Meanwhile, a few months later, the knight and I got married. Bollywood all over:--)

But at the time though it wasn’t funny. It was scary. The surreal thing remains the utter loss of countenance of these people in that police office and the uneasy feeling that no one seemed to be able control these guys.

Years later, I ran into one of them by accident. He greeted me as if we were old pals, so cordially: “Oh hello, hi, it’s you! When did you come back? We’ve met, remember?”

That stinking rat.

Yet I forced myself to smile back: “Oh yes! I remember! You are so and so. How have you been?”

I hated myself for doing that. It sounded as if I was selling my soul.

But in effect, I was calculating in cold blood: You may need his help sometime down the road. He may know someone whose help you may need to get something done. Even if he doesn’t have any useful connections, he could still harm your projects or people connected to you, so you’d better not give him any reason. It would be unwise to jeopardise chances in the heat of the moment.

I would have loved to just beat him up, but one thing you learn when you enter the dragon is to never allow yourself to get irritated by its raw demeanor. That can completely backfire, so don’t be like Bruce Lee, be a tough cookie.

Be like Sunzi in The Art of War.

Beat them with their own weapons. Use people like the police guys or the embassy guy a thousand times in return. The worse they act, the more focused you become.

There are a lot of them, all members of the much discussed new aristocracy who are complicating the political situation with their vested interest and their feudal mindsets. They thrive in this situation of intransparency and unaccountability.

What they don’t know is that they can’t win. Tibet will always be bigger than all of them combined.

As our Lamas say:

"The sword of hatred is ornamented with the handle of invasion,
A red star has imprisoned the sun and moon,
The high snow-peaked mountains are cloaked in the darkness of a poisonous wind;
The peaceful valleys have been shattered by the sound of artillery.
But the dignity of the Tibetan people competes with the glory of the sky."
Chogyam Trungpa

I only hope I can vaguely remember these lines when I enter the dragon this summer.

Mountain Phoenix


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