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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Creoles, Lolos and Adventure

Yi women in Ninglang, Yunnan; 1996

The other day when I was getting ready to go to work, I decided to pep up my office attire with a pair of creoles. I haven't worn this kind of earrings in ages. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I suddenly remembered what my grandpa used to say when I wore creoles as a teenager: "You look like a Lolo!”

I never knew what a "Lolo" looked like.

I was born at the other end of the world, far from his Tibetan birthplace and in my family we spoke high Tibetan. I knew the term Loba, which some Tibetans used to refer to American Indians (Amirika'i klopa) - whether it meant the same in my grandpa’s dialect? That’s what I subconsciously assumed until I finally encountered real Lolos face to face on an adventurous journey through the southeastern Tibetan frontier as a young adult.

It all began in a town called Ninglang along the southeastern section of the Sino-Tibetan borderland. We found ourselves a driver and car and began the journey up north. Our destination was Mili, a remote Tibetan area we knew from old travel accounts. I wanted to see for myself the remnants of the palace of the former "lama-king" and take a look at his fabled kingdom which I only knew from old photographs published in the National Geographic ages ago.

A few miles outside the County seat, we saw two local women hitchhiking. Our Beijing Jeep was half-empty, the road was long, and who knew when the next public bus would pass by. So in came two women wearing huge square hats that looked like black kites ready for take-off. Their pleated black skirts were dusty and their gigantic, shapeless brown cloaks smelled of smoke. They also wore huge creoles.

After the women got off at the first hamlet, we had to air the car. The Tibetan driver said, the ladies were "Yizu" (Khotso yidzu red), who lived in the surrounding mountains growing potatoes, corn and poppy which they also smoked.

But "Yizu" was clearly not a Tibetan word. The very sound was revealing. Khotso yidzu red was a total ra-ma-lug sentence: Neither fish nor flesh, a stylistic faux pas, worse than messed up zhesa or honourific language.

I pestered the driver what they call them in Tibetan. After a while he reluctantly said Lolo, only to instruct me the next second not to say the word out loud because it was pejorative and we were on their turf. He bent over and said in a low voice: "Lolo means thief, so we are not supposed to use that expression. Since liberation we have to say Yizu."

Obviously only people who were not "liberated" like my grandpa and myself continued to ignorantly use "Lolo"! It's not a Tibetan term either for that matter but at least it sounded like one.

The road was getting narrower and steeper and we advanced at a snail's pace. Suddenly there was a stretched rope across the lane blocking our advance. How odd, in the middle of the mountains! Then men emerged left and right from the road and said we had to pay a toll otherwise they wouldn't let us pass. To my untrained eye they looked like the average Sichuanese road workers one can see in many places in Kham. But the driver said they were Yizu or Yi people. After negotiating with them for a while, he paid them a sum so they would let us continue our journey.

Lithang River at dusk with the ascending side in Mili territory

Later that day we had to cross a broad creek. The driver said the water is shallow enough to drive through. There was no bridge in sight anyway, only a few houses on both sides. Like in an adventure film our car got stuck in the middle of the creek with the water level high enough to enter the Jeep. We took off our shoes and socks, pulled up our pants and grabbed our backpacks, wading to the other side. Then we went to the first house asking for help. It cost us again but the Yi eventually helped us pull the car out of the water.

After this incident, we kept having problems with the car. Somehow the steering system was impaired and the breaks didn't seem to work properly either. When we reached Mili at Lhakhang it was already dark. We urged the driver to get the car properly serviced the next day, while we were going to explore this fabled "Lama-kingdom".

Mili at Wacheng (Tib. Lhakhang), 1996

Early in the morning we climbed up to Mili Gonchen, the great monastery and palace of the former ruler, the "Lama-king". Historically Mili must have been a Tibetan El Dorado with mining, gold planning, and generally gold constituting a large part of the kingdom's budget. The Mili king was also on friendly terms with the neighbouring Konkaling bandits buying weapons from them and granting them a safe passage after their pillaging tours through the borderlands. Eventually, he was killed by the Nationalists in 1934 in a war over gold prospecting rights.

Since the Mili kings were Gelugpa patriarchs, they had no direct heirs and usually a nephew would succeed. But we couldn't find out whether the ruler, killed in 1934, was succeeded by a male relative and whether there was person in Mili today who continued this position in one way or another.

 Officially "Mili Gaden Shedrup Nampar Gyalwa'i Ling" or in short 

"Mili Gonchen", the great monastery of Mili; photographed up the hill.

Magnificent vistas from above Mili Gonchen

Mili Gonchen, close-up, 1996

After the Communists took control, Mili was made a County of the Liangshan Autonomous Prefecture of the Yi, Sichuan Province. The Miliwas are now governed by "Lolos", so to speak. What would my grandpa have said to this? From what I gather, the Tibetans in the region to this day consider themselves on a higher level of civilization than the Yi. So how well are the Tibetans of Mili able to put through their "nationality-specific" concerns such as language under a Yi Prefecture, I wonder?

In spite of the turbulent history and the ruthless exploitation of Mili's huge natural reserves, most notably forests, it was still a beautiful place. Like in other Tibetan places, the Chinese have been systematically taking away anything that they could turn into money. What they considered useless, such as places of worship, they destroyed. But despite the vandalism, the exploitation and the destruction, I found a land that was majestic, serene and pure. The wounds lie deeper than a casual visitor would be able to recognise.

There weren't any monks to be seen back when we visited and some parts of the monastery were still in ruins but a recent music video shows Mili Gonchen completely rebuilt with an active Sangha and the singer is shown going for mchod mjal. Singers are often role models for young Tibetans. When one of them is shown performing a primordially Tibetan act such as paying respect to the Dharma and its representations, it may give people's resilience a boost in the face of Chinese cultural and political pressure.

Praise to the grand monastery of Mili as a haven of comfort and happiness. The first half of the song is sung in Tibetan. The second half is in Chinese.

It’s remarkable that people rebuilt the monastery and monks are ordained again. After all,  in the old days a grand monastery like Mili demanded ample corvée or ulag and historically the subjects were said to be extremely poor with few rights. The new rulers did their very best for their part to incite people against religious institutions and Buddhist dignitaries. Yet the first visible thing people did when they regained some freedom was to rebuild the monasteries.  

Maybe the common folks of old have always understood Dharma better than many of their so-called "educated" observers including myself. The reverence and devotion has never been about the monastery or a Buddhist dignitary but what they stood for: The teaching of the Buddha. People knew all along it is precious and must be protected at any cost.

Spectacular mountain views greeted us when we left Mili descending on the winding road to Yongning. We finally reached the plains at dusk when our Beijing Jeep totally conked out. Neither the breaks nor the steering wheel were responding. We drove straight into a tree and the car toppled over into the roadside ditch. It was the shock of a lifetime. Had this happened a few hours earlier up in the mountains of Mili, it would have been our last hour. The car would have plunged into a gaping abyss and our time on earth would have been up. Nobody got injured but the thought gripped us at the marrow. 

Luckily the accident happened at the entrance of a small hamlet. As it was getting dark, we crawled out of the car, collected our belongings and found shelter at a near-by farmhouse where we spent the night.

We reached Yongning hitchhiking with local farmer on a rattling motor rickshaw the next day. Located at a scenic lake called Luguhu, the place surprisingly had a functioning Tibetan Buddhist monastery. It was built in Sino-Tibetan style with monks who spoke Tibetan. We couldn't tell whether they were real Tibetans or assimilated Mosos who converted to Buddhism. The Moso were the dominant ethnic group in this area. Unlike the Yi, the Moso felt much closer.

"Wild West" street scene in Yongning/Thalam, fall 1996

At the monastery it became clear, that the town called Yongning on official maps was what the Tibetans refer to as Thalam (mtha' lam) and lake Luguhu was something like Latha Tso in our language. The monastery's official Tibetan name was Thalam Trame Gompa. It turned out to be another Gelugpa outpost affiliated with the three Densa in Lhasa.

In the old days, you could find monks in Sera, Drepung and Ganden that came from border areas like Thalam. Since "liberation" none of the Tibetan Buddhist monks from the outlying Tibetan are allowed to study at the three great monastic universities in Lhasa. Only Lord Buddha knows how they manage to reach the required level of studies. Some escape to the Buddhist institutions in India to complete their religious studies. Upon return to their home monasteries in Tibet however, they are met with suspicion and are often given a hard time to teach.

We also learned from the monks in Thalam that the beautifully curved cordillera that hugged the lake on one side was Thalam Senge Karmo or "the white snowlion of Thalam",  considered the local protector deity or yullha of the region. Now Shidag or Yullha are about as kosher Tibetan as it can get. Unlike Buddhism, which is imported, the belief in local protector deities is an authentic Tibetan creation. Every place in Tibet proper had its local protector deity. To witness this broad outreach of Tibetan culture was simply amazing.

Mountain in the background: Thalam Senge Karmo, seat of 

the local protector deity of the land

The last stop on our great journey was Lijiang, the centre of the Naxi people whom the Tibetans call Jang and whose city they call Jang Sadam. The place is mentioned in the Gesar epic, so many Tibetans have heard about it. I don't know though whether they connect it with modern-day Lijiang.

Of all the ethnic groups on Tibet's southeastern border perhaps the one the Tibetans feel closest to or least distant from are the Tibeto-Burman Naxi. Mixed marriages between the two groups occurred frequently in the old days, the common pattern being a Tibetan trader husband with a Naxi wife. Lijiang was an important town in the tea trade between Tibet and China. We can also read in Bapa Phuntsog Wangyal biography written by Goldstein that when the Nationalists were looking for Communists like him, he went into hiding to Lijiang where he had a relative that was married to a Naxi noblewoman.

Perhaps intermarriage was also easy because many Naxi used to practice what looks like a form of Bon. Their religion is officially called "Dongba" which is another Chinese linguistic corruption and conceptual inadequacy based on the Tibetan ston pa  ("Buddha"). The Tibetan original is used to refer to Buddha Shakyamuni (Tonpa Shakyathupa) but also to Tonpa Sherab, the founder of Bon, whom the Chinese inconsistently render as Dingbuo Shiluo. - My hair is beginning to stand on end again. Welcome to Babylon! 

Lijiang’s Old Town was touristic already when we visited years ago. If you go there today you'll probably be put off at the hordes of noisy Chinese tourists clogging the Old Town with its lovely creeks and cozy arcades. The town seems to get more and more crowded every year.

If you are interested in Naxi culture you could attend a concert of the famous Naxi orchestra which was founded in the early 1980s to save Naxi culture from extinction. But don't expect too much. Ancient Naxi music seems to consist mainly of "ancient" musicians in uniforms made of Chinese brocade and playing musical instruments that sound Chinese. The pieces are said to date back to the Yuan dynasty. Whatever, a Naxi element in the music is hard to detect. I suspect it's more of a tourist cash machine than genuine Naxi culture. Or Naxi culture is the same as mainstream Chinese? Only the Naxi know.

We didn't dwell in the commercialized Old Town and explored the surrounding area on bicycle which was lovely. There were several Karma Kagyu monasteries in the Lijiang plains we visited. It is said the Kagyupa fled south after the rise of the Gelugpa in Tibet proper. What began with a tragic escape though could become a "market advantage" today: These monasteries are historically established outposts of Tibetan culture and perfectly positioned to introduce Tibetan Buddhism to the interested Chinese public. Moreover since they are institutionally less rigidly organized than their Gelug brothers in their huge monasteries, these Lamas are flexible to travel and teach the Dharma. Hopefully they can make the most of their situation to be good ambassadors of Tibetan culture and benefit the local people.

As a child and also during adolescence I was always under the impression that there is a clear border with Tibet on one side and China on the other. But as it turned out, between our two countries' southeastern border was a whole ethnic potpourri of people like the Yi, the Moso, the Naxi, and again groups like the Lisu, all probably with their own understanding of who they are and where they belong. And I haven't even begun looking into the northeastern frontier. Do we do these groups justice when we map the places where they live as "Tibet"?

Historically the Tibetans have looked down on the Tibeto-Burman groups along their border, considering themselves superior in civilization. But times have changed. Everyone is equal now and deserves respect. Are we inadvertently doing onto them what the Chinese are doing onto us?

I also wonder how the textbooks used in the Tibetan-run schools in India today describe the multiethnic Tibetan periphery. School books are relevant in as much as they reflect the view of a government. These books influence children's perspective of how they perceive the world. So does the Tibetan leadership have a clear idea which areas and cities can be considered Tibetan today? What about the other ethnic groups who sometimes live in the same place? Where does Tibet stop and where does China begin?

Extract of Google Maps: The southeastern Sino-Tibetan fronter travelled in late 1996: Ninglang- Mili - Thalam - Lijiang.

My dad used to say the power of the Lhasa government ended at the Drichu, the upper reach of the Yangzi, which maps show in Chinese as Jinsha Jiang. He used to say it with a sense of pride: "The Tibetan areas east of the Drichu were free and ruled themselves!" If there was any authority they respected at all, it was their Lamas.

But what sounded great to people like my dad is a curse today because at the Drichu is where the Chinese drew the line. All Tibetan areas to the east did not make it into the "Tibet Autonomous Region" and are now cut off and incorporated into the neighbouring Chinese provinces so that we have this irritating situation where a large part of Tibet is not Tibet. As a nation we paid dearly for historical Lhasan negligence and shortsighted Khampa pride.

It's been a while since I've seen some of these places. A lot has changed in the meantime, I'm sure. But even a hundred years after Rock, Goullart, Kingdon Ward, Amundsen and whosoever, my fascination with this part of the Tibetan highlands endures. 

The next travel project is to explore the northeastern border up in Amdo.

For the moment however, the only type of adventure I am experiencing is trying to solve unforeseen problems at the office and keeping up pace with the children at home. My daily routine is domesticated and predictable. But whenever I wear creoles, I tell you, a touch of real adventure is in the air and I fancy feeling a wild, non-conformist streak in me.

Perhaps I was a Yi in a former lifetime, who had interactions with Tibetans, and then came back as one? 

Buddhist rebirth theory would explain the attraction to this corner of the highlands where Tibet has stopped to be totally Tibetan, but China has not yet properly begun.

Mountain Phoenix

Present Arm-Chair Traveller

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Reality Bites

"Mami, zidang!" Our 10-year old exclaimed all of a sudden. I turned my head: "La nga'i norbu? Kharé dug?" The kid pointed to a photo of children in the school we visited in Tibet last summer. Together with pictures of Guilin and the Great Wall it hung under the header "China".

Continueing in Tibetan, our child said: "Why did they put the picture under China?"

"You should ask Joanna why she put it up under China", her dad chuckled back in Tibetan.

Joanna was a young, enormously energetic and talented colleague from work who had just returned from a six-month leave where she traveled several Asian countries. Among her destinations was the small Tibetan school we helped support. Joanna spent two weeks there working with the pupils and left an exemplarily positive impression on teachers and students alike. Now she was organising an "I'm back" party in the form of a fund-raising dinner to help the school. She had her travel pictures and memorabilia neatly arranged by travel country: Thailand, Indonesia, India and China.

On the whole, the time we spent at the event was worthwhile: At the end of the evening, there was a nice amount of money for the school and we also made one or two interesting contacts which could be useful for further projects.

After the kids went to sleep that night though, we parents had to come back to our 10-year old's "China incident". It pointed to a basic dilemma our children eventually had to learn to reconcile: To us Tibet was separate from China. It would never cross our minds to consider ourselves "Chinese". Tibet is Bod and China is Rgya. To us, the two are as separate – and as equal - as France and England. But how to cope with the external world for which there sometimes was no difference due to the political reality?

When my partner went to Tibet with his mother the first time in the early 1980s, China had just begun to open up. All his relatives came to meet them at the entry point. On their journey to the Tibetan areas, they had to cross Chinese territory in a multiple-day train ride during which he boycotted the food served leaving his mom amused and the relatives in Mao suits puzzled at the kid from abroad. They didn't understand that this was a political statement by a young, patriotic Tibetan: "I'd rather starve than eat Rgya-mi Khala – food from the enemy!"

He wasn’t keen on seeing places of worship razed to the ground, children indoctrinated, forests cut down, rivers diverted, mineral deposits exploited and his culture suffocated by swamps of reckless outsiders. Among his peers who went to Tibet, some returned so heart-broken they never recovered. But he was lucky to manage: He worked his way out of the initial shock and the aversion, got himself enrolled in a Chinese university and acquainted himself with their language and their culture to the extent where he was able to live and work in a country he called his own but that was controlled by the Chinese. Every day was full of challenges.

Though outwardly, he had arranged himself with the overlords to perfection, he never changed on the inside. By the time we met, he was a person with multiple identities. To a Tibetan born in the West like myself he appeared like "one of us". But at the same time when the situation required it, he maneuvered smoothly like a local Tibetan using the same speech, the same specific expressions complete with a personal network, seamlessly fitting in as if he had never lived anywhere else.

I'm thinking maybe the adaptation process he underwent was similarly as defining as the experience made by earlier Tibetans from the frontier like Gedun Choephel in the old days.

Gedun Choephel said Tibetans from border areas like his native Amdo, were more patriotic by nature than the ones in the central areas because the former lived face to face with "the other" whereas the latter in those days probably never had met a Chinese person to begin with.

According to Gedun Choephel, the sense of identity was more pronounced in frontier Tibetans because of daily interaction and confrontation with the other: You begin to think harder about your origins, your history and what sets you apart. It's probably not said for nothing that the motor for his famous book on Tibetan history was his nationalism. In any event, over the years it really appeared as if the more my partner adapted to Chinese customs on the outside, the stronger his Tibetan core became on the inside.

Once when we were queuing up at a fast-food chain for lunch, a lady asked him where he got his "really cool" shoulder bag from. Quick like a shot I heard him say: 

"From Delhi!"

"Why did you say Delhi?" I was there in Beijing when he got it.

"She may think we're Chinese," he said apologetically, adding with a chuckle: "I hate being mistaken for a Rgya-mi!"

Still the same kid on the inside refusing food from "the enemy":--)

Yeah, if we must choose between China and India, the latter seems like the lesser evil. The Dalai Lama even says: "India has more right to claim Tibet than China."

Doesn't that sound like servile flattery?

No country has any right to claim Tibet, full-stop.

During a Buddhist teaching to Indians earlier this year he also said: "India is the teacher, Tibet is the student." 

It's another statement that mentally subordinates our country.

Tibet owes India in many ways, that's true. As the Holy Land where the Buddha Dharma originated and by the kindness they have shown in granting safe asylum to our people in their hour of need, India will always be special to the Tibetans. But does that mean it's required to ingratiate ourselves with India? Where's our sense of national self-esteem? 

Maybe it's just me but I'm under the impression the Dalai Lama is saying more weird things lately. Like the other day, in front of a group of Chinese students, where said he is partly a "Marxist". In the past, he used to say he is a "Buddho-Marxist".

I have often wondered whether the Dalai Lama has advisors. Marxism and its practical outgrowth communism have social justice and the equal distribution of wealth as their goal, which is good. But the method to achieve this goal is rooted in animosity: Hate-filled "class struggle" killed millions and in Tibet today, the communists sometimes still act as red as they were in their reddest day under Mao. As a Tibetan, I find it disturbing to hear our leader happily label himself a Marxist when tens of thousands of our people were killed under the communist regime and many continue to suffer mistreatment.

The Dalai Lama flirting with Marxism is also troubling from a Buddhist perspective: The Buddhist ideal, and especially so the Mahayana form that Tibetans practice, is the peaceful Bodhisattva who works his way up to serve others based on improving oneself. The Communist ideal is an equal society created through violence based on destroying others. Superficially there are shared commonalities but fundamentally Buddhism and Communism are radically different. For a great Buddhist leader like the Dalai Lama, who is also revered as a Bodhisattva, to say he is partly a Marxist is extremely bizarre.

Now I don't know how the remark came across to those Chinese students and maybe all the Dalai Lama wanted was be on good terms with them - just like with the Indians. But again, it's unnecessary that the leader of the Tibetans cozies up to either Indians or Chinese. We do struggle with a lot of problems, homegrown as well as externally imposed, but there is no need to dpal las bshad anyone. We should just be ourselves.

Nobody wore Mao suits anymore by the time my siblings and I saw Tibet the first time in the early 1990s. But a bunch of Mafiosi-like United Front officials with dark sunglasses kept following us around wherever we went. In the end, they invited us for a meal. While our parents thought it would be wise to accept, we kids thought that's totally unworthy. We were not going to be "bought by the Chinese". When our parents insisted, we deliberately smoked throughout the whole meal so that we would not have to touch their rotten Rgyami Khala while these guys helped themselves to a free meal.

We were so angry at "the Chinese" that towards the end of the trip, we brought all our garbage carefully collected in order not to pollute the environment in Tibet, back to the entry-point in China where we stuffed it into one of the closets in our hotel room exclaiming: "Take this, shameless imperialists!"

Today I can relate to the experience as a funny anecdote but back then everything was serious and nobody laughed. I remember being angry most of the time: Angry at the Chinese for being there uninvited, angry at the Tibetans for mixing Chinese words into the Tibetan language, angry at the Tibetans working for the Chinese government - there was so much anger in me it overshadowed the entire experience putting me in a bad mood most of the time unable to appreciate much. When people back home asked whether I had a good time in Tibet, I didn't know what to say. If I said yes, people could think I was happy with Chinese rule. If I said no, people could think I was a spoilt kid estranged from her roots who couldn't handle the poverty there.

I was under shock, unable to gather a coherent thought. The Tibet picture in my head and the real Tibet I encountered were worlds apart. I went there thinking I was prepared for the worst but the reality was beyond my imagination.

After many months, I could somehow recollect myself: I had only been there for a few weeks as a visitor, I told myself. Tourists who visit a country for a short time don't return with the impression either that they now got a complete picture of the place. My impression had to be incomplete. The conclusion was that I needed to go back and live there for some time in order to get a better picture.

Call it the desperate human attempt not to lose hope in the face of hopelessness. Whatever the psychological explanation, the insight saved me from going into a depression and so I went back over the years with the new awareness that when I expect to see failure, destruction and despair, I would and more than I prefer. The way we regard something influences the way we feel about it, this much I know today.

Letting my anger overtake my whole being hasn't change the Chinese after all while it totally harmed myself: Subconsciously looking for a confirmation of Chinese suppression wherever I went and the chronic complaining made me sick. The negativity spread inside me like a cancer and disrupted any learning, attention or judgment.

I still can't stand the Chinese in Tibet, no use to pretend. The aversion sits so deep it will take a whole lot of well-intended Tonglen "exchanging-self-for-others" meditation sessions to even start changing that. But with time I also realised that my resentment is entirely my problem because the Chinese couldn't care less!

When I gradually managed to broaden my focus, I began to notice that there were a few groups and individuals in Tibet who, operating under the same constraints as everyone else somehow prevailed. I was beginning to see something like light at the end of the tunnel.

There were people who did not succumb to the widespread gambling and drinking, cheating, corrupting and chasing after quick money. A small group was doing things differently and better. They protected their positive outlook, their enthusiasm for good work, their respectful manners and their faith in the Dharma no matter what was going on around them. They raised their children based on these values. They are teachers, farmers, sales people, nomads, clerics and even government workers. Their strength was the determination to accept the challenge, play by the rules of the Chinese, beat them at their game without compromising their Tibetan core, and in the course, reinvent themselves. Those were the people who became our role models. On an individual level, the way these people led their lives to us appeared like the ultimate symbol of Tibetan defiance.

We grew up in the politicized environment of exiles and had this inflated view that you sometimes have when you learn about something only from hearsay. With no direct contact to Tibet, it was psychologically enormously important to gain some sort of certainty about where we were headed. For us, the Tibetan community abroad and Dharamsala provided that certainty and the only dimension we were able to perceive was political.

But when you live in Lhasa or Chamdo, you have to cooperate with the Chinese-dominated system out of tactical necessity. People's views were coined by pragmatism and their decisions based upon what would bring a direct advantage to their daily lives: Issues of primary concern were decent housing, satisfactory jobs and a good education for their children – things which the Tibetans abroad were unable to influence. The latter exposed real problems in Tibet which was important, but there was little they could do about them. Seeing the impotence now was deeply unsatisfactory and going back to our old lives felt awkward. The expat gatherings that functioned as Tibet surrogate during our youth began to feel alien and contentwise stuck in time.

It was just as unpleasant for us parents to see the Tibetan school listed under "China" at that fundraising dinner, but while we adults had learned from experience to do the difficult balancing act and bear the tension, the children stood at the beginning. They had to learn to deal with the reality.

So we have been careful when speaking about China and the Chinese around them. We explain to them that the Chinese believe Tibet is a part of their country and that they believe they helped the Tibetans out of poverty. It doesn't mean we accept the Chinese position, but it's crucial not to deny it.

The children know very well from their visits to Tibet that the Chinese are forcing themselves on the Tibetans who have to put up with the situation because they are weaker. The children also know it's not right without us needing to tell them a whole lot about how the Chinese stole our country and chased away its rightful ruler. The kids know.

They are learning at home and in school to help each other out, that the stronger ones should help the weaker ones, the older guide the younger, they have things like "peacemaker days" in school where they learn to solve their disagreements via dialogue and mediation. So it's brutal on kids to discover that the political reality in the world of the grownups can be the pure contrary: not the rule of law but the rule of force with the mightier controlling reality.

But at the same time, might is not automatically right: We know Tibet was an independent country. We should have done more to protect our sovereignty while we had the chance, true. Now we are faced with the bitter reality that we lost control. But we deal with the situation outwardly while knowing inwardly that a lie does not become truer even when repeated a million times.

In this regard, the physical encounters with Tibet and the people there seem to have given our kids an unprecedented boost. During a parents-teacher meeting once, the kindergarten teacher told us that our child made a huge step in development after the summer holidays. The kid seemed more at ease, more assertive and outgoing than before. The teacher's observation came as a confirmation that the carefully orchestrated exposure to Tibet was good for the children.

Tibet makes you become grounded, makes you take up your natural space by giving you all its power where you become confident, forward-looking and certain that opportunities will come your way. It is very powerful. It's not like life is without problems all of a sudden but you begin to take control rather than feeling powerless.

It kind of works on us parents, so we hope it will somehow work on the kids too.

Mountain Phoenix














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