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National Geographic : 2002 Apr
Contents
Buddhism is a constant, overriding presence, involving never ending rituals to assure good fortune and, ultimately, rebirth. In Tibet, as in all Buddhist countries, the faithful erect stupas and place relics inside them to bring good to their lives. Norbu's shrine was one of thousands of religious structures destroyed by Red Guards during the decade-long Cultural Revolution launched in 1966; by the time it was over, youthful communist zealots had killed millions throughout China-including tens of thousands of Tibetans. But Norbu represents the stubborn side of Tibetans. He and some of his neighbors recently won permission from the local government to reconstruct the stupa. "They told us that if we were willing to pay for it, we could do as we liked." Now freshly whitewashed and gilt trimmed, it resembles a giant upended ice-cream cone, gleaming in the brilliant sunlight. FOR ME NORBU'S EXPERIENCES suggested the first tentative emer gence of what could become a significant change in Tibet. More than a decade has passed since I was last there, after the Tianan men Square massacre in 1989 and a previous civil uprising in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. Martial law was in effect then, and foreigners weren't permitted to travel outside the city, where drab concrete Chinese build ings were already overwhelming traditional earthen and stone Tibetan architecture. This time, though, I traveled more than 4,000 miles throughout the Tibetan Plateau, where 85 percent of the people live as subsistence herdsmen and farmers. I also made side trips to Nepal, a funnel for escapees, and India, where 100,000 Tibetans live. There I spoke with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan god-king who fled Lhasa in March 1959 and established a government-in-exile in northern India (see page 16). The 130,000 Tibetan exiles around the world still dream of the Dalai Lama marching triumphantly home to a newly independent Tibet. This unrealistic hope has been weakening ever since 1965 when China separated most of the Tibetan Plateau from the rest of China and designated it the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). Parts of the east ern Tibetan states of Kham (where Norbu lives) and Amdo were made into so-called autonomous prefectures and grafted onto the Chinese provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan, and Yunnan. In reality neither the TAR nor the prefectures enjoy autonomy-they are as much under Beijing's thumb as any part of China, with dissent banned and dis senters punished. For this reason I have changed the names of most Tibetans in the story. As with other Westerners, what I anticipated finding in Tibet today was heavily conditioned by the exile government's well-organized infor mation machinery. The exiles admit almost no progress back in their homeland, and I expected a people and culture in deep decay. Finding Norbu and others like him, therefore, came as a great surprise. They are by any standard middle class, a breed of Tibetans that barely existed historically and is all but unknown to the outside world today. Beyond these individuals I was also surprised to find signs of the TIBETANS
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