We hear little in the West about life in Lhasa, and so it is helpful now and again to speak directly with Tibetans who are living there. The problem is that few of us have the opportunity to do so.
I recently was fortunate to speak with a young Tibetan woman who currently lives in Lhasa, and I thought I would share part of our conversation with my readers.
She had a Masters Degree that she'd obtained from an institution outside of Tibet, was fluent in Chinese, was learning English, and was highly proficient in it already. She was also gainfully employed in Lhasa (because she spoke Chinese) as a teacher. She has already returned, and she says she is doing fine.
She says this because she can say nothing else; her email is monitored, and were she to speak the truth about the conditions in Lhasa currently suffered by the Tibetan people, both she and her family would suffer dire consequences—this is what she told me during our conversation.
A couple of other things she mentioned. Having a picture of the Dalai Lama was considered to be a serious crime and would always be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Pictures of him were available, and some Tibetans had them, but they were always viewed in an atmosphere of fear and terror. Altars were allowed, but of course a Tibetan altar without the image of His Holiness is an incomplete altar indeed. Religious freedom—to practice as you please—does not exist.
Random personal searches by the Chinese police occur regularly, and informers exist at every level of Tibetan society in Lhasa. These informers report to the Chinese government, and they have created a sense of paranoia among the Tibetans that is debilitating.
Chinese students in classes with Tibetans in Lhasa are given preferential treatment; instruction in Tibetan is typically not allowed, although the Tibetan teachers who teach in this environment make every effort to encourage and at times instruct Tibetan students in their mother tongue.
The authoritative Buddhist teachers have largely left Tibet and settled within the monasteries and nunneries in India. So a young Tibetan man or woman who wishes to become a monk or nun and get the authentic teachings must leave Tibet and their family and undertake the perilous passage over the Himalayan mountains into India.
In Lhasa, the unemployed class is almost wholly Tibetan because the Chinese who come to Lhasa come with jobs as an incentive, and Chinese is required for employment. The mass migration of Han Chinese into Tibet and particularly into Lhasa is proceeding apace.
Finally, she told me that hunger in Lhasa is also a problem. She cried as she remembered standing in line recently at a meat market in Lhasa. An elderly Tibetan couple in front of her had waited patiently to buy a small parcel of yak meat, and when they were told the price, they realized they didn’t have enough money to buy it. They were finally able to purchase the bone, after the meat had been trimmed off, and they told my friend that they would simply make a bone broth with it. The prices are set, she explained to me, by the Chinese government, and they reflect the market prices in Beijing, hardly an index that Tibetans living in domestic exile in Lhasa can afford.
While the world is left aghast by the ten fire protests we have recently witnessed in eastern Tibet, we must also remember that the Chinese occupation has had a thorough-going and debilitating effect on the very fabric of Tibetan life, and this often escapes the headlines.
Tibetan life, in all of its complexity and richness, is under constant assault by the Chinese.
That should be the daily headline.
Sign up for Email Updates
