lhasa, tibetan and chinese

Arriving in Lhasa after an absence of nearly ten years, two major changes stand out immediately. One is the degree to which Lhasa has been turned into a Chinese town. The other is how many monks and nuns were in evidence.

With the exception of the old Tibetan area surrounding the Jokhang, Lhasa seems more Chinese than Tibetan. Passing through its streets, one sees larger Chinese shop signs and hears more Chinese spoken than Tibetan. In fact, Lhasa often has the feel of a standard colonial outpost. Much as did India under the British rule, Tibet attracts young men with economic ambitions coming to make money to support themselves and their families back home in China. As did the British in India, Chinese may lived their whole lives in Tibet without ever bothering to learn the local language.

Meanwhile, even as Lhasa is increasingly Sinified, its Buddhist heart is very much in evidence. It is often said that the practice and study of Dharma is far livelier in eastern Tibet, mainly for political and historical reasons. The occupation of Tibet by China employs, among others, the tried and true colonial method of divide and conquer, and part of that process involves dividing the area of Tibet into several different Chinese provinces. Western and central Tibet lie within the boundaries of the so-called Tibetan Autonomous Region or TAR, while Kham and Amdo were politically amputated and grafted onto the provinces of Qinghai and Sichuan. In these two provinces to the east of the TAR, Tibetans are politically grouped with other ethnic minorities and thus receive less intense scrutiny than they do in provinces where they are the single largest rivals to Chinese hegemony.

Nevertheless, Buddhist practice is certainly alive in central Tibet as well. (see Christian's photo above of public teachings we came across at Ramoche temple in Lhasa). We found the debate yards of Sakya and Sera monasteries vibrant with the sounds of monks sharpening their understanding of their textual study. Elsewhere, we happened upon a small monastery whose abbot was conferring a highest tantric initiation that very day, his monks having just completed the corresponding sand mandala. Unlike similar initiations I had seen in Tibetan monasteries in exile, every single monk, even the young monks in the back rows, who had earlier been playing and giggling, evidently knew all the complex mudras and performed them correctly with great solemnity once the initiation had begun. Although this was not primarily a tantric college, it was clear that this abbot had taken great pains to train these young monks.

Thanks again to Christian Luczanits for the marvelous panoramic photo of Lhasa that heads this entry...