Life in Lhasa

...The peculiar ground rules the Chinese impose on visitors required me to begin my one-person tour by spending three days at a designated hotel...

...Over 40 of the priests were killed and hundreds were imprisoned...

...A stream of vehicles soon passed by...

...Once inside I sat quietly for a while, letting the peaceful gong- and horn-accompanied chanting of the students wash over me...

...I was met there by my guide, a depressed young Tibetan woman suffering a cold...

...and all of the West is, without question, the country of Great Tibet...

...was surprised that there was no traffic at all...

...To comfort a little Tibetan boy who was crying, he gave him a picture of the current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso...

...The carvings that are accessible have been colored in reds, blues, oranges, and pinks...

...Tibetans waiting on line to see the images in the various chapels glared at him and muttered among themselves...

...The office of Tibet's exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, estimates that Beijing's agents have killed 1.2 million Tibetans since 1950...

...I bought one used in the Black Hat Dance...

...On the mountainsides I could see the remains of many small monasteries Mao's minions destroyed in the late 1960s and early '70s...

...At present about 300 monks live in Ganden...

...In any case, the young Swiss immediately felt a hand on his shoulder...

...We passed lean cows, fat-tailed sheep, an occasional yak, and plump black pigs...

...There shall be no sudden alarms and the word 'enemy' shall not be spoken...

...He was able to talk them down to $200...

...More livestock seemed to be grazing than when 1 was last in Tibet...

...She slept and Eric Clapton sang "I Shot the Sheriff" on the tape deck as we drove into town (my "package" included a car and driver...

...Next came a pair of trucks carrying soldiers with rifles at the ready who formed seemingly empty squares...

...When I asked him what they were accused of, he became so upset that his English collapsed...

...In the fields people threshed and winnowed...

...After the devastation, Tibetans sought with great patience to rebuild it, but the Chinese regularly either arrested them or punished those involved by raising their rents and taxes...

...But just as I started talking to a Tibetan man walking near me, sirens blared behind us...

...So 1 was especially looking forward to the breathtaking view of the Himalayas that is normally the highlight of the flight to Lhasa...

...Otherwise the Barkhor is unchanged...

...Apparently it had been smashed with a rifle butt: another casualty of the Cultural Revolution...

...Then, I went off myself to the Barkhor, a street circling the Jokhang that is both a market and a khora, or place of ritual circumambula-tion...

...But they remained invisible—albeit due to cloud cover, not the emissions of Chengdu's industrial plants...

...tawny haystacks stood out against the walls of whitewashed houses...

...The Chinese, at the time of the Cultural Revolution, told the Tibetans their decorations were a mark of frivolousness and scolded them for lacking the high seriousness of Communists...

...There five traffic police yelled at him in Chinese and threatened that, unless he paid them $500, they would put him in a cell already filled to overflowing with Tibetans...

...I saw many Bodhisattvas and Buddhas, as well as images of Tibet's patron, Chenresis, the deity each Dalai Lama is thought to reincarnate, and of Guru Rinpoche, who reintroduced Buddhism to Tibet and Bhutan...

...Tibetan independence ceased in 1950, when China annexed it...

...In addition, they make masks that serve as decorations in monasteries and are part of the ceremonial dances performed during festivals...

...Pilgrims gathered in front of the cliff were meditating, burning sweet-smelling juniper branches, or touching their foreheads to the representations they could reach...

...The seller, in offering it to me for $ 1,000, rightly noted that it would cost two or three times more in Nepal, where the best Tibetan art objects are often found...

...Here charming Tibetan houses have their window frames painted with eternal knots, flowers and stylized clouds, and plants bloom in tin cans on the window ledges...

...The students were like their counterparts everywhere: Some were intent on their lesson...

...My guide went into the Jowo Sakyamuni chapel to worship before an image of the 12-year-old Buddha that sits swathed in offering scarves and surrounded by flickering lamps...

...As the whole procession headed for the edge of town, I asked the man beside me what was going on...

...With the Himalayas looming in the distance, we traveled through beautiful farm country along the Kyi Chu River...

...The World Wildlife Fund appears to have succeeded over the last three years in either stopping this trade or driving it off the main streets...

...The Chinese, however, continued to keep a tight rein on what, sincel965,they have called the Tibet Autonomous Region...

...Over the past few years, Beijing has poured such a huge number of Han Chinese into Tibet that these immigrants now comprise 85 per cent of Lhasa's population...

...the women lighting yak butter lamps as silver bells on their belts tinkled...

...The photos of the exiled leader that tourists often pass out are more precious to Tibetans than the ones the Chinese government allows to be sold in the Barkhor...

...A group of cars trailed by a phalanx of perhaps a dozen motorcycles, each with a sidecar bearing an officer in a neatly pressed uniform, followed...

...In the lead was an official car transporting one bemedaled officer...

...On my lap sat the mask I had bought—a yellow skull grinning unnervingly, crowned with smaller skulls...

...Meanwhile, I moved on to the perimeter of the central court, the Kyilkhor Thil...

...I subsequently heard that although this harvest was exceptional, there might very well be food shortages...

...A few days later I flew to Nepal...

...Because Tenzin Gyatso is outside the country, Tibetans feel the travelers' pictures bring them closer to him...

...Within a decade, Beijing began to ignore the Tibetans' renewed restoration efforts and, in fact, eventually took credit for what they accomplished...

...Peter's, WANDA BLISS is the pseudonym of a freelance writer who often visits Tibet?and would like to continue doing so...

...The Tibetan farmers are forced to sell the fruit of their labors to Beijing at a fixed rate...

...What a different place Tibet would be if every road again ran past brightly-painted, mountain-perched monasteries flying prayer flags...

...Upon reaching the new square the Chinese have built in front of the Potala?sacrificing a large Tibetan neighborhood in the process...

...When it was attacked by Mao's cadres in the '70s with artillery and vast amounts of dynamite, over 2,000 priests lived there...

...In those initial few days my guide dutifully took me to see the main sights...

...I made the khora of Ganden with my guide's mother...

...The rebuilt structures look pathetically raw in their new paint...

...Shaped like a tiered pyramid, it was intricately contrived and decorated with small turquoise stones...

...One sidled over to me and whispered angrily, "Chinese bad...

...we were two grandmas making the rounds...

...There a Chinese man was having his picture taken in front of one of the turquoise- and coral-ornamented principal statues...

...It bristles with an astounding variety of items for sale—everything from sheepskin coats, hand-knitted wool underwear, khatas (the scarves offered to holy images), locally made jewelry, American ballpoint pens, and Chinese as well as Indian cosmetics, to "antiques...

...The two men pointed out the holy spots to her, indicated the size of the landholdings Ganden once owned, and told her stories about Tsongkhapa...

...Afterward I noticed that it was totally caved in on one side...

...my attention was caught by two historic tablets enclosed in a walled area outside the structure...

...On my previous visit, one shop had a tiger skin hanging up for sale outside its door...

...ONE MORNING some days later, everybody in the guesthouse I had moved to who had been out early commented about how few people they saw and how little traffic there was, except for police and Army vehicles at crossroads...

...All of the East isthe country of Great China...

...Similarly, the chapels have a sparse appearance...

...The change of heart sprang from a realization that the renovation would attract large numbers of Western tourists, along with their foreign exchange...

...A different kind of artistry can be found in the maze of small streets one easily drifts into from the Barkhor...

...Thus in October 1987, when Tibetans demonstrated against their rulers and attempted to free monks taken prisoner following previous demonstrations, they were fired upon and several were fatally wounded...

...since it is the Tibetan people who donate the turquoise, corals, gems, gold, and silver that adorn the images and altars...

...But its Chinese rulers are not likely to leave soon: According to Yin Fatang, a Communist Party official, the largest uranium deposits in the world are believed to be in the vicinity of Lhasa...

...others, mostly smaller boys, giggled and made faces at each other across the room, or, of course, grinned at the tourist in their midst...

...The monk blessed us both by touching it to our bowed backs...

...Some make the pilgrimage around it walking, some in a prostrate position...

...For five days I never saw the sun, or more than a few blocks ahead of me, because of the thick air pollution...

...No one knows what has happened to the treasures and historical records housed in the other 90 per cent of the building, once also a monastery and school...

...Only then could I move to a considerably cheaper guest house...

...I was one of about eight Westerners on board...

...At my request, we finished off the day in the workshop of a friend the Tibetan had told me about...

...These trophies are much prized by the Chinese...

...He said the trucks held two young Tibetans who were being taken out to be shot...

...The harvest was in full swing, and tractors pulled carts loaded with grain...

...My guide translated my request to a monk, who carefully removed a small, exquisitely beautiful silver chorten from a cabinet...

...Whether you are a native or a foreigner in Tibet, you are at the mercy of the whims of the Chinese authorities...

...The text declares: "Tibet and China shall keep the country and frontiers of which they are now in possession...

...They were surrounded by electric rice cookers, stereos and other comforts of "civilization" they were bringing to their new homes...

...In a Friendship store, too, I had seen a second tiger pelt fitted with a plastic tongue and fangs...

...Another group of cars brought up the rear...

...Its front courtyard became a cafeteria, and the monks' living quarters were taken over by the Lhasa Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference...

...It belonged to a traffic policeman who proceeded to arrest him, put him in handcuffs and march him to a small police station nearby...

...The rest of the passengers were Chinese taking advantage of Southwest China Airlines' lax carry-on rules...

...Understandably, he was so shaken by the experience that he couldn't wait to leave the country...

...The city's new airport terminal, for all of its bleak poured concrete, is a decided improvement over the old one, whose main features were dirt and a frigid draft, thanks to broken and ill-fitting windows...

...The owner and an assistant make clay statues of great delicacy that portray Tibetan deities...

...In the early 1980s the Jokhang and a number of other temples were restored...

...When I returned to the guesthouse my fellow travelers were gathered around a young Swiss man, listening to the tale of his horrific day...

...As we proceeded she acquired two elderly monks, one of them wearing a shovel-like hat to protect him from the sun...

...He must have been of some importance, for generally only monks are allowed within this court...

...On a table full of such collectibles I saw a large piece of brass decoration that had been torn from a temple...

...One, erected in 1794, bears instructions in the event of a smallpox outbreak...

...Henceforth on neither side shall there be waging war nor seizing of territory...

...When my guide returned, we ascended to the roof of the Jokhang, where an apartment kept in readiness for the Dalai Lama rises cupola-like, its balcony adorned with flowers...

...He took me first to Chakpo Ri, a cliff face carved with more than 5,000 figures, some dating back to the seventh century...

...Ten per cent of the 1,000-room structure is open to the public...

...A more violent police attack occurred at the Jokhang in March 1989, aftermonks protested the Chinese intruding into the Monlam Chenmo, or Great Prayer ceremony...

...At the center of the court monks were chanting and blowing into long horns, their thermoses of yak butter tea beside them...

...We ended up spending the day together...

...Nevertheless, today the Jokhang's front courtyard is perpetually full of life...

...In the building called Serdhung Lha-khang I asked to see a chorten—a multi-tiered vessel often containing relics?that I had been told held the tooth of Lobzang Trakpa Tsongkhapa, founder of the Gelugpa order...

...The other, much older, dates back to 823 and records a treaty between Tibet's King Ralpachen and China's Tang Emperor...

...For our second stop, my new guide led me through a bewildering warren of streets to a monastic college I would never be able to find again...

...At the Jokhang temple, Tibet's St...

...THE NEXT DAY my guide, her two-year-old son in his split pants (the Tibetan answer to diapers), her mother, and I piled into the car at my disposal and set out for nearby Ganden, one of the six great monasteries of the Gelugpa monks...

...I watched nomad pilgrims moving about —the men in homemade boots, with prayer boxes attached at their sides...

...During Mao's Cultural Revolution the Jokhang was transformed into the Lhasa City Municipal Hotel...

...He had gone out to the park where Norbulingka, the summer palace of the Dalai Lama, is located...

...So I was prepared to find myself almost alone when I walked along Beijing Street on my way to the Potala Palace, a renowned architectural marvel and the former residence of the Dalai Lama...