My Last Morning in Tibet

It is morning and the power is still out. I’m tempted to ask if this happens every March 10.

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In the morning, I was in the jeep with the driver and my tour guide on the way to the airport. Driving along Beijing Road, we saw many green military trucks and green-clad soldiers, some still wearing riot gear helmets. Gyantzing told me that monks at Drepung Monastery (which we had wandered around earlier in the week) fought with the military, and laymen joined in. The same thing happened at the Jokhang. I had told Gyantzing about my circumambulating the Potala and how many times I circumambulated the Jokhang yesterday, and now I told him that it was around seven in the evening when I headed back to the hotel, so the protest must have started after that. He also said, “Drepung is now closed to tourists.” Wow—that’s the monastery we visited on the first morning.

On the outskirts of Lhasa: a military convoy of at least nine trucks is coming out of the military base.

We passed a rocky mountain, and on one lower corner was a portion of a carved Buddha figure; most of it had broken off the mountain. I wonder if it used to be brightly painted like the others, perhaps decades ago or centuries ago. I wonder if the Chinese blew it up in the 1950s or 60s.
We passed the big Buddha carved and painted on the rocks, right after passing the little summer houses; they certainly have a great view of the Buddha, but I’m not impressed with the choice of making realistic goose sculptures along the edge of the pond, when there are real live geese just like that a few yards away. The real ones are quite enough.

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I’m at Gate 2, at the airport, and actually eager to go back to Kathmandu, despite how gloomy it was. I’m eager to use the Internet (for obvious reasons, namely my eyewitness account!) and to get a souvenir for Elaine. After several years of eagerly researching Tibet and finding the culture so fascinating, and at least two years of hoping that someday I’d visit Tibet, it is ironic that I’m now so eager to get out of Tibet and back to Kathmandu.

The view at the terminal is gorgeous, through a long, tall glass window. The view is of sharp pointy brown mountains and a bright blue sky. The sky is so big and bright blue in Tibet generally.

The terminal has a little shop, and it includes some books, including The Search for Shangri-La by Charles Allen. Gyantzing had mentioned the book to me, and I said that I’ve heard of it—I think I have a copy of it, but significantly the subtitle is completely different in the American edition than in the version available in Tibet. The subtitle here says something about Western China, whereas the American edition uses the phrase “Tibetan history” rather than pretending as if Tibet were part of China. I spotted a book called Tibetan Stories, which as I expected has folk stories and mythology, but it also has ridiculous anti-Dalai Lama propaganda, very stupid and childish stuff, and as is the Maoist custom calls him “Dalai” instead of “Dalai Lama,” as if he weren’t a teacher. The word “lama” means “teacher.” In my opinion, he’s much more a monk and spiritual leader rather than a politician, and he prefers it that way.

When the customs guy looked over my passport and boarding pass, he chatted with me cheerfully, and I was cheerful too, but I was weirded out when he asked, “Was this your first visit to China?” My first thought was: But I haven’t been to China!
Rather than argue, I said, “Yes.”
“Did you enjoy your first visit to China?”
“Yes, it’s gorgeous!” I said, no longer so shocked. When he encouraged me to “return to China,” I said, “Maybe next time I’ll study the language first!”

I kept it vague, not specifying whether I meant Tibetan or Manchurian Chinese. Who knows, maybe I will take that course on Chinese and go to Beijing some day. But I don’t like mean boys in uniforms, and I don’t like megaphones. I’m sure the Dalai Lama would disapprove of the wagons with megaphones blaring out recorded ads for merchandise, and I rather suspect he’d also not be keen on shops blaring out music, like the same song over and over again in particular.
Maybe the next country I visit will be Thailand. Or maybe I’ll go to Morocco, so I can ride a camel, since I’ve ridden an elephant in India and a yak in Tibet.

In hindsight, it’s too bad I didn’t ask Gyantzing some questions about nuns. The tour was all about boys, boys, and boys—like in Kathmandu women and girls were so much in the background while I wished they’d step into the foreground. Yes, I know, patriarchy is a polluting cloud that’s suffocating most of the world, but in some places it’s more blatant than others, particularly in the extremes of misogyny. Somehow in the USA, patriarchy seems slightly less subtle because it comes not in the way you see people on the street but in the form of such things as nuclear weapons and having a Whiteboyworld government that acts like the world’s bully and that, along with their misogynistic supporters, are doing their damndest to impede women’s reproductive freedom not only in the USA but also globally, what with the evil Global Gag Rule.

Anyway, what I was going to say is that it’s too bad that, when Gyantzing told me boys had to be sixteen before they could become monks, I didn’t ask what age nuns had to be. Also, I should have asked if the nunnery that I’ve read was close to the Potala is open to visitors or at least contains a temple that’s open to visitors. I wish I had thought of that on my free day; I could have taken my Lhasa map with me and walked to the nunnery, and I could have walked up to the Naga Temple, or at least close to it, in the park. Gee, I’ll just have to visit Tibet again someday… I’m more likely to stick to armchair traveling, since I have plenty of books on Tibet, including some books on Tibetan women and the feminine in Tibetan Buddhism.