I was in Lhasa on Tibet Uprising Day

Immediately after I got home from a trip to India, Nepal, and Tibet, I turned on my computer, typed up the following eyewitness account, and sent it to the International Campaign for Tibet and various news media. I ultimately also sent it to the president of China and to Amnesty International, and perhaps a few other organizations. The Olympics in China are coming up, and currently the International Campaign for Tibet's website has a letter that you can send to Bush, because he's going to visit Beijing. (I could make a snide remark about how I'm sure someone who's literate will read the letter to him, but I'll refrain.)

Today is March 10, 2008, and I am writing by the light from a hotel room window, since the power is out, as it has been all afternoon, evening, and night. I have spent a week in Tibet, and this is the only day that there has been a power outage, quite unlike Kathmandu, Nepal, where power outages happen at least once a day and last for hours. I suspect that the authorities deliberately turned the electricity off in at least part of Lhasa, just because today is Tibet Uprising Day, when protests against the Chinese occupation are most likely to occur. On this day in 1959, the current Dalai Lama sneaked out of his summer palace, the Norbulingka, and began a long journey to exile in India; two days later, the Chinese bombed the palace and still thought he was inside.

This morning as I equanimously lived in the present moment, practicing my walking meditation around the Potala, the Dalai Lama’s palace which is perched high on a mountain. I occasionally spun big gold prayer wheels set in wooden frames while I observed the pilgrims around me, some of whom greeted me with the words, “Tashe delek,” or “Hello!” I didn’t think much about the fact that today was Tibet Uprising Day. I was the only Westerner in sight, but I wore a Tibetan-style chupa, or dress, like so many of the pilgrims. Some of them wore contemporary clothes, and I saw many women wearing sunhats, but other pilgrims who had traveled far away wore traditional clothing that was often somewhat ragged, and they carried prayer wheels and often had coral and turquoise beads braided in their black or grey hair. I could see different styles of chupas from different Tibetan regions, for pilgrims walked great distances to reach Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. During one of my perambulations, when I reached the back wall below the Potala, I was startled by the sight of a white police vehicle something like an extra large golf cart filled with six cops in formal uniforms as if they had dressed up to join a parade.
I walked around the palace only once before I crossed the street and stood in the center of the drab concrete-paved square, where I took a dead center picture of the Potala, a beautiful sprawling red and white building with flat roofs and Buddhist banners; at the very top, there are ornate pointed gold roofs over the tombs of the Dalai Lamas. Most of the present palace dates to the seventeenth century, and it is all in traditional Tibetan style, with walls slanting inward and with black-framed glass-less windows. The building is thirteen stories high, and earlier on my vacation I had enjoyed a tour and climbed many stairs. I had stood in the courtyard, looked up at the Dalai Lama’s look-out window, and imagined a much younger Fourteenth Dalai Lama looking down upon the courtyard, as he had before he went into exile in India.

Strangely, after my camera snapped a picture of the Potala, a cop seemed to yell at me from some distance, but I didn’t understand what he said. I looked at him for a moment, but he stood perfectly still in the square, so I shrugged, turned around, and took another picture of the Potala, to see what he would do. He didn’t do anything. Since I wore Tibetan clothing, perhaps he had at first mistaken me for a Tibetan. I soon crossed the street and happily circumambulated the Potala three more times. I remained equanimous even when I reached the left side of the building and megaphones blared out music from a shop and advertisements from a cart full of merchandise. I did not feel annoyed when I was at the back of the Potala and could hear pop music blaring from the park that includes the Naga Temple. Under the circumstances, I would have preferred to listen to Tibetan Buddhist monks or nuns chanting.

I was ready to head out toward the Jokhang Temple, when I noticed numerous blue uniforms standing around the street corner, so I jaywalked and moved on. I headed for the vicinity of the Barkhor, an alley or path that circles the Jokhang Temple, the most significant Buddhist temple in Tibet. I had lunch at a café near the temple and went to my hotel room to write in my journal and take a nap.

Around 4:30, I returned to the Barkhor and began a walking meditation around the Jokhang Temple. I was in basically the same mental state I had experienced while circumambulating the Potala. So much walking meditation, perhaps combined with the thin air, is enough to put me in a calm, content, and peaceful mood. In the past week, I’ve walked around the Jokhang and stood on its roof, and this was the first time I noticed police standing around the Barkhor, the paved and crowded circumambulation route for the Jokhang, where pilgrims from all over Tibet walk around and around, much as they do around the Potala. Espying the police reminded me what day it was, but I remained equanimous and continued my walking meditation while out of curiosity keeping an eye out for cops.

Some of the police wore navy blue uniforms: badges, caps, and all, like airline pilots. At first, those were the only police I noticed. I decided to circumambulate six times rather than only three. Next time around, I noticed not only several uniforms but also cops wearing navy blue, with navy blue windbreakers. Both kinds of police either stood around watching the steadily moving crowd or sat on stools or benches around the Barkhor. After that, I started noticing what I suspected were undercover cops, and one of them said, “Hello!” to me like anyone else. I am so sick of that word, which almost every Tibetan apparently knows, but I smiled faintly and said, “Hi.” I only saw three other Westerners the whole time I was circumambulating, and they all looked to be cheerfully shopping.

When I had walked around six times, I was about to depart through the large paved square in front of the Jokhang, when a police siren jolted me out of my walking meditation. A small police van drove onto the square, which is normally reserved only for pedestrians. Like many others, I stopped to gawk, as I noticed two white cop cars and a huge crowd of police in navy blue uniforms standing, many of them forming a wall facing the temple. Brimming with curiosity, I joined the growing crowd, in which I was the only Westerner. This would have been a great time to be fluent in Tibetan, so that I could have understood what people around me said. To the right was a white vehicle and a large number of people gathered; many blocked my view, but it looked like most of that crowd was young, perhaps teenagers, and they were just standing around staring. In front of them stood cops in full uniform.

My first thought was that a political demonstration had begun, even though I had assumed that nobody would demonstrate unless they were suicidal. But as I observed the crowd of cops in the center, most of whom from what I could see formed a line, I thought maybe they were attempting to incite the crowd to riot so that they would have an excuse to get ugly with the crowd. Finally, I came to the much more likely conclusion that this was all a power-tripping display. Nonetheless, putting on this display is just the thing that could encourage Tibetans who believe in freedom and who are loyal to the Dalai Lama to put on a political and hopefully nonviolent protest.

Twice while I was part of this gawking crowd, a cop approached the cluster of people around me and yelled something while holding up his arms as if to push the people in front, and the crowd started to back away and disperse, but other people walked up and took the place of those who walked away. I finally decided that standing around and gawking like this was silly, so I turned away and continued circumambulating the temple and observing the police.

I have to admit that at this stage I was feeling rather less equanimous and was more interested in observing the police than in mindfully walking. Cops still stood or sat here and there around the Barkhor. Walking around the left front side of the Jokhang, I saw a cop standing on a wooden bench and holding onto the roof of a merchant’s booth. Eventually I heard a siren again, but this time I was not in front of the temple but rather surrounded by booths and shops behind the temple. A white police van with a blaring siren moved toward the crowd, counterclockwise, same as the golf cart-like vehicle I had seen while circumambulating the Potala. I have no doubt that this is deliberate, since Buddhists traditionally circumambulate temples clockwise. The crowd stepped out of the way of the police van and gawked. I kept looking back at the van, and it turned around behind me. This senseless driving around with a siren when there was no emergency struck me as ridiculous, and again the phrase “power-tripping display” came to my mind.

On another round, I saw a couple of young monks and maybe two other people standing in front of a wide and colorfully painted gateway, like the driveways to hotel courtyards in Lhasa. I stopped next to the monks and was quite astonished at what I saw. On the other side of the gateway, two white vehicles were parked with their right sides facing the entrance. A couple of little kids in pale blue school uniforms stood in front of the headlights, and next to them stood a military officer in a green uniform. Facing the children and the officer were at least four rows of green-clad soldiers, all squatting close to the ground, as if frozen in that position, and wearing helmets like motorcycle helmets but apparently used for riot gear. This was too bizarre! Nobody was rioting, and I had yet to even see a single protester. After gawking with my mouth hanging open, I looked up in search of a sign over the gateway and soon spotted a little square one overhead. It said “Police Station” in three languages.

I circumambulated a total of twelve times, not stopping till it was about seven in the evening and merchants had begun to take down their merchandise from the booths. I truly did not expect a demonstration to take place and therefore decided I had seen enough. I assumed that the rest of the evening would look much the same: the police and soldiers would continue their power-tripping nonsense, while the crowd would merely gawk and keep walking rather than protest or riot.

2
Today is the day after Tibet Uprising Day, and I have returned to Kathmandu, where the power is of course out; if the power were more reliable, I would go to the Cybercafé, type up my eyewitness account, and e-mail it to the International Campaign for Tibet and anyone else. Under the circumstances, I shall have to wait a few days, till I have returned to the United States.

In the morning, I was in the jeep with the driver and my tour guide on the way to the airport. Along the main drag, Beijing Road, we saw many green military trucks and green-clad soldiers, some still wearing riot gear helmets. The guide 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, perhaps only shortly after I left the Barkhor. I said, “I left the Jokhang around seven.” My guide also said that Drepung is now closed to tourists. On the outskirts of Lhasa, a military convoy was coming out of a base and we passed some of the vehicles; I counted at least nine trucks.

At the airport, a friendly guy in a uniform was stamping my passport and asked, “Was this your first visit to China?” I found the question startling, since I wasn’t in China, but I didn’t see any point in arguing and replied in the affirmative. He then asked, “Did you enjoy your first visit to China?”

I said, “Yes, it’s gorgeous! Maybe next time I’ll learn the language first.” I felt slightly ashamed of not arguing, of not righteously correcting him by pointing out that I haven’t visited China yet. But I do not like confrontation and did not know how to articulate such words. I had to be content with writing my eyewitness account and sending it to the media and to such organizations as the International Campaign for Tibet. It was a small bit of activism, but it was much more useful than arguing at the airport.

Back in Kansas, Toto

The flight to Kansas City was amazingly brief, in contrast with the long and cramped flight from Doha to Washington DC. I set foot in the very familiar airport and almost immediately spotted Elaine, who gave me a hug and drove me to my house. We talked aoubt the trip—particularly Tibet Uprising Day—all the way to Topeka.

I stayed up till past 5 am, finally typing up my handwritten eyewitness account of Tibet Uprising Day, which I e-mailed to the International Campaign for Tibet, Amnesty International, and a bunch of people I know. I also e-mailed a variation to the president of China and the Chinese chair of the Beijing Olympics. I may or may not be banned from China and Tibet. Oh well. I also have reason to believe it will be a challenge to adjust to the time change.

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.

2
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.

3
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.

Tibet Uprising Day

This feels like the coldest day yet—I’ve been in Tibet for nearly a week. Maybe it just seems colder because I had the coldest room yet; maybe I should try harder to turn up the remote-control heater, since like the one in Shigatse it’s stuck on 30 degrees centigrade, whatever that means. No matter how cold my room seems, it’s a lot colder outside my room than in it! I could see my breath in the hotel roof restaurant. I’m sure Tibetans are less sensitive to cold than I am—even most Americans are less sensitive to cold than I am. In the restaurant, I had three cups of tea (they’re tiny cups), and when I was done eating and pushed away my plate, I put my glove back on my right band before I continued drinking tea.

2

Wow—what a morning! It’s now 1:15 pm, and I’m at the Tangyeling Café, which rather caters to Westerners. Not only is the menu multilingual and big, but it even has Indian food, Mexican food (or something like it) and stuff like pizza. Too bad I didn’t find the place when I wandered into the noodle joint my first full day in Lhasa. Here I ordered Indian food that’s hopefully authentic (except it doesn’t have to be as spicy). The café also has really nice ambiance. It has elephant-patterned cloth placemats, pictures and banners and little prayer wheels on the walls and big glass windows. There’s recorded music, and it’s Western, which reminds me of Mc’llo’s in Dharamsala, although it’s much quieter here.

This morning I walked the three long blocks to the Potala, circumambulated once, bought a disposable camera at a little camera shop, dodged the traffic (I swear I can hear Paul McCartney singing “Let it Be”) to the park across from the Potala, took some photos—including two of my stuffed toy owl Dewey in front of the Potala. I got back across the street and circumambulated the Potala three times straight.

After I took pictures of Dewey and the Potala from concrete steps descending into a pond, I headed further toward the left to the big bland square that has a monument to the Chinese invasion of Tibet (still absurdly called “The Peaceful Liberation of Tibet”). I got to the center of the square and stood there very visible, held up the little camera, and took a full frontal photo of the Potala. I heard someone yell something, and I turned. It looked like a Chinese cop in a blue uniform was looking at me, and he yelled again. There was some distance between us, and since I was wearing Tibetan clothing, he may have mistaken me for a Tibetan. I looked at him for a beat, and he was silent, so I shrugged, turned around, and took another picture of the Potala. Nothing happened.

I turned and moved further up the square, to get a closer look at the Invasion monument and to take a picture of it, when I noticed that a soldier in a green uniform stood on the steps at the monument, so I decided not to take a picture after all. I didn’t want to push my luck that far, although I’d been drinking Tibetan holy water. I got a little closer to look at the monument, turned and got a much more satisfying look at the Dalai Lama’s palace. I headed back the way I came, with the intention of taking the dangerous crosswalk again. But first I stopped amid the bare trees and took a picture of the Invasion monument from a hopefully safer distance. I also took a little walk across a bridge and circumambulated a café in Tibetan style—bright and colorfully painted—and then I went back to continue circumambulating the palace.

My lunch at Tangeyling consists of vegetable korma (with broccoli! I had broccoli withdraw), yoghurt with bits of cucumber, naan, and masala chai. It was like I was back in Varanasi. Americans sat and had a lively conversation at the next table, along with probably the only blonde baby in Tibet. That must look really weird to the locals.

3
I wrote the following in the evening, by the light coming in through the hotel room window, since the power was out all afternoon, evening, and night. I would have sent this as soon as I got to Kathmandu, but the power is highly unreliable there.

I was in Lhasa on Tibet Uprising Day

This morning as I equanimously lived in the present moment, doing a walking meditation around the Potala and occasionally spinning prayer wheels while I observed the pilgrims around me, I didn’t think much about the fact that today was Tibet Uprising Day. At the back wall below the Potala, I was startled by the sight of a white police vehicle something like an extra large golf cart filled with six cops in full uniform.

After one walk around the palace, I crossed the street and stood in the center of the square, where I took a dead center picture of the Potala. Strangely, a cop seemed to yell at me from some distance, but I didn’t understand what he said. I looked at him for a moment, but he stood perfectly still, so I shrugged, turned around, and took another picture, to see what he would do. He didn’t do anything. Since I wore Tibetan clothing, perhaps he had at first mistaken me for a Tibetan. Later, I had circumambulated three more times and was ready to head out toward the Jokhang Temple, when I noticed numerous blue uniforms standing around the street corner, so I jaywalked and moved on.

Around 4:30, I returned to the Barkhor and began a walking meditation around the Jokhang Temple. I was in basically the same mental state I had been in while circumambulating the Potala. In the past week, I’ve walked around the Jokhang and stood on its roof, and this was the first time I noticed police standing around the Barkhor, the circumambulation route for the Jokhang. That reminded me what day it was, but I remained equanimous and continued my walking meditation while out of curiosity keeping an eye out for cops.

Some of the police wore navy blue uniforms: badges, caps, and all, like airline pilots. At first, those were the only police I noticed. I decided to circumambulate six times rather than only three. Next time around, I noticed not only several uniforms but also cops wearing navy blue, with navy blue windbreakers. Both kinds of police either stood around watching the steadily moving crowd or sat on stools or benches around the Barkhor. I saw more cops than you can shake a prayer wheel at.

After that, I started noticing what I suspected were undercover cops, and one of them said, “Hello!” to me like anyone else. I am so sick of that word, but I smiled faintly and said, “Hi.” (Incidentally, I only saw three other Westerners the whole time I was circumambulating, and they all looked to be cheerfully shopping.)

When I had walked around six times, I was about to depart through the paved square in front of the Jokhang, when a police siren jolted me out of my walking meditation. A small police van drove onto the square, which is normally reserved only for pedestrians. Like many others, I stopped to gawk, as I noticed two white cop cars and a huge crowd of police in navy blue uniforms standing, many of them forming a wall facing the temple. Brimming with curiosity, I joined the growing crowd, in which I was the only Westerner. This would have been a great time to be fluent in Tibetan, so that I could have understood what people around me said. To the right was a white vehicle and a large number of people gathered; many blocked my view, but it looked like most of that crowd was young, perhaps teenagers, and they were just standing around staring. In front of them stood cops in full uniform.

My first thought was that a demonstration had begun, even though I had thought that nobody would demonstrate unless they were suicidal. But as I observed the crowd of cops in the center, most of whom from what I could see formed a line, I thought maybe they were attempting to incite the crowd to riot so that they’d have an excuse to get ugly with the crowd. Finally, I came to the much more likely conclusion that this was all a power-tripping display.

Twice while I was part of this gawking crowd, a cop approached the cluster of people around me and yelled something while holding up his arms as if to push the people in front, and the crowd started to back away and disperse, but other people walked up and took the place of those who walked away. I finally decided that standing around and gawking like this was silly, and I continued circumambulating the temple and observing the police.

I have to admit that at this stage I was no longer feeling equanimous and was more interested in observing the police than in mindfully walking. Cops still stood or sat here and there around the Barkhor. Walking around the left front side of the Jokhang, I saw a cop standing on a wooden bench and holding onto the roof of a merchant’s booth. Eventually I heard a siren again, but this time I was not in front of the temple but rather surrounded by booths and shops. A white police van was moving toward the crowd, counterclockwise, same as the golf cart-like vehicle I had seen while circumambulating the Potala. I have no doubt that this is deliberate, since Buddhists traditionally circumambulate temples clockwise. We all stepped out of the way of the police van and gawked. I kept looking back at the van, and it turned around behind me.

On another round, I saw a couple of young monks and maybe two other people standing in front of a wide and ornate gateway, like the driveways to hotel courtyards in Lhasa. I stopped next to the monks and was quite astonished at what I saw. On the other side of the gateway, two white vehicles were parked with their right sides facing the entrance. A couple of little kids in pale blue school uniforms stood in front of the headlights, and next to them stood a military officer in a green uniform. Facing the children and the officer were at least four rows of green-clad soldiers, all squatting close to the ground, as if frozen in that position, and wearing helmets like motorcycle helmets but apparently used for riot gear. This was too bizarre. After gawking with my mouth hanging open, I looked up in search of sign over the gateway and soon spotted a little square one overhead. It said “Police Station” in three languages.

I circumambulated a total of twelve times, not stopping till it was about seven in the evening and merchants had begun to take down their merchandise from the booths. I truly did not expect a demonstration to take place.

I have a theory that the real reason the power is out is that it’s Tibet Uprising Day—like the Chinese authorities did this on purpose. Maybe the lights will be out till midnight. I’m glad the heater works even though it runs on electricity—it probably has a different connection, I don’t know. There’s a light on in the hallway—I can see it from under the door—and there’s some sort of big room facing the courtyard and with lots of shelves—the lights are on in there. It’s now 9:06 pm.

4
Who cares if the lights don’t work: for once, I had a hot shower! It’s probably because nobody else is crazy enough to take a shower in the dark. I had the flashlight on and I was very careful about not slipping. Now I’m going to bed; I look forward to snuggling under the covers.

Chant softly and carry a big prayer wheel.

Sometimes a prayer wheel is just a prayer wheel. Gee, I wonder if guys and prayer wheels in Tibet are like guys and cars in America. The bigger the prayer wheel…never mind.

Return to Lhasa

I want to go meditate alone in a cave. Well, a cat for company would be OK. I want to have no contact with humans for a month. Unfortunately, I’ll be in Topeka, Kansas, after I return to the States, and will be going back to my job and have the enormous ordeal of dealing with Aunt Ethel; without snow and ice, I don’t know what excuses I can come up with for not wanting to associate with her. Given what an insensitive brute she is, she’ll no doubt get all huffy and holier-than-thou if I simply said I needed solitude. She doesn’t believe introverts like me exist. Deranged barbarian. Not that her psychotic delusions matter to me, but for some odd reason she believes in imposing her psychotic delusions on me and she does insist on cramming them down my throat. I have so got to pack up and head out to the west coast.

7:30 am I had a dream in which I was in what looked like a Tibetan village with crumbly white buildings, and many people were around—I think I wasn’t the only dharma bum—and a very little girl, two or three years old, had taken a liking to me (oddly—I can’t imagine why anyone would take a liking to me, especially a child!), so I was attempting to get her adopted. She seemed to want me to adopt her, which was of course completely out of the question. I thought that if she were a kitten, I’d have a different attitude. Maybe that dream was inspired by the thought that I need to nurture myself, to be my own mother. The little girl could have represented me, even though she looked Tibetan and was dirty and ragged like a beggar. Maybe I am like a beggar, begging for respect and acceptance. I also had a dream in which it looked like Tibet or some other place, maybe Kathmandu, and plenty of Westerners lurked around. It’s vague now—actually, I think there was a glass cabinet full of Tibetan scriptures, the kind you see rolled up in brocade here in Tibet and at the Exiled Government’s library in Dharamsala.

2
Now that I’ve had breakfast and brought my luggage down (with some help—this hotel doesn’t have elevators, the only reason I can see it qualifying as a "budget" hotel), I’m in rather a better mood than earlier. I just gave a little kid a pen—it seems to have worked, since he took it and walked away. Great, even toddlers know the word “Hello.” I must have, I’m guessing, looked stupider than I suspected. Or maybe that’s just my paranoia talking—it’s hard to tell where justified paranoia and unjustified paranoia meet. I’ve read a lot about Tibetans—that they have a sense of humor that involves laughing with you rather than at you, and that they can make humor out of suffering. But at least two incidents yesterday were obviously misogynistic males laughing at me, not with me. It’s so ironic that misogynists have a ludicrous belief in their superiority just because they have a ridiculous organ hanging between their legs, that quite obviously does not make them superior in the least. Besides, who’s more likely to cause war and build bombs: someone who has a uterus, or someone who has a penis?

I was going to write about the emotions of the two different visits to India. 1) Blissful, euphoric, happy, confidence-building. 2) Some bliss and happiness early on in particular, but the disappointing reality check of my depression still being with me—I did not leave my depression behind and that is a major thing from which I was trying to run. I’ve read in Buddhist books that you should not try to relive the same experience; this is referring to a meditative experience, but it can also refer to the emotions you experienced on a pilgrimage. I think a large part of the emotions on the pilgrimage was thanks to our meditating for forty-five minutes in the mornings and also, in particular, our meditations in special places where the Buddha also meditated—those places gave me highly emotional moments. Last year’s pilgrimage was the most wonderful vacation I’ve ever had, and probably ever will have. This vacation has been the weirdest I’ve ever had.

Today we are driving back to Lhasa. Yesterday was Women’s Day—women were drinking and dancing. That explains the fireworks. I didn’t know about it until this morning: Gyantzing asked me if I slept well and then explained why there was so much noise that could have kept me awake but didn’t. Too bad I wasn’t out celebrating with women, but then again I’m not into drinking and dancing. I’m into overthrowing patriarchy. I’m into getting the revolutionary ball rolling, which is what Women’s Day should be about. It’s ironic that it was supposed to be Women’s Day when for me it felt like Misogyny Day. Without patriarchy, every day would be Women’s Day—a day free of war, rape, incest, domestic violence, and prejudice. Every day would be a day free of oppression and injustice. Bye-bye Dominator Society, hello Partnership Society, to use the scholar Riane Eisler’s terminology. It seems to me like this Women’s Day is scarcely more than condescension, mere words. It doesn’t seem to be conjuring a lot of feminist consciousness around here, that’s for sure, judging by my experience on the streets of Shigatse yesterday. It should be about sociological transformation to an egalitarian and just society, not about drinking and dancing.

Writing while in car (and therefore very large and messy handwriting):
I see shaggy goats with curly horns. Brahmaputra/Yellow River—we’re passing it again. Shigatse Region: On the left of the highway, we see some small buildings and an area where a new, smaller airport will be built. Straight ahead stands a wide, roundish, rocky brown mountain. It’s a holy mountain for sky burials; wealthy families pay for funerals there. I can see two stupas, smoke, and prayer flags on top of the mountain. It’s significant that only wealthy families get sky burials there; I didn’t think to ask what happens to poor people when they die. Perhaps I didn’t ask because my mind was on the breathtaking scenery, but I’ve been in Tibet for nearly a week and have continually seen breathtaking scenery.

We stopped for gas, and I walked around. I approached a bridge, and across it we saw what looked like a monastery with three pointy roofs. Gyantzing explained that it’s a Boen monastery on the river. (I’m adding an “e” after the “o” in “Boen” because of my computer’s inability to type an umlaut; it has the same effect on pronunciation as an umlaut in German.) The monastery has a backdrop of big brown mountains looming over it. While we looked at this building in the distance, Gyantzing told me some things about the Boen religion.

Interling is the name of the monastery and means “Center of the Swastika.” Boen has statues like Buddhas, but with a swastika on the chest. I commented that I’ve seen Chinese Buddha statues with a swastika on the chest, and he explained that’s only Chinese, not Tibetan. I believe it was a Hindu sun symbol before Buddhists took it up—simply because you see a lot of swastikas in India, such as on Hindu temples, and Buddhism branched off Hinduism. The swastika is similar to the Irish goddess Bridget’s sun sign; I have one made of twigs that I purchased in Ireland.

Shirup (or Sherab, I’m thinking, since that was the name of an early, influential Boenpo abbot) is the name of the Boen Buddha. Boen is more naturalist, since it’s an indigenous shamanistic religion (I might add that Tibetan Buddhism gets its more Pagan aspects from Boen—both religions seem to have influenced each other). Various things in Tibetan Buddhism, such as images of the sky and moon, and also prayer flags, juniper burning—all come from Boen originally. Shungshun was the founder of Boen (according to Wikipedia, his name was Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche, and Shang Shung was an ancient Tibetan culture that predates Tibetan Buddhism.)

Gyantzing mentioned that his uncle was a monk at this monastery in 1959. The Chinese put an abrupt end to his monastic career.

I saw two very cute donkeys in the street. I stared at the donkeys, and locals who stopped here stared at me. There is a gas station and probably a place to stop for snacks; I just know quite a few vehicles are parked here. From the car, I saw ponies with colorful saddle blankets. Just a bit ago, I saw a lot of sand, what you might call a cold desert, on a flat surface backed by big brown rocky mountains, and I also saw sand on mountainsides. We’re riding through an area of mostly brown mountains with some streaks of greenish grey in smooth descending falls, surrounded by sharp and roundish surfaces. Down by the river are some dark, shiny, slick, large rocks. There is also green flowing water.

In the middle of nowhere, we stopped at a café that emits loud music that sounds like a song I’ve been hearing a lot in Tibet. I wasn’t hungry for lunch, having had a large and relatively late breakfast, so I wandered around outdoors after telling Gyantzing I wasn’t ready for lunch. It felt good to stretch my legs after sitting in the car, and I also admired the mountains, some of which were snow-capped. I saw nine crows fly off; I wonder if that’s an auspicious symbol, since seven appeared when the first Dalai Lama was born, and five appeared when the Fourteenth Dalai Lama was born. It was bright and sunny out, and the sky was amazingly bright blue.

Breathtaking mountains surrounded me. The yard included two scruffy cows and three dogs.
A group of five children walked up to me and chatted with me; they knew some English words. I thought they’d beg, but they just wanted to chat. Maybe if I had had a camera, they would have wanted their pictures taken, and then they would have begged for money, and I would have given it to them, but of course my camera was hopeless and therefore hidden away.

The kids said, “Hello!”
I said, “Tashe delek!” and, “Hi!” It was a new day, and I was more patient. Besides, they were definitely free of malice. They said some Tibetan and got a blank look from me. One of the girls pointed at my forehead, and I thought she was pointing at my third eye. They asked me my name, and I said, “Susan.” They repeated it after me, and I smiled. I said, “What are your names?” But I guess they didn’t get the question, or I didn’t understand their names; they had a tendency to talk all at once.
One of the girls pointed at my forehead and said, “You are beautiful!”
Embarrassed and taken by surprise, I laughed and said, “Thanks!”
Soon they said, “Bye!” cheerfully, and I did the same, and they moved on, playing kick the can in the street. Perhaps they were walking to a school far away from their home. A couple of them were dirty enough to be beggars, and they were a variety of ages—like between two and seven I think, not that I’m a good judge of age. I wished I had a bunch of pens handy, but they were all in my suitcase.

With some urging, namely a grandma stepping out onto the café threshold and waving me in, I went indoors, sat down at a long table with the guys, and tasted rolls and butter tea. Inside, the café was like a family house—maybe it was combo home and café. Tibetan butter tea doesn’t taste bad if you dip bread in it—it taste just like bread and butter. Gyantzing chatted with Grandma. The family was busy in a courtyard, just outside a big glass window in front of us; they covered an old wooden table with a big shiny plastic Coca Cola tablecloth that was very commercial looking in red and blue. There was a grandfather, a dad, and a young woman, presumably the oldest daughter, working on the table, and also children were hanging around. They were stapling the shiny tablecloth onto the table, and I rather thought it would look so much prettier to paint the table in very bright colors. I have a hand-painted and very colorful coffee table painted with African-inspired designs; it was a cast-off from an ex-roommate.

We passed a glistening turquoise river.

I’ve noticed a lot of police checkpoints on this route, which have resulted in numerous short stops. Bureaucratic much?

We arrived in Lhasa, where we stopped at a travel agency and Gyantzing got my plane ticket, to my vast relief. The office was a large white-tiled sort of room with a few women behind a very long countertop. Strangely, they did not take credit or debit cards (I don’t own any credit cards), but only cash, so I paid with almost all of my Chinese money. I felt very grateful toward Gyantzing for getting that problem out of the way so calmly and uncomplainingly. He said that since this isn’t tourist season, it was easy to get a ticket. Nonetheless, it was weird that I had gone to Tibet without a return ticket to Kathmandu, but that fits in with all the other weirdness on this trip. We afterwards went to the Yak Hotel, the same one at which I stayed previously, and parted.

I used Internet at the hotel and my e-mail was unbelievably slow. It must have taken twenty minutes to open each page, and I was reading Tricycle magazine most of the time. I have a theory that the Chinese government doesn’t want me to send e-mails, and that’s the reason that it was so unbelievably slow. Every minute or so, the screen changes color from off-white to white, and I have reason to suspect that when it’s white, somebody else is reading it. Gee, the Bushworld government spies on e-mails and you don’t know when they could be reading yours; at least the Chinese government lets you know when they’re spying on you.

According to Vikram Seth in From Heaven Lake, there were portraits of Mao all over the place in Tibet in 1981. Fortunately, that is no longer the case. Going to Tibet and seeing portraits of Mao Zedong would be like going to Poland and seeing portraits of Adolf Hitler. True, he’s on all the yuan. Indian money has Gandhi printed on it, and Chinese money has Mao printed on it. Setting aside the little detail that Gandhi, what with his vow of poverty and all, would be absolutely appalled to know that his face is on money, which would you rather have on your bills: portraits of a highly influential nonviolent activist, or portraits of a political fanatic who was responsible for widespread famine and more deaths than Adolf Hitler?

I walked directly from the Internet café to the Barkhor, where I circumambulated a total of six times, till past seven in the evening. I knew the route but nonetheless periodically thought I’d follow the monks. When in doubt, follow the pilgrims spinning prayer wheels. I saw countless monks in red robes, some wearing brocade jackets of which I doubt the Dalai Lama would approve, never mind that they were traditional Tibetan garments. Many monks were quite stout, as the Dalai Lama’s brother pointed out, and they made me feel slender. Indeed, with all the meat and noodles in their diet, it’s no wonder. Many laypeople were also in traditional clothes, especially older people, that was well-worn and in mostly browns and dark reds, and I spotted some elaborate hairdos, with strings of coral and turquoise beads strung into braids. People of all ages wear traditional clothing, but it’s often more spiffy looking than pilgrim-looking. Even some of the chupas are brocade, unlike my plain dark blue cotton chupa.

The first alley I walked through was lined on the right with many booths displaying a bounty of vegetables; it's strange that I’m not finding so many vegetables at restaurants. Other stalls displayed a bounty of spices and herbs and teas (oh my). I scarcely looked at the less interesting booths that sell electronics, plastic toys, or ordinary Western clothing. I was more interested in stalls selling incense and Buddhist sculptures, although I’d rather get a Buddha statue in Kathmandu. A couple of stalls displayed monastic musical instruments, including those incredibly long horns, which stood on the big open end down on tables. Some booths displayed hundreds of strings of beads, mostly coral and turquoise, though a couple of booths sold strings of pearls.

On the right side, towards the front of the Jokhang Temple, are stalls displaying not only jewelry but also horse decorations such as bells and various silver, turquoise, coral, and other old stuff that I’m tempted to call artifacts; they were certainly used, if not antique, traditional Tibetan paraphernalia. Some booths sell fabric and traditional clothing, but what’s particularly interesting is that there are fabric stores around the Barkhor.

Humans aren’t the only ones who circumambulate the Jokhang: it’s not unusual to see cute little dogs. I saw a couple of black and white Lhasa Apsos (though it seems like earlier on the trip, I saw many Tibetan spaniels and no Lhasa Apsos), and weirdly enough I saw a light tan Chihuahua. I’m fairly certain that Chihuahuas are Mexican dogs! The little critter was on a leash and scurrying to keep up. I rather hope the person it was with, an older woman in a chupa and apron, would periodically pick the tiny dog up and carry it.

When we got back to Lhasa, we drove past the Norbulingka and it’s under major construction—it really didn’t look pretty, so that’s off. I’m rather doubtful I’ll ever visit Tibet again. Love the scenery, hate the food. I’m very glad that I packed all that dried fruit and nuts.

I can’t believe this—there’s a song running through my head, because almost every shop or stall that sells CDs plays that song on speakers. It sounds like a combination of traditional Tibetan and modern music, almost techno.

The streets of Tibet seem so much more orderly than the streets of Kathmandu, even though I was timidly trying to cross the wide intersections in Lhasa with traffic going by on either side of me. The rickshaws in both Lhasa and Shigatse have lanes along both sides of the street, and they are separated from car traffic by a metal railing painted in red and white stripes. The rickshaws themselves have green canopies with a pleated, colorful fringe—they’re reminiscent of Tibetan Buddhist banners, but they’re a cheap and cheesy imitation. The rickshaws leave their special side lanes to turn or cross the streets.

All the police vehicles in Lhasa are white—I think with blue lettering, in at least Chinese, maybe also English, and/or Tibetan. And I’ve seen plenty of police vehicles in Lhasa. Taxis look Western when they don’t have that white Dharamsala taxi look, of course without the Bollywood music on the radio or the Ganesh statue on the dashboard.

I’ve seen Hyundais and other Japanese vehicles in both countries, and I was weirded out in the courtyard parking lot of the Yak Hotel, because I saw a Geo Metro. It was white and shaped like my car and although I couldn’t find the phrase “Geo Metro,” I did see “Chevy” and some Chinese words.

A peculiar sight (if you’re not accustomed to it) that I frequently saw in the countryside in Tibet was the tractors. The front is a tractor, like for a farm, and there’s a long pair of handles that the driver holds as if they were reigns on a horse, and behind the driver this vehicle is a wooden wagon. The first one I saw on the road, from behind, had me completely fooled. I thought it was a horse-drawn wagon. There were indeed plenty of real horse-drawn wagons in Gyantse, a town known for its horse races.

A common sight, especially in Shigatse, is three-wheeled cycles with a wooden wagon in back. Many merchants own this kind of vehicle, and the merchandise is piled in back with a very annoying megaphone repeatedly playing a recorded message.

The megaphones are awful. They were big in China (and consequently Tibet) in Mao’s time. If megaphones are loudly blaring political propaganda at all hours of the day, you can’t think, you can’t concentrate. That’s where this comes from. That reminds me of how some people like to listen to music all the time, whereas I like to have quite a bit of quiet, such as while writing.
In Tibet, smoking like juniper offerings is normal, even indoors. With the possible exception of the Tangyling Café, restaurants don’t have nonsmoking sections. Ditto hotels, and my room in Kathmandu also had an ashtray. Yuck.

Sera Monastery

As we rode to the Sera Monastery, which is on the outskirts of Lhasa, Gyantzing told me that it housed five thousand monks before the Chinese invasion, and now it only has eight hundred monks. To me, that still seems like an awfully big number, but at the same time I don’t think it’s appropriate for the colonial government to limit the number of people who want a spiritual and communal life (or at least supposedly spiritual—not all monks are good, and because of the occupation, monks and nuns aren’t allowed to study as deeply as they should, and as they do in Dharamsala). Gyantzing explained that boys have to be at least sixteen years old to become monks now, and the Chinese authorities look at their background first, to make sure they have no relatives in India or relatives who are political protesters. I think that generally boys who become monks when they’re only five years old aren’t old enough to know whether that really is their calling, but on the other hand I’ve read that there’s so much for them to learn that they have to start at such a very early age. The part about the authorities checking potential monks’ backgrounds strikes me as much more oppressive and intrusive than the part about making them wait till they’re sixteen. Strangely, I didn’t think to ask how old girls had to be to become nuns, but I guess it didn’t occur to me because we were at an all-male monastery.

The Chinese destroyed the statue of Padmasambhava in front of Mount Kailash, huge statue, right after it was built. Power tripping much? They did the same with another statue—this is recent stuff if the Chinese government doesn’t approve of a public statue—like they’d approve of something Buddhist anyway!—then they tear it down. As I pointed out, it’s power-tripping politicians. But China’s not the only country that has power-tripping politicians—the USA has a blatantly power-tripping Whiteboyworld ungovernable government.

We were on the road to the monastery, when I spotted yaks for the first time, standing around amid small bare trees that I hesitate to call a forest. The narrow road was lined with merchants who had simple little booths. They didn’t look like they made a good living, with their dingy clothing and unkempt hair. The road leads directly to the monastery, where you buy tickets as though the monastery was an amusement park. That’s how the Chinese treat Buddhism in Tibet.

At the end of this road was the looming whitewashed monastery, such a different world from the Chinese streets of Lhasa. After we got out of the car and Gyantzing got the tickets, we walked up steps at a dramatic slant. I saw whitewashed buildings to my left and to my right.

The first place we visited was the printing press, a room that has traditionally been used as a printing press I’m thinking for centuries. The walls were lined with shelves and shelves full of carved wooden blocks. Some shelves contained modern books in Tibetan but I also saw stacks of the long, slender pages of Tibetan traditional scriptures, not only on shelves but also on the floor.

There were low glass cabinets forming a square in the center of the room, like in a shop. On top of the back glass cabinet were stacked black-printed banners on yellow fabric lying stacked on top of the glass cabinet. Gyantzing explained to me that these are pinned onto a door for good luck, and I decided to purchase a banner for me and another for my brother. The banners I purchased are quite different: the one with Manjushri at the top protects you from illness, and the one that I got for myself is a mandala. At some point while I wandered around this fascinating room, I noticed a couple of monks staring at me. They were doing it the same way as villagers visiting the Potala had stared at me, but it was disconcerting to be stared at by monks.

In more or less the center of the monastery is a shell of a building that was bombed after the Chinese invasion (supposedly during the Cultural Revolution, but in fact the Chinese started bombing Lhasa in 1959). One wall facing the entrance stood, still white stone blocks with black-framed windows, and it was disconcerting to see weeds growing out of the windows. Weirder still was looking through the windows and seeing the sky and the hill slanting upward, instead of seeing the interior of a building with brocade banners and gold Buddha statues. I walked around the corner, and there was very little of the opposite wall or side walls remained. It looked like an ancient ruin, and yet it had been intact before the late nineteen-fifties. It is a great shame that the Chinese won’t even admit that this sort of thing happened before the Cultural Revolution. Liars. Oh, yeah, we can’t let honesty get in the way of ideology.

We took a walk through the main part of Sera Monastery, with a functioning prayer hall and little rooms containing statues of Shakyamuni, Tsongkapa, and the like. After our visits to Ganden Monastery, the Potala, and the Jokhang Temple, the art and décor in Sera Monastery’s temples and shrine rooms seemed redundant, though nonetheless beautiful and stirring. There were a few other tourists, particularly a group of Germans. Most of the tourists in Tibet are Chinese, and this is only March, so the tourist season won’t actually begin for a couple months.

Large red double doors lead into a courtyard surrounded by a whitewashed stone wall. Inside the courtyard are some trees, and when Gyantzing and I entered it, the courtyard was also full of red-clad monks, most of whom looked between the ages of sixteen and forty. They were practicing the traditional Tibetan debating, which to an outsider looks quite comical. They split into twos, and one monk stands before the other and asks a question, stretching out his arms and slapping his palms together. The other answers, and as he finishes his answer, he stretches out his arms and slaps his palms together. This is often done with smiles and laughter. Sometimes one monk questions a group of four monks. After watching this for about half an hour, we wandered into another section of courtyard, where middle-aged monks debated in a much quieter and gentler manner, while sitting cross-legged on the ground. That wasn’t nearly as interesting to watch.

Between three and five in the afternoon, monks entertain tourists at Sera Monastery by practicing their traditional debating (Michael Palin calls it kung fu debating) in the monastery’s courtyard. Before I left on this trip, I read an online report presented by the International Campaign for Tibet; it was specifically for people who were about to be tourists in Tibet, and among other things it explained the monks at Sera Monastery still debate as they had in the past, but now it entertains tourists and the topics of their debates are much simpler than they were before the Chinese invasion. They aren’t allowed to study as much, and they are not allowed to study Tibetan Buddhism with the depth that previous generations studied and practiced. The gurus, the Rimpoches, are in exile and teaching practitioners outside of Tibet, not in it.

We walked slowly up a path that went up, up the mountain. The mountain itself was a light brown color and crumbly with rocks, some of which were quite large. Not much plant life grew high on the mountain; that’s a clue that we’re at a high elevation. Above, I gazed at bright and colorful pictures of bodhisattvas painted on rocks, some of which were very high up. I imagined robed painters climbing up to precarious locations just so they could paint Buddhas and bodhisattvas on mountain rocks.

In the distance is a yellow-painted stone temple that Gyantzing explained is in front of Tsongkapa’s favorite meditation cave. I remembered the small Tibetan temple in front of the Buddha’s austerities cave near Bodh Gaya, India. During Tsongkapa’s time, the meditation cave would have been a simple cave without any ornate temple in front of it.

We climbed up and got closer to huge painted rocks and to a tall skinny empty tower from which a huge thangka is hung on Losar. It was very narrow, with slightly slanting walls and the obligatory black-framed windows, but Gyantzing explained that inside the tower is empty; there’s a staircase but no furniture or artwork. Of course, the building’s sole purpose is to display the giant thangka.

In front of the tower was a plateau, and I stepped near the edge, amid the shrubbery, and standing at this lookout point, I gazed at the distant Potala. One of the enormous, flattish stones next to the tower was covered with several bright Green Taras. We turned to head back toward the lively monastery, and I noticed a woman sitting on the ground and wearing a brimmed hat and colorful striped shawl, and I thought she looked Peruvian.

I’m hearing a yowling tomcat out in the parking lot or some such place, somewhere outside my window. I think I heard him last night, too. He probably smells me and thinks I’m a female cat.

Drepung Monastery and the Jokhang Temple

My altitude sickness this time includes not only dizziness but also nausea and headache, but fortunately I took a painkiller.

I had breakfast at the rooftop restaurant, with its breathtaking view, and it was an English breakfast with tea or coffee—no bottled water to be found. I thought I had time to go up to my room, but I couldn’t get the keycard to work. This was rather unfortunate, since I hadn’t remembered to put on sunscreen before leaving the room. Afterwards, I met up with Gyantzing, and the driver took us to Drepung Monastery, the eleventh century monastery we saw while driving yesterday. “Drepung” means “rice heap.”

During the tour, I took a few notes: Sacred items that are important to a Tibetan monastery: Chortens Statues Scriptures Tsongkapa’s monastery—founded in 1416. Power—wisdom—compassion—three statues representing these three things are continually displayed together, because you can’t have one without the others. Yamunthaka—major fierce deity, protector of Yellow Hat Sect (Gelugpa). Karmapa—Black Hat Sect, Tsupu monastery, 70 km west of Lhasa. Panchen Lama = Amitabha, Buddha of the Past. The seventh Dalai Lama built the Norbulingka, the summer palace in Lhasa. Cedrundrop founded Tashilhumpo, the Panchen Lama’s monastery. Baby—deserted when robbers invaded, and he was protected by crows. (The first Dalai Lama, that is.)

At the Drepung Monastery this morning, we visited a typical Tibetan prayer hall or chanting hall, and there was a cheerful monk on a window seat to whom you were to give money if you want to take photos. Up against his side and on his robes was a fluffy brown and cream-colored cat, curled up into a ball. I placed a yuan bill in front of the monk, saw the cat, and said, “Oh, a kitty!” and smiled. Who knows if the monk or the cat understood what I said. I was tempted to pet the cat, but given its close proximity to the monk, I decided against it. It wouldn’t be the first time I nearly petted a Tibetan monk. Um, never mind.

While I was blissed out at the monastery, with the endless blue sky and stony mountains and stunning snow-capped mountains serving as a surreal backdrop, I was aware that there used to be one hundred thousand monks there before the Chinese invaded, that it used to be a much livelier place, with four universities inside it. It still contains a functioning university, but I was struck by how quiet, how almost deserted, the place seemed. The monks there now are all caretakers—they clean the place up, cook food, take money for photography, and refill the metal offering bowls with water or refill the big butter lamps. That is not deep scholarly stuff.

As a woman, I can understand seeing the Tibetan monastic system as power-tripping and elitist, but I nonetheless think it’s important to have scholars and spiritual practitioners who are doing the deep stuff. Of course, I think they should include approximately the same number of women as men. Nonetheless, I see the way the Chinese limit the monastery as also being oppressive, as intolerant of religion or more importantly spirituality. I often saw a monk or some guy whether or not he was wearing red robes, adding large chunks of yellow butter to the enormous butter lamps, two foot wide metal bowls on a pedestal in front of shrines. Or someone, who in some cases looked like a pilgrim rather than a monk, poured liquid butter into the lamp, or a monk lit the row of wicks sticking up out of the uneven butter mess. Just because we were indoors didn’t mean we were in a cozy room; some of the butter was very solid, no matter that flames burned at the top of the wicks. The rancid butter smell was rather less than pleasant; maybe that’s why my nose hasn’t noticed the aroma of unwashed pilgrims.

We climbed many stairs and wandered into many rooms, some—many—of which had amazing sculptures (what you might even call dolls) draped in colorful patchwork brocade capes and often in coral and turquoise jewelry. Some sculptures were instead studded with such jewels. Many of the statues were enormous, some as large or larger than life; some were a couple feet tall, and some very small, such as the cabinets filled with a thousand identical Shakyamuni Buddha statues. There was a lot of repetition in the subjects of the statues: we saw a great many thousand-armed and eleven-headed Avolakiteshvaras; Green Taras and White Taras; and a great many Tsong Kapas (hardly surprising, since he founded this monastery and it’s very much associated with him). Since I’m not from Tibet, Tsong Kapa isn’t that significant to me; I have a greater appreciation for compassionate bodhisattvas such as Avolakiteshvara and Tara. There were at least two sets of arhats, some fierce deities such as a huge Palden Lhamo figure—she’s a protector of Lhasa and the Dalai Lama.

In one prayer hall, alone a wall, were large likenesses of all the Dalai Lamas except the current one, which got us on the topic of the rather suspicious deaths of many Dalai Lamas when they were very young; for instance, the ninth was a little kid. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Dalai Lamas died when they were kids, likely thanks to poisoning.

We probably could have gotten through the tour faster if I didn’t talk so much, believe it or not. I even mentioned Dharamsala sometimes, and Gyantzing said, “That must seem more like Tibet than here,” and I agreed. He was in Dharamsala six years ago, so he’s not brainwashed as I had feared. He’s not squeamish about discussing things that I expected to be taboo, such as the controversy over the current Panchen Lama. I was probably pushing it when he explained the stacks of manuscripts in a glass case and I said that we saw many manuscripts at the exile library in Dharamsala, and as we walked toward a doorway, I said, “And we even met the Prime Minister.” Not exactly a safe topic! There were indeed people around, and I’ve read that even people who look like monks could be spies.

To my surprise, we toured the kitchen. It has a very high ceiling like most of the rooms, but it doesn’t have the colorful murals covering the walls and columns that the prayer halls and other rooms have; the kitchen was all painted a dark brown and was quite dark, although traditional wooden cabinets were painted red and yellow and with a floral pattern. There were gigantic metal pots for feeding large numbers of people, and there were rows and rows of large teapots like the ones the monks carried during the Dalai Lama’s teachings, but these teapots were bigger.

As soon as we entered the kitchen, I heard a cat meowing! There was a grey and white cat walking around, and it was very vocal, friendly, and purred enthusiastically while I petted it. A monk had just cooked little beige potatoes; Gyantzing offered me a couple, and they were very hot and tasty, boiled and salted. The cat may have been hoping to get a potato, too. It had to settle for Gyantzing and I petting it and my taking a couple pictures of it.

Oh yeah, there’s more about the Drepung Monastery that I have to mention! It includes an upper section that was the Dalai Lama’s living quarters—like the second through fourth Dalai Lamas—before the Potala was built. It was much like I believe the Dalai Lama’s rooms look like at the Potala, which I’ll get to visit tomorrow. There was an Audience Chamber, red-painted furniture and a tall throne where the Dalai Lama sat while regular people came in and talked to him or at least bowed to him. There was a very old yellow brocade cape set up on the throne, next to which was a display case; I’m thinking it contained a statue and offerings, but that may have been another similar room. Next door was an audience chamber where the Dalai Lama talked with politicians, and connected to that was a room full of beautiful red-painted, carved furniture: cabinets on the sides, a bench facing the door, a couple of small, low cabinets in front of the bench. The walls of the Audience Chamber or one of the other rooms were painted with murals that told stories.

I was a little surprised at the murals in one small room, a simple room with a staircase leading upstairs. The room contained no furniture and was like a hall that led to the outdoors and that was one of the last places we went. It had not only murals of various figures on a black background, but above that was a border displaying animal and human skins hanging. There were also some skulls painted here and there. It was quite tantric, and quite gruesome. 2 During my lunch break, I wandered down the street and went into the first noodle shop I came to. The young women behind the counter didn’t understand English and so I pointed at a picture of something that looked vegetarian. It turned out to have a small pile of yak meat, ground up, placed on the center top. Gross! I ate the noodles and peanuts and chives around the meat and was careful not to even touch it with my chopsticks, while I more or less read an article in the Buddhist magazine Tricycle but paid more attention to my surroundings than to the magazine.

While I was at this noodle stop, a total of three beggars approached me. Despite Shantum’s talk about not giving to beggars because that’s perpetuating their lifestyle and thereby disempowering them, I gave a small bill to each beggar. I sat in a far corner and simply couldn’t refuse—they walked up to me while I sat in a corner, so it wasn’t like when beggars are on the street and you’re walking past them. I remembered the Jataka tale about the Bodhisattva, a previous life of the Buddha, giving to beggars no matter what and even letting people steal from him. The first beggar in the noodle shop was a filthy little girl, who pressed her palms together and looked at me with big eyes. She had wandered in silently, unaccompanied by any adult. The second beggar was a dirty young woman in a chupa and with a baby on her back. The third beggar was an old woman, also in traditional dress, who walked with a cane and had a circular, lined face. Given the individual circumstances, it seemed appropriate to give money to each of them. It was certainly a firsthand exposure to the feminization of poverty, since they were each female and I might even go so far as to say they were like a Triple Goddess: Maiden, Mother, Crone, because they covered different stages of our lifespan. Who knows, maybe they were all dakinis in disguise.

From what I’ve read about visiting Tibet, you’re kind of expected to leave food in your bowl so that monks, nuns, or beggars can eat the leftovers (as long as they don’t mind your germs, of which I doubt they’ve ever heard). I thought of that when a couple of nuns showed up. No beggar was waiting for me to finish eating, but I left the bowl half full, with all the yak meat and the noodles and chives directly underneath it.

Kathmandu was gloomy, but there’s something stirring in my soul at sight of the snow-capped mountains and gliding hawks and wind-beaten banners and prayer flags, and the Potala looming so high in the brilliant blue sky full of fluffy white clouds. It’s all so breathtaking and awe-inspiring, and it’s so easy to forget my neurotic troubles.

Today when I cleaned out my passport bag during my lunch break, I found a Kit Kat bar, which I thought was from Jagdish. I later looked at it lying on the nightstand, and I wondered: when am I going to stop looking for a surrogate mother? It is a futile search. I need to nurture myself, to be my own mother.

I think rapid heartbeat—as in high blood pressure—must be one of the symptoms of altitude sickness. Same goes for dehydration, which causes diarrhea. On the other hand, it would be more accurate to say that high blood pressure is a reaction to the high altitude, and the dehydration quite likely comes from the fact that I have to go out and buy bottles of water to drink.

I also have strangely discovered that the same Germans who sat with me on the plane are staying at the Yak Hotel; I met them at breakfast. We also ran into each other again at Drepung Monastery. As one of them said, “The world gets smaller when you’re in Tibet.”

3

After lunch, Gyantzing and I met up again at the hotel lobby, and we walked to the shop that sold bottled water, where I stocked up on four more bottles. (I just can’t get enough water, and I’m still having diarrhea as of seven pm today.)

We then walked to the Jokhang Temple. In front of the temple is a huge expanse of pavement—actually, it’s rectangular slabs of what might be slate rather than ordinary cement blocks—a courtyard ahead of the Jokhang Temple, quite the happening place. Pilgrims circumambulated and prostrated before the Jokhang, and some people were out shopping. You can get both your spiritual and material needs (or wants) in the same place, the Barkhor, the walkway around the Jokhang. I saw people in clothing from different regions of Tibet and a variety of prayer wheels twirling in pilgrim’s hands. There was a stupa-shaped stove where people burned offerings of juniper in the morning, as we had seen when we arrived at the Drepung Monastery early enough to see people pick up the green branches and place them in a stove in front of the monastery.
Inside the Jokhang, I’m thinking that the row of Dalai Lama sculptures (all up to the Thirteenth) that I previously described were at the Jokhang, not Drepung. I also saw many photos of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, and at least two were painted. East or West, people sometimes painted photos in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Jokhang’s exterior primarily dates from the seventeenth century, and you have to go inside to see seventh century woodwork, for the Jokhang dates back to when Buddhism was first introduced to Tibet. Originally Buddhism in Tibet involved just the Jokhang Temple and some lay practitioners, but eventually there were seven monks. That is why temples and monasteries often have carvings of seven critters, mainly snow lions, on the façade, running horizontally over the doorways. When we entered the front door, instantly we were surrounded by seventh century woodwork in a narrow corridor—the doors and doorframes were very dark wood, and the walls were painted dark yellow and red. In an alcove were walls with old bodhisattva murals and in front of them were large-as-life papier-mâché figures that replace the originals after the so-called Cultural Revolution. Most of the sculptures were destroyed in the 1950s and 60s.

Inside the big main temple now, there stands an enormous Avalokiteshvara statue in the center facing the entrance, and in front of it are many long red banners, like any Tibetan prayer hall, but unlike at Drepung Monastery, this hall was clearly put to use and alive. Many dark red capes sat in rows on the low red benches, and in the center of the room were musical instruments, such as an enormous drum. On the outer walls were small, bright murals telling stories: in particular, the story of the building of the Jokhang, complete with a stupa in the center. According to this legend, the first Buddhist king threw a ring to indicate where the temple would be built and it landed in the lake. The illustration showed that wooden boards were cut and carried and set up across the lake.

Around the perimeters of the room are display cases full of statues and some documents of the seventeenth century made of that dark wood with reliefs that have been worn down over the years. Some shrine rooms had large dark wooden double doors that are chained and padlocked; they’d be open in the morning, when a big crowd is inside. These are special shrines, labeled over the doorway, and they contain a special theme, such as the Tsongkapa shrine, or the Avalokiteshvara shrine. Each shrine that we entered contains large and elaborate gold Tibetan sculptures wearing brocade.

At some point, I saw a skinny little grey cat walking in the aisle, and it leaped onto the wooden fence or bench that’s around the central prayer hall. Then the cat leaped up on a high Buddha throne. A cat can look at a Buddha. I’m delighted to see cats in Tibet; strangely, in India stray dogs are all over the place, but you rarely see a cat. Maybe that’s because dogs are on average so much more outgoing and needier than cats.

A particularly festive shrine is a big room with a large Avalokiteshvara. It was approximately three or four feet just seated. This Avalokiteshvara was originally a plain sculpture but over time received donations of gold, turquoise, and coral, with the result that elaborate decoration was piled on and it now has an excessively ornate crown of gold, turquoise, and coral, with big hanging earrings and a collar to match. A bodhisattva stepping in style. Even in traditions other than Tibetan, bodhisattvas are often depicted wearing a great deal of jewelry and crowns and flowing silk sashes, showing that they are more worldly than full-blown Buddhas, since they choose to stay in this world in order to help those who are unenlightened. The sculpture also wears a colorful, patchwork or appliquéd brocade robe, like those worn by so many sculptures. Around the sides of the room are tall standing life-size bodhisattvas, of course painted gold with blue hair, and wearing patchwork brocade robes with long silk fringe.

We climbed up on the flat rooftop of the Jokhang and looked out over the crowd that is continually circling around the temple. We had an excellent view of the entire square, so we watched not only pilgrims circumambulating the temple and in some cases spinning prayer wheels, but we also saw the merchandise booths in two long rows on either side of the square, where many people haggled. Also in front of the temple is a little space inside a stone wall containing a very old tombstone-like stone sticking up with a message carved into it. Gyantzing mentioned that it basically says that China will never invade Tibet, and I laughed and commented on the irony. I was a bit surprised that he brought it up.

Gyantzing said, “Many, many people circle around the temple.” Just as he said this I saw a fluffy white little dog on a leash, and I said, “Not to mention the occasional dog.”

We got back down the treacherous ladder-like stairs and parted in front of the Jokhang, where Gyantzing said I’m welcome to circumambulate the temple. I was happy to do so, having read so much about it. I walked slowly and steadily, at the same pace as the pilgrims in front of me. It was a walking meditation, so I was mindful of my steps at the same time that I was gawking at my fascinating surroundings. I was moving like this through a vast crowd, in lanes lined with shops and merchandise stalls.

Some merchants sold mundane things like plastic toys and flashlights, which you could get just about anywhere in the world. Others sold pictures of the Panchen Lama and other religious figures; Tibetan Buddhist statues and ritual tools; coral, silver, and turquoise jewelry; musical instruments for rituals; ordinary clothing such as t-shirts with the message “Yak yak yak Tibet;” and ready-made traditional Tibetan clothing such as elegant black chupas. I noticed a fabric store that contained brocade and thought I might shop there sometime, but right now I just enjoyed the walk.

Of course, I had a lot more to look at than merchandise. Beyond the stalls and salespeople were the tall stone Tibetan buildings with shops on the main floor and perhaps apartments up above. Some of the people in the crowd were red-clad monks, and others were pilgrims who in many cases wore traditional dress, such as rough-looking heavy wool robes. When I reached the front of the Jokhang, its beautiful façade was a welcome sight, and rows of pilgrims dramatically prostrated before it. I only went around twice because halfway round the second time, I noticed that I was dizzy and nauseous again, so I headed back to my hotel room. Unlike in Dharamsala, where the altitude is low compared to Lhasa, I experienced two days of altitude sickness.
I only saw a total of five white people all day, and three of them were the Germans staying at this hotel. While circumambulating the Jokhang, I had just been thinking I was the only non-Asian in the whole crowd, when I briefly noticed a pair of Brits.

10:20 pm—I’ve taken some labels off water bottles as cheap souvenirs; I think it’s sad that the labels are in Chinese, not Tibetan. It’s also sad that this major street is called Beijing Road, the most prominent street in Lhasa, and that it’s lined with Chinese-looking shops. It’s not till you get to this neighborhood, the Old Tibetan Neighborhood (like a historic landmark, something from the past), that the shops all have signs in Tibetan, in addition to Chinese. It’s not unusual to see Tibetan, Chinese, and English—for the shops around the Jokhang in particular, this is standard. It struck me as ironic to see a store that’s called “Ethnic Clothing Shop” when the “ethnic” clothing is Tibetan and is basically what you see many women wearing, in particular chupas and striped aprons.

My Arrival in Lhasa, Tibet

Flying over Tibet, I see tippy-top peaks of snow-capped mountains peaked out of the clouds. Cloud formations included what looked like a panda bear sticking its tongue out. Another cloud resembled someone resting, perhaps a reclining Buddha, and another cloud was too reminiscent of a mushroom cloud. I must have seen the top of Mount Everest, but there were so many mountain tops that I don’t know which one it was.

Germans surrounded me on the plane, and when they spoke English, it was with a British accent. A Tibetan guy across the aisle (I had the window seat) asked the German guy next to me if he’d put a book in his bag. It was a hardcover book and pretty big, and he bought it in India and no doubt it was not a pro-Chinese occupation kind of book. The German guy was dubious about it, since he didn’t want to get in trouble either. He turned to me and asked, “Do you speak English?”
I smiled and said, “Yeah.”
“Yeah. You’re British?”
“No, American,” I admitted. He then explained the situation to me and asked if he should take the book, and I said I wouldn’t do it, just to be safe. I then explained, “If he’s caught, he’d get into worse trouble, though. He could be imprisoned. But you’d still get in trouble.” At the airport near Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, my bags had to all go back through a security check, even though we were arriving rather than departing. This young guy in a green Chinese uniform and wearing clear plastic gloves searched both my carry-ons but not my suitcase. Stuff I got in Dharamsala and that I don’t want the Chinese to see is actually in the suitcase, so I lucked out in that respect—so far, anyway. I guess they’re more concerned about what we bring than what we take to an airport for departure, since this is fascist Chinese-occupied Tibet.

The soldier even flipped through pages in my books and notebooks, probably to see if I brought pictures of the Dalai Lama. I’m so glad I didn’t purchase any such pictures in Dharamsala, after all! I’ll wait and get some when I return to Kathmandu.

What the tall, stern and unsmiling Chinese soldier didn’t do is read the smallish print on the front cover of my spiral bound photocopied edition of the Tibetan Dhammapada: there are lots of words on the cover, and toward the bottom is a paragraph specifying the Dalai Lama’s teachings in Dharamsala and the dates of the teachings. Of course this was all in English, and I suspect that he wouldn’t have understood many of the words on the cover. I don’t think Chinese or Tibetan people speak English as much as people from India and Nepal do, since in those countries it’s taught in school even when they’re little kids. That’s the best way to learn more than one language: start in elementary school; I wish we’d do that in America.

I recall reading that, for whatever reason, China doesn’t allow you to bring more than twenty changes of underwear. When I read about that, I imagined what it could be like when a Chinese authority looks through my suitcase.

“You have too much underwear! You are a member of a splittist faction!” “No, that’s just a rip in the seam.” “Why you have Dalai Lama pictures in your underwear?” “I figured of all the places that would least likely get looked at carefully…”

This is so crazy—I’m in Tibet for real! I’d like to take a picture of a yeti, but I won’t be out in the wild, and I doubt a yeti would be circumambulating the Jokhang Temple.

Gyantzing is my tour guide, a guy. I was hoping for a female tour guide. After this trip, I’ll want a one-way ticket to Herland. I was relieved to leave that mean boy in a green uniform and head toward this big open space devoid of furniture with the one exception of a sort of table on which I had to place my Chinese visa, an eight and a half by eleven inch piece of white paper with black ink and an official-looking red stamp. A middle-aged Tibetan guy in a dark jacket approached me and asked if I’m Susan, and I smiled and said, “Yes!” He gave me a khatta, a white Tibetan greeting scarf that’s sheen and printed with auspicious Buddhist symbols. It has a very long silky fringe on each end, and the fringe tangles with everything.

Writing in the minivan while riding from the airport, I took notes in a horrible scrawl, while Gyantzing gave me information:
The airport is at 3600 meters above sea level, and Lhasa is at 3700 meters above sea level. All I know about meters is they’re approximately four feet. I didn’t do the math; I just know it’s big numbers.
The river near the airport is the Brahmaputra, and it’s winding like turquoise arteries. From Mount Kailash to India is 60 kilometers. The Yellow Valley is sandy with short, spiky brown and red plants.
Barley, wheat, and peas are the main crops. I know they can grow potatoes and other root vegetables, though, and they’re actually capable of growing quite a number of vegetables and flowers during a couple of summer months, at least on the plateau. Nowadays there are greenhouses, but oddly they looked empty as we rode past them from the airport. It seems to me like this would be a great time of year to put the greenhouses to use.
Lhasa Gytsu is the central river, and it goes to northern Tibet. ( I wouldn't be a bit surprised if I totally misspelled that.)

Twenty percent of Tibetan males were monks, and two percent of Tibetan women were nuns, before the Cultural Revolution. Or to be more accurate, this was before about 1959, since the Chinese had already invaded and done a great deal of harm before the Cultural Revolution and kicked plenty of monks and nuns out of their monastic lifestyle. However, the tour guide isn’t supposed to say that: the official Chinese bull shit propaganda story is that the invasion was “the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet” (yeah, just like Georgie Porgy and his minion’s invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq were “Peaceful Liberations”) and it’s absolutely verboten to point out that the invasion was in fact very violent and oppressive, not a peaceful liberation at all. Not to mention that buildings like monasteries were bombed; monks and nuns raped and murdered, that sort of thing. Peaceful liberation, indeed.

400 nuns—biggest number in Tibet—on mountain. 600,000 = population of Lhasa, 40% Tibetan. New buildings are coming up in Chinese style. Tall glass skyscrapers, I notice. China has certainly lifted its leg and pissed on Tibet.

I see on the river reddish brown ducks with pale yellow heads, black-tipped wings. We passed greenhouses, where people grow tomatoes, cucumbers, etc, and a group of people planting trees with a cart loaded with branches. We passed Western-looking cows and sheep. I’m kind of surprised that the cows aren’t more like Indian cows.

We passed an 11th century monastery, Ballendesh, built in typical Tibetan style, whitewashed with slanting walls. Pretty. Cremated, ashes in stupa—brought ashes back in 1960’s (I’m not sure if this comment refers to an abbot or to the monks of that monastery in general or not—too bad my notes weren’t more detailed). We came to a mountain with carved and painted Buddhas. Around the time of the invasion or the Cultural Revolution, there was a request that the central government (as in Beijing) not destroy the monastery, so here it stands. (We were still south of Lhasa while I scribbled these notes, while the tour guide was speaking in the jeep.)

The military base, a big tall scary building a few minutes down the road from the old monastery, is three years old. I looked up at the looming rectangle, a very modern building, and thought: That’s a sign that you’re in an oppressive fascist police state. It’s such a power-tripping symbol to have a military base right there, on the outskirts of Lhasa. It disgusts me but doesn’t really surprise me. I seem some green military vehicles in front of the building, around which is a fence with a gate where a stiff green-clad soldier stands. He looks like he’s frozen in place; he may as well be an android rather than a person.

We stopped to see the beautiful, bright Buddha paintings on a mountain, and the ducks on the lake across the road were talkative in and at the edge of the snakelike winding little bits of river. Before we walked up to the mountain and looked at the big bright Buddha, we went through a colorful gate painted in Tibetan symbols, and we stopped at a juniper stove. It’s whitewashed and probably made of earth, and it’s shaped rather like a vase or like a Tibetan stupa, with curved sides and a curved aperture where the juniper is placed. Inside the aperture, the surface is burnt black and has remnants of the plant, and a little bit of smoke still issues out. I’ve seen these many times in photos of Tibetan architecture, and I could tell they were stoves, but I never knew exactly what they were. They’re located in front of all monasteries and temples, and they are used for burning offerings of juniper every morning. I hope they grow plenty of juniper bushes nearby.

The Buddha is indeed huge and painted and slightly carved on the mountainside. It’s low enough that the artist or artists could have been standing on the ground while making it, rather than standing on scaffolding. It’s not smooth and sophisticated but rather has the rough texture of the rocky mountain and has a folk art look to it. Colorful deities, smaller than the Buddha, are painted on the mountain, and I recognize Green Tara, a Goddess of compassion who has one foot down from her lotus throne, like she’s about to get down and help people out. I wish she’d come help me, but I have to help myself.

A few yards past the big Buddha mountain, we passed newly-built summer houses. Although the houses have Tibetan-style murals, the walls are filled with very large greenish glass windows; they are deserted little vacation houses presumably for Han Chinese invaders. They consist of modern architecture despite the murals, and the architect has made no attempt at imitating traditional Tibetan architecture; the little houses look like they might only have one room, maybe a little more than that, and they have peaked roofs. Given what the climate is like, I don’t think people would stay in them for more than a couple months. Would they really enjoy it?

I see plenty of modern versions of Tibetan houses. They have garage doors like Indian and Nepalese buildings but also ornate red Tibetan doors. They have grey walls made of what looks like big stone or cement blocks. They can have large front picture windows, probably for the living room, and they also have plenty of other windows, with glass. Traditional Tibetan windows didn’t have glass but had shutters—given the climate, I’m thinking you’d have to be bundled up all the time, even in the house. Of course, the Tibetan beer chang would warm people up, as would hot food and a fire.

We came to traffic police, who are Chinese in fancy blue uniforms, before we passed bulldozed (or more likely bombed) and graffiti-decorated older Tibetan houses. If they were destroyed in the fifties or sixties, I’m surprised nobody’s cleared away the evidence and instead has left these reminders to inspire resentment and to perhaps inspire some Tibetans to be suspicious of the official Chinese version of their history. I’ve read that Tibetans living in Tibet aren’t getting the real story, and this is not surprising; though if they have parents or grandparents around who remember what really happened, then I suspect they learn from them.

We passed under the new railroad and saw the station in the distance. We passed the notorious train station, which mimics traditional Tibetan monastic architecture and was completed in 2006. I’ve read that global warming means the permafrost is melting, and this will make the train tracks sink and crumble in a short time. Really smart thinking. But of course, the Chinese are in denial about so many things. I’ve also read that while the official story is that the railroad is good for Tibet and that building it gave many Tibetans jobs, the truth is that the better jobs were given to Chinese and that Tibetans had the worse and lower-paying jobs on the railroad. And of course it also means that all the more Han Chinese can move into Tibet, as if there aren’t enough. They don’t even have the lungs for this climate—I can’t think they’d be all that much at home.

On the left we passed a cement factory, which according to Gyantzing is one of the first factories that the Chinese built in Tibet, in the 1960’s, causing the worst pollution in Tibet.
Also on the left, after we’ve entered Lhasa, we passed Drepung Monastery. It is on a mountainside beyond shops and looms up looking quite large and impressive, all whitewashed walls slanting inward so that the base of the wall is wider than the top, just in all traditional Tibetan architecture, and the monastery has the obligatory black-framed windows. Sera Monastery is in Lhasa and Ganden, which houses the yellow-hat sect, is in Gyantse. It dates to the 11th-12th centuries, 14th century. The last sect only dates to the seventeenth century and is a reformist sect thanks to the fifth Dalai Lama. He got other orders to change into the Yellow Hat (Gelugpa)—most monasteries in Tibet are now yellow-hat. The second through the fourteenth Dalai Lamas had their education in this monastery, Drepung. It’s a big and special place. I’ve had the impression that lately the reason there are so many more Gelugpa monks and nuns is because of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s charisma, but it sounds like it predates him.

We’ve passed countless Chinese shops on the outskirts of Lhasa. I look at the signs over the roll-up doors and see scarcely any Tibetan script, all Chinese. Yes, I mentioned roll-up doors; I didn’t expect Tibet to have the same sort of entrances to shops that India and Nepal have, but there it is. I’m guessing that China also has shop doors that look to Westerners like garage doors, because under the circumstances Tibet is much more influenced by China than by India, although Buddhism came from India to Tibet and therefore in the past India had a huge influence on Tibetan culture. We stopped at the Bank of China, a remarkably new-looking building (like so many) but they’re not taking US dollars at this hour, so we’ll go back tomorrow morning to exchange some of my money.

I saw a very skinny and young Chinese woman sitting behind a guy on a motorcycle. She wore tight jeans and a purple jacket, and I noticed that she had tall black boots with spiked heels. I guess it was the boots, plus things I’ve read about modern Lhasa, but I strongly suspected her of being a prostitute sitting behind a customer. The motorcycle was at a wide intersection and zoomed off around a corner to the left. The streets are so wide and clean here, nothing like the narrow, dirty, and chaotic streets in Kathmandu.

As we drove past the towering and impressive Potala Palace, I gasped and gawked and the tour guide told me a few things about it. The Potala has thirteen stories and a thousand rooms. On the façade different sections are painted different colors: red, white, or yellow. The red rooms are the Dalai Lama’s and for politics. The white rooms are for the monastery. In other words, the Potala has a color-coded façade. The yellow section is a courtyard between the special white section, which contains among other things the Dalai Lama’s rooms, and the red. This isn’t tourist season, so we can spend more time in the Potala; normally tourists are only allowed one hour in the Potala and it is crowded.

The Potala sits on top of a mountain, the Marpo Ri or Red Hill, and it looms over Lhasa as if it’s giving the Chinese government the finger. I’m not one of those Shangri-la people who think that Tibet has been nonviolent for the past hundred years; I know it has in that time been just another patriarchal country, and according to the history books Tibet has had wars with China and even battles between different sects, different monasteries. Nonetheless, I figure that since the mountains are still standing, the Potala is still standing, and the Jokhang Temple is still standing, Tibet still has some magic.

I don’t think it’s possible to be a radical feminist and be a Shangri-la person, someone who sees Tibet and Tibetans through rose-colored glasses. If you have feminist consciousness, then shortly after you start learning about Tibetan culture it becomes really obvious that it’s male-dominated, and you might also suspect the monastic system of being somewhat power-tripping in general, not just in its contempt for women and nuns.

Actually, the monastic system isn’t all to blame for that, but rather the social structure in general: parents encourage their sons to go to the monastery, which traditionally was where you got the best education. But parents highly discourage their daughters to become nuns and thereby get a comparable education to the boys; they’re encouraged to get married and give birth to children. Even if they do become nuns, they have a tendency to do domestic chores around their parents’ house or for the monks, so that they still don’t get the kind of education and training that monks get. Nuns are not fully ordained bhikkunis and are totally considered subservient to the monks. Also, in Tibetan tradition, monks perform rites and ceremonies for the people, but nuns totally don’t. It’s so misogynist and hateful, and every time I read or think about power-tripping males in Buddhism I find it terribly ironic, given what Buddhist practice is supposed to be all about. Cultivating male ego has no resemblance to cultivating egolessless, quite the contrary. I should perhaps mention that of course my male and androcentric tour guide didn’t mention any of these things; my comments come from many books I’ve read about Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism.

The Yak Hotel, where I’ll be staying, is just down the street from the Potala itself, on the main drag, Beijing Street. It is a very wide and very modern and clean paved street, again in sharp contrast with what I’m accustomed to seeing in India and Nepal. The streets in Lhasa are indeed reminiscent of a Western street, and the steering wheel is on the left side, just like in America. In both India and Nepal, it’s on the right, and traffic goes on the left side of the road.

The Yak Hotel, which I started to mention, is at least two stories tall and has a grey concrete façade. Facing the main drag is a wide doorway into the lobby, and the doors are open and display two door curtains, or whatever they’re called, that are white with blue trim and appliquéd with big blue Buddhist continuous knots; we had seen some for sale at the nunnery in Dharamsala, and Marsha purchased one in the gift shop. To enter the hotel parking lot, we actually drove through a gateway that led to a courtyard where other vehicles are parked. The courtyard is surrounded by tall grey walls that imitate traditional Tibetan architecture but have straight walls rather than the truly traditional ones that slant inwards.

This neighborhood, where my so-called budget hotel is located, is the Old Lhasa neighborhood, where most of the Tibetans live and where the architecture at least pretends to be traditional Tibetan architecture. The street is flanked on both sides with tall, grey stone or concrete block buildings, with black-framed windows and flat roofs. Along each side of the very wide street is a lane for rickshaws that have striped canopies imitating the top horizontal of Buddhist flags or Tibetan banners; that is, the canopies have a nylon ruffle all the way around, striped in red, yellow, and green, but they’re cheap and faded-looking compared to the rich brocades that you would see inside a Tibetan temple.

Before I parted with Gyantzing in the lobby, he gave me a brief run-down on tomorrow morning. For breakfast, there’s a fifth floor rooftop restaurant. At 9:45 I’ll meet with Gyantzing in the lobby.

Most of the hotel staff apparently consists of very young and thin Tibetan women. A skinny girl in a mauve padded nylon jacket took my wheeled suitcase and carried it up a flight of stairs to my room. Also a boy helped out in the room, and between them they introduced me to the heater with its white plastic remote control and someone turned it up for me. I tipped them and looked around the room with a grin.

My hotel room is so not my idea of what you would expect in a budget hotel. This is so much fancier than a Motel 6! The room even has complimentary white terrycloth bathrobes hanging in the closet, and the bathroom contains complementary toothbrush, shampoo, bath gel, and a comb, each in its individual little cardboard box. And on a small table by the windows are a teapot, tea bags, and Chinese-style white porcelain teacups with lids and decorated with a Yak Hotel logo illustrating yaks. There’s a mini bar, but it just has a few beverages—pop in red and white cans like Coca-Cola, Lhasa beer, and four bottles of water; I’ll definitely drink all the water. There’s a Western toilet and bath; I figured in a budget hotel I’d be squatting for both the toilet and a bucket bath. Furthermore, the décor isn’t plain and drab; the room is beautiful—it is brightly painted with Tibetan Buddhist murals, including the Wheel of the Law. The ceiling is also brightly painted with ridges like those in the architecture of Tibetan monasteries. The only thing budget-like that I can figure out is that there’s no elevator. I don’t think there’s room service either, but I’ve never used that anyway.

I am in Tibet! I am so dizzy! I ate some dried fruit and hazelnuts that I brought, and I took the Chinese herbal medicine and an altitude pill. I’ve only been to a dozen countries, but I somehow suspect Tibet is the weirdest country in the world. I hope the aroma of incense and butter lamps will be stronger than the smell of hygienically challenged pilgrims.

I should mention, thanks to a glance back at my scrawled notes, that when we got to the old Tibetan neighborhood, which is called—guess what—the Old Tibetan Neighborhood, there are shops with lettering in both Tibetan and Chinese. Again, the shops have open fronts like in India and Nepal, and when they close for business, they roll down the “garage” door.

2
With altitude sickness and a cold, I went to bed at 8 pm tonight. I just woke from a dream in which I was outdoors with a happy group of people holding hands and dancing around a pine tree… or maybe we danced around a player piano that mostly played automatically but you could push keys and make some music. I was dancing with the Dalai Lama! He was on my left and let me hold his pinky while everyone danced. The dancing style seemed rather more Jewish than Buddhist, like at a Jewish wedding.