Lost on Planet China - J. Maarten Troost [113]
But it’s not merely political independence that’s at stake, it’s religious independence too. Just as the Chinese government appoints cardinals for the Catholic Church, so, too, it dictates who, precisely, can be incarnated as a lama, or teacher of Tibetan Buddhism. In China, Tibetan Buddhist lamas need a permission slip from the government in Beijing before they can be reincarnated. Indeed, when the Dalai Lama announced in 1995 that the eleventh reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, Tibet’s second most revered lama after the Dalai Lama, had been found in Tibet, Beijing became so ticked off that it sent a Politburo member to Lhasa. In the Jokhang Temple, senior Communist leaders put the names of three boys in an urn and chose by lot the official Panchen Lama. The boy chosen by the Dalai Lama has since disappeared. So, too, has the monk who found him.
By buying a ticket to the Potala Palace, one is tacitly conceding that the palace belongs to the state. But what also makes it just a little more awkward is that the palace is one of the most important sites for Tibetan pilgrims. At first, after I’d entered, it felt like a dusty museum. There were even cats prowling in the hallways. And then, just as I was admiring a fine golden statue of someone in a blissful state of enlightenment, in came a family of braided pilgrims, dipping yak butter out of tin cans and placing it in candle holders. And then they would shower the room with fluttering notes of money. Every holy room was graced with hundreds of images of Mao.
But the monks inside seemed jovial enough. In one chapel, I found two monks, one chanting, the other poking at his cell phone. Then the pilgrims entered. The chanting monk gave the other a look that seemed to say, Hey, put away the cell phone. It’s showtime. And indeed he did put it away, and he began to chant with a reverence reserved for visiting pilgrims, if not tourists.
In another chapel, an elderly Yoda-like monk approached me. “Where are you from?”
I told him and asked him about the pilgrims. They seemed different from pilgrims I’d seen elsewhere in China. They didn’t seem to be praying for wealth, as they did on Tai Shan. Instead, they were distributing wealth inside the temples, sprinkling notes upon the golden statues as they shuffled from room to room.
“The pilgrims come from all over Tibet. They come not just once, but many times. This is a very important place, very important.”
“Do you think the Dalai Lama will ever come back?”
“No. I don’t think the Dalai Lama will ever come back. He left in 1959. It makes us very sad.”
I spent several days in Lhasa, rarely leaving the tight confines of the old town. I could have remained for months, though it’s possible I’d reconsider in January. Perhaps I could move my family here, I thought. Kindergarten in Tibet. That would be cool. And the air was clean up here. Of course, there wasn’t much of it, so perhaps that would be a problem. Is it good parenting, taking kids up to 12,000 feet? Yes? No? I didn’t know. But I could live here, I thought. The Tibetans were kind and affable. I’d expected to find a people crushed by Chinese oppression. The People’s Liberation Army had been in Tibet for more than fifty years. They’d desecrated temples. They’d shot monks. But Tibetans are not crushed. Indeed, they are the jolliest people I’d encountered in China. I could live among these cheerful people. But the last thing Lhasa needed was another non-Tibetan to take up residence in