Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [176]
While paddling lazily back across the river, Frank said, “Hey, Drepung, I’ve got a question I’ve been meaning to ask you—that day at the MCI Center, what was that with you putting a scarf around the Dalai Lama’s neck, before he gave his talk?”
“Yeah, what was that about?” Charlie chimed in.
Drepung paddled on for a while.
“Well, you know,” he said at last, looking away from the other two, so that he was squinting into the sunlight squiggling over the river. “Everyone needs someone to bless them, even the Dalai Lama. And Khembalung is a very important place in Tibetan Buddhism.”
Frank and Charlie gave each other a look. “We knew that, but like just how important?” Charlie asked.
“Well, it is one of the power spots, for sure. Like the Potala, in Lhasa.”
“So the Potala has the Dalai Lama, and Khembalung has you?”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“So how does the Panchen Lama fit into that?” Charlie asked. “What’s his power spot?”
“Beijing,” Frank said.
Charlie laughed. “It was somewhere down in Amda, right?”
Drepung said, “No, not always.”
Charlie said, “But he’s the one who was said to be on somewhat equal terms with the Dalai Lama, right? I read that—that the two of them represented the two main sects, and helped to pick each other when they were finding new ones. Kind of a back-and-forth thing.”
“Yes,” Drepung said.
“And so, but there’s a third one? I mean is that what you’re saying?”
“No. There are only the two of us.”
Drepung looked over at them.
Charlie and Frank stared back at him, mouths hanging open. They glanced at each other to confirm they were both getting the same message.
“So!” Charlie said. “You are the Panchen Lama, that’s what you’re saying?”
“Yes.”
“But—but…”
“I thought the new Panchen Lama was kidnapped by the Chinese,” Frank said.
“Yes.”
“But what are you saying!” Charlie cried. “You escaped?”
“I was rescued.”
Frank and Charlie paddled themselves into positions on either side of Drepung’s kayak, both facing him from close quarters. They laid their paddles over the kayaks to secure themselves as a loose raft, and as they slowly drifted downstream together, Drepung told them his story.
“Do you remember what I told you, Charlie, about the death of the Panchen Lama in 1986?”
Charlie nodded, and Drepung quickly recapped for Frank:
“The last Panchen Lama was a collaborator with the Chinese for most of his life. He lived in Beijing and was a part of Mao’s government, and he approved the conquest of Tibet. But this meant that the Tibetan people lost their feeling for him. While to the Chinese he was always just a tool. Eventually, their treatment of Tibet became so harsh that the Panchen Lama also protested, privately and then publicly, and so he spent his last years under house arrest.
“So, when he died, the world heard of it, and the Chinese told the monastery at Tashilhunpo to locate the new Panchen Lama, which they did. But they secretly contacted the Dalai Lama, to get his help with the final identification. At that point the Dalai Lama publicly identified one of the children, living near Tashilhunpo, thinking that because this boy lived under Chinese control, the Chinese would accept the designation. That way the Panchen Lama, although under Chinese control, would continue to be chosen in part by the Dalai Lama, as had always been true.”
“And that was you,” Charlie said.
“Yes. That was me. But the Chinese were not happy at this situation, and I was taken away by them. And another boy was identified by them as the true Panchen Lama.”
Drepung shook his head as he thought of this other boy, then went on: “Both of us were taken into custody, and raised in secrecy. No one knew where we were kept.”
“You weren’t with the other boy?”
“No. I was with my parents, though. We all lived in a big house together, with a garden. But then when