Rant

Right. China.

By the time I arrived in Lhasa I had really had my fill of China. You get used to the spitting, the umbrellas, the bad fashion socks, the pollution, the MSG, the fact that everyone's out for themselves and bu*gger you if you're in the way, etc etc. It's exhausting, it's disheartening, it's annoying and you end up kicking small children* and uttering f**k every 3 minutes to deal with it. But deal with it, you do.

*OK it was Chengdu, I had been nearly run over/ pick-pocketed /pushed out of the way/ poked in the eye with an umbrella numerous times that day, so when a 2-3 year old kid reaches into my handbag he chose the wrong gringo to mess with that day. And it wasn't a kick so much as a firm "HEY" and a nudge with my shin relocating this child closer to his parents and suggesting that perhaps he should find someone else's bag into which to reach.

So hopping on the train from Xining to Lhasa, I had the sense that I was leaving China. Yes, I do recognise that in terms of map borders and passport stamps, technically Tibet is part of China, but here's the thing. This place is a completely separate country that's being occupied by China. No question about it, Tibetans are not Chinese and Tibet is not part of China.

China can use all the propaganda they'd like to convince their people otherwise, but I'm not buying it (I also don't buy the whole Mao was 70% right thing, for the record). Tibetans have completely different language, customs, beliefs, ideals, aspirations, manner from the Chinese - they do not recognise themselves as Chinese, and their only link to China is China's claim over them.

The first thing I noticed was on the train, heading from Xining to Lhasa. This train is controversial in itself as China built it to bring or relocate more Han Chinese (the group that makes up 90%+ of the ethnic population of China) to Tibet to Sino-cise the joint, disrupting the Tibetan environment in the process. On the plus side Lhasa can get access to coal!!! - as reported in the government propaganda broadsheet English-language China Daily as they celebrated Yet Another Magnificent Accomplishment On The Part Of Chinese Engineers.

Anyway the train is full of Chinese in the hard sleeper (2nd) class, and one would presume 1st class as well, but en route to the restaurant car you go through 2 hard seat (3rd) class cars. The first car has about 20 Chinese people spread around 100 seats. The second is packed to the gill with Tibetans chanting and praying and singing and smiling and greeting you with "Tashi Delek!" and holding your hand in what we gathered was some sort of blessing. It was such a striking moment for me to be suddenly surrounded by the low murmur of Tibetan prayers.

It was also the first time I saw

• the self-segregation of the Tibetans & the Chinese

• the radical difference in the treatment of foreigners between the two groups

• the clearly recognisable difference in identity

Tibetans would rather sit on each others laps in one hard seat carriage than spread out into the second car where there are a few Chinese people laying about.

Up to this point I really didn't know enough about the whole Free Tibet movement, beyond that it was fashionable amongst celebrities and hippies to champion the cause, to have formed an opinion on it. Having said that, my knowledge of Chinese history is complete enough to know that most likely, whatever the Chinese government says is complete bulls**t. The Dalai Lama also looks like a nice, reasonable, peace-loving guy so he must have some legitimate claim on the issue.

It didn't take long in Lhasa to get a feeling for what it's really like there for Tibetans and how truly constricted they were in day to day life (particularly, of course, religious freedom). You instantly recognise that Tibetans are 2nd class citizens in their own country and they and their religion have been treated with contempt by the Chinese since 1959 (or before). The more we learned about the way China treats Tibet and Tibetans the more angry we got.

Tibetans cannot have passports.

Tibetans cannot compete for China in the Olympics (oh, but the Chinese will use one to take the torch to Mt Everest to Illustrate the Great Glory of the Chinese People - because they're the only ones conditioned enough to do it).

Tibetans will suffer imprisonment or worse for being found to possess a copy of the Dalai Lama's photo.

China subsidises Chinese people to visit Tibet as tourists in an effort to make it 'more Chinese'.

The monastery entrance fees not only go solely to the government, but the monasteries have to pay the government further taxes just to exist.

Employers (who are almost always Chinese) favour Chinese over Tibetans for jobs. Our Tibetan guide, Galek, had to take a rigourous exam to be employed but his Chinese counterparts didn't have to take any exam. Naturally Galek's not paid as much as the Chinese guides...no doubt because the Chinese guides would be sooooooo knowledgeable about Tibetan language, customs, religion...

There are military police in full riot gear with automatic weapons on every street corner in Lhasa as well as on the roofs of the buildings around town. And those are just the ones we can see.

The monks in the monasteries are more often than not Chinese spies and not real monks. And all of the monks in the Potala Palace are spies.

The Chinese government 'relocated' farmers from Lhasa to develop the Chinese section of town. On the plus side there are now karaoke bars.

The Chinese kidnapped the Panchen Lama - basically #2 to the D.L. - in 2000 (sorry, 'house arrest') and have instated their own Lama...because you know how Communism and religion go hand in hand, and Beijing knows best how to lead the Buddhist faith.

Most of the shopkeepers in Lhasa are Chinese not Tibetan because they've immigrated there on the encouragement of the Chinese government.

The Chinese stocked a holy lake with fish so that the Chinese tourists can go sport fishing...because, you know how Buddhists are such in favour of killing living creatures.

They have dammed another holy lake to direct hydroelectric power to the Chinese military presence.

The last straw was when, in an attempt to find some form of intelligent (and intelligible) literature on Tibetan Buddhism I was forced to choose from 6 crap booklets put out by the China International Press. I selected "The 14th Dalai Lama" with the only photo of the DL that I saw in Tibet in an attempt to read the Chinese side of things - my senior year 'Propaganda and Persuasion' sociology lecturer would have had excellent material in the way they found the most sinister looking photo of His Holiness (and greyed it out to make it look more so).

The booklet, an 80 page tirade against the DL in what could best be described as a 12 year old's English composition skill, had such illuminating chapters as

• Driving Tibet to Paradise or to Hell?

• Promoting Buddhism or Making a Mess of it?

• Benefiting Tibetans or Doing them Harm?

And worked through The Tibet Question with predictably ridiculous conclusions. For instance, I had no idea that the Dalai Lama was responsible for the 1996 Tokyo serin nerve gas attacks!

Far. Out.

A selection from the booklet to really hit home how obscene it was:

After the Tiananmen Square event in June 1989, international anti-China forces jointly imposed political isolation and economic sanction on China, and sought to turn public opinion against the country. The 14th Dalai Lama, who had been given the Nobel Peace Prize at that time, got dizzy with such international adulation, as if he had been drinking qingke barley wine. He travelled throughout Western countries and Eastern Europe, praising the tremendous changes in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. At the same time he issued various predictions, acting more like a psychic than a Living Buddha. He repeatedly predicted that within 5 to 10 years, 'Tibet will be independent' and 'the Communist Party of China will collapse.'[...]

Prediction after all cannot replace reality. Neither socialist China collapses because of the 14th Dalai Lama's curses, nor Tibet returns to feudal serfdom through the 14th Dalai Lama's divination. The sky above the snow mountains is still blue and clouds are still white. Farmers are tilling on their land and herdsmen shepherding their flocks on the grassland. […] The country enjoy stability, national unity and economic development. People are living and working harmoniously and pleasantly. The comprehensive national strength is being enhanced day by day.

Ahhhhhhh the noble peasant. Sources also say that China Will Grow Stronger Yet.

And of course the entire Chinese population buys it. So many will say "I don't understand why the West is so sympathetic to the Dalai Lama! He's a murderer and a slave owner!" And this is the attitude with which all Chinese visit Tibet, in the process unknowingly fostering further resentment from the foreign tourists towards their umbrella-toting, littering, driving-up-to-Everest-because-they-can't-be-bothered-walking ways. (No, you don't get to jump up and down next to Everest as if you climbed the mountain if you take a 25 yuan bus the 4 kms from the tent camp to base camp)

A brief history lesson

China's claim on Tibet essentially stems back to Ghengis Khan days when Mongolia occupied both China and Tibet. Completely logical then that, when Mongolia retreated, China rightfully owns the place. (Say, the British occupied both the US and Canada at one stage...maybe we Americans should all start wearing flannel shirts, ending sentences with "ay" and implement a logical universal health care system). Predictably the informative booklet doesn't even refer to the justification behind China's occupation of Tibet because Everyone Knows Tibet Is Rightfully Part of China!

Tibet was independent on and off as subsequent dynasties came and went, till 1959 when That Good Ol Guy Chairman Mao stormed the joint, forced the Dalai Lama to flee, and decided that what these Tibetans really needed was to start planting rice in the plateau. All 35mm of rainfall a year the place gets should really be put to good use with that suggestion.

Starvation ensued until China realises, maybe since barley's the only thing that grows above 3500 meters we should keep it that way.

And then comes the Cultural Revolution...In the name of Smashing the 4 Olds, monks are murdered, ancient monasteries completely destroyed, temples desecrated, Red Guards wreak havoc on the place and very nearly get to the Potala Palace (thanks Deng Xiaopeng for saving that one) before they're stopped. China's reaction to their black history of the 1960s and 70s has always been 70% sweeping under rug and 30% "oops" - though I don't think the "oops" made it as far west as Tibet.

Countless times during our stay in Tibet we were told "oh this monastery/ relic/ statue/ Buddha is only 10 years old because it was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution". The Ganden monastery used to hold 10,000 monks...now just 800 lived there (grounds patrolled by Chinese militia). About 20 years ago the Dalai Lama issued a decree that a particular deity was not supposed to be worshiped for some reason or other, and some of the monks of the Ganden monastery smashed the deity whilst others disagreed and wanted to keep worshiping it. No prizes for guessing which statue, of all the things destroyed by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Government decides they should pay to have rebuilt.

Since 1980s and 1990s the Chinese government has invested money in the region in the areas of infrastructure, education, health, trains, sport fishing, etc....With the regular crackdown on religious freedoms of course. It would probably be fair to say that they have improved some aspects of health and education for Tibetans.

...wait the education is all in Chinese

...hmmmm can't recall seeing any form of hospital outside of Lhasa and Shigatse

...oh, wait, they DID have a few karaoke bars. That makes the oppression all worth it!

I could go on and chances are if you're still reading, you might be interested. Returning to the Tibetans in the hard seat carriage on the train...it may well be my imagination but you can almost sense the special meaning they attach to saying 'tashi delek' instead of 'nihao' in greeting us. As if in that greeting they're saying to you 'please acknowledge we have a separate identity, and spread our message'. And I can assure you that in my response of 'tashi delek' back I'm pounding my fist to my chest in a 'solidarity brother, screw China' sentiment.

FREE TIBET.