Tibetan chinese and chinese Tibet

---

Lhasa is now a Chinese haven, full of Chinese shops and Han trying to make a new and better life for themselves in stunning surroundings and plenty of space to spread out. With so many reported incentives for them to move to Tibet its no surprise that many Han Chinese have made Lhasa and Shigatse their homes in recent years. Chinese people wishing to move to Tibet can stake a claim and buy up any piece of land they wish (Tibetans cannot) and even the one child policy doesn't apply to Chinese settlers in Tibet.

Lhasa is a very special place but it is also heartbreakingly sad. I probably can't say too much as you may know that everything, and I mean everything is censored by the Chinese government. All correspondents are absolutely non private or secure!

The Chinese influence and presence in Lhasa is stifling really, suffocating may be more accurate. Every corner in Lhasa has Chinese signs and shops and China has quite literally trampled its way through the town and destroyed much of the mystical and spiritual atmosphere you would expect to find in such a place. In fact it makes me really sad to say it but I think that Lhasa, as the capital of Tibet that contains so many spiritually and religiously important pilgrim sites doesn’t really stand for what it should anymore in the present day. Yes you will still find beautiful Tibetan men and women circling the Jokhang temple with absolute dedication but it will all be closely monitored by the Chinese government from various cameras dotted around the Bakhor square. And you may still find Tibetan shops selling souvenirs that are sold to you by Tibetans but the shocking truth is that of the 700 or so reported businesses in Lhasa only a mere 300 are said to be owned and run by Tibetan people.

Sadly Lhasa is more like a Chinese wonderland or a theme park, a holiday destination for those Han Chinese wealthy enough to visit. I think I’ve seen more Chinese tourists in Lhasa than I would ever care to see in my lifetime.
There are so many terrible things in the surrounding area too, like the fact that driving through the countryside today on our way to Shigatse, we saw many little stone Tibetan dwellings all flying the Chinese flag instead of the traditional prayer flags that seem to decorate much of the surrounding hills and homes. When we asked why this was, our guide told us that the government gives the flags to the families and they MUST fly the flag, they have no choice in the matter.

Another example of Chinese ignorance was their 'solution' to stop the 'Sky burials' carried out by the Tibetan people as an important religious and traditional custom for helping their loved ones pass on. Unfortunately this was also a custom that was heavily frowned upon by the Chinese as they found the act of dividing the body up into small pieces and then letting the remains of the body be taken away by birds of prey, quite literally being freed to the wind and the sky, was seen by the Chinese government as being savage and disgusting. The Chinese had a simple solution, they started killing as many birds as they could in the hope this would prevent the burials from being fully carried out, the result instead was that now Tibet has lost many glorious birds.

The Chinese government have even built a monument directly opposite the Potala palace, a big bold statement and a harsh remainder of their unwanted dominance over the town and Tibet itself.

I discovered something very interesting about China while travelling there. I don't want to go back. This is quite a bold statement for me to say because I always leave countries hungry for more, knowing that the time was never long enough and there is always more to be discovered around the corner. Admittedly I would still love to see the Great Wall and see some of the cities in the East, but from what I have learned in the short three weeks I travelled in Yunnan and Sichuan, I have seen enough to know that I don't want to come back and aid the government in their continued destruction of Tibet, whether knowingly now or not they are slowly strangling a magnificent culture, that should be cherished and preserved for future generations.

China is an incredibly beautiful country in itself with many warm and welcoming people (mainly those found out of the cities and in Tibetan communities that live in far western Sichuan, once part of the Kham province of Tibet) but generally the people who deal with tourism, the people you see on the streets, the people in the cities most of these people who I have met, to me, these people let the country down.

Their spitting, the staring, the constant fascination with tourists, who seen occasionally as a person but mostly we are merely a walking dollar to them that can be manipulated, the covert pictures that are taken all the time even when standing in front of Everest or the Potala! The way they almost completely destroyed Tibet and its monasteries and heritage and the way they continue to do so, encroaching on from what I can see a life full of age old traditions and deeply rooted religious buildings, full of people who have to be some of the most beautiful, welcoming and lovely people I have ever met, and really all they want is some kind of compromise to enable freedom and the much longed for return of their leader the 14th Dalai Lama.

Its just very sad to be an outsider and witness the damage that has and continues to be done to the incredible place.

The best example I can give to sum up what I mean is this: In the year 763 a peace treaty was signed and inscribed into three stone pillars of which one copy has survived and can be found in the bakhor square in Lhasa
It states that both Tibet and China will respect each others land and people and that neither one will invade the other and try and claim land that is not his own. It goes on to say that "Tibetan people will be happy in Tibet, and Chinese people will be happy in China."

The Chinese just have this wonderful way of taking something so precious and ruining it. Destroying old, beautiful buildings and architecture in favour of new modern concrete structures, all in the name of power, progress and the future is not something that is isolated to Tibet, we saw it happening all over china. Chengdu for example, one of the oldest cities in china has one road left with old buildings still clinging to the unstable surroundings of a growing new age city. In fact only 2 of these buildings on this one street still remain. Soon I fear there will be little of the traditional Chinese architecture that tourists come to see left, and all heritage will be lost in place of the modern age.

You can see it makes me sad. I just wish I had the chance to see Tibet the way it should have stayed or better still I wish no one had ever been able to reach it and it could have survived in peace the way it had done for generations before. Sadly the situation will only get worse as the new train brings in an estimated 6,000 tourists to Lhasa everyday! I feel incredibly guilty for in part funding the train now, even though it was a fantastic experience. It is crushing Lhasa with the volume of people. I’m not sure how many people each train holds but there were about 14 carriages and I counted maybe 10-15 non Chinese tourists aboard.

These trains bring with them change. A change that will strip Tibet of its heritage, its people of their values and beliefs and its countryside of its untouched beauty. These changes are not welcomed by Tibetans. There are ways we can help. Free Tibet.
www.freetibet.org

---