Escape from the Land of Snows (10 page)

The city was overflowing with people, jammed with perhaps three times its usual population of 30,000. Merchants in tiny dark stalls sold Chinese jade, yak meat marbled with fat, American galoshes, hand grenades, wireless radios, kimonos from Tokyo, sewing machines, and prayer wheels whose every turn sent a mantra upward to the heavens, along with copies of Bing Crosby’s not-quite-latest records (it took up to two years for 78s such as “White Christmas” to make it to Tibet). Wild-looking nomads whose hair had never been combed and whose faces were blasted tones of red and brown from the winds of the eastern provinces made their circuit of the holiest site in Tibetan Buddhism, the fortresslike Jokhang Temple in the center of Lhasa. Away from the public squares, pregnant women lay outside stark naked even in the chilly air, their bellies oiled to catch the spring sunlight, which it was believed would give them an easy birth.

And then there were the green trucks of the People’s Liberation Army. The soldiers, dressed in green drab, held rifles close to their chests as they looked down from the truck beds. The PLA soldiers were young, their faces expressionless. They were the phenomenally disciplined products of Mao’s revolution, so different from the corrupt, drunken troops of previous eras. The soldiers of the PLA had been a common sight in Lhasa for years, but that March, hatred of them had suddenly spiked. Tibetans shouted insults to them or called for them to leave Lhasa, and there had been several stabbings
of Chinese soldiers. Loudspeakers crackled to life with news of the country’s deliverance: “
Hail to the liberation of the Tibetans!
You are people who are lagging behind in the world. We are the people who will help you. Our relationship dates back thousands of years. We have come to bring progress.”

The PLA soldiers were often as miserable as the Lhasans themselves, though for different reasons. Tibet was a hardship post, in many cases thousands of miles from the soldiers’ homes and among people known to be hostile to the Han—“the barbarians,” as the common soldiers called them. The PLA troops called their mission “being buried,” because the Chinese words for “bury” (
xia zang
) and “Tibet” (
Xi zang
) are so close, and because going to Lhasa was like a death.

If Lhasans had, at first, cooperated with the PLA, the troops’ presence had now become stifling. “
No one could speak their mind because someone might be listening,” said Diki Tsering, the Dalai Lama’s mother. She heard rumors of Tibetans who spoke out against the Chinese disappearing, their deaths blamed on Khampa bandits. “
Gradually, life in Lhasa became unbearable,” she remembered. “For months my daughter and I had been talking late into the night about means of escape.”

But it was the resplendent, martial Khampas, the Golok men wearing yak-hide boots and bowler hats, and the others from outside the Vale of Lhasa whose presence signaled the greatest disruption in the balance of things. With their guns slung through wide leather belts, their dark eyes often appearing like slits in an agate mask, they were the physical reminders of a dissipated empire. Twelve hundred years ago, Tibet had been the premier Asian power, an empire that sprawled from Turkistan in the north, Changan in the east, Afghanistan in the west, and the Ganges River in the southwest. But now these men and their families were refugees in
their own capital, having pitched their tents on the banks of the slow-moving Kyichu River to the southeast of the city.

It was as if a previous incarnation of Tibet were squatting in the city, waiting for events to unfold.

The spark that lit the thousand-year-old kindling came very early on March 10, 1959. That morning, what seemed an entirely innocuous rumor spread through the streets of Lhasa: the Dalai Lama was planning to go to a dance performance at the Chinese military headquarters. Minute by minute, the news seemed to accelerate along the cobblestoned streets and dark, narrow alleyways that ring the city. It was the kind of gossip that people found almost physically painful to keep to themselves. Women dropped the bowls they’d been kneading barley dough in and men let the cups of butter tea fall soundlessly from their hands as they got up and ran to the streets. Sixteen-year-old Lobsang Yonten, the son of an aristocratic family with deep ties to Tibetan nationalists, was off for the New Year’s holidays and at that moment playing board games in one of the alley tea-stalls that dotted the city. He heard someone shout out the news of the Dalai Lama’s visit to the Chinese camp, and the first thing that sprung into his mind was the thought, “
I would sacrifice my life for His Holiness.” Yonten instantly began running. He ran toward the Norbulingka, where the Dalai Lama was staying, as if the Chinese were lining up to shoot him at that very moment, because that is what the rumor meant to most Tibetans: that the Chinese were about to kill or kidnap their Precious Jewel.

As he emerged from the alley, Yonten could see others running flat out, east toward the Dalai Lama’s palace. Although he couldn’t see her, his sister, hair still wet, was flying toward the Jewel Park from another direction. She’d been in the midst of washing her
hair when she’d heard the rumor and had begun running without remembering to grab a towel. Doors banged as houses emptied of people and merchants hurriedly shut their shops to join the crowd. The shouting grew louder as they ran. It was as if a small cyclone were sweeping Yonten and the others along the streets, pushing them the three miles to the Norbulingka.

To an outsider, the news would have meant nothing. The dance performance was one in an endless parade of visits and duties that the Dalai Lama spent his life carrying out, much to his own disappointment. The invitation stemmed from a near-forgotten conversation weeks before in which the Chinese official Tan Guansan had mentioned to the Dalai Lama that a new dance troupe had arrived in Lhasa and the Tibetan leader, out of politeness more than anything, had replied he’d like to see them. “
It had been our painful experience under the Chinese regime that I did not have the option even to decline a social invitation,” he remembered. But the visit hadn’t been coordinated through the usual channels, and when the Dalai Lama’s staff had found out about it the night before, one of them in particular—a young official named Barshi Ngawang Tenkyong—panicked.

A junior bureaucrat in the Tibetan government, Barshi had been on edge for any signs of Chinese intrigue. Tibetans believed that the Chinese often targeted high lamas. “
By 1959, the people were experienced in the Chinese methods,” says Narkyid, a Lhasa government official. “In Kham and Amdo, they would invite the top monk and sometimes shoot him and sometimes kidnap him. So everybody was thinking of this.” Rumors had swirled through Lhasa for weeks about Chinese soldiers dressed in civilian clothes carrying bombs to the Potala Palace, or about three planes at a nearby airport waiting to take the Dalai Lama to Peking. “
The Tibetans were out of their minds with worry about threats to His Holiness,” remembers one Tibetan.
On hearing about the Dalai Lama’s visit to the Chinese military HQ, Barshi decided to consult the Nechung Oracle. For hundreds of years, the Nechung had been the vessel for the spirit known as Dorje Drak-den, the personal protector of the Dalai Lama and the government of Tibet. Every major decision was brought before him.

As Barshi waited for his audience, cymbals clashed, the oracle’s assistants began chanting, and the Nechung himself emerged, dressed in golden silk brocade, his tunic covered in ancient symbols, a mirror around his neck surrounded by amethyst and turquoise flashing in the darkened room as the spell took hold. The man sat on a cushion and soon his eyes bulged as the spirit of Dorje Drak-den began to enter his body. His breaths came in short, choppy bursts. A massive, ornate helmet was placed on his head, and it was now understood that the spirit was present in the room.

Barshi had asked the oracle what was the best course to protect the Dalai Lama. In his guttural voice, the Nechung replied that a ritual of Buddhist prayers should be performed in a specific order. With that, he abruptly stood up, indicating the session was over.

There is a saying in Tibet, “When the gods get desperate, they tell lies.” Barshi sat openmouthed, astonished by the evasive answer, and as the Nechung turned to leave, the young official demanded clear instructions. They were talking about the life of the Dalai Lama, after all. The Nechung, clearly annoyed, hesitated and then sat down again. “
It is time,” he said, after a moment, “to tell the all-knowing Guru not to venture outside.” It was an unmistakable sign that His Holiness was in danger.

The Chinese, inadvertently, had contributed to the aura of threat surrounding His Holiness. Days before the dance performance, Chinese emissaries had told the Dalai Lama’s chief bodyguard (who was also his brother-in-law) that his traditional contingent of twenty-five bodyguards, strapping Khampas in
burgundy robes with padded shoulders, were to halt at the Stone Bridge two miles from the military headquarters on the day of the recital. The PLA would take over security after that point. The Dalai Lama’s advisers were shocked. Such a request had never been heard before; it was like asking the king of England to arrive at Peking airport alone and unescorted, like a common traveler. It was both an insult, the officials felt, and a warning. When the chief bodyguard protested, the Chinese messenger snapped, “
Will you be responsible if someone pulls the trigger?”

On the night of March 9, the Lord Chamberlain and other government officials approached the Dalai Lama and told him that, in light of the highly unusual requests from the Chinese, he should stay away from the HQ. But the Dalai Lama, who hated the elaborate protocol of bodyguards and official retinues anyway, said he would attend. The Norbulingka was electric with tension. The Dalai Lama was, many believed, walking into a trap from which he and Tibet would never emerge.

That night, Barshi decided to take action. He sent an anonymous letter to the abbots of two nearby monasteries, alerting them to the Dalai Lama’s visit, knowing the news would set off alarm bells among the monks in the hills above Lhasa. Barshi then bicycled to the Potala and to other points in the city, telling people to gather in front of the Norbulingka the next morning to keep His Holiness safe. Another junior official set off on a horse with the same mission, a Tibetan Paul Revere.

By seven o’clock the next morning, it was clear they’d touched off something they couldn’t control.

As sixteen-year-old Yonten was running toward the Norbulingka, the Dalai Lama’s mother was in her well-appointed Lhasa home,
supervising the dyeing and embroidering of clothes, when a neighbor flung the door open and shouted to her, “
What are you doing?!” Diki Tsering looked up, astonished. Although she’d been born a humble peasant woman, Diki Tsering had been raised to the exalted position of the Dalai Lama’s mother. Few people spoke to her like the messenger just had.

The intruder didn’t wait for an answer. “Everyone in Lhasa is going to the Norbulingka with sticks, clubs, knives, and whatever else they can lay their hands on,” the man said, talking fast in the Amdo dialect. “Even if we have to die, we will stop Him from going!”

Her first thought wasn’t about the Dalai Lama. She knew he was safe in the Norbulingka, surrounded by towering bodyguards and the Tibetan army. But her youngest boy, the impish Choegyal, had gone to the dance performance, and now he would be a hostage to the Chinese. Diki Tsering stood and went to the window.

As she stood listening to the bellowing of the crowd, Diki Tsering thought she could hear in it her youngest son, crying, “
Amala, Amala
” (“Mother, Mother”).

At that moment, Choegyal was sitting wide-eyed in the Chinese camp watching a swirl of activity rotate around an absence—that of his older brother. At 7:00 a.m. a Chinese military truck had come to Drepung Monastery to pick Choegyal up for the dance performance. It was a beautiful spring morning, and he’d happily climbed aboard along with aristocrats, cabinet ministers, and abbots. But as the truck lurched toward the camp, the people inside heard a rumbling. “
I didn’t know what was happening,” Choegyal remembers. “We looked out of the truck and we could see all these people running toward the Norbulingka.”

Choegyal stepped down from the truck and found Tibetan schoolchildren waiting on either side of the path, looking at each vehicle expectantly as they held in their hands
katas
and bunches of flowers. Clearly, the Chinese authorities had no idea that Lhasa had risen up. Choegyal and the rest of the notables were ushered past the gate and then left to wait. The stage where the performance was to take place stood empty.

At the same time, a young monk was walking toward the Norbulingka with a group of his friends. They were startled to see a man come speeding down the road toward them on a bicycle, “
puffs of vapor blowing from his mouth.” The junior government official hurriedly explained that all monks were being summoned to the summer palace. His voice trembling, the man said that the PLA was preparing to take His Holiness to China.

The monks rushed to the Norbulingka, their wool robes flapping as they ran. There in front of the gates they found a huge crowd, perhaps 30,000 people, almost a third of the present population of Lhasa. More were arriving by the moment, streaming by and bowing in supplication toward the summer palace. Some were shouting; others prostrated themselves on the ground, weeping, calling out, “The wish-fulfilling Jewel is Tibet’s only savior. Don’t let the nobles exchange him for Chinese silver!” As he got closer to the Norbulingka, the young monk sensed that the mood of his fellow Tibetans was darker than he had first imagined. “The crowd was out of control,” he said. Chants rippled through the mass of people, starting at one corner and spreading quickly to the opposite: “China out of Tibet!” people yelled. “Tibet for Tibetans!” In the middle of that roiling mass, sixteen-year-old Yonten felt the anger of the crowd radiate through him. “
All the people seemed so furious,” he remembers. “Some were crying and others became frenzied and senseless. It was so sad and thrilling at the same time.”