Whispering in Tibet
first published by BlueEar.com, 1998
by Whitney Stewart

Under a wide, cloudless Tibetan sky of startling blue, my cousin and I climbed a steep path up sun-bleached stones. My nostrils itched from the caked dust. We moved lethargically, our breathing hard-fought above twelve thousand feet, but the thirteenth-century Shekar Monastery stood within easy reach. The whack of hammers told us reconstruction was fervent. I offered my cousin a lozenge to ease her raw throat.

This was a return visit. I had last been there, with my mother, in 1986 -- the year before foreign tourists caught Chinese oppression on camera and the Tibetan uprising was reported globally. High-altitude touring was not yet a fad then, and Hollywood had not yet told the story of the 14th Dalai Lama. Tibetans had welcomed my mother and me as we wandered around Lhasa’s Jokhang Temple and the Potala and Norbulingka Palaces, and frequently offered us food, tea, and amiable conversation. At our hotel bar, I was invited repeatedly to dance with giggling Tibetan girls. In the mornings, when I lingered on the banks of the Kyi Chu River, Tibetans left me alone to meditate on their country’s unparalleled natural beauty.

The only requests Tibetans made of my mother and me were for pictures of the Dalai Lama, which we did not have. I felt an inexplicable spiritual connection with Lhasa and vowed to return soon. I was thoroughly charmed and uncritical.

Last May, the moment I landed at Lhasa’s new airport I saw that the changes in Tibet were far greater than I had expected or could understand during this two-week stay. In the twelve years since my last visit I had lived with a Tibetan family in Dharamsala, India, practiced Buddhism with a Tibetan lama, written a screenplay for an adventure film about Tibetans, and interviewed the Dalai Lama four times for my two children’s books about him.

Despite years of research on the country, my heart still jumped as I exited the airport. Just seeing slick, black, air-conditioned minivans in the parking lot made me wince. Modernization was inevitable and useful, I had to remind myself. Tibet could not stay antiquated and rugged just to please my longing for adventure and authenticity. Why shouldn’t Tibetans have air-conditioned minivans, I said aloud before climbing into a colorful, old, un-air-conditioned truck with a small tourist group.

As my cousin and I rested to look out over Shekar village and photograph the flat, white-washed rooftops covered with yak dung patties, we were surrounded by dusty little boys in patched trousers and frayed button-down shirts. Smiling wildly and eyeing each other, they worked out a plan. I watched them decide who would befriend my cousin, and who me. They took us on as customers, unwilling though we were.

Two of the beguiling rascals, Tenzin and Dhondup, matched our steps up the mountain, exchanging words with us in fragmented English. I did my best to reply in equally fragmented Tibetan. As charmed as I was by the boys’ spunk and sweetness, I saw through their smiles. Guide the tourists up the obvious path (we could not have lost our way); request money, candy, and pens on the way down. The method was all too familiar.

We left Tenzin and Dhondup at the doors of the monastery for half an hour, but sure enough they waited for us. They had no school -- Tenzin claimed school was lousy -- and they didn’t seem to have animals to herd. What better than to follow Westerners?

In the next moment, I faced a personal dilemma: how to say no to cute, needy Tibetan boys. Not ten feet down the path, both boys began practicing their English vocabulary. "Pens? Pens?" they chanted. "Money? Money? Food?" They pantomimed eating with their dirt-caked fingers. I shook my head. Tenzin laughed and swung his head from side to side, winking at me as if to say, "Aw, come on!" I told him school was better than begging. He just smiled and whispered, "Money?" Finally something broke in me, and I gave him the wooden whistle attached to my day-pack. He stared blankly at my gift, and I felt idiotic for having given it to him as a memento. Why would he want to remember the tourist who denied him?

Dhondup was less cheery than Tenzin. When I explained that begging was "yakpo mindu," not good, Dhondup scowled. I think he thought I had said that he was not good. He spat at me and began shouting and pointing up at the monastery.

His Tibetan was too fast to understand, but his rage was clear. I tried calming him with gentle facial expressions, but he shouted even more. Then he pinched my cousin on the arm. She had reached into her bag and found gum for both boys, but Dhondup wanted money, and he never let up. He lifted his arm as if to punch me. Nothing I said could placate him. As my cousin and I climbed back into our battered truck and our driver pulled away from the crowd of ragged begging children, Dhondup didn’t miss his final chance to spit at me again.

I was crushed that this child was so hardened, and I questioned my own reluctance to give the boys money. Dhondup’s rejection caused me unfamiliar agony. What was the difference between sending money to Tibetan refugees in India—something I do regularly—and handing out money to beggar children in Tibet? Why was one so easy to do and the other so repugnant? I could not answer myself, and I retreated that night into my sleeping bag still seeing Dhondup’s distorted face.

The ugly scene in Shekar was to repeat itself as my companions and I traveled the tourist route between Lhasa and Kathmandu. Even when we visited the remote nomad territory near Paiku Tso, our truck was encircled at most stops. My usual forwardness in meeting locals now became an automatic ducking of my head, a recoiling.

In an unpopulated desert region near Porong, picnicking on a limited ration of instant soup, crackers, and dried fruit, we were approached by at least fifteen nomads. I sat still and stared at the ground as they stormed our circle. Then I put away my food, looked up at a woman who was tapping me urgently on the wrist, and shook my head.

Annoyed, she hit me on the arm and shouted something as she pointed to the land and mountains behind her. Perhaps she was telling me I was only a guest in her country, on her land, something I felt keenly. Maybe she wanted me to compare how much I had with how little she had, something I had done already. I rose wordlessly to face my miserliness alone. My despair inflated, and I found myself frustrated and crying. When had so many Tibetans become beggars? Had I just not noticed in 1986? Could they be helped?

After several nights contemplating the poverty, the begging, and my own discomfort, I asked a well-informed Tibetan man about the issue. Did he see begging as a problem? I wanted to know. Of course, he replied. Many educated Tibetans in Lhasa wondered what to do about the increased begging, he explained. Should we be giving food and money to these beggars? No, he declared. Tibetan children needed encouragement to find secure employment. But could children find any work? This was very difficult, he explained. Jobs were scarce, and secondary education was often too expensive for farmers and nomads.

Couldn’t the Dalai Lama broadcast a message over short wave radio explaining the detriments of begging? I asked, in the same moment realizing my naiveté. This may not help, he replied. Uneducated Tibetans faced a question of survival. Children had no incentive to go to school. Many would not understand the Dalai Lama even if they heard him. The problem was political. China would lose face by acknowledging poverty in Tibet. How could the Communist government create social programs to ease unemployment and truancy without admitting to the poverty under their jurisdiction? My Tibetan friend saw no solution. I found no comfort.

Not all my encounters in Tibet were aggressive, but all were at least mildly tense and guarded. I am so accustomed to speaking freely with exiled Tibetans about the loss of their homeland that in conversations inside Tibet I felt painfully bridled. I never brought up politics, limited myself to banalities. But no matter what the topic, I noticed Tibetans watching their tongue.

In Lhasa, restaurant servers chuckled with us freely until we discussed touring beyond the capital city. The young women admitted wanting to see Mount Kailash or Paiku Tso, but they could never do so. They worked seven days a week, they told us, and slept and ate at their restaurant.  They were lucky to take a stroll down the street. If they spoke about anything other than the instant coffee we had brought from Switzerland, they looked over their shoulder and indicated to us, finger to lips, to whisper. That is the gesture I remember, a ubiquitous one in Tibet, a gesture repeated by monks in the monasteries, by youths in the alleys, by merchants trying to get by. And when that gesture itself is too loud, Tibetans just tilt their head indicating that someone, someone unseen, could be listening.

Whisper in Tibet, I told myself. Or don’t say anything at all. Don’t analyze until you get home. Don’t let surveillance cameras catch you weeping in the Dalai Lama’s empty throne room. Pretend to care about nothing but photographing gorgeous vistas and buying hip T-shirts.

I could read and write all I wanted about Tibet, but what would I have known of Tenzin and Dhondup? What do I know now? Would I have helped them by giving them money? Would I have understood how their lives, and their parents’ lives, have been changed over the past twelve years, over the past forty? Who am I to question them? Who am I to picnic on someone’s land and not offer candy and money in return? Who am I to want to ease my own discomfort or to send Tenzin and Dhondup to school?

For now, I go unanswered.

Whitney Stewart writes fiction and nonfiction and has a special interest in Asia. She has published three young adult biographies: The 14th Dalai Lama: Spiritual Leader of Tibet ; Aung San Suu Kyi: Fearless Voice of Burma; and Sir Edmund Hillary: To Everest and Beyond.

Historical Note, also by Whitney Stewart

TIBET , 1911 - 1998

Tibet and China have a history of complicated relations. At the start of the 20th century, the two countries maintained what the 13th Dalai Lama called a "benefactor and priest relationship," not based on the subordination of one country to the other.

After the 1911 revolution in China, the Tibetan government demanded the evacuation of all Chinese soldiers and officials from Tibet. The Tibetans regarded this political move as a declaration of Tibet's independence. From 1913 until 1950, Tibet conducted its own domestic and foreign affairs -- levying taxes, issuing Tibetan currency and postage stamps, validating Tibetan passports -- without interference from China.

Soon after the 1949 Communist victory in China, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) announced it would liberate all Chinese territories from imperialists, including Tibet. Alarmed, the Tibetan government immediately tried to settle territorial disputes with the People's Republic of China. Because the Communists insisted that Tibet was an inalienable part of China, negotiations soon were suspended. The PLA advanced on Tibet's eastern provinces of Kham and Amdo.

During the 1950s, the teenage 14th Dalai Lama attempted negotiations with Beijing. Tibetan delegates were sent out to rally support from the West and from the United Nations, but few foreign countries came to Tibet's aid. Chinese forces moved into Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.

In March 1959, thousands of Tibetans in Lhasa rose up against the Chinese. Seeing the futility of continued negotiations in the chaos, the Dalai Lama fled Lhasa and set up government offices in India. More than 100,000 Tibetans followed him into exile.