An announcement that Canadians were down-loading the sound of cow bells to their cell phones has prompted me to revivify my yak bells. The Canadians were using the sound to support their contestants at the Vancouver Olympics. I needed the bells to celebrate the Tibetan New Year. The sound of the bells is forever associated in my mind with Nepal and the tinkling sound of passing yak trains.
Unfortunately my bells had been displaced from their customary place of honor after I noticed moth cocoons on the yak hair straps. Could the small moths that occasionally show up in my kitchen be the start of a Tibetan invasion? Could I be arrested by the enforcement brigade of the Department of Agriculture? In panic I sprayed the bells and their yak hair straps with insecticide and stored them in a plastic bag. But now the bells, have been released, shampooed, and called on to promote general happiness as we march forward into the Iron-Tiger Year.
February 15. The year began with the new moon of February 15. This year the start of the Tibetan lunar-solar calendar coincided with that of the Chinese and Vietnamese calendars. This might have been supposed to allow Tibetans and Chinese to celebrate together, but there has been little easing of tension in general. In Tibet monks and laypeople said prayers and threw tsampa in the air to mourn the killings of Tibetans in the 2008 protests that took place all over Tibet, accoding to a Tibetan web site based in south India. There is a further reason for tension. The Chinese takeover of Tibet began in 1959 when the Dalai Lama fled to India. The Tibetan calendar consists of a 60 year cycle. Five elements (Fire, Earth, Iron, Water, Wood) are coupled to the 12 zodiac animals (Hare, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, ape, Bird, Dog, Pig, Mouse, Bull, Tiger). The last Iron-Tiger year thus corresponds to the first full year of Chinese rule.
Jim Yardley in the New York Times reported on February 17 that the Chinese have been persuading Nepal to tighten its border with China and send back to China Tibetans who cross the border. Often they do so on their way to Dharamsala in India in search of an education or as a pilgrimage to visit the Dalai Lama. “Until 2008 roughly 2,500 to 3,000 Tibetans annually slipped across the border.” Last year it was down to 600. The Chinese have steadily worked for decades to establish Nepal as a client state and pry it away from Indian influence. Road building has been their major method of creating bonds, a technique that is reminiscent of the period of the Great Game.
DALAI LAMA in Dharamsala. Photo by Gaelen Hanson, 2009
February 18. Then came the low-key meeting in the White House between President Obama and the Dalai Lama. Let us pass over the stupidity of smuggling the Dalai Lama out the side door past the garbage bags. Pennance has been done: the Social Secretary has chosen to resign.
February 20. Nicholas Kristof in his New York Times Blog of Feb 20 has tried to explain why it was necessary for Obama to Meet the Dalai Lama and why Obama needs to explain to the Chinese people why they met. (The White House Blog was anything but forceful.)
“ The Dalai Lama is reviled by many ordinary Chinese, perhaps more so by the public than by the Chinese government, although this in part reflects propaganda critical of the Dalai Lama. The most important thing that needs to be conveyed is that it’s in China’s own interests that the world, China included, engage the Dalai Lama. China is making a catastrophically bad bet that after His Holiness dies, the Tibetan problem will be easier to solve. In fact, the reverse is true. The one thing most Tibetans agree on is their reverence for the Dalai Lama. If it weren’t for him, there would have been a much more violent resistance to Beijing, and Tibetans would have turned long ago to terrorism.” “A deal between China and the Dalai Lama is possible —… but it’s feasible only as long as the Dalai Lama is alive. Only he can make the tough compromises necessary, and deliver the Tibetan poeple behind him."
February 26. Reuters corresopondent Ben Blanchard, visiting a region of Tibet outside the most controlled area, reports that Tibetans and Han are ignoreing politics to build uneasy ties based on their common history that links Tibetans and Han Chinese to Buddhism. "Qinghai's Tibetans say they are given far more leeway to practice their religion than those living in what is formally called the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). Pictures of the Dalai Lama are openly displayed at major temples in a way unthinkable in that region. At the lunar new year celebrations last week, monks at one monastery freely carried out a complex ceremony complete with ornate, embroidered silk costumes that culminated in the unfurling of a giant image of the Buddha on a nearby hillside. It attracted a small, though fascinated, crowd of Han Chinese tourists. One observer rmarked: "I think we can learn a lot from our Tibetan compatriots. They must be doing something right."
Monsoon Storm, Gyamtso La, Tibet, 2003. The pass is the highest point on the way from Lhasa to the Everest Base Camp and the watershed between the Arun and the Tsangpo rivers.
"The storm soon passed;
the Chinese overlordship of Tibet remains."
Dear Chinese & Tibetan friends, you are summoned by yak bells.
