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Journalism of Courage
Despite the absence of road signs or promotional websites,a dozen or so people each day manage to find their way to this sleepy hamlet that sits in the fold of a dusky mountain in northwestern Qinghai Province.
They congratulate themselves for having found the placeand for evading the policebut then come face to face with Gonpo Tashi,a squat,no-nonsense barley farmer who guards the entrance to the house where his uncle,the 14th Dalai Lama,was born 76 years ago.
If the traveller speaks Tibetan,Tashi,65,will peer warily out into the road before swinging open the heavy wooden doors and allowing entry to the modest home where Chinas most reviled and revered spiritual leader spent the first three years of his life.
If the visitor is Han Chinese,the gatekeeper might grumble about the rules but then relent. If the supplicant has Western features,Tashi can be relied upon to shoo the interloper back toward the vehicle he came in. Leave,leave now, he will shout. If they come,you will be in trouble.
They refers to the local public security personnel who occasionally block the road to HongAi or stand outside the Dalai Lamas ancestral home.
That this state-financed shrine to the Dalai Lama exists at all highlights Beijings complex and contradictory attitude toward a man it frequently describes as a terrorist,a separatist and a wolf in monks robes. Today,even possession of the Dalai Lamas picture is considered a crime.
HongAi,or Taktser as it is known in Tibetan,has long been on the receiving end of this official ambivalence. In the mid-1980s,when talks were proceeding reasonably well,the government rebuilt the Dalai Lamas birthplace,which had been destroyed during the antireligious fervour of the Cultural Revolution.
In 2010,the local Communist Party poured 2.6 million renminbi,or about $410,000,into HongAi,upgrading the towns 54 residences,including the Dalai Lamas homestead.
According to official figures,a majority of the towns 274 residents are Han,and even those who describe themselves as Tibetan cannot speak their ancestral tongue. In his 1990 autobiography,Freedom in Exile,the Dalai Lama said his family spoke no Tibetan,only a dialect of Mandarin. It was only when he and his family moved to Lhasaafter high-ranking lamas identified him as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lamathat he learned the language.
In his book he described his hometown in bleak terms,recounting the crop failures and the harsh winters. His last visit was in 1955,four years before he fled to India during a failed uprising against Chinese rule.
Those who make it past Tashis temperamental door policy report that there are a few utilitarian rooms surrounding a courtyard,its centre anchored by a pole draped in multicolored Tibetan prayer flags. Just as eye-catching is the late model Volkswagen,covered by plastic drop cloth,that sits in one corner. One room contains a bed,another a yellow throne and a Buddhist shrine.
Those villagers willing to speak to foreign visitors were proud of their connection to the Dalai Lama. A 46-year-old woman,Chobai, described herself as a distant cousin said she had once traveled overland to India to visit him. We are all waiting for him to come back one day, she said. Another woman a few doors down offered a tour of her home and the shrine that includes two photographs of the Dalai Lama,a distant relative.
After a trio of Dutch tourists pounded on the front gate and refused to retreat,Tashis 45-year-old nephew stepped outside. When the police failed to materialise,he seemed to relax as one of the tourists,Lisanne de Wit,described a recent visit to Dharamsala,India,where the Dalai Lama lives. De Wit then made one last plea for entry,describing how she had endured a week-long bus ride from Sichuan Province to reach this corner of Qinghai.
The nephew shrugged and offered a sympathetic smile. The order has come from above, he said before shutting the door. And theres nothing you or I can do about it.
