Beautiful Ghosts (60 page)

Tan sighed and stopped the car short of the gate, near where the supply tent had been pitched. He stared at the mountains a long time, letting the smoke drift out of his mouth. “Opportunity,” he said slowly, “interests me no more.” He shrugged. “I’ll have to alert the adjoining counties since the looters have obviously abandoned Lhadrung.”

He stepped out of the car. Shan followed. The field where the extra troops had camped was empty. As Tan lit another cigarette, Shan turned toward the wire, fifty feet away. It was the prisoners’ rest day, and a few of the old men could be seen at the far side of the prison grounds sitting in a circle.

“I am going back into the mountains,” he said with an uneasy feeling. Tan, pacing along the side of the car, appeared not to hear. A sentry stationed outside the gate seemed to recognize Shan and muttered something to the guard inside the entrance, who began watching Shan warily.

Finally the colonel returned to the driver’s door, and seemed about to climb back in when three men emerged from the administration building, two guards and a gaunt youth, manacled, his freshly shaven head down, wearing newly issued prison greys. Shan watched in silence as the guards pulled the new prisoner toward the inner wire.

“I can’t change what he did, the sentence he received,” Tan said. “But I told them the 404th is harsher than any coal mine, that I deserved to keep him for all the trouble he caused me.”

The prisoner was pushed toward the wire, spreading his arms to grip the fence, staring at the thin, bent figures inside. He did not move as the guards unlocked his manacles and opened the gate, did not react as they pulled him from the fence and led him through the razor-wire-lined passageway into the prison. But then he slowly raised his head as if sensing onlookers, and turned toward Shan. It was Ko.

As his gaze locked with that of his father, he froze, then was shoved forward by the guards. When he passed the razor wire, into the dead zone, he stopped and stared again at Shan, who took several steps forward, toward the wire, into the dead zone on the outside of the wire. He heard the protests of the guards, a sharp reprimand from Tan that quieted them.

Ko’s mouth curled up into his defiant grin. He raised his injured hand, wrapped in a now-bloody bandage, and lifted it over his head toward Shan. Shan silently raised his own hand, and for a moment they stared at each other, both grinning, until a guard’s baton found Ko’s shoulder. His son dropped to his knees as the second guard’s boot pushed him forward. They lifted him by the waist of his pants, carried him out of the dead zone, dropped him facefirst into the dirt, then left.

A terrible silence descended over the camp, punctuated by the sound of the gate closing, its bolt loudly clicking into place. Then a thin old Tibetan clad in prison rags hobbled from behind one of the barracks and knelt at Ko’s side. In the still air Shan heard a sound, not distinct words but a tone of comfort, as the aged lama reached out and rested a hand on his son’s back.

G
LOSSARY OF
F
OREIGN
L
ANGUAGE
T
ERMS

Terms that are used only once and defined in adjoining text are not included in this glossary.

aku.
Tibetan. Uncle.

amban.
Chinese. The representative of the Manchu imperial government (Ching dynasty) in Lhasa. The office was created in 1727 and abolished by the Thirteenth Dalai Lama in 1913.

Bardo.
Tibetan. A term used for the Bardo death rites, specifically referring to the intermediate stage between death and rebirth.

bayal.
Tibetan. Traditionally, a “hidden land,” a place where deities and other sacred beings reside.

chorten.
Tibetan. The Tibetan word for stupa, a traditional Buddhist shrine including a conspicuous dome shape and spire, usually used as a reliquary.

dorje.
Tibetan. From the Sanskrit
vajre,
a scepter-shaped ritual instrument that symbolizes the power of compassion, said to be “unbreakable as diamond” and as “powerful as a thunderbolt.”

dronma.
Tibetan. A small wooden churn used for making buttered tea.

dungchen.
Tibetan. A long, deep-sounding ceremonial trumpet, usually made of telescoping sections.

durtro.
Tibetan. A charnel ground, where Tibetan dead are dismembered in preparation for feeding to vultures.

dzi.
Tibetan. An agate bead, typically banded or etched, worn as a protective charm.

gau.
Tibetan. A “portable shrine.” Typically a small hinged box carried around the neck into which a prayer and often other sacred material have been inserted.

gompa.
Tibetan. A monastery, literally a “place of meditation.”

gonkang.
Tibetan. A protector deity shrine, often found in monastries, frequently in the lower levels of temple buildings.

goserpa.
Tibetan. Literally “yellow head,” one of the terms used to refer to any foreigner.

kangling.
Tibetan. A ceremonial trumpet traditionally made of a human thigh bone.

khata.
Tibetan. A prayer or greeting scarf, usually made of white cotton or silk.

kora.
Tibetan. A pilgrim’s circuit, a circumambulation around a holy site.

lama.
Tibetan. The Tibetan translation of the Sanskrit
guru.
Traditionally used for a fully ordained senior monk who has become a master teacher.

lao gai.
Chinese. Literally “reform through labor,” referring to a hard labor prison camp.

lha gyal lo.
Tibetan. A traditional Tibetan phrase of celebration or rejoicing, literally “victory to the gods.”

mala.
Tibetan. A Buddhist rosary, consisting of 108 beads, used to mark mantra recitation and other devotional practices.

mandala.
Literally, a Sanskrit word for “circle” (Tibetan
kyilkhor
). A circular representation of the world of a meditational deity, with the particular deity at the center, traditionally made with colored sands, although its symmetrical, symbolic arrangement may also take a three-dimensional form in some temples.

mani
stone. Tibetan. A stone inscribed, by paint or carving, with a Buddhist prayer, typically invoking the mani mantra,
Om mani padme hum.

Manjushri.
Sanskrit. An important member of the Tibetan pantheon, the deity of wisdom, often depicted holding a sword to cut through obscuring thoughts.

Milarepa.
Tibetan. The great poet saint of Tibet who lived from 1040 to 1123.

mudra.
Tibetan. A symbolic gesture made by arranging the hands and fingers in prescribed patterns to represent a specific prayer, offering, or state of mind.

nei lou.
Chinese. State secret, literally “for government use only.”

peche.
Tibetan. A traditional Tibetan book, typically unbound in long, narrow leaves which are wrapped in cloth, often tied between carved wooden end pieces. Traditionally a peche contained the printed text of prayers and religious teachings; since they contained sacred words they were not permitted to touch the ground.

ragyapa.
Tibetan. Corpse cutters, the people who perform the dismemberment of bodies that is part of the Tibetan sky burial tradition.

Rinpoche.
Tibetan. A term of respect in addressing a revered teacher, literally “blessed” or “jewel.”

samkang.
Tibetan. A brazier, often found in monasteries, used for burning fragrant woods.

Tara.
Tibetan. A female meditational deity, revered for her compassion and considered a special protectress of the Tibetan people. Tara has many forms, the two primary ones being the Green Tara and the White Tara. She is sometimes referred to as the mother of Buddhas.

tsampa.
Tibetan. Roasted barley flour, a traditional staple food of Tibet.

thangka.
Tibetan. A painting on cloth, typically of a religious nature and often considered sacred, traditionally painted as a portable scroll on fine cotton and sewn into a brocade frame.

tsa-tsa.
Tibetan. A small image stamped in clay (often mixed with sacred substances), typically representing a religious figure.

Yama.
Tibetan. Lord of Death.

A
UTHOR’S
N
OTE

In early 1904 one of the strangest expeditions in history began climbing over the Himalayas through Sikkim’s Jelap La Pass into the unknown lands of Tibet. Acting on vague reports that Russia might be establishing a presence in the country, the British government dispatched fifteen hundred fighting men supported by nearly ten thousand porters and thousands of mules, horses, camels, buffaloes, yaks and even, as Peter Fleming reminds us in his captivating book
Bayonets to Lhasa,
two zebra-mule hybrids, all under the direction of Colonel Francis Younghusband. While this armed invasion of what was essentially a demilitarized country may not have been a high point in the foreign policy of Great Britain, the human dimensions of the campaign and its aftermath were remarkable. Colonel Younghusband’s soldiers came equipped for battle, pestilence, severe cold, and treacherous mountains, prepared for everything but the society they encountered. British soldiers equipped with state-of-the-art Maxim machine guns faced Tibetans armed with matchlocks, swords, and paper protective charms. British officers squared off against lamas brandishing yak hair fly whisks and prayer beads. Neither side had rules of engagement for such encounters. Good-natured Tibetans handed the British traditional greeting scarves even as the troops advanced on Lhasa’s ragtag army. The British leaders were perplexed when their counterparts sometimes offered them Buddhist prayers; the Tibetans were equally confused when the British began opening field hospitals to treat the Tibetan wounded.

The expedition did eventually reach its destination of Lhasa, negotiated the trade treaty that was its primary purpose, then quickly withdrew into the footnotes of history. But for a few souls on both sides the campaign left an indelible mark. The expedition opened a window for the first time on the outside world for the people of the high plains beyond the Himalayas, and a handful of Tibetans began attending school in India and England. Any lingering animosity was soon replaced with trust, which grew so strong that when in 1910 China made an early attempt to seize control of Lhasa, the Dalai Lama took sanctuary in British India. Colonel Younghusband soon resigned his commission, turning to a spiritual existence which led him to found the World Congress of Faiths, and he later wrote that the most spiritual moments of his long life had been in Tibet. He devoted himself to trying to build bridges between the religions of the world, especially those of the East and West. When he died in England in 1942 an image of Lhasa was carved on his tombstone and a clay sculpture of Buddha placed on his coffin. Many of the small cadre of British military and foreign service officers who took up residence in Tibet seemed to fall under the spell of the country, likewise turning to scholarly and philosophical pursuits. One, David McDonald, eventually stayed two decades in the service of the British and Tibetan governments, chronicling how Tibet changed his life in his
Twenty Years in Tibet.
Another field officer, Austin Waddell, who first entered Tibet in disguise on early intelligence gathering missions, devoted himself to the study of Tibet’s complex Buddhist traditions, becoming the foremost Western authority on Tibetan culture and religion of his time.

While the Younghusband expedition represented the first significant incursion of Westerners into remote Tibet, Europeans had long been a part, albeit an obscure one, of the imperial court in Beijing. Jesuit priests had a presence in Beijing even before the Manchus arrived there to establish the Ching dynasty in the mid-seventeenth century. The beloved Qian Long emperor’s passion for the arts did not exclude representative works of the West. A small but flourishing colony of European painters was supported by the Qian Long in the eighteenth century, the most prominent member of which was Giuseppe Castiglione, and by the time he began planning his retirement cottage, it was no surprise that the emperor called upon Castiglione and his Chinese protégées to assist in its adornment. That cottage, known as Juanqin Zhai, the Lodge for Weary Diligence, still stands in the Forbidden City, the building and its peculiarly Western murals having sat almost undisturbed for two centuries. The Qian Long’s inclusion of lamas and elements of Tibetan culture within his court is also well documented, and he took many steps to assure that Buddhism, and Buddhist artists, flourished during his long reign.

The emperor was one of many who have, through the ages, been intrigued by Tibetan art. At first glance Tibetan thangkas may seem simplistic, stiff, even crude representations of obtuse religious subjects. But, like most good art, the more you study them the more they draw you into their complex world, in which every color, every image—from carefully arranged human hands to uplifted lotus petals—has a symbolic meaning. Their creation was a selfless, worshipful act—the names of those who created many of the finest pieces are lost to us because they did not sign their works—and no painting was complete until it had been consecrated to install its deity. The stark beauty of these godly residences is only underscored by the fact that the mortals who made them had available only the natural materials of their high mountain world, deriving their pigments from local plants and minerals. For those who would learn more about the intriguing world of Tibetan art, a number of excellent books are available. Three of the most comprehensive and helpful are
Sacred Visions
by Steven Kossak and Jane Casey Singer, and two volumes sharing the title
Art of Tibet,
one by Robert Fisher, the other by Pratapaditya Pal.