In Exile From the Land of Snows (7 page)

Since the advent of the Ganden Phodrang, the government of the Dalai Lamas, Tibet’s administration had been equally split between the clergy and the nobility. Every key post was held jointly by a monk and a nobleman, both to share and to check power. Tibet’s unique government worked so well that internal strife rarely emerged, save in the unavoidably weak regencies between the majorities of the Dalai Lamas. With the restraining hand of central authority removed, factionalism, which had plagued Tibet since the fall of the Yarlung Dynasty, inevitably cropped
up. This and its corollary, the vague, potentially compromising tie to an outside power, most recently China, stood out as the nation’s sole political liabilities. So long as Tibet remained hermetically sealed from the world, isolated behind impregnable mountains, the faults never threatened to destabilize it. Toward the close of the nineteenth century, however, more than two millennia of Central Asian solitude suddenly gave way to the encroachments of the modern world.

In 1904, concerned over Russian expansion—via Tibet—to the northern borders of its Indian realm, Great Britain dispatched an expeditionary force to Lhasa. After securing trade ties from the Tibetan government, the troops withdrew, not, however, before alerting China to the insubstantial nature of its claim on Tibet, described prior to the assault by Lord Curzon, the British viceroy of India, as a “constitutional fiction.” To reassert their dominance, the Manchus sent an army of their own. After almost six years in exile, following the British attack, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama had been back in Lhasa only a few weeks when, in the winter of 1910, he was forced to flee once more, this time, ironically, to India and the protecting arms of the British. For the first time in history, Peking now ruled Tibet directly until, in the wake of the 1911 revolution, its forces were expelled and the Dalai Lama returned to formally reproclaim Tibetan independence. Ignoring the declaration, China’s new republic, led by Yuan Shih-kai, announced a policy, based on Sun Yat-sen’s doctrine of the five races of China, laying claim to most of the major regions with which the Chinese state, in its various forms, had had substantial contact over the centuries. Thus, not only Tibet but Manchuria, Mongolia and Xinjiang were held to be provinces of China proper, a belief subsequently adopted by both the Kuomintang or Nationalists and Communists as well. China, though, could not occupy these territories. By 1918 Tibet’s small army had pushed the Chinese back through Kham to Dartsedo, the original border of the two nations. Nevertheless, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama recognized that a political solution must eventually be found. Enlisting Great Britain as mediator, he attempted, at the Simla Convention of 1914, to negotiate a compromise based on a British concept of Chinese suzerainty over a fully autonomous Tibet. When the Chinese refused to comply—holding out for complete control of Tibet—he began to modernize the country’s antiquated army. As China’s first republic collapsed, and the period of competing warlords followed by the Nationalists’ long struggle with the Communists ensued, the issue faded. Tibet once more found itself fully independent, unassailed by outside pressures. For two decades peace descended on the country, aptly described by the Dalai Lama in his
kachem
or final testament, when he stated that under the latter part of his reign Tibet had become “happy and tranquil, like a land made new.” Beside his sanguine portrait of the present, though, had been the ominous warning, drafted in such vivid detail, of a future Tibet eclipsed in oppression, the days and nights “dragging slowly on in suffering.” Remote as such a fate seemed to be in the winter of 1933, its antecedents were to strike with shattering speed.

Three days after the Dalai Lama’s death, Tsipon Lungshar, an ambitious Finance Minister, mounted a coup d’état. Hoping to capitalize on the delicate period of transition to a regency, he sought to displace the interim power of the Cabinet with that of the National Assembly, under his control. Inciting the thousand-man Drong Drak Magar Regiment to rebel, he succeeded in having his chief rival—a monk official named Kunphela, who had been supported by the regiment—banished by the Assembly to southern Tibet, charged with negligence in caring for the Dalai Lama during his final illness. It was not until the discovery of an assassination attempt, orchestrated by Lungshar against an intransigent minister, that both the Assembly and the Cabinet realized how close they had come to being superseded. (Documents in the possession of Lungshar’s followers subsequently revealed a detailed plot to overthrow the government.) Convicted of high treason, Lungshar received Tibet’s severest form of punishment—blinding. No sooner had the crisis been averted, however, than a second, less dramatic, if ultimately more dangerous threat developed. In the confusion following the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s death, a Chinese Nationalist general and two aides-de-camp were granted entry visas to Lhasa. In 1912, following the expulsion of the Manchu occupation force, the Tibetans had demonstrated their independence by refusing to accept Chinese representation in their country maintained, historically, by two Ambans, or Manchu officials, stationed in Lhasa—a convention that Peking had cited since the eighteenth century as proof of its own dominion. But now, unsure of itself, the government let just such a delegation in, under the guise of a condolence mission. Instead of departing after it had tendered official sympathies, the mission remained, opened up a liaison office and established a crucial foothold for the Nationalists in Tibet.

Thus, almost immediately following the Dalai Lama’s demise, the two dangers foretold in his testament began to materialize—Tibet being threatened “both from without and from within.” Under these inauspicious conditions Reting Rinpoché, a twenty-three-year-old lama of little political acumen, though greatly respected for his spiritual attainments, assumed the regency, having been selected by the National Assembly. Once more, Tibet turned away from worldly affairs, content to take up, in the evening
of its seclusion, the pursuits of peace and meditation. Within this tranquil interregnum, the new Dalai Lama was to spend his childhood.

W
HILE HIS FAMILY
was quartered in a newly built residence called Yabshi House, below the eastern walls of the Potala, Tenzin Gyatso lived in four small rooms at the top of the enormous edifice. More than a quarter mile long, filled with over a thousand chambers, assembly halls, narrow corridors and dark, ancient chapels, the Potala was less a home than a living museum. In winter it was numbingly cold; in summer the stench from the sewers beneath its precipitous walls permeated the building. At its center stood the red or religious palace, containing the gold, jewel-encrusted tombs of nine previous Dalai Lamas, before which butter lamps burned and monks prayed. On either side rose the walls of the white palace, which housed the Dalai Lama’s private monastery, the “Peak” school for monk officials, government offices and the meeting halls of the National Assembly. Halfway up the eastern wing, a large open square was overlooked by the Dalai Lama’s quarters five stories above. With easy access to the Potala’s roof the rooms commanded a breathtaking view of Lhasa, the Kyichu River and the 15,000-foot peaks surrounding the valley. Like miniature jewel boxes, their ceilings and doorways were ornately carved in gold and red lacquered filigree, the floors spread with bright Tibetan carpets, the walls and altars covered with silk brocade and
thankas.
Intricate frescoes depicting the life of the great Fifth Dalai Lama, who had built the Potala, adorned the walls of the sitting room, while the Dalai Lama’s bedroom, with its modern night table and bed embellished with dragons, was no more than the size of a large closet. Thousands of religious and historical texts, many illuminated in gold, silver, turquoise and coral ink, filled the Potala’s library; priceless works of art, tapestries, sculptures, metalwork and antique armor from the entire span of Tibet’s history were scrupulously preserved in the many storerooms and treasuries.

Within this imposing setting, the young Dalai Lama was raised almost entirely in the company of monks. He was referred to as either the “Precious Protector,” the “Wish-Fulfilling Gem” or simply the “Presence.” Few were allowed to speak to him directly. He appeared in public only to preside over lengthy ceremonies of religion and state. But in spite of the constraints of his position, he seemed at home in the role. “From the earliest age, whatever my brother did, he did perfectly,” recalled Takster Rinpoché, the Dalai Lama’s eldest brother. “We all saw this. He never complained or rebelled. Everyone was greatly impressed.” The Dalai Lama himself remembered: “When I was very young, everything came
easily to me, as if I was used to all of it. I just enjoyed the spectacle.”

At the age of six, Tenzin Gyatso’s education began. Arriving early in the morning for the day’s first lesson, his tutors commenced what was to be an eighteen-year course of studies. Learning to read and write on chalk-covered boards, he also spent long hours memorizing, the principal means of study for young monks in Tibet. Facing his teachers, the Dalai Lama was required to recite without pause increasingly longer sections of scripture, a skill which, later employed in dialectical debate, drew on thousands of pages of abstruse metaphysics, philosophical terms and prayers. The Dalai Lama’s tutors soon noted their charge’s natural gift for study.

Nevertheless, there were times when the role proved daunting. When, at the age of seven, Tenzin Gyatso was required to intone a prayer before 20,000 monks gathered in the Central Cathedral, he almost fainted from anxiety. Later, he often dreamt of escaping the Potala and leading a less stultified life. “When I was ten or eleven,” the Dalai Lama recounted, “I would read on religious retreat with my elder tutor. We always sat in a small, dark room at the top of the Potala, with one window facing north. Beneath us lay a road where boys and girls led their families’ cattle to pasture. Each evening the children would return home, herding the animals, and they would always be singing Tibetan opera songs. Then I often wished that I was with them. If I were there, I used to imagine, that would be something truly fantastic.”

At winter’s end, the Dalai Lama departed from the Potala for the Norbulingka, his procession marking the official start of summer. On the day of the parade the entire government set aside their heavy winter costumes and put on lighter equivalents, transforming the look of the capital for the new season. They then marched together with the Regent, Cabinet ministers and Commander-in-Chief of the Army, sword drawn in salute before the Dalai Lama’s palanquin, through hushed crowds kept in place by the long whips of the bodyguards, who, all over six-and-a-half feet tall, padded their shoulders for further effect. To the people’s delight, the young ruler’s nightingales and parrots called out from their cages while his brilliantly caparisoned horses, decked in yellow saddles, bridles and bits of gold, pranced behind their grooms; monks blew shrill, high-pitched
gyalings
or short horns and the regimental bands played “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.” From behind the palanquin’s silk-fringed windows, though, it was the sight of nature that pleased the young Dalai Lama most. “The season was most beautiful,” he remembered. “All the lawns were turning green, the apricot trees flowering and the birds singing. I used to love that day going from the Potala to the Norbulingka.”

Founded in the eighteenth century by the Eighth Dalai Lama, the
Norbulingka, two miles west of Potala, had grown from a favored bathing and picnic ground into a walled park of temples and two-story palaces almost a mile square. Though the government transferred its work to the summer quarters as well, the enclosure remained permeated by an atmosphere of peace and tranquillity. Tame musk deer, pheasant and peacocks wandered freely between its pavilions; pet fish filled its ponds, rising to the water’s surface to be fed when they heard the Dalai Lama’s footsteps approach. While large sections of the park remained densely wooded, each morning the palace lawns were neatly laid out with hundreds of earthenware pots filled with flowers and rare plants. More ambitious gardening reaped the rewards of the Norbulingka’s astonishingly fertile earth. Radishes weighing up to twenty pounds and cabbages more than three feet wide were routinely produced. Peach, pear, cherry, apple and walnut trees were also grown.

Within the Jewel Park the Dalai Lama spent the happiest times of his childhood. Rummaging through the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s collection of old
National Geographic
and
Life
magazines, he conceived a passion for modern inventions, encouraged by the gifts of a Meccano set and a telescope. Growing older he began to disassemble watches and a few treasured but generally inoperative movie projectors, reconstructing them from memory. His attentions then turned to Tibet’s sole cars, two baby Austins and an orange Dodge, which had belonged to the previous Dalai Lama and had lain idle since his death. In the company of a young Tibetan trained in India to drive, Tenzin Gyatso repaired two of the vehicles, teaching himself in the process the workings of the combustion engine. When the driver departed for the day he secretly raced the cars across the lawns of the inner garden, occasionally crashing into gates or trees. Breaking a headlight on one such foray, he endeavored to conceal the damage with a specially cut piece of glass fogged by repeated applications of sugar syrup. He also spent long hours poring over the mysteries of AC and DC current produced by a somewhat faulty generator, an enterprise that met with continual harassment from the Lord Chamberlain and his tutors who feared the Dalai Lama would be electrocuted. Returning to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s foreign books and periodicals, the young ruler grew interested in maps, history and world affairs. As he entered adolescence he requested two officials who spoke English to translate a set of volumes he had ordered on the recently concluded Second World War. Simultaneously he began to study the alphabet and increased his vocabulary. The Dalai Lama pursued these unprecedented interests entirely on his own, until a much-needed comrade emerged in the person of Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian mountaineer then living in Lhasa.