Sunday, May 27, 2007

Why Irish Builders should move to Tibet by blogger JC Skinner

The ancient capital of Tibet consisted of the Potala Palace, home of the Dalai Lama, and the Jokhang Temple, around which Tibet's main tourist drag of Barkhor Street now runs (see pic of Barkhor above).

A photo I have of Lhasa in 1916 indicates these two buildings as the only things on the entire plain between the Himalayan ranges. Nowadays, the entire stretch of the city, from the Norbulingka Palace to beyond the Barkhor Area, is a predominantly Tibetan 'old' town.

This in itself is odd, given how Tibetans are traditionally semi-nomadic, following their yaks in semi-permanent tents for much of the year, often going on pilgrimages solo, spending time at sacred lakes or sites in contemplation and so on.

But there you go, Lhasa the city exists. But there is another Lhasa - the Chinese immigrant city best viewed from the back of the Potala. This is twice the size of the Tibetan city, and is, apart from its relative cleanliness, indistinguishable from any other Chinese city.

This end of town has the little kids in their sports tracksuit school uniforms, the Bank of China ATMs, the garish neon signs for cheap hotels or good Sichuan food, the travel agents, the shopping centres, the gated communities, the car showrooms.

This is the product, not only of sixty years of Chinese occupation, but also of the dozen flights and numerous trains daily arriving in Lhasa from China in recent years. Lhasa is a Chinese boomtown right now, and Chinese from all over the Middle Kingdom are arriving looking for work or to make a fortune out of foreign tourists.

Read full blog post.

23 comments:

JC Skinner said...

Thanks for linking to me. I genuinely believe that a bigger push is on now to eradicate Tibetans and their culture (except in some limited 'Buddhist Disneyland' tourism concept) than ever before, now that the train is disgorging hundreds of new Chinese workers daily into Lhasa.

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