Among the many half-cocked (and often disastrous) schemes dreamed up during the Cultural Revolution, the institution of “barefoot doctors” was one much admired by Western Maoists and celebrity pilgrims to the middle kingdom as Shirley MacLaine.
Karmapa and the Cranes
After his dramatic escape from Tibet in December 1999, the young Gyalwa Karmapa became an immediate celebrity in the exile community – in a reverential Tibetan sort of way, of course. A group of students from the Tibetan Children’s Village decided to dedicate their class environmental project – on saving the Tibetan crane – to the boy lama.
Thinking of Burma
It was somewhere in an article by George Orwell that I came across the phrase “the solipsism of the sick man”, i.e. the inability of people mired in depression, disease or suffering to see beyond their own condition.
A Prayer Song for the March to Tibet
NOW LET US RETURN TO TIBET
(A Prayer Song for the March to Tibet)
By Rakra Thupten Choedhar
KI KI SO SO LHA GYALO
Victory to the Gods of Tibet
A Letter from Lhasa
Yesterday it was quite hot outside and the soldiers guarding one of the petrol stations had a big umbrella to protect them from the intense sunlight. Today it’s the opposite: cold, cloudy and even light snowfall as storm-fronts hover over the mountains and sometimes close in on the valley. Like the weather here in Lhasa the rules are quickly changing too.
Negotiation Nightmare
“Whenever the Tibetan issue has received any substantial attention in the world, be it with the demonstrations (1987-90) in Lhasa or the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Dalai Lama, the Chinese have nearly always succeeded in side-tracking international concern by making titillating press announcements soon after the event, declaring their willingness to sit down and talk with the Dalai Lama or his representatives.”
Dalai Lama’s ‘Middle Way’ has failed
DAILY NEWS & ANALYSIS
Tuesday, May 06, 2008 3:41:00 AM
‘Dalai Lama’s ‘Middle Way’ Has Failed’
Venkatesan Vembu interviews Jamyang Norbu
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Blogger
(REVISED & UPDATED)
Woeser’s TIBET UPDATES provide invaluable detailed information on all that has happened and is happening in Tibet now. Her writing provides a stark immediacy to events and brings them up-close and personal as no report by foreign journalists or “experts” can, not even the scribblings of exile writers like myself.
Nurturing the Embers of Rangzen
People inside Tibet had, in unimaginably lonely and secretive ways, faithfully nurtured the embers of Rangzen for all these many years. In spite of decades of propaganda, “political re-education”, surveillance by informers, spies, and agents, and (once in a while) brutal interrogation by trained and experienced torturers, they had managed to hide and protect this faith in the deepest recesses of their hearts.
Was It Violence?
It was unfortunate that when the protests started in Lhasa last month His Holiness made a statement threatening to resign because of “violence committed by Tibetans in his homeland” (AP). I don’t want to subject His Holiness’s use of the word “violence” to any kind of semantic scrutiny, in the manner of William Safire in the New York Times Magazine, but …
