by John Avedon
WHILE 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.
“He seemed to me like a person who had for years brooded in solitude over different problems, and now that he had at last someone to talk to, wanted to know all the answers at once,” wrote Harrer, recalling his first meeting with the then fourteen-year-old Dalai Lama. Through an intermediary, the Dalai Lama had requested Harrer to constr
uct a film hall in the Norbulingka. On its completion, he unexpectedly invited the Austrian to meet with him in person. “I went towards the cinema, but before I could enter the door opened from the inside and I was standing before the Living Buddha,” Harrer recounted. “Come, let us see the capitulation of Japan,” said the Dalai Lama, pushing his guest into the projection booth. Nervously Harrer started to thread the projector, but was “nudged aside” by the Dalai Lama, who completed the task in a moment. Following the film showing, Tenzin Gyatso dismissed his rather distraught abbots, and ushering Harrer into the now sun-filled theater, pulled him down by the sleeve onto the maroon carpet. Confessing that he had long planned a meeting, as he could think of no other way to become acquainted with the outside world, the Dalai Lama poured forth a flood of questions. “Do you like it here in the Holy City? Can you operate an army tank? An airplane? How do jet airplanes fly? Why do you have hair on your hands like a monkey?” Feeling the “attraction of his personality,” Harrer stared at the young man. He sat cross-legged before him, hands folded peacefully in his lap, cheeks glowing with excitement, his whole body swaying from side to side. His complexion was considerably lighter than that of most Tibetans. He was tall and well formed, with “beautiful aristocratic hands” and eyes full of “expression, charm and vivacity.” Rather bashfully, the Dalai Lama took out his notebook of English words and said, “Heinrich. You will teach me this language. We will start now.”
Their lessons continued for months. Mathematics, geography and natural science were studied, including topics ranging from the structure of the atom to why Lhasa was eleven hours behind New York. Much time was also spent in the new movie theater watching films, the Dalai Lama’s favorites being a documentary on the life of Gandhi, Castle newsreels and Henry V, painstakingly translated by Harrer from Shakespearean English into Tibetan. “He continually astonished me by his powers of comprehension, his pertinacity and his industry,” observed Harrer. “When I gave him for homework ten sentences to translate, he usually showed up with twenty.” The Austrian was also taken by the Dalai Lama’s unusual character. He described his native modesty as a “source of perpetual wonder,” the “average child of a rich tradesman being far more spoiled than he was.” Decisiveness emerged as another distinguishing trait, the Dalai Lama possessing “a clear-cut individual will capable of imposing itself on others.” He sensed in him—and was confirmed in this by the ruler’s mother—an inner loneliness. Yet, as their friendship grew, the young Dalai Lama continually brought up the subject closest to his heart: religion. Confiding that he was practicing techniques by which consciousness could be separated from the body, he told Harrer that, on completing them, he intended to send him seven hundred miles west to Gartok, from where he would guide his actions directly from the Potala. “When you can do that,” said Harrer to his student, “I will become a Buddhist too.” Unfortunately, the experiment, and along with it the burgeoning friendship, was abruptly brought to an end.
ON THE EVENING of August 15, 1950, while Tenzin Gyatso was taking a small meal of tea, yogurt and homemade bread delivered once a week by his mother, an earth tremor suddenly shook the Norbulingka. It was followed by forty tremendous reports resounding in rapid succession across the sky. The Dalai Lama and his attendants ran out into the garden of his residence, looking east toward Sera Monastery, from where the explosions had come. At the time they imagined them to be artillery fired near Sera, but shortly afterwards people arrived from Lhasa saying that the blasts had originated even farther east. A day later it was heard over All India Radio that a massive earthquake had rumbled across southeastern Tibet; a quake so powerful that while moviegoers in Calcutta fled theaters in terror, the sound of the aftershocks traveled twelve hundred miles across Tibet, all the way to its western borders.
“This was no ordinary earthquake; it felt like the end of the world,” wrote Robert Ford, an English radio operator working for the Tibetan government in Chamdo, the provincial capital of Kham. In fact, it was the fifth-largest quake in history; mountains and valleys exchanged places in an instant, hundreds of villages were swallowed up, the Brahmaputra River was completely rerouted and for hours afterwards the sky over southeastern Tibet glowed with an infernal red light, suffused with the pungent scent of sulfur.
Coming when it did, the quake was viewed by all Tibetans, the Dalai Lama included, as something more than just a geological phenomenon. In its devastating destruction, they saw a harbinger of their nation’s fate.
As early as 1945, four years before the end of China’s civil war and with it the inevitable renewal of aggression against Tibet by the victor, the State Oracle had faced eastward in a trance, wildly shaking his head in warning. In 1947, he had prophesied that in the Year of the Iron Tiger—1950—Tibet would face “great difficulty.” Two years later, in 1949, his caution had been accented by the appearance of a bright horse-tailed comet. Hanging in the heavens day and night for several weeks, it was viewed by older Tibetans in particular as an indubitable omen of war, the 1910 invasion by China having been preceded by just such a comet. The next summer, the unfavorable signs turned from the natural to the uncanny. On a bright, cloudless summer’s day, in full view of downtown Lhasa, water poured from one of the golden gargoyles inaccessibly located on the roof of the Central Cathedral. The capital of a tall stone column, erected in A.D. 763 to commemorate Tibet’s conquest of China, was found shattered one morning at the foot of the Potala.
Just as the Thirteenth Dalai Lama had prophesied, once more the external threat was matched by signs of internal decay. In 1941, Reting Rinpoché had given the Regency to the senior tutor of the Dalai Lama, Taktra Rinpoché, a mutual pact ensuring that on completion of the religious retreat for which he had retired, Reting Rinpoché would return to power. Six years later, in the spring of 1947, Taktra Rinpoché’s entourage was all but ready to relinquish control. During their rule, bribery and bureaucratic negligence had run rampant. To restore Tibet’s government to more capable hands, Reting Rinpoché’s followers attempted a coup. Requesting support from Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Nyungne Lama, the ex-Regent’s private secretary, dispatched a hand grenade concealed in a package addressed to Taktra Rinpoché. The grenade exploded prematurely, the plot was uncovered and Nyungne Lama shot himself in the bathroom of a friend’s house in Lhasa. Reting Rinpoché was then arrested and detained in the Potala, an act which, in turn, sparked a revolt by the monks of the Je College of Sera Monastery, to which he belonged. In twelve days of fighting with government troops, two hundred monks perished before the rest surrendered. Little more than a week later Reting Rinpoché died mysteriously in prison, a small collection of blue marks on his buttocks the only abnormal sign.
The brief civil war left Tibet profoundly demoralized. In addition, fifteen years after the arrival of the Kuomintang mission, their attempts at subterfuge had grown to include Tibetans in all segments of society. It was not until July 1949 that the Tibetan government realized the extent of the infiltration and, fearful that the newly victorious Communists would take advantage of it, closed the “liaison” office, deporting its staff, along with some twenty-five known agents and their Tibetan accomplices. Banishing the Chinese from Lhasa, however, could not extinguish their irredentist claims.
On New Year’s Day 1950, three months after the creation of the new People’s Republic of China, Radio Peking announced to its people and the world that “the tasks for the People’s Liberation Army for 1950 are to liberate Taiwan, Hainan and Tibet.” A slew of broadcasts from Xining and Chengdu, capital of Sichuan, followed, each asserting that Tibet was “an integral part of Chinese territory.” Tibet had fallen under the “influence of foreign imperialists,” the announcements stated. As a result, it required “liberation” to “secure China’s western borders.”
Though the language was novel, the implications were clear. With four decades in which to have prepared defenses now lost, Lhasa finally moved to protect itself. The Tibetan government turned first to the army. Si
nce the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s death its improvement had been ignored. No more than a glorified border patrol, the 8,500 troops possessed fifty pieces of artillery and only a few hundred mortars and machine guns. Enlisted men often traveled in the company of their wives and children; officers, primarily noble officials on brief tours of duty, had no prior military training. Nevertheless, fresh troops and ammunition were soon deployed to a thin chain of garrison towns lining the western bank of the Upper Yangtze River, Tibet’s de facto border with China. Both the men and their commanders were confident that, with the aid of the country’s greatest natural asset, its lofty ranges, they could hold off the seasoned troops of the PLA.
Diplomatic expectations were not so sanguine. Aware that there was no possibility of a lasting self-defense against China, the government telegraphed India, Nepal, Great Britain and the United States requesting them to receive missions seeking support. Lacking official relations with all but India—Tibet never having deemed it necessary to establish ties to a world with which it had no contact—it received, in the main, polite but negative replies. India, for whom Tibet served as a vital buffer state, proved the greatest disappointment. By the terms of the 1914 Simla Agreement, which had devolved on him, India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, was required to deny recognition of Chinese suzerainty over Tibet until China itself acknowledged Tibet’s strictly defined autonomy. Instead, he repeatedly spoke of this suzerainty, though “vague and shadowy” as being a generally recognized fact, thereby signaling Peking that India’s new government would not, as its British predecessor had, come to the aid of Tibet. On hearing of Tibet’s request, China immediately warned New Delhi that receiving “an illegal delegation” would be tantamount to “entertaining hostile intentions against the Chinese People’s Republic.” A few months later, the Chinese government offered assurances to the Indian ambassador in Peking that China had no intention of using force against Tibet. Thereafter, Nehru encouraged Lhasa to negotiate alone on the basis of the Simla Convention. Compelled thus to deal directly with the Communists, Tibet’s government dispatched a delegation to Peking to secure, as its instructions stated, “an assurance that the territorial integrity of Tibet will not be violated” and to “inform the government of China that the people and government of Tibet … will maintain their independence.” En route the delegation contacted Chinese officials in New Delhi, who suggested they wait for the arrival of the newly appointed ambassador to India. They did; but in the furtherance of their own designs, the Chinese did not.
