Morning in Lhasa

6:30’s sunrise brought the call to prayer, but not the horns and drums from Boudha, but a man singing out from the mosque next door. A mosque in Lhasa. In China. But no Tibetan horns and drums and chants?

7am brought the first crow of the rooster. Far in the distance you can just make out a few cars, but the loudest sound is a neighbor spitting off the balcony. There is no electricity. Still no drums.

Tibet is here though, as the pilgrims circle the Jokhang like they did the Boudha Stupa, prayer wheels spinning as they chant. Around them are the souvenir touts grabbing you to look, “cheep, cheep, just looking, sorry”. I think they’re Chinese. But away from the bizarre is the food market and stores selling the traditional Tibetan dresses, thermoses, cookware and momos. Here the men still wrap their hair up in red ribbons or silver and coral pins. Everyone holds prayer beads and wears jewelry. Men and women alike with large stones of turquoise and red coral on earrings and necklaces walk the streets and stare at us like we stare at them. I have the universal - I’m American. “Obama!” thumbs-up and now we are friends discussion. As I showed a large group the pictures on my camera, the constant hum of the “Om” was chanted in my ear. I’m going to Dharamsala next, I say and that is one word they know. Dharamsala, where their Lama lives – not the Panchen Lama mandated on all of the pictures now, with their bad print quality and cheap gold frames. Their lama, the Dalai Lama.

7:30 second crow. This is the traditional way the Tibetans told time before occupation according to Heinrich Hemmer, from Seven Years in Tibet fame who revisited Tibet in 1982 and wrote about it in Return to Tibet. I smuggled the book into the country. It’s banned here.

Driving into the city yesterday wasn’t far from what I expected – three story malls, Volkswagen and Ford dealerships, and rows of small restaurants with bright signs in Chinese advertising what’s inside. It’s a lot like China. Now the horns of Lhasa start, but they are the car horns of Thursday’s traffic and it’s sad.

There are extreme double standards here. The Chinese can get passports, talk freely. Some hold jobs dressed like traditional Tibetans or monks and if you are caught talking politics to a spy, you are escorted to the border. At six, when the monasteries close, you can spot “them” changing into their street clothes to return home for the night. These “monks” don’t go to evening prayers, obviously. They collect a paycheck. One tried to hide from me after I spotted him, too late to save the mirage.

After last year’s riots, the number of monks allowed in the monasteries decreased even more. In the Jokhang Temple, which once allowed monks to chant in the assembly hall and tourists watched three deep, now has “monks” lounging on the cushions talking on their cell phones. Once housing up to 10,000 monks, the Deprung Monastery had a population of 500 until the riots. Now there are only 50. The guide was not allowed to tell us this. His brother joined us and was not allowed to talk to the foreigners, as he didn’t have a guide pass. The Chinese would assume he was talking politics and he would be removed. So, there is no way for the Tibetans to learn English, so there is no worry of their passing word to us. Unlike North Korea we are not physically segregated, but they do hold their rules. The Chinese army watches from every rooftop and marches through the streets in formation. After dark, when only the pilgrims are left circling the Jokhang Temple, measuring their distance by throwing their bodies to the ground, armored cars full of armed patrols circle, driving counter-clockwise, just to show their power and disregard to karma. No one else would go counter-clockwise. No one but the ignorant and rude.

There is a bright side, I suppose. One, Tibet isn’t alone. One member of our group was told to remove all pages referring to Taiwan from his China Lonely Planet. LP doesn’t acknowledge that Taiwan is part of China, so it is banned, along with all mention of the Dalai Lama. Two, because of China, the teachings and traditions of Tibet have gained a following. Once closed to the world, students can now come to Kathmandu and India and study and practice Tibetan Buddhism with the monks in rebuilt monasteries. Westerners are learning of the ways that wouldn’t be possible fifty years ago. But really, is this a bright side? Now there are Tibetanologists, like there are Egyptologists, grabbing onto the end of a culture, only held alive in the hearts of those that are repressed or are refugees.

Like the T-shirts,… Free Tibet.