In some July 10 editions, an article about the Dalai Lama incorrectly referred to nearly 56 years of communist rule in China. Other editions referred correctly to nearly 56 years of Communist Chinese rule in Tibet.
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In Tibet, Dalai Lama Continues to Hold Sway
"We are not Chinese," said a portly monk at a CD shop just down the street from Jokhang Temple. "We are Tibetans."
His 23-year-old companion and fellow monk said that three years ago he tried to sneak across the border from Tibet into India, bound for the Dalai Lama's exile headquarters in the Himalayas. He was caught by Chinese border guards, he said, and driven back to his monastery -- without punishment, but also without change in his conviction that the Dalai Lama should still be Tibet's ruler.
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"We monks are all students of the Dalai Lama," he said.
The middle-school teacher said large numbers of Tibetans feel the same way and put up photographs of the Dalai Lama in their homes as a sign of loyalty. Phuntsok said security forces discourage displays of the Dalai Lama's photograph but do not scour people's homes looking for them.
Qu Zha, deputy director of the Jokhang Temple administration, said the Dalai Lama's pictures are banned at the temple. But monks elsewhere in Lhasa furtively showed reporters little photographs of him hanging under their robes like Christian scapulars.
"As believers, we think religion should be separated from politics," Qu told reporters brought to his temple by government officials. "The Dalai Lama is involved in politics. So I believe most of the monks would not support the return of the Dalai Lama.
"Most of the people would not like to see history repeat itself," he added, referring to the serfdom that was common before Chinese rule was restored in 1951 and the severe repression that followed the Dalai Lama's departure.
Part of the repression was forced patriotism lessons for Tibetan monks, designed to persuade them to embrace Chinese rule. Qu said the lessons continue, but only sporadically, and the 180 monks at Jokhang Temple spend most of their non-religious study time trying to learn Chinese and English to keep up with the times.
The temple's main image of Buddha, carried by hand litter for three years over the mountains from Xi'an during the Tang Dynasty in the 7th century, is one of the objects of worship that draw pilgrims to Lhasa year after year, temple officials said. Others are artifacts in the Potala Palace, including the throne where the current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th in a sacred line, once sat to rule Tibet.
One of the pilgrims, a monk named Tchetcham, prostrated himself in prayer before the temple Thursday morning as thousands of fellow pilgrims shuffled by on their circumambulation. During a break, Tchetcham, 44, said he had arrived in Lhasa three days earlier by bus from his home monastery in Xining, in Qinghai province.
The trip, his second, was a sacred duty, said Tchetcham, who uses only one name. Asked what drove him to carry out such a mission, he pointed to the temple wall without speaking. As for how long he planned to continue praying in front of the shrine, he said, "I think I'll go back home sometime next year."
