September
11, 2000
Rebirth
of ancient Buddhistmonastery
By Chen Liang
After breakfast, Chasam stood in front of the kangtsang, the residence for monks in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, overlooking the road winding up to the Ganden Monastery.
When he spotted the first vehicle of the day crawling up towards him, the 58-year-old monk headed for the Shartse College nearby. Opening the red wooden doors of the grand-looking Tibetan building, he began his wait for the coming pilgrims and tourists.
About 40 kilometers to the northeast of Lhasa - the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region - Ganden was established as the first monastery of the Gelugpa order. It has remained the main seat of this major Tibetan Buddhist order ever since.
Founded in 1409 by Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), the revered creator of the Gelugpa order, Ganden is one of the three major Gelugpa monasteries in the region. The others are the Drepung and Sera monasteries.
Of all the great monasteries in Tibet, Ganden suffered most during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76). Most of its buildings, including the Assembly Hall, the Golden Tomb of Tsongkhapa, the Jiangtse College and the Shartse College were demolished.
Ganden has been reborn, however, thanks to extensive reconstruction in the 1990s.
When our vehicle made a sudden turn on the steep, bumpy road leading up to the monastery, I saw the gigantic Ganden stretching across the top of a mountain that was covered by fresh green grass and bushes.
Under the scorching sun, the sheer white walls of many of Ganden's structures were bright, and the golden roofs of some of its grand buildings glittered. I was captivated by the overall splendour.
Chasam smiled at us when we reached the stone-paved yard in front of the Shartse College.
He said he was the caretaker of the college.
"It's my daily work to open the doors at 9 am for pilgrims and tourists and to close the doors when they leave," he said.
Born in 1942 in Lhaze County of Lhasa, where Ganden is located, Chasam entered the monastery at the age of seven. He stayed there studying Buddhism until 1960. He returned home to farm, only going back to Ganden in 1992, when the government initiated a large-scale reconstruction of the monastery.
"Believing in Buddha is no longer taboo," said Chasam. "I wanted to serve Buddha. So when the monastery started being reconstructed, I came back."
The college has a large shrine with images of Tsongkhapa and his two principal disciples, Gyatsab Je and Kedrub Je. When Tsongkhapa died, the abbotship of the monastery passed on to them.
The walls on three sides of the hall are covered with elaborate frescoes of Tibetan Buddhism. The wall on the other side is empty. The images and the frescoes all look quite new.
Chasam said the structure was completed three years ago. "But it takes some time to finish the frescoes," he said.
Some 500 monks live in the monastery, about 200 of whom belong to the Shartse College, and the others to the Jiangtse College.
He said the two colleges used to hold chanting gatherings separately. "But now we hold the gatherings together in the Assembly Hall, which is good for us, as it makes us more united," he said.
Ganden is not far from Chasam's home village, and as such the monk can visit his family once every two months and stay with his brothers for one or two days.
He is luckier than Norsam Langje. Coming to Ganden at 22, the monk from Northwest China's Gansu Province has spent 11 years studying Buddhism in the monastery and has only returned home three times.
"The environment here is perfect to study scriptures," he said. "I have spent most of my time doing nothing here but reading, chanting and debating."
He said most of the monks in Ganden are from Tibet, with two from Gansu, two from Sichuan Province and a dozen from Qinghai Province.
Leaving the college, we walked to a small square with a prominent white stupa or chorten, a round, domed building erected as a Buddhist shrine. On the north side of the square, the fortress-like Golden Tomb of Tsongkhapa, with its slanting ochre walls, and the Assembly Hall with its golden roof, stood side by side. They looked spectacular.
At the entrance of the two-storey Assembly Hall, Damba, a 42-year-old carpenter was sawing wood and his 18-year-old apprentice, Norkyung, was smoothing a piece of wood.
They were from Xigatze, the second-largest town in Tibet, and have been working for the monastery since March, said Damba.
"We make doors, windows, tables and shrines," the carpenter said. "The monastery pays me 750 yuan (US$90) and Norkyung 600 yuan (US$72) a month."
Most of the space inside the main assembly hall was occupied by red cushions and clusters of colourful flags hung down from the ceiling. The air was filled with the smell of yak butter.
We entered the Golden Tomb of Tsongkhapa, or Serkhang in Tibetan, through a side entrance which leads into an open courtyard. There, 17-year-old Soglang Jamzain was sitting on the ground, printing Tibetan Buddhism scriptures page by page on a block, and 35-year-old Sogqu was proof-reading and correcting a block with a knife.
Blocks of different sizes, darkened by printing ink were scattered around. Several cups of sugared black tea were giving off steam. Nearby, on a long table, were tidy stacks of scriptures.
Coming from Nyemo County in central Tibet with their master and another apprentice, Sogqu and Soglang Jamzain had been printing scriptures for the monastery for two and a half months. They have another two months to go.
Soglang Jamzain said the scriptures would be used to fill the monasteries' empty bookshelves.
"So far we have printed more than 70,000 pages," the craftsman said.
Officials in the Lhasa Bureau of Ethnic and Religious Affairs said that between 1992 and 1997 the government had spent more than 27 million yuan (US$3.2 million) on rebuilding Ganden's main structures.
"We plan to raise more funds in the next few years to improve the monastery's power and water supplies and put in a fire alarm system," said Tudain Gesam, an official with the bureau.
"The monastery is also undertaking some minor rebuilding projects on its own."
The original tomb and the preserved body of Tsongkhapa in the Golden Tomb of Tsongkhapa were destroyed during the "cultural revolution." The new silver and gold chorten was built to house salvaged fragments of the master's skull.
After a simple lunch in Ganden's restaurant, we headed west for a walk. We were rewarded by stunning views of the broad Lhasa River valley along the way. The river's water is abundant during the wet season and has carved out dozens of channels on the usually dry river bed so that it looked like a shining web.
Clusters of prayer flags were everywhere along the route. At a narrow pass, I hung a string of prayer flags between a rock and a tree.
At 2:30 pm, after an easy walk of around 45 minutes, we again came to the square, which was already empty.
We heard the sound of arguing and clapping in the distance.
"The monks are debating the scriptures. It is one of their daily rituals," our interpreter Cering Doje said. "When they debate, they clap their hands."
Identity of Tibet survives changes
By Tan Hongkai
|
|
As we were tossed about in a bouncing vehicle on the dirt road to the Namyi Lhoba Autonomous Township, we dreamed of the exotic world that lay before us.
In our imagination the community of Lhoba in southeast Tibet's Mainling County, like a lonely isle in a sea of Tibetans, was a place of color and magic with many visually-striking images to distinguish it from its Tibetan surroundings.
Even our photographer, who said he had an allergy to body-numbing rides on poorly-maintained dirt roads, did not utter a word of complaint.
A yearning for eye-opening discoveries overpowered his usual desire for comfort.
But our fantasies were shattered as the real picture of Lhoba life unfolded before our eyes when we approached the village of Cezhao.
There was an intense feeling that we had been cheated by our guidebook. What we saw did not agree with the book.
Contrary to our guidebook, villagers no longer make traditional stoneware. Few people weave bamboo containers. Bow and arrows, the standard tool of Lhoba hunters, lie idle as makeshift wall decorations.
Family houses are built, without exception, using a combination of Han and Tibetan styles -- fancily carved and painted door and window decorations evoke Tibet, and the sloping roofs are common in South China.
What was most disappointing to our photographer was our failure to find a villager dressed in traditional Lhoba clothes.
There was only one complete set of traditional Lhoba clothes in the town, said Dagyug, the town's head. We did not have the opportunity to see the set because it was currently on display at an exhibition of traditional costumes of ethnic minorities in Kunming, Yunnan Province.
Wearing a Tibetan-style pelt hat, Dagyug said it is no longer possible to tell Lhobas and Tibetans apart from the way they dress.
The villagers we came across were all in Tibetan dress, common in the region.
Lhoba's traditional clothes are too complex and inconvenient for daily wear, Dagyug said.
Though Lhobas do have their own spoken language, they write in Tibetan. Everyone we met in Cezhao spoke fluent Tibetan.
Though Dagyug managed to name two things that differentiate Tibetan and Lhoba foods, he acknowledged that Tsampa, the most representative of all Tibetan foods, is just as important on Lhoba dinner tables.
The locals told us that different weddings and burial customs are the most prominent distinctions between Lhoba and Tibetan customs.
Days after that "unworthy trip," as our photographer called it, we overcame our initial disappointment and began to come to terms with reality.
We were but a group of curious outsiders hunting for novelty. We cared more about how different the Lhobas than we did for what is best for them.
While we lamented their "loss" of traditions, they retain a strong sense of ethnic identity.
Just like Lhasa's Muslims, called "Tibetan Muslims" in Tibet, who have adopted most Tibetan foods and speak Tibetan, Lhobas made their choices of their own free will.
They would not, and are not obliged to, change their decisions about their own life according to our tastes. They are the best judges of what to do and what not to do.
"You may call this Tibetanization if you want," said Dagyug. "For us it is not. We are still Lhobas."
This reminds me of the rampant rumors in the West about the "Hanization" of Tibet.
Chinese Mandarin's equal status with Tibetan as an official language in Tibet, the presence of Han people in Tibetan cities, the appearance of so-called Han-style buildings and even the popularity of Han food are quoted as proof of an effort to Hanize Tibet.
If that logic stood, it would be possible to say that Americans are no longer American because they consume products from everywhere in the world.
This does not appear strange to me because I myself have had the experience of being considered "Americanized."
"You look so American," an American friend of mine told me during a study tour of India.
When I inquired about the ground of his judgment, he pointed to my Levi's jeans and Rayban sunglasses.
I do hold an American degree. I do like American fashions by Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein. I do enjoy Hollywood movies. But none of these things have ever compromised my Chineseness. They never will.
As such, China's unconcealed eagerness for Western technologies and management know-how is not equivalent to a desire to Westernize.
The proposal of a "market economy with Chinese characteristics" is a manifesto of self-consciousness.
However popular McDonald's and the NBA are here, China is still China. If it were not then American China-bashers would not cry out against "Chinese nationalism" as often as they do. Further to this it needs to be said that, while racking their brains to pull China onto the track of "Westernization," however, some in the West are cursing the growing intimacy between the Han and Tibetan peoples, who are of the same Chinese nation. Tibet is still Tibet, however much it changes. There are no traditions that are set in stone forever.
Like individuals, each ethnic group has its own advantages and disadvantages. It is a matter of course that different ethnic groups learn from others' strong points and offset their own weakness through long-term co-existence.
The ethnic Han Chinese have absorbed the fine traditions of many other ethnic groups over the long course of China's history.
As the largest ethnic group in China, the Han people have an obligation to help the country's other 55 ethnic groups.
Despite epoch-making leaps forward in the past 49 years, Tibet needs substantial outside assistance to tackle poverty.
The Dalai Lama and his followers in the West cite existent signs of poverty in Tibet as evidence of the Han people's sin of "marginalizing" Tibet in China's economic rejuvenation process.
This is far from the reality of the case. China has implemented many aid programs to help eradicate poverty, worked out according to Tibetans' needs and with their involvement. Critics in the West vilify this as well, and accuse China of attempting "cultural genocide."
I am personally concerned about the dilution of Tibetan characteristics in urban development in Tibet, and I know that this is not the result of what the Dalai Lama calls "cultural genocide."
Traditional Tibetan building styles are no longer popular because of cost considerations, I learned from a Lhasa-based Tibetan expert on building designing.
Tibetan-style houses cost considerably more than common ones if they have the same modern functions.
My designer friend also noticed that what Westerners call Han-style buildings in Lhasa have actually been transplanted from the West.
So, it is "Westernization" rather than "Hanization," if you want to stick a label on it.
Eating Tibetan Tsampa and wearing Tibetan robes have not "Tibetanized" the Lhobas.
Sipping Coca Cola and seeing Hollywood blockbusters have not "Americanized" the Chinese.
Living in non-Tibetan apartments and going to Sichuan restaurants will not Hanize Tibetans, either.
In any case, they
still eat Tsampa, drink butter tea and pay homage to Buddha as their ancestors
did.
Legacy of a Tibetan storyteller