In the 19th
and early 20th century Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, was often dubbed The Forbidden City, The
Vatican of Lamaism or The Abode of the God King by westerners. These names and
the fact that there were few first-hand accounts of the city and no photos of the place all,
added to its mystique. China had been
penetrated, India has been described and
Japan was being explored, the Tibetan capital remained
unknown. In 1628 two Jesuits, Fathers
Cacella and Cabral got as far as Shigatze only a few hundred miles from Lhasa
but were then turned back. Finally the
equally intrepid Jesuits Fathers Grueber and d’Orville got there on the 8th
October 1661. Their notes on and sketches of Lhasa were published in Latin in 1677. Thomas Manning
was the first Englishman to get to Lhasa
in 1811 while on his way to China. In
1846 two more Catholic priests, Fathers Huc and Gabet, reached Lhasa and
managed to meet the regent, explore the city and stay there for some months.
After this no westerner set foot in the place until 1904 when
the Youghhusband expedition invaded Tibet, pushed its way into Lhasa, forced
the Tibetan government to sign a trade agreement and then withdrew.
Of course while
Lhasa was forbidden to westerners, Buddhists from China, Mongolia and Ladakh,
Sikkim, Bhutan and Buryatia in Russia had been going on pilgrimage to Lhasa for
centuries. Even some Japanese managed to get there; the Japanese monk Ekai Kawaguchi managed this
in 1901. Tibet in general and Lhasa in particular was off limits to westerners
because despite the Tibetan’s ignorance of the modern world they knew that one
country after another in Asia had fallen to colonial powers and they were
determined that this would not happen to them.
The attraction of
Lhasa for Buddhists was its long history as a centre of Buddhist scholarship,
its sacred temples and its location as the seat of the Dalai Lama, revered even
by Buddhists other than those of the Tibetan sects. It should be recalled that
when Anagarika Dharmapala founded the Mahabodhi Society in 1891 the Dalai Lama
became its chief patron. For westerners the very fact that they could not go to
Lhasa gave the place a special allure. In the second half of the 19th
century a race developed between explorers of different countries to be the
first to get there. The Swedish explorer Sven Hedin was obsessed with being the
first to “unveil” Lhasa; he drove himself and his party so hard that several of
the his porters and a dozen of his
camels died of exhaustion. Despite this he failed. It was left to Francis Younghusband to win the
prize in 1904, at the head of a 3000 strong army, supported by 7000
porters. From then on until 1950 small
numbers of westerners visited the city, mainly British diplomats, explorers, scientists
or privileged guests of the Tibetan government. Nearly all of them reported how
squalled the city was. The fastidious Kawaguchi dubbed it “the citadel of filth”. Younghusband described its streets as “mean and dirty” and
L. A. Wadell reported that even the
temples were “dark, dingy, filled with the smell of rancid
butter from the innumerable butter lamps kept burning in front of the idols,
and overseen by scowling lamas”. Of course,
if Younghusband or Wadell had visited the slums in London’s Whitechapel or the
Gorbals in Glasgow at around the same time they would have found them equally filthy. And if the Tibetans had invaded the UK and
gone to St. Pauls I suspect the archbishop
of Canterbury would have scowled at them. Yet despite the dirt, all
visitors to Lhasa up to 1950 also report that it was one of the most
fascinating city in the world, filled with ancient and unique sights to stimulate the imagination and enchant the eye. There was the three elegant
stupas forming the gateway to the city (Pargo
Kaling), the Dalai Lama’s Summer
Palace (Norbulinka) set in beautiful
gardens, the huge Sera Monastery that housed 500 monks, the Ramoche Temple, the
Turquoise-roofed Bridge (Yutog Zamba),
the enchanting Dragon Pavilion (Lukhang) on an island in the middle of a lake bordered
by gnarled and ancient trees, the city’s
main temple The Jokhang built in the 8th century and filled with
ancient treasures, to name but a few. But outdoing all these in size and
splendour was the Potala Palace. With its souring, inward-sloping walls and
stairways, its contrasting red and white towers and its golden spires, it is
one of the most majestic buildings ever conceived, a true architectural marvel.
And with the snow-caped mountains as a backdrop and its golden spires and roofs
reflecting the sun and shining in the clear air (Lhasa is at 3490 meters above
sea level) the whole scene literally takes the breath away (top picture, Lhasa in the 1920s)
Just as the kings
of Kandy succeeded in keeping colonial powers at bay with the help of nature
(preserving the thick, leech-infested, road-less jungles on the borders), so too
the Tibetans preserved their independence with the help of the daunting and
snow-bound Himalayas. But in both cases the isolation could not be maintained
forever. In the case of Tibet the danger did not come from the British to their
south but from the Chinese to their north. On the 6th October 1950
the Communist Chinese invaded the country. For the next few years they
successfully disguised their true intentions, but when the Tibetans revolted in
1959 those intentions, to dismantle Tibet’s unique Buddhist culture, became
only too apparent. The subsequent crackdown was swift and brutal. But worse was to come during the so-called
Great Cultural Revolution (1966-76). In an orgy of destruction and violence,
temples were dynamited, Buddha statues smashed, monks and nuns humiliated,
imprisoned and murdered; and not just in Tibet;
China’s cultural heritage suffered a catastrophe
too.
I managed to get to Lhasa in 1985 just as
China was opening up. The whole city looked like a rubbish dump. In the main shrine of the Ramoche Temple
the statue of the Buddha had been destroyed and replaced by a garish one
of Mao Zetung. In the mournful ruins of
the once grand Drepung Monastery I saw
dozens of bags of small bronze Buddha statues being weighed on a large pair of scales, probably to be sold off as scrap metal. I went to a stinking
public urinal only to find that it had been paved with Mani stones, the stones Tibetans inscribe the
mantra Om Mani Padme Hum sutras on.
There were even plans to dynamite the Potala Palace but this was abandoned at
the last moment, supposedly because of intervention of Zhou Enlai. Despite the
neglect and destruction the old city was mainly intact; the Chinese buildings,
mostly ugly barracks-like constructions had been built around it. Then I
visited Lhasa again in 2009. What a difference!
The city looked fairly clean, modern and many times larger than it had
14 years earlier. There was only one problem –
it looked like any of a thousand artless, nondescript modern Chinese
cities. Only small pockets of the distinctive Tibetan-style houses were left
and even these are now rapidly being
replaced by cement block flats, tasteless shopping malls and barren car parks.
Even buildings of historical signifance
are being demolished. Just recently the Summer Palace (Shide Drokhang) of the former regents of Tibet, ransacked during the Cultural Revolution was bulldozed rather
than repaired (second picture). Temples such as the
Jokang, the Lukhang and the Ramoche have
now been repaired and are in good condition but they have been reduced to
little more than tourist traps; Tibetan worshippers are pushed aside so
that Chinese tourist can take photos. I spent several hours looking for the lovely
Turquoise-roofed Bridge only to eventually find it hemmed in on both sides by modern buildings. But it is not just the
disappearing of the old but what the replacements are being used for which is contributing
to Lhasa’s destruction. In 2009 it was estimated
that there are now over 1000 ‘massage parlours” in the city catering to the
huge influx of predominantly male Chinese workers. What was once a city of
Dhamma is, one report recently said, “rapidly becoming the sleaze capital of China.”
Habitat International has recorded the destruction of the city’s significant
buildings in its 2013 publication ‘The
Traditional Lhasa House; The Typology of an Endangered Species’. It makes
very sad reading.
The Chinese
government is extremely sensitive about its rule in Tibet and tries to justify
it in a most curious way. Official publications and websites endlessly recount
how backward Tibet was before the Chinese takeover and how much they
have developed the country. This is exactly how colonial powers in the 19th
century justified their rule in Sri Lanka, India and numerous other places.
Responding to criticisms of the destruction of old Lhasa the chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region
recently said: “We have spent millions of yuen
on developing Lhasa. The city has facilities it never had before such as
electricity, rail connection, garbage collection, clean water and so on. The
city is hardly recognizable from how it
used to be.” This is quite true, although
the same could be said for most other cities in the world. It is also true that
it is almost unrecognisable; its Tibetan character has been almost completely
erased, its traditional architecture has almost disappeared, and its religious
role had been replaced by commercial and tourist ones. I am reminded of General
Westmoreland’s notorious comment about Hue in 1968: “We had to destroy the city in order to
save it.”
