The Gonggor Airport near Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, looks brand new and shiny and empty.  I realize that it’s not tourist season, which doesn’t start till May, but I suspect that when an architect designed this airport and presumably a committee approved of the design, they were being overly optimistic about how many tourist would be coming to Tibet.  Those of us who had been on my flight seemed to be the only visitors in the entire airport; otherwise it was staff and green Chinese uniforms.  The extremely modern airport has vast glass windows and long brick walls and a long slick white tile floor—a far cry from the very detailed and elaborate statues and murals that I think of when I think of Tibet. 

My bags had to all go back through a security check, even though we were arriving rather than departing.  A tall young guy in green Chinese uniform and clear plastic gloves searched both my carry-ons but not my suitcase.  Stuff I got in Dharamsala and that I don’t want the Chinese to see is actually in the suitcase, so I lucked out in that respect—so far, anyway.  I guess they’re more concerned about what we bring than what we take to an airport for departure, since this is fascist Chinese-occupied Tibet.  It’s the first time I’ve ever been in a country occupied by an arrogant imperialist country.  Oh, then again, I’ve been to Northern Ireland, which oddly likes its bondage.  Who would have guessed that Irish Protestants were into bondage.

The soldier even flipped through pages in my books and notebooks, probably to see if I brought pictures of the Dalai Lama.  I’m so glad I didn’t purchase any such pictures in Dharamsala, after all!  I’ll wait and get some when I return to Kathmandu. 

I recall reading that, for whatever reason, China doesn’t allow you to bring more than twenty changes of underwear.  When I read about that, I imagined what it could be like when a Chinese authority looks through my suitcase.

“You have too much underwear!  You are a member of a splittist faction!”

“No, that’s just a rip in the seam.”

“Why you have Dalai Lama pictures in your underwear?”

“I figured of all the places that would least likely get looked at carefully…”

This is so crazy—I’m in Tibet for real!  I’d like to take a picture of a yeti, but I won’t be out in the wild, and I doubt a yeti would be circumambulating the Jokhang Temple.

I was relieved to leave that Mean Boy in a Green Uniform (MBGU) and head toward a big open space devoid of furniture with the one exception of a podium on which I had to place my Chinese visa, an eight and a half by eleven inch piece of white paper with black ink and an official-looking red stamp. 

A middle-aged Tibetan guy in a dark jacket approached me and asked if I’m Susan, and I smiled and said, “Yes!”  Gyantzing is my tour guide, a guy.  I was hoping for a female tour guide.  After this trip, I’ll want a one-way ticket to Herland.  He gave me a khatta, a white Tibetan greeting scarf that’s sheen and printed with auspicious Buddhist symbols.  It has a very long silky fringe on each end, and the fringe tangles with everything, including cough drop wrappers.

Writing in the minivan while riding from the airport, I took notes in a horrible scrawl, while Gyantzing gave me information:

The airport is at 3600 meters above sea level, and Lhasa is at 3700 meters above sea level.  All I know about meters is they’re approximately four feet.  I didn’t do the math; I just know they’re big numbers.

The river near the airport is the Brahmaputra (Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibetan), and it’s winding like turquoise arteries.  From Mount Kailash to India is 60 kilometers.  The Yellow Valley is sandy with short, spiky brown and red plants.

Barley, wheat, and peas are the main crops.  I know they can grow potatoes and other root vegetables, though, and they’re actually capable of growing quite a number of vegetables and flowers during a couple of summer months, at least on the plateau.  Nowadays there are greenhouses, but oddly they looked empty as we rode past them from the airport.  It seems to me like this would be a great time of year to put the greenhouses to use.

Lhasa Tso is the central river, and it goes to northern Tibet.

Before the infamous Cultural Revolution, which might be better called the Cultural Disintegration, twenty percent of Tibetan males were monks, and two percent of Tibetan women were nuns.  Or to be more accurate, this was before about 1959, since the Chinese had already invaded and done a great deal of harm before the Cultural Revolution and kicked plenty of monks and nuns out of their monastic lifestyle.  However, the tour guide isn’t supposed to say that:  the official Chinese propaganda story is that the invasion was “the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet” (yeah, just like Georgie Porgy and his minion’s invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq were “Peaceful Liberations”) and it’s absolutely verboten to point out that the invasion was in fact very violent and oppressive, not a peaceful liberation at all.  Not to mention that buildings like monasteries were bombed; monks and nuns raped and murdered, that sort of thing.  Peaceful liberation, my foot.  The authorities admit that the Cultural Revolution was a mistake, but that’s it; admitting that the invasion was also bad, destructive, and murderous would be admitting that China shouldn’t be occupying Tibet.

Four hundred nuns at a mountain nunnery: that’s the biggest number of nuns in Tibet.  Of course Gyantzing didn’t explain that the reason Tibet has, even before the Chinese invasion, had so many more monks than nuns is simply power-tripping undeserved male privilege, the scourge of Planet Earth in general.  Boys are highly encouraged to move into a monastery and get an education, while girls are highly encouraged to be drudges and housewives and baby-making machines.  The usual.  Yawn.  I have fantasies of learning every language on Earth and trekking all around the planet, delivering to women everywhere the message:  You’ve been force-fed lies since the day you were born.  Women are people too.  Women are just as good as men and just as capable of enlightenment, and anyone who claims otherwise is a bigoted, power-tripping windbag. 

600,000 = population of Lhasa, 40% Tibetan.  New buildings are coming up in Chinese style.  Tall glass skyscrapers, I notice. 

I see on the river reddish brown ducks with pale yellow heads, black-tipped wings.

We passed greenhouses, where people grow tomatoes, cucumbers, etc, and a group of people planting trees with a cart loaded with branches.  We passed Western-looking cows and sheep.  I’m kind of surprised that the cows aren’t more like Indian cows.  We also passed an eleventh-century monastery; Around the time of the invasion or the Cultural Revolution, there was a request that the central government (Beijing) not destroy the monastery, so here it stands. 

The military base, a big tall scary building a few minutes down the road from the old monastery, is three years old.  I looked up at the looming rectangle, a very modern building, and thought:  That’s a sign that you’re in an oppressive fascist police state.  It’s such a power-tripping symbol to have a military base right there, on the outskirts of Lhasa.  It disgusts me but doesn’t really surprise me.  I saw some green military vehicles in front of the building, around which is a fence with a gate where a stiff green-clad soldier stands.  He looks like he’s frozen in place; he may as well be an android rather than a person.

We stopped to see the beautiful, bright Buddha paintings on a mountain, and the ducks on the lake across the road were talkative in and at the edge of the snakelike winding little bits of river.  Before we walked up to the mountain and looked at the big bright Buddha, we entered through a colorful gate painted in Tibetan auspicious symbols, and we stopped at a juniper stove.  It’s whitewashed and probably made of earth, and it’s shaped rather like a vase or like a Tibetan stupa, with curved sides and a curved central opening where the juniper is placed.  Inside the aperture, the surface is burnt black and has remnants of the plant, and a little bit of smoke still issues out.  I’ve seen these many times in photos of Tibetan architecture, and I could tell they were stoves, but I never knew exactly what they were.  They’re located in front of all monasteries and temples, and they are used for burning offerings of juniper every morning.  I hope they grow plenty of juniper bushes nearby.

The Buddha is indeed huge and painted and slightly carved on the mountainside.  It’s low enough that the artist or artists could have been standing on the ground while making it, rather than standing on scaffolding.  It’s not smooth and sophisticated but rather has the rough texture of the rocky mountain and has a folk art style to it.  Colorful deities, smaller than the Buddha, are painted on the mountain, and I recognized Green Tara, a Goddess of compassion who has one foot down from her lotus throne, like she’s about to get down and help people out.  I wish she’d come help me, but I have to help myself.

A few yards past the big Buddha mountain, we passed newly-built summer houses.  Although the houses have Tibetan-style murals, the walls are filled with very large greenish glass windows; they are deserted little vacation houses presumably for Han Chinese.  They consist of contemporary architecture despite the murals, and the architect has made no attempt at imitating traditional Tibetan architecture; the little houses look like they might only have one room, maybe a little more than that, and they have peaked roofs.  Given what the climate is like, I don’t think people would stay in them for more than a couple months. 

I see plenty of modern versions of Tibetan houses.  They have garage doors like Indian and Nepalese buildings but also traditional ornate red Tibetan doors.  They have grey walls made of what looks like big stone or cement blocks.  They can have large front picture windows, probably for the living room, and they also have plenty of other windows, with glass.  Traditional Tibetan windows didn’t have glass but had shutters.  Given the climate, I’m thinking you’d have to be bundled up all the time, even in the house.  Of course, the Tibetan beer chang would warm people up, as would hot food and a fire.

We came to traffic police, who are Chinese in fancy blue uniforms, before we passed bulldozed (or more likely bombed) and graffiti-decorated older Tibetan houses.  If they were destroyed in the fifties or sixties, I’m surprised nobody’s cleared away the evidence and instead has left these reminders to inspire resentment and to perhaps inspire some Tibetans to be suspicious of the official Chinese version of their history.  On the other hand, they might assume the damage dates only to the Cultural Revolution, as the official propaganda states.  I’ve read that Tibetans living in Tibet aren’t getting the real story, and this is not surprising; though if they have parents or grandparents around who remember what really happened, then I suspect they might learn from them.

            We passed under the new railroad and saw the station in the distance.  We passed the notorious train station, which mimics traditional Tibetan monastic architecture and was completed in 2006.  I’ve read that global warming means the permafrost is melting, and this will make the train tracks sink and crumble in a short time.  But of course, the Chinese are in denial about so many things.  I’ve also read that while the official story is that the railroad is good for Tibet and that building it gave many Tibetans jobs, the truth is that the better jobs were given to Chinese and that Tibetans had the worse and lower-paying jobs on the railroad.  And of course it also means that all the more Han Chinese can move into Tibet, as if there aren’t enough.  They don’t even have the lungs for this climate—I can’t think they’d be all that much at home.

On the left we passed a cement factory, which according to Gyantzing is one of the first factories that the Chinese built in Tibet, in the 1960s, causing the worst pollution in Tibet.

Also on the left, after we’ve entered Lhasa, we passed Drepung Monastery.  It is on a mountainside beyond shops and looms up looking quite large and impressive, all whitewashed walls slanting inward so that the base of the wall is wider than the top, just as in all traditional Tibetan architecture, and the monastery has the obligatory black-framed windows.  Sera Monastery is in Lhasa.  Ganden, which houses the yellow-hat sect, is in Gyantse.  It dates from the eleventh to twelve centuries and the fourteenth century.  The last sect, Gelugpa, only dates to the seventeenth century and is a reformist sect thanks to the fifth Dalai Lama.  He got other orders to change into the Yellow Hat (Gelugpa)—most monasteries in Tibet are now yellow-hat.  The second through the fourteenth Dalai Lamas had their education in this monastery, Drepung.  It’s a big and special place.  I’ve had the impression that lately the reason there are so many more Gelugpa monks and nuns is because of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s charisma, but it sounds like it predates him.

We’ve ridden by countless Chinese shops on the outskirts of Lhasa.  I look at the signs over the roll-up doors and see scarcely any Tibetan script, all Chinese.  Yes, I mentioned roll-up doors; I didn’t expect Tibet to have the same sort of entrances to shops that India and Nepal have, but there it is.  I’m guessing that China also has shop doors that look to Westerners like garage doors, because under the circumstances Tibet is much more influenced by China than by India, although Buddhism came from India to Tibet and therefore in the past India had a huge influence on Tibetan culture. 

As we drove past the towering and impressive Potala Palace, I gasped and gawked and the tour guide told me a few things about it.  The Potala has thirteen stories and a thousand rooms.  On the façade different sections are painted different colors:  red, white, or yellow.  The red rooms are the Dalai Lama’s and for politics.  The white rooms are for the monastery.  In other words, the Potala has a color-coded façade.  The yellow section is a courtyard between the special white section, which contains among other things the Dalai Lama’s rooms, and the red.  This isn’t tourist season, so we can spend more time in the Potala; normally tourists are only allowed one hour in the Potala and it is crowded.

The Potala sits on top of a mountain, the Marpo Ri or Red Hill, and it looms over Lhasa as if it’s taunting the Chinese government.  They almost bombed it in the 1960s; fortunately they didn’t.  I’m not one of those Shangri-la people who think that Tibet has been nonviolent for the past hundred years; I know it has in that time been just another patriarchal country, and according to the history books Tibet has had wars with China and even battles between different sects, different monasteries.  Nonetheless, I figure that since the mountains are still standing, the Potala is still standing, and the Jokhang Temple is still standing, Tibet still has some magic.

I don’t think it’s possible to be a radical feminist and be a Shangri-la person, someone who sees Tibet and Tibetans through rose-colored glasses.  If you have feminist consciousness, then shortly after you start learning about Tibetan culture it becomes really obvious that it’s male-dominated and hierarchal, and you might also suspect the monastic system of being somewhat power-tripping in general, not just in its contempt for women and nuns, because there used to be battles between rival monasteries and there might still be some competition. 

Actually, the monastic system isn’t all to blame for that, but rather the social structure in general:  parents encourage their sons to go to the monastery, which traditionally was where you got the best education.  But parents highly discourage their daughters to become nuns and thereby get a comparable education to the boys; they’re encouraged to get married and give birth to children.  Even if they do become nuns, they have a tendency to do domestic chores around their parents’ house or for the monks, so that they still don’t get the kind of education and training that monks get.  Nuns are not fully ordained bhikkunis and are totally considered subservient to the monks.  Also, in Tibetan tradition, monks perform rites and ceremonies for the people, but nuns totally don’t.  It’s so misogynistic and hateful, and every time I read or think about power-tripping males in Buddhism I find it terribly ironic, given what Buddhist practice is supposed to be all about.  Cultivating male ego has no resemblance to cultivating egolessless, quite the contrary.  And a major message of the Buddha’s was that anyone and everyone can reach enlightenment, male or female.  I should perhaps mention that of course my male and androcentric tour guide didn’t mention any of these things; my comments come from many books I’ve read about Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism.

The Yak Hotel, where I’ll be staying, is just down the street from the Potala itself, on the main drag, Beijing Street.  It is a very wide and very modern and clean paved street, again in sharp contrast with what I’m accustomed to seeing in India and Nepal.  The streets in Lhasa are indeed reminiscent of a Western street, and the steering wheel is on the left side, just like in America.  In both India and Nepal, it’s on the right, and traffic goes on the left side of the road.

Travel website that talks about the Gonggor Airport:  http://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/tibet/lhasa/airport.htm