13
SIGNS AND QUESTIONS
Reting Road, Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, Northern India
Wangdu Palsang was setting a strong pace around the hilltop town, expertly pointing out buildings and buddhas in his faintly American accent; a product, he explained, of three years studying political science at the University of Washington. Jet-lagged and struggling a little with the altitude, Beth kept up as best she could, but finally had to ask her benign guide if she could stop for a rest. They did so in front of a large green billboard. Catching her breath, Beth was surprised to see the image from the nun’s postcard staring down at her.
She retrieved the card from her notebook to compare. The two pictures were identical, but this time the young face was set above a big black question mark. Below that, in recently repainted gold capital letters, the sign read:
TIBET’S STOLEN CHILD—The 11th PANCHEN LAMA GEDHUN CHOEKYI NYIMA
THE WORLD’S YOUNGEST POLITICAL PRISONER
Beth read the English portion of the multilingual text that lined the board, the paint older, cracked, and fading.
The “25” had been recently repainted in a bright red.
Beth immediately took the easy leap to the fact that the unsuspecting boy in the photograph was no longer the world’s youngest political prisoner. That sign had been repainted many times. Seeing her interest, Wangdu suggested to Beth that he take her photograph standing next to the sign. While he did so, she noticed another man from across the street do the same but quickly move on when he saw her looking. She alerted Wangdu, to which he casually replied, “Local pervert or Chinese spy, Mrs. Waterman, not to worry!”
Shaking off the explanation as a little odd either way, Beth turned back to the sign. In the bottom right corner of the billboard’s painted frame she noticed a design cut into the wood. No hastily scratched mark, it was a carving of a butterfly.
Beth asked Wangdu if the insect meant anything in Buddhist culture. Momentarily fumbling with his camera, the youthful Tibetan dropped his lens cap, saying only as he picked it up, “No, not really. Let’s move on now, Mrs. Waterman, much still to see.”
With her phone, Beth quickly photographed a reminder of both the text on the board and the carving, then ran the tip of her finger around the winged symbol. While she did this, another figure, unseen, tugged hard on the back of her shirt. She jumped, turning around quickly to the further shock of a face that had lost most of its nose and one eye, revealing much of the skull within, and an outstretched hand. More from the twin nasal cavities that ruptured the face than the toothless mouth below, Beth heard an unintelligible sound somewhere between a wheeze and a mumble.
“Mrff . . . mrff . . . mrff,” the broken face repeated.
Horrified at the sight, she seized a few rupees from her pocket, handed them over, and then set off after Wangdu, who was already heading up the steep road.
“Did you see that beggar, Wangdu? Why is he not better cared for here?” she asked when she caught up with him.
“We care for everyone we can, Mrs. Waterman, but that man is very damaged by what was done to him in Tibet. He often roams free, however much we try to help him.”
With that said, they walked on in silence for a little while until Beth broke it by asking about the lost boy in the billboard, as she showed Wangdu the postcard she had been given.
“You must understand that your world really only knows the one, the Dalai Lama, but we actually have two equally important lamas that preside over many hundreds of others,” Wangdu replied.
“Go on,” Beth said. So while they walked, the Tibetan told how the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama were the two dominant pillars—the heart and soul—of Tibet’s Buddhist faith; a faith that, despite over sixty years of atheistic occupation of its land, could not be extinguished.
Chairman Mao, he explained, had tried everything in his almost unlimited power to eliminate it through persecution, destruction, and political dogma, but had failed—especially because the Dalai Lama had escaped his grasp in 1959. In counter maneuver, Mao had attempted to utilize the Panchen Lama who remained, but that also failed when he proved to be both devout and unafraid to criticize Chinese rule, submitting his famous 70,000 Character Petition to Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in 1962; a detailed report that identified the many failures of Chinese rule in Tibet. It quickly led to his imprisonment.
As both the existing Dalai Lama and the tenth Panchen Lama were born before the Chinese occupation, the death of the latter in 1989—some said under mysterious circumstances—was seen as an opportunity in Beijing. His death and subsequent reincarnation presented the possibility for the Chinese to coordinate the selection and enthronement of one of the most senior positions in Tibetan Buddhism, to effectively arrange a new “made in China” Panchen Lama who would toe the party line. However, underestimating the complexity of the search for the reincarnation and the ongoing loyalty to the Dalai Lama within their Tibetan territories, the Chinese authorities failed in their plan when, independently from his exile, the Dalai Lama announced that Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the boy on the billboard, was the reincarnated eleventh Panchen Lama.
The Chinese were furious. Almost immediately the boy and his family were taken into custody. Moreover, the leader of the search committee within the Tibetan territories, Chadrel Rinpoche, himself still clandestinely supportive of the exiled Dalai Lama, was arrested and charged with treason. A new leader for a new search was appointed in order to present other politically acceptable candidates. The Golden Urn, an archaic Manchu ceremony that Wangdu described as “having slightly more historical precedent than Harry Potter’s Goblet of Fire but not a lot” was dusted off from the eighteenth century and utilized in a televised ceremony in Lhasa to “select” another boy that the party had already prechosen. This time, the People’s “Living Buddha,” their reincarnate Panchen Lama, was Gyaltsen Norbu; also six, also from Nagchu, but conveniently with Chinese Communist Party parents despite the fact he was being deemed a reincarnate . . .
All the while, a single, simple truth of the process—that a new Panchen Lama can only be confirmed by the existing Dalai Lama—was being conveniently ignored. “And in that you have it all,” Wangdu Palsang concluded. “Because when the time comes the Chinese will suddenly ‘remember’ that the reverse is actually true.”
“What do you mean?” Beth asked.
“I mean that a new Dalai Lama can only be confirmed by the Panchen Lama. The Chinese will undoubtedly use their counterfeit Panchen Lama to lead any future search for the next Dalai Lama. A search that I assume will show all the faith and freedom of his own selection. A search that will produce their man for our future. In that way they will finally have control of our two most important figures.”
When Beth asked Wangdu what he thought had happened to Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, he had replied gravely, “No one knows. Official requests for information are always met with either silence or, as you say where you come from, bullshit, that he’s attending school and living a normal life somewhere in China. Whenever the precise location or a meeting with him is requested, it is declined with replies that it is not possible because ‘his security has been threatened’ or ‘that he is at risk of being kidnapped by separatists’—which is pretty stupid when you think about it. Kidnapped from his kidnappers? I don’t think so, Mrs. Waterman.
“In 2007 the UN Human Rights Council itself asked about him and the Chinese authorities stated words to the effect that, ‘Gedhun Choekyi Nyima is a perfectly ordinary Tibetan boy, in a good state of health, leading a normal, happy life, and receiving a good education and upbringing in traditional Chinese culture, and that he enjoyed studying calligraphy. But after nearly twenty years there is still no sign of him. That’s a long time to be invisible. Your postcard is the only picture of him that you will ever see.”
“Do you think he’s dead, Wangdu?” Beth said.
Wangdu paused, wrestling with the question before answering.
“It is difficult to say. Possibly, but the Chinese are complicated. Despite being Communist for over seventy years, they have thought like Confucius for more than a thousand. It creates a deep conflict in them. Whilst some of them might say all religion is nonsense so, dead or alive, the boy makes no difference, others would argue that if perhaps Gedhun Choekyi Nyima really is the true Panchen Lama then it is best to keep him alive because if he dies then he may reincarnate elsewhere beyond their control . . . Their ‘middle way’ approach always wars with a ruthless pragmatism. The dominance of one or the other attitude varies depending on who is calling the political shots.”
Beth and Wangdu walked on together until they stopped before another banner tied to the same fence that held the billboard. The long vinyl panel roped to the railings featured row after row of similar portrait photographs to those of the stolen child billboard. However this time the faces of the men and women displayed were older, adults this time, even if some were anonymous, featuring only a white silhouette. Beneath each face, actual or invisible, was a name, a place, and a date.
“More political prisoners?” she asked Wangdu.
“No, Mrs. Waterman.”
“What then?”
“Those are our people who have burned themselves to death in the name of Tibetan freedom.”
Beth thought of her coming interview with the Dalai Lama the following day. “But most of all that smile masks a true sadness and pain you cannot begin to imagine . . .”