“Critics are already asking what Beijing offered – or was asked for – in return.”

Angry Chinese Blogger sheds some light on why young Chinese people feel the way they do about Tibet.

I promise, at some point I’ll start talking about my actual memories again instead of hopping on my soapbox every few minutes. It’s just very difficult to do so after reading the news.

If you’ve been following the recent news, you know that Tibet is having a terrible time right now. (If you don’t, the BBC has a good rundown.)

I’ve been trying to find the words to express how angry and sad and frustrated I have been since this violence started.  It is a very strange feeling to look at pictures coming out of Lhasa and recognize in the burnt-out shells places I and my classmates passed every day for three weeks. Yahoo has an extensive photo gallery of Lhasa and Tibetan protests. In the rubble, so far I’ve recognized a teashop in which I got a wonderful cup of tea, a little Chinese dumpling shop that would belch out the noxious fumes of cooking cabbage and unidentifiable meat, and various shops near the Barkhor. Of course, we can’t contact any of the people we met in Tibet, so we don’t know if they are safe or not.

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Well, Bjork sure has riled up Beijing. I knew I liked her. ^_^

You can see the video by going to YouTube and searching for “bjork tibet”. (For some reason, embedding the video here broke everything else.) I recommend not reading the comments unless you enjoy being angry.

China gets its way once again: Team Tibet will not be allowed to participate in the Olympics, since Tibet is not recognized as a sovereign state. The team is apparently still in good spirits, and hopes to try again in 2012. Perhaps they’ll have better luck when the games aren’t hosted by their oppressors.

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It has taken a full week for Xinhua, the Chinese national news agency, to release this report of unrest in Tibet. Why? See title. They needed time to spin the event to make it look like everything is just peachy. And forget the idea that government workers “persuaded” rioters to go home. Two women on our trip witnessed firsthand what happens when the Chinese government “persuades” people.  They watched three police gang up on a middle-aged women and knock her to the ground and kick around her groceries. Hmph.

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Yesterday the Dalai Lama accepted the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor Congress can give to a civilian.

His speech and the speeches of others at the ceremony reemphasize that he is not a “splittist,” as Beijing claims, but simply a crusader for peace. He restated that it is not independence he is after, but actual autonomy, something the “Tibet Autonomous Region” utterly lacks. He thanks the American people for their support, and is rather politic in thanking the Bushies for their “support of religious freedom” (heehee, I don’t think he’s been reading the US news much…).

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Today on Phayul: China blatantly defends its record on religious freedom. And again with the “why can’t you mean old foreigners stay out of our internal affairs?”

Any claim China makes that its citizens have full religious freedom is patently false. We have seen this with our own eyes.

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Tibetan arts and crafts are characterized by ornate decoration and bright colors. There were many things that I wished I could bring home with me. However, it is important to note that Tibet is fighting to retain some measure of cultural uniqueness. Every real Tibetan antique that is taken out of the country is one more piece of heritage that Tibet loses. Already many beautiful monasteries have been partially or wholly destroyed, and the artwork on the walls of the Potala Palace is being painted over or covered by fabrics.

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According to Phayul, China’s government is demanding the right to veto Tibetan reincarnated Living Buddhas. What this would basically do is allow China to decide who is a deity and who is not.

There are several famous examples of this, the most famous of which is probably the case of the Dalai Lama. The DL is considered the reincarnation of Chenrezig, the Tibetan Buddhist deity of compassion. As such, he is also the reincarnation of the previous Dalai Lama. What the Chinese government would like to do is to be able to say, “Sure, you guys have found someone you think might be the Dalai Lama, but we’ve found a suitable candidate as well, and you will consider him as well,” and of course there would be no choice but to accept the Chinese candidate (who would be a Tibetan kid, but wholly answerable to Beijing) or risk the destruction of monasteries and the killing and jailing of innocents.

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