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.

Tibetan people often greet each other by sticking out their tongues. This can be a bit disconcerting to Westerners, for whom the stuck-out tongue is a childish insult or a sexual gesture. But rest assured, if a Tibetan sticks her tongue out at you, she’s probably just saying “hi.”

This custom reportedly derives from a belief that demons have black tongues, and sometimes that is all that differentiates them visually from humans. A demon won’t stick out its tongue in greeting because you’ll see the color and know it for what it is.

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The Tibetan drink of choice is “butter tea,” black tea with yak butter. Most Westerners cringe at the thought. Most of the folks in my study-abroad group professed love or at least like for it. Me, I did not care for it. It tasted about what you would imagine black tea with unsalted butter would taste like–unimaginably bland.  It does not help that if Tibetans like you, they will see to it that your teacup stays filled to the brim. The only way you can keep it from being refilled is to not drink it, but you feel so impolite if you don’t at least sip it.

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Tibetan kids are cute as buttons! Chubby little windburned, sunburned cheeks, ready smiles, and often a cheery “Hallo!”

Many of the younger children we saw were a bit shy, and would hide behind Mom if we waved at them. Mom would encourage them to greet us, and they’d blush and hide even more, in that little-kid way that isn’t really hiding, with their bodies behind Mom’s legs and their heads sticking out.

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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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