The End of Tibet

Early that morning, the Arjia and other senior monks huddled inside the Jokhang, Lhasa's holiest temple. Flickering lamps fueled by pungent, creamy yak butter lit the interior, casting shadows across the faces of grinning warrior deities painted on the walls. Smoky incense wafted through the temple. On this morning, the deities stood guard over a small golden urn on a table draped with yellow silk. As is traditional in Tibet, monks in long robes surrounded the urn. But in an alarming break from the past, the urn itself had been brought by the Chinese -- and joining the monks were a host of officials from Beijing dressed in sleek modern suits.

The lamas eyed each other nervously. The ceremony could determine the fate of Tibet, but they had not come here voluntarily. The night before, Chinese guards had hustled the monks into the Jokhang, along empty streets patrolled by armed soldiers, and ordered them to prepare for a ceremony. If anyone disrupted the proceedings, one official warned, "We will punish him without mercy." As dawn approached, with undercover Chinese policemen standing in corners, the monks began selecting a Panchen Lama.

Every lama present knew that the ceremony should not be taking place. According to Tibetan tradition, the selection had already been made. Since the previous Panchen died, several leading monks had been working secretly with the Dalai Lama to conduct a search for the next Panchen, quietly following the old traditions. After years of looking for signs, they had identified Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, a boy from a family of herders from Lhari, a region of east-central Tibet. On May 14th, 1995, the Dalai Lama recognized Nyima as the eleventh Panchen Lama.

But Beijing had reacted furiously. Before Nyima could appear in public, Chinese security forces abducted the boy from his home and brought him to Beijing. Then Chinese officials summoned Tibetan monks to an emergency meeting early in November 1995 and ordered them to denounce the Dalai Lama's Panchen. When the monks did as they were told, in front of television cameras, they were each rewarded with $1,250 -- a fortune in a country where the annual per-capita income is less than $500. When the Arjia Rinpoche tried to suggest that China accept Nyima, he was warned, "Never mention that again." China then sent chartered jets to the birthplaces of the boys they wanted to be Panchen Lama and whisked them into hiding.

Now, as dawn approached in the Jokhang, Chinese officials placed pieces of ivory marked with the names of each boy inside the golden urn. Bomi Rinpoche, a Tibetan lama appointed by the Chinese government, approached the table. He rubbed the sides of the urn, picked out one of the ivory lots and handed it to Luo Gan, a top Chinese official. Luo then read the name: Gyaincain Norbu, the six-year-old son of a party member. Surprise -- tiny Norbu happened to be waiting in the next room, dressed in a golden robe and hat. Luo shook Norbu's hand, telling him, "Love the country and study hard." The monks who had just been forced to participate in the destruction of centuries of tradition could only murmur quiet prayers. After Norbu was enthroned, the Dalai Lama's office called the ceremony "invalid and illegal."

Eager to create the fiction that Tibet's top religious leaders endorsed their new Panchen, Chinese officials asked the Arjia Rinpoche to tutor Norbu. "They offered me a Mercedes and a very senior government position," the Arjia says. Beijing also pressured lower-ranking monks to pay respects to Norbu. Only nine days after his selection, Chinese officials brought Norbu to another Tibetan monastery. With soldiers looming in the background, they hoisted the tiny boy into a giant throne and gathered hundreds of monks in front of the child. "The boy was sitting there, and all together we had to prostrate ourselves before him," recalls the Arjia, his voice soft with shame. "It's supposed to be a happy occasion, but no one was smiling."

Norbu has served his purpose. At his first major international event, a conference of Buddhists held in China last April, the boy praised Beijing. "Chinese society," he declared, "provides a favorable environment for Buddhist belief." Appearing before the Chinese media, Norbu added, "We wouldn't have made all these achievements without the good leadership of the Chinese Communist Party." Monks who refuse to appear in public with Norbu have been threatened with expulsion from their monasteries, a crushing blow in Tibetan society.

Shortly after the Buddhism conference, I tracked down one of the few foreigners ever granted an audience with Norbu, an American businessman named Laurence Brahm, who has close relations with both Tibetan lamas and Chinese officials. According to Brahm, Norbu echoed the Chinese government's line, urging Tibetans in exile "to come back and help Tibet." He also grilled Brahm about Christianity, possibly seeking to better understand how the West would react to China's moves in Tibet. With the current Dalai Lama approaching his seventy-second birthday, Norbu is in a position to play a major role in the future of Tibetan Buddhism. According to several sources, Beijing has already created an informal committee to pick a new Dalai Lama, with Norbu to give his seal of approval to China's choice. "The Chinese are thinking they're going to pick their own Dalai Lama," says the Arjia.

Nyima, the Panchen selected by the Dalai Lama, has meanwhile vanished. In April, Asma Jehangir, a United Nations special envoy for freedom of religion, expressed her concern to the Chinese government about Nyima's whereabouts. Beijing refused to present the boy, but informed Jehangir that he was "leading a normal, happy life." Other foreign diplomats have been similarly rebuffed. On a trip to China, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Harold Koh asked to see Nyima. "They said that he was fine -- We know where he is, and he's fine," Koh told reporters. When Koh asked to see the boy, he was told, "That's not necessary."

Information about Nyima remains sketchy, his movements tightly managed. But stories trickle out. According to Tibetans who have traveled to Nyima's hometown, the boy remains under guard in Beijing, living a sad, underground life as a political prisoner. Chinese officials, they believe, sometimes smuggle him into Tibet so he can see his family, but his visits are never announced, perhaps for fear that Tibetans would flock to their chosen boy-god. People in Nyima's hometown remain deathly afraid to tell anyone about his visits.

One Tibetan provided me with what he said was a photo of Nyima, which he had obtained from sources close to the boy's family. The snapshot shows a moon-faced kid with short hair. He sits on a simple bed in a bare room. He stares sad-faced and wide-eyed at the camera.

On a dry, clear morning, i climb to the top of the Potala Palace. Gazing across downtown Lhasa, I see a city nothing like the low-lying town of twenty years ago, when Tibetan vendors gathered every morning in the open-air markets to weigh hunks of yak cheese and bloody yak meat, and pilgrims in long cloaks adorned with sashes rubbed prayer beads and murmured to themselves as they circled the Jokhang. In those days, Tibetan nomads wearing sheepskin coats would often ride into town on horseback, herding their flocks of yaks into the streets.

Today Lhasa is booming. In the modern downtown, construction workers dig up entire sections of the city, building new avenues lined with Chinese banks, Chinese department stores and even Chinese fast-food restaurants overlooking the holy Jokhang. Along the main drags, packs of taxis and Chinese tour buses jam the streets, disgorging crowds of visitors who try to collar monks into posing with them or who play scratchy Chinese pop tunes on their cell phones. On side alleys dotted with grim new apartment blocks, recent migrants from China's Sichuan province crowd into four-table hot-pot restaurants, where they use their chopsticks to dip vegetables and tiny chunks of meat into vats of steaming oil sprinkled with fiery Sichuan chilies. Those with more money skip the hot-pot joints and head instead to the new tearooms on the upper floors of hotels, where Chinese businesspeople talk shop over thimble-size cups of tea, bowls of noodles or games of mah-jongg.