The End of Tibet

As Lhasa is rebuilt from the ground up, Tibetans are being pushed to the margins -- in the newer section of the city, I cannot find a single Tibetan-owned shop. And the pace of change is only likely to increase: Last summer, China opened the first rail line to Tibet, a move expected to flood the territory with as many as 800,000 migrants and tourists each year.

The sweeping changes in Lhasa are no accident. "The government has a long-term strategy to encourage more Chinese businesspeople to come to Tibet, so it'll be easier to control the Tibetan people," admits one former Chinese official. (Although the Chinese embassy declined to comment, many government officials spoke to me on the condition of anonymity.) Beijing has made it easier for migrants to gain residence in Tibet, and the region receives more government subsidies than other provinces in China. The cash has sparked growth and created prosperity -- but it often primarily benefits Chinese migrants. According to one former official, government bureaucrats convince rural Tibetans to give up their land, promising them that they will be given property in the city. "But then they never give the Tibetans any compensation," the official explains. Instead, the bureaucrats give the land to Chinese entrepreneurs, throwing in loans to help them start their own companies.

"Businesses in Tibet simply are being taken over by the Chinese," says one prominent Tibetan. Although Beijing officially denies the rapid influx of Chinese, a top government official admitted to reporters in 2002 that Tibetans would soon become a minority in Lhasa. At the same time, the government ensures the support of provincial officials by paying them some of the highest salaries in China. "The government allows more space for corruption in Tibet," says Lukar Jam, a specialist on Chinese development policy who has worked for the Tibetan government in exile. "The Tibetan officials accept Beijing's policies because they see there will be significant financial benefits."

As Chinese migrants take over the city, they have turned traditional Tibetan culture into a carnival sideshow. One Saturday night, I visit a nightclub in a high-end section of Lhasa. The place is packed with Chinese businessmen, some of whom pay the equivalent of fifty dollars each -- a fortune in Tibet -- for private boxes overlooking the stage. At 11 p.m., Tibetan men dressed in fake animal skins take the stage. The Chinese media often portray Tibet as a wild, savage land, and the performers do their best to embody the stereotype, flashing their bare chests and smashing drums while they chant and shake their long black hair -- a traditional Tibetan dance hyped up for the crowd. Smoke machines and flashing lights illuminate their writhing bodies, while giant speakers pound out traditional Tibetan songs rewritten with Chinese lyrics and hip-hop beats.

When the men are done, female singers in traditional costumes dance toward the edge of the stage, thrusting their hips and pouring shot glasses of alcohol down the throats of favored customers. Chinese tourists and businessmen toss back shots and slip traditional white scarves around the necks of their favorite singers. By midnight the drunkest members of the audience have run onto the stage to slur songs along with the Tibetan performers and pretend to pray like devout Tibetans.

Outside the club, China's policies have succeeded in impoverishing many Tibetans. Robbed of their land and unable to compete with Chinese migrants, Tibetans now suffer the highest poverty rate in China and the worst malnutrition and infant mortality. Young people often cannot find jobs in Chinese-dominated businesses, and many are homeless. On a grassy plain on the outskirts of Lhasa, in the shadow of one of the city's most important monasteries, I come across a cluster of white yurts surrounded by piles of garbage. It is only afternoon, but groups of drunk young men already sit on tiny stools outside the yurts, tossing dice and chugging local brews. Monks in ragged robes caked with dirt wander from yurt to yurt, begging for coins from liquored-up Tibetans. Women circulate through the camp, too, trying to lure men into a yurt for a quickie.

Prostitution is flourishing in Lhasa. By one estimate there are 10,000 sex workers in the Tibetan capital, which has a population of less than 500,000. The day after visiting the yurt camp, I wander to the core of the city. By four in the afternoon, hookers are pouring into the streets. Along a narrow lane near the holiest temples in Tibetan Buddhism, young women wear knee-high boots, push-up bras and so much eye shadow that they resemble the evil offspring of Courtney Love and Katherine Harris. The girls, many of them no more than adolescents, press themselves against the glass windows of their brothels. As Chinese and Tibetan men stroll by, the hookers run outside, trying to drag them through their doorway.

Inside one brothel, a concrete and metal shack with large windows exposing the front room like a fishbowl, a fourteen-year-old girl takes my hand, leading me into the back. Welts cover her stomach, which is exposed by her tube top. There is nothing on the concrete walls, and the concrete floor is bare save for a small square of moldering linoleum. The girl points to the bed and offers sexual intercourse for ten dollars. When I pull away, she cups her breasts in her hands and halves the price to five dollars.

On a larger boulevard near the brothels, Chinese and Tibetan men saunter through a maze of sex shops that sell dildos, inflatable breasts and other sex toys. Some pick out herbal remedies from the shelves, Viagra-like potions designed to keep you hard all night. Others wander next door to small convenience stores selling massive containers of beer. Behind the convenience shops, the heaviest drinkers have collapsed on the ground, their faces red, their clothes stained with food and feces. Laughing Tibetan children kick a soccer ball around the drunks' prostrate bodies.

In a back alley behind the convenience stores, other prostitutes negotiate with customers. A girl shaped like a child's top offers me oral sex for five bucks. When I turn away she, too, lowers the price -- to three dollars, pleading for me to stay. As I walk away, she shrieks, a pained scream.

Since he fled to india in 1959, the Dalai Lama has remained the only figure able to keep his people from succumbing to utter despair. For Tibetans, the fact that he lives offers some meager hope they will not be forgotten by the world. His writings are smuggled into Tibet, and his speeches are broadcast on stations like Radio Free Asia, a U.S.-funded broadcaster. Almost every Tibetan I speak to tells me that their greatest wish is for the Dalai Lama to return to his homeland. In the ultimate tribute to their love, Tibetans frequently praise his name in public, knowing that doing so can result in harsh treatment. "I knew that I would go to prison," says a former monk who screamed out blessings for the Dalai Lama in front of Chinese police and paid for it with years of beatings. "We will never forget him."

Eventually, however, even a living god must die. Facing his own mortality, the Dalai Lama has adopted an approach to Beijing that he calls the Middle Way. Instead of demanding independence for Tibet, as he did for decades, he affirms that the land is part of China and calls only for greater political and cultural autonomy. China has responded by quietly opening a dialogue with the Dalai Lama's envoys about the future of Tibet.