McLeod Ganj

My third trip to the Himalayas. Why do I keep coming back to mountains and monks?

So I didn’t actually see him. But that’s okay, because a week ago, I had no idea the Dalai Lama was even going to be in Dharamsala while I was there, let alone be giving public teachings to a group of Russian Buddhists (who knew?). Without having registered to attend, the best I could manage was a spot in the courtyard outside the main temple where they were showing a live telecast that was simultaneously translated if you were able to find a cheap FM radio. I was told that you could find them everywhere in town and, perhaps with a dash of irony, that they were all made in China.

After seeing Tibet a couple years ago, I couldn’t come down one way or the other about the whole situation. Maybe that's just the inevitable clash of being both Chinese and some kind of human rights person. But I remember feeling one thing for sure, which was that it was unsettlingly sad that through two weeks in Tibet, I did not once see a picture of the Dalai Lama.

In 36 hours in Dharamsala and McLeod Ganj, the Dalai Lama was everywhere. Local Indian stores and restaurants even displayed handwritten signs thanking the Dalai Lama for bringing tourism to the area. That felt about right.

What felt wrong, of course, was that the Dalai Lama and his fellow Tibetans shouldn’t have to be here at all. UNCHR’s favorite poster slogan is, “Einstein was a refugee.” Setting aside for the moment massive Chinese protests, UNHCR could just as easily launch a catchy PR campaign with the slogan, “The Dalai Lama is a refugee.” Him and thousands of others, who for some reason often get left out of today’s refugee policy conversations.

And even though I purposefully started my trip up here with a mind to see what things are like for the Tibetans in exile, I too forgot that they are in fact all refugees. Last night, I attended a panel discussion about gender equality in Tibetan society, and my translator was a young Tibetan man who broke into perfect Mandarin when I told him I was from Hong Kong. Which made perfect sense; he told me he had graduated from high school in Lhasa before making his escape, trekking for 28 days over the Himalayas and into Nepal before finally being resettled in Dharamsala several years ago. His parents, who were (Chinese) government officials in Lhasa, did not come with him.

He had to go before I could offer to buy him dinner and ask him more about just how crazy the journey must have been. It seemed like a missed opportunity, a fleeting chance to learn from the source about two issues that have been big parts of my education: refugee movement and Chinese sovereignty. Here was my moment to take all my asylum-seeking-interview-advocacy-stuff experience and apply it to something real, something personal. And I blew it.

The panel ended late, and I wandered into town too hungry to spend much time looking for a decent restaurant, so I went straight back to McLLo, the traveler hotspot I ate at the night before. It was packed, live music and everything, so I had to share a table. To my right were a few Canadian backpackers. Across from me, two Tibetan men, both with long, straight black hair down to their shoulders. One of them looked a whole lot like Jackie Chan.

The other man broke the ice by raising his mug of Kingfisher to mine, and when he asked me where I was from, I said Hong Kong and ran with it, telling him that his friend looked a whole lot like Jackie Chan. Jackie Chan was super happy. He said he had seen all the movies, and loved how the real Jackie Chan was such a good martial artist and comedian at the same time. Then I bought another round of Kingfishers.

They were both from Amdo in Tibet. They spoke some basic Chinese, though not nearly as fluent as the translator I met earlier in the evening. Both had left Tibet years ago, had spent a month crossing by foot over into Nepal, and had lost friends along the way. I hadn’t missed my chance after all. And then it hit me: they’ve all made that journey. Every single Tibetan in Dharamsala. My two newest friends. Their friends, sitting at another table. The group elder, all of 30 and now based in Montreal. The newest arrival, 20, originally from a Tibetan part of Sichuan, who rattled off the 四大天王 in quick succession when I asked him what Hong Kong actors he liked. The prettiest girl in the room, at the end of the table, also a recent arrival.

All of them, and every other Tibetan in town, had made what is maybe history’s most ridiculous—just plain ridiculous—border crossing, over and through the tallest, most perilous mountains in the world, eluding not just your average smalltime border patrolmen but rather that beast we call the People’s Liberation Army. They had all lost friends en route. They had all left family behind, perhaps forever. And all for what? To hatch some pie-in-the-sky plan to retake Tibet? To join some insurgent secessionist movement and ignite the dissolution of China as we know it?

Are you kidding me? These guys were out partying on a schoolnight, singing along as the band played “Wonderwall” and downing Kingfishers the same way all twentysomethings consume alcohol, from McLeod Ganj to Lan Kwai to frat houses all across the States: in large amounts. Maybe that’s not the image the Tibetan community wants to show the world, but for me, it made things make sense. These guys gave up all they knew and roughed it up and over seven or eight thousand meters of rock and ice because, corny as it is, they just wanted to be free. Free to have as many pictures of the Dalai Lama as they want. Free to study English and the world. And yeah, free to get trashed on a Wednesday night.

I don’t know how that contributes to greater Tibetan autonomy or some kind of peaceful settlement. I just don’t know. But I do know that every Tibetan I met had no reservations about having a drink with me, both before and after I told them I was Chinese. I know that they all love Hong Kong movies, and they all said, at least to me, that they love Chinese people, if not so much the Chinese government. It reminded me how, over some beers in a Lhasa bar two years ago, a couple hippie Chinese youths told me they thought Tibetans should govern Tibet, that after living in Tibet themselves they had decided it was a culture and a people all its own, separate from anything they knew as Chinese.

Feels like the world could do worse than to solve problems through young, impressionable minds formed by experience, not propaganda. Plus drinks.