NJJ: Chinese! So you wonder, are these women speaking Chinese to their children? And the answer is, yes.
What happened spiritually is that the Chinese government went into the monasteries and imposed a re-education process upon them, in which they made it illegal to worship the Dalai Lama. Anyone who had a picture of His Holiness had to get rid of it. Imagine having to burn the very representation of your heart's center! When that process began, we saw a huge escape from Tibet of young monks and nuns who had been trying to hold out under the Chinese influence. This was very recently — 1998, 1999.
But then the Chinese government realized how forceful the Tibetans outside of Tibet really are. So now they've changed that policy. Now they say, "OK, you sent your monks and your kids out of Tibet. You get them back right now, or you guys will go to prison." They now realize that maybe those kids and those monks that went to Dharamsala are not ever coming back. Maybe they're going to join the Free Tibet movement (what the Chinese call the "Splittist Movement"), and maybe now they're going to have a voice! So the Tibetan parents that are left in Tibet don't know whether, or how much, they can trust the Chinese, because the Chinese change their tune so often and so violently.
Also, when you land in Lhasa and encounter the Chinese who work at the airport, you know that you're in a police state. It's clear. People don't smile. And when you consider the traditional Tibetan culture, in which people did nothing but smile for thousands of years, and then consider what's happening now, with this new Tibetan consciousness (like that of my woman friend at the health club who is so driven to succeed) you realize the level of confusion that exists for the Tibetan people now. You realize, seeing what has happened, that maybe the parents of these young Tibetans who did not leave the country saw that their children, in order to survive, had to buy in to the Chinese model. Those parents didn't cop out. They didn't have any choice, if they wished for their children to survive.
TC: What is the instance now of Tibetan young people going to university in China?
NJJ: Much higher. The Chinese took a lot of Tibetan students, even at the high school level, out of Tibet and into China, where they gave them an extensive education. Those students are now back in Tibet, a part of this "successful" Lhasa business community. I've worked with them.
This Chinese higher university education scheme for the Tibetans is even more pronounced now. It's almost as if the opportunities for education are attractive to anybody, whether it's Chinese education or not. And the Dalai Lama himself will say the same thing. I paraphrase him: "OK, we had this large percentage of our population that was not educated. At least now they're getting an education, even though it's totally directed by the Chinese. It's better than no education at all."
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