I have met a lot of those kids, educated in India, who have gone back to Tibet. And what happens is that they no longer have access to books, other than what's available in the Chinese-controlled situation. The kind of freedom of creative thinking ... whatever they worked so hard to develop in exile, it just gets squashed when they get back to Tibet. They become very lazy. They get really depressed. They go to the discos that are offered to them now, and they just seem to exist. This is tremendously sad.
TC: Presumably they're not speaking Chinese when they come back.
NJJ: They have to learn Chinese in order to get work. There has to be communication on that level as well as in English. A lot of the older kids who have come out do speak Chinese already. In fact, my older boy, Tsering Dorje, recently took his vacation from school to travel to Nepal and work on his computer skills and his Chinese language skills. He speaks Chinese, and I've made a point of having him continue that Chinese language instruction because he will need it if he ever decides to go back to Tibet.
TC: Are they teaching Chinese in Dharamsala?
NJJ: Privately, some do. Some of the schools are trying to get it into the curriculum, as an elective for those older escaped kids who want to keep up their fluency in Chinese.
TC: There's a certain irony in that, of course.
NJJ: Of course!
TC: So, what I understand to be the case is this: There is a continuing resistance effort in Tibet. There are still freedom fighters. People are still trying to get out. But as the economic situation improves there for the Tibetans themselves, and as they begin to be immersed within the Chinese society — economically, linguistically, etc. — the opposition to the government and the need to flee seem to be less. And the Tibetan consciousness, that was so famous and so much in the foreground 20 years ago, is slowly being reduced and reduced and reduced.
NJJ: I think so. But, I must say that that is completely and totally my own opinion. No one wants to hear it, I will tell you that. But I think it is the truth. So ... now there is this new, young class of Chinese nouveaux riches in Lhasa. They bring their children to an amusement park that the government recently built. And the upwardly mobile young Tibetan parents bring their children there, too. They're all mixing together at the amusement park. You see people renting these little go-carts for their kids. Go-carts in the form of Chinese tanks or Chinese dragons. Two or three of the families will be Chinese; one or two will be Tibetan. They're all getting into these weird little decorated carts, and the whole thing is so surreal!
Article comments