March is the most angst ridden month for Chinese fonctionnaires in Tibet. Elections for a new prime minister-in-exile are scheduled for tomorrow, and travel agencies "say they have been ordered not to allow foreign tourists into Tibet in March."
Spend a few worthwhile minutes with the New York Review of Books blog, where Pico Iyer takes stock of the state of Tibetan politics and the 75 year old Dalai Lama. Nine days ago the Dalai Lama announced his "retirement" from politics, which Iyer says "was one way of underlining to Beijing that the Tibetan problem will not go away when he dies...."
Stephan Tanty has written an entertaining new book, Escape from the Land of the Snows. It's a quick read; You can do it in a weekend. It's written in a dramatized, you were there style, purporting to know the thoughts of the players, but it paints a vivid, immediate portrait of Lhasa, 1959, as the young Dalai Lama prepared for and then carried out his escape.
Escape from the Land of the Snows describes a positively medieval world that just simply doesn't exist today. It's hard to grasp the depth of change Tibet and its leader have seen across a single lifetime.
The Tashilunpo Monastery in Xigatse, Tibet from the China Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.
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