BOOK REVIEW The lighter side of the Tibet issue Waiting for the Dalai Lama: Stories from all sides of the Tibetan Debate
by Annelie Rozeboom
Reviewed by Dinah Gardner
In the time it takes to say the words: "the Dalai Lama" you can bet there'll be
a new book out about Tibet on the bookshelves. And recently the flurry has been
even more furious. Waiting for the Dalai Lama: Stories from all sides of the
Tibetan Debate by Dutch journalist Annelie Rozeboom is one of the more
accessible of these offerings.
Rozeboom, who spent a decade as a reporter in China, does her best to speak to
everyone, not just the usual suspects. As well
as catering to the favorites of the Free Tibet love camp (tortured
ex-prisoners and the Dalai Lama) and the "Tibet has always been part of China
and you'll get arrested if you say any different clique" (a patriotic nomad
with a surprisingly educated turn of phrase and some random Italian "academic"
that no one's heard of) she finds a whole cast of characters to talk to. And so
while we don't get all sides of the Tibetan debate (as promised), we do get
more sides than usual.
We get to meet a Tibetan impersonator of Mao Zedong ("He is a confident man and
he's rich. He drives around in a new Volkswagen Santana and he spends a lot of
time talking on his fancy cellular phone"), a Tibetan government official who
berates the Western press for supporting the Dalai Lama, a former Tibetan Red
Guard ("When I look back now, I think we were crazy in those times"), the Dalai
Lama's state oracle (orders a Coca-Cola before the interview), a Tibetan doctor
in India who hits his patients with a hot hammer and a man who was ordered to
take his trousers off in front of the Panchen Lama because they were bright
yellow.
Last, but not least, Rozeboom gets to meet the big man himself, but the Dalai
Lama's words are so familiar now that his interview is probably the least
insightful. It's the little people, the doctors, the students, the Mao Zedong
impersonator, and the harried Red Cross worker in Lhasa who flesh out the
debate in ways that many other commentaries have so far failed to do.
The format of the book is light and palatable: It's chopped up into bite-sized
interviews which are written as one-sided conversations interspersed with some
analysis and background. Best of all, Rozeboom peppers it with her wry sense of
humor. She has a knack for plucking out the bizarre, the ludicrous and the
downright funny. Most often this is seen in the editing of the interview
transcripts.
Bintsi, the former serf tells Rozeboom: "Our life has really improved. We used
to know nothing. Nowadays, we are much better informed. We know about politics.
The name of the Chinese prime minister? No idea." A Chinese cadre-cum-engineer
who works in Tibet parries criticisms about development in the autonomous
region. "What? Nuclear experiments by the Chinese army in Tibet? No, absolutely
not. Mrs An, I can assure you that no nuclear tests have ever been carried out
... Do you think that if someone was exploding bombs, I wouldn't have noticed?
I've never seen a big hole. Under the ground? What kind of nonsense is that?
And they can measure it abroad? All that is propaganda from the West."
This makes Waiting for the Dalai Lama, an enjoyable and easy read. But
maybe that's one of its shortcomings, it's too easy. "They feel oppressed by a
group of very bad people," is how she explains the feelings of Tibetans in
Tibet about the Chinese; she shuffles past the Dorje Shugden debacle [a
Buddhist sect banned by the Dalai Lama] in a mere paragraph; and in the chapter
on women concludes that Tibetan woman have it easy by quoting a book by a Kham
lady who married a British guy in the 1920s.
Typical of poor societies all over the world, Tibetan women in Tibet had and
still have a very low status as many modern-day anthropologists have pointed
out, and it's odd that Rozeboom picked up this issue at all if she wasn't
really going to take it on.
From the word go, Rozeboom promises us she is no one's spokesperson. "I know
that the Chinese people are not a group of terrible monsters, as they are
sometimes depicted by pro-Tibet activists. And the Tibetans I had met did not
match the sacred-monk image that they are sometimes given in the Western
press."
Indeed, before Rozeboom had even put pen to paper for this book, she was
introduced to a Living Buddha who slipped off his robes and asked her to take
him to the disco. She is careful to quote from both pro-Chinese and pro-exile
Tibetan sources, but she's usually a little more gentle with her Tibetan
subjects.
Dumbed down or not, she does manage to tackle all the big issues: the curse of
Shangri-La ("Tibet just can't get rid of its myths"), exile politics ("there is
one problem with the Tibetan democracy: there isn't really an opposition"); and
China's inability to solve the Tibetan problem ("They also seem to be convinced
that the Tibetans want money, while many of them just want their religious
leader back.").
By having access to the stories of such a broad spectrum of people, we do get a
better idea of the reality of modern-day Tibet both in China and in exile.
What's missing of course are some interviews with ordinary Chinese (she talks
to one Chinese official - quoted above - whom she succeeds in depicting as
fairly odious) and how they see the Tibetan issue. Because, after all, it's the
Chinese who have the power to change the situation in Tibet. Without their
understanding, we'll all be waiting for the Dalai Lama to go home for a very
long time.
Waiting for the Dalai Lama: Stories from all sides of the Tibetan Debate
by Annelie Rozeboom. Blacksmith Books (February 16, 2011). ISBN-10: 9881774209.
Price US$15.95, 212 pages.
Dinah Gardner is a freelance reporter based in Beijing.
(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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ex-prisoners and the Dalai Lama) and the "Tibet has always been part of China
and you'll get arrested if you say any different clique" (a patriotic nomad
with a surprisingly educated turn of phrase and some random Italian "academic"
that no one's heard of) she finds a whole cast of characters to talk to. And so
while we don't get all sides of the Tibetan debate (as promised), we do get
more sides than usual.
