ABSTRACT
China’s concern over the loyalty of its “new Tibetan brothers” was well-founded. On the busy streets of Lhasa, Tibetans would shyly approach me, bow, and whisper, “Please, a picture of the Dalai Lama.” All photographs or paintings of the Tibetan leader were banned as “subversive” by the Chinese police. Even possession of a photo can lead to beatings, prison, or even the Lao Gai, the vast gulag created by China in the wastes of Quinghai Province, where the average sentence for political deviation, real or imagined, was fifteen to twenty years’ hard labor on subsistence rations. Yet it was plainly evident that Tibetans yearned passionately for the return of their spiritual leader, and sorely chafed under the harsh Chinese “liberation.”
