What´s the matter with Tibet?

If there was any truth in her words, I thought, I must have been transported to another planet.

"We have seen photos, and videos," she continued. "Every year we see them."

"Who took these photos?"

"Foreigners. From other places."

I calmed down, before asking: "Are you sure these photos and films were taken recently? They may be from the 'cultural revolution' period when Tibetans just as other Chinese suffered and were treated badly. Or during the civil rebellion in 1959? Might you not have been deceived? Maybe they show you the same pictures year after year? Maybe the photos were altered?"

As a spokesperson of her group, she turned around, and said: "It's possible, but we have no means of checking."

"Might these activist friends of the Dalai Lama," I continued, "be the authors of the photocopied letters on the board at the village entrance, issued by 'His Holiness Dalai Lama's office'? And the inscription 'Chinese, leave', who do you think wrote it?"

I explained to them all the changes that had happened in Tibet and talked about all the money invested by the central government into reconstruction and development, the progress in education, the religious freedom, the improvement of health, society, life, and they were astonished. Apparently, no one had ever spoken to them like this.

"Do you believe me?" I asked.

"I believe you because you are a foreigner," said the woman, "not a member of the communist party. Are you?"

"You can trust me. I tell you only what I have seen. Tibet is a beautiful and peaceful place where people sing while they work, where people smile and enjoy life."

The younger ones among them were born in Nepal; others had fled Tibet to go to Nepal in the 1950s and never returned to Tibet. They have no passports; of course they cannot enter China.

I then visited a temple where a young 17-year-old monk said that his greatest aspiration was to see Tibet. He thought monks were arrested, jailed or even killed in China, his thought based on the fact that his friend went there and never returned.

"I'll tell you something, young man. Your friend may have been arrested because he entered a country illegally. But if you never heard from him after that, don't you think he might have accomplished his great desire: to see Tibet. He may be living in a monastery there!"

He bowed his head and said, "I wish I had such a chance!"

Finally, I realized that the Tibetans outside Tibet are the victims not only of ignorance but of a well-organized campaign of misinformation. And it struck me that it may be the same for the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama, who left the country when he was still very young and under the influence of a group, and never saw Tibet with his own eyes later in life to be able to judge things for himself, is also a poor victim - much like the woman at the village market.

Editor:Zhang Ning