Lhasa.

From the very instant we landed, some in our group to react to the higher altitude. Shortly after we arrived, Steve Levine and I went for a walk. During our walk, I was accosted by two poor young boys begging for money and one of the boys started to punch me on the arm tried to remove my watch. Steve believed that these young Tibetan boys (6-8 yrs old) believed I was Han Chinese and therefore someone who had wealth. We heard from a few people that Tibetans love all foreigners except for the Han Chinese. Apparently, families from the Tibetan countryside come into Lhasa for the promise of opportunity and wind up stranded and begging.

The struggle for Tibetans to retain their identity, autonomy and culture continues. The opening of the new high altitude railway connecting Beijing to Lhasa might seem to many as a technological marvel, as at its highest, the railway sits over 4,000 meters but the Tibetans are the group left out of this. Since opening a few months ago, nearly 3,000 Han Chinese are arriving in Lhasa daily. They are the ones who can afford the train ticket and come looking for employment and opportunity.

The huge influx of Han Chinese into Tibet continues to takeover the social, economic, political, and cultural life.

Walking side by side Tibetan pilgrims, prostrating (walking a step, lying flat on the floor, getting up, walking another step, and repeating this…) all the way to the Jokhang Temple or around the Potala Palace is a humbling experience. Many local citizens can be seen handing money to these faithful pilgrims as they proceed into Lhasa. As we toured Jokhang Temple, the holiest place in the world for Tibetan Buddhists, we saw thousands of families who made this once in a lifetime pilgrimage to Lhasa to visit the Temple, to pray at the tombs of past Dalai Lamas and of Shakyamuni (Siddhartha Gautama).

We toured the Temple along side one very poor Tibetan family who were probably among the pilgrims who’ve come from remote regions of Tibet. They had very high cheekbones, a very distinguishing facial trait that told us they were from the far north. As they past each tomb, they placed money at the foot of each deity, money that was clearly more valuable to them that to us. Candles throughout the temple are burned in yak butter and the entire floor of the place is sticky and covered with dried yak butter.

The Sera Monastery. We visited a monastery set in the side of a mountain where hundreds of Buddhist monks, aged 14-48 were practicing their own form of debate. In pairs and sometime groups, one younger monk would sit on the rocks of the monastery courtyard while the older monk stood facing them and with a clap of their hands, asked a series of philosophical questions. Different claps were used to communicate right and wrong answers.