Chinas plan to liberate a

cradle of Tibetan culture

Tibetans circle a building in Rongwo Monastery. The monastery was once the center of
life in the town known as Tongren in Chinese and Rebkong in Tibetan, but rapid
development is changing that. (Emily Rauhala/The Washington Post)

By Emil
y Rauhala-December 14

TONGREN, China Two photographs grace the walls of the Tibetan farmers home. In the
courtyard, affixed with silver tacks: Xi Jinping, smiling. Inside, by the light of a yak butter
candle: the Dalai Lama in monks robes.
Here, in a region called Qinghai in Chinese and Amdo in Tibetan, in a town known as Tongren
or Rebkong, depending on whom you ask, things exist in disparate pairs: Two portraits. Two
languages. A public face and a private heart.
Even that, it seems, is not enough.
Local officials this year issued a 20-point notice that reaches ever further into the lives of
Tibetans here in whats long been a cradle of Tibetan culture, a thriving monastery town where
people proudly speak their native tongue and tout the artists who paint scrolls called thangkas.
The man whom many Tibetans love like a father, the Dalai Lama, was born not far from here.
After a failed anti-Chinese uprising, he fled over the mountains to India in 1959 and has not
been allowed to return.

In his native Amdo, and across the Tibetan plateau, his absence is a source of anguish. Many,
like the farmer, keep a framed picture in their private quarters, or tuck a passport-sized
photograph into the folds of their clothes. They pray for him.
[In the Dalai Lamas home town, a moment of limbo]
But the Chinese authorities new rules, reminiscent of restrictions in Tibet Autonomous Region
to the west, treat these everyday acts of faith as potential crimes against the state: You shall not
pray for the Dalai Lama at a religious festival, the notice says. Nor shall you carry his picture in
public.
According to the directives, Tibetan calls for protecting the mother tongue, food safety,
literacy or wildlife protection are merely a pretext for separatism, and therefore a threat
to social stability a Communist Party buzzword that presages political crackdowns.
Now, as frost settles on the hills and farmers take temporary leave from the land, local officials
are readying for what some euphemistically call stability maintenance season. They believe
that tighter controls will keep the peace through the restless winter months.
Tibetans in exile, rights groups and academics counter that ever more aggressive policing fuels
unrest. They fear that what is happening in Rebkong may mark a shift toward the type of
security thats suffocated other Tibetan areas, especially Lhasa.
This security-run notion of politics stability-first, as they put it is spreading from central
Tibet to eastern Tibetan areas, said Robert Barnett, director of Columbia Universitys Modern
Tibetan Studies Program. These days, everything is stability maintenance its a big theme
of Tibetan life.
In Rebkong, that life is very much in flux.
Set among low hills at the far eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau, Rebkong is known as the
birthplace of several significant writers and the home of the centuries-old Rongwo Monastery.
The monastery has long been the citys centerbut that is changing, fast. In a regionwide
building boom that intensified after the 2008 riots in Lhasa, the government has expanded or
renovated many public spaces, sprucing up Dolma Square, at the monasterys gate.
[Eyewitnesses recount terrifying day in Tibet]
State funds including a much-advertised sponsorship from the coastal city of Tianjin
have since fueled the construction of a second square on the other side of town, as well as
reams of new roads and half-built high-rises well-suited to migrants from the east.
Chinas state-backed press cites this type of achievement in infrastructure as evidence of the
governments commitment to liberating Tibet.

They are trying to build their image as a savior, as the benefactor of the Tibetans, said
Woeser, a Tibetan writer and poet, who generally goes by one name.
But even as courtesy of Tianjin garbage trucks roll down freshly paved streets, there are
questions about what is gained and what lost in rapid, state-led development.
All construction, all the roads, the majority of the benefit goes to migrants, said Yangdon
Dhondup, a research associate at Londons School of Oriental and African Studies. "Of course
the streets are better, but the big money is not really made by most Tibetans.
I think Rebkong will follow the same path as Lhasa. Thanks to migration, it will soon look
like any other Chinese town and thats the aim: dilute Tibetan identity as much as possible.
That fear is turning the citys vast public squares and smooth roads into sites of resistance.
In 2010, several thousand students took to the streets to protest plans to change the language of
instruction from Tibetan to Chinese. Their slogan: Equality of people, freedom of language.
The area around Rebkong has also seen several self-immolations, part of a wave of fiery
protests that have claimed more than 140 lives. In the early winter of 2012, six people set
themselves on fire in a single month, prompting the police to put SWAT vehicles and fire
extinguishers in Dolma Square.
In the demonstrations that followed, high school students reportedly ripped Chinese flags from
public buildings.
[Rapprochement with the Dalai Lama? No way, says China.]
A government memo that leaked after the suicides urged officials to withhold state support to
the families of the dead and their home towns. All projects running on state funds in selfimmolators villages must be stopped, it read.
This years notice takes things a step further, prohibiting people from making incense
offerings, reciting prayers, sparing the lives of animals or lighting butter lamps for selfimmolators, or greeting their family members.
The goal of this and other rules is to scare would-be separatists into submission. Given the
range of acts that are now considered threats to Chinas stability, some wonder if the 20-point
notice could have the opposite effect, widening the distance between the local government and
local Tibetans, most of whom want to be able to pray, speak and study as they please.
Mark Stevenson, a senior lecturer at Australias Victoria University who studies Tibetan art and
regularly visits Rebkong, said the gap is only growing as the new Rebkong grows.
These days, you have the government end of town and the monastery end of town, he said.
Instead of communities coming together, the divisions are getting sharper still.

Gu Jinglu reported from Tongren.

Emily Rauhala is a China Correspondent for the Post. She was previously a Beijing-based
correspondent for TIME, and an editor at the magazine's Hong Kong office.