August 16, 2007
Gyegu Journal
Tibetans Turn Festival Into Mute Protest Against China
By HOWARD W. FRENCH

GYEGU, China — With the polish of veteran television M.C.’s, the slick, Chinese-speaking announcers used every trick in the book to try to get a largely Tibetan crowd of a few hundred people involved in the singing and dancing on stage.

“Let’s hear a round of applause for your very own Khampa Festival,” shouted the male announcer, drawing little more than murmurs from the audience in this city in western China, just north of the Tibetan border. “One more time, this is your own real and genuine festival,” the man continued gamely, only to be greeted once again by near silence.

It is possible that in this region of China, where Tibetans cling to their own language, the announcer’s shtick failed for reasons of sheer incomprehension. It could not have helped, though, that the crowd had been corralled by a large deployment of police officers and soldiers who stood by, as if on guard against serious trouble, throughout the morning’s performances.

Then, after a moment of uneasy quiet, the female M.C. offered her own interpretation, heard over a live microphone. “They’re ignoring us,” she said.

This is the season of Tibetan festivals, where people throughout this region gather to celebrate old traditions during the long, hot days of summer, before the early onset of autumn and a harsh, prolonged winter.

The Khampa Festival in Qinghai Province is one of the largest on the calendar and traditionally draws Tibetans from all over western China. This year, for the first time, local officials tried to use the event to promote tourism and development in one of the poorest areas of China. As the muted response to the announcers suggested, however, the event had also acquired a political subtext: the continuing struggle between China and its Tibetan minority over cultural identity and religious freedom.

In recent weeks, China has announced new regulations governing the reincarnation of Tibetan clergy and has acted swiftly against Tibetans at other summer festivals who have hoisted banners with the likeness of their exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and in one case, urged people to shout if they wanted the Dalai Lama to be allowed to return from exile.

Most of this province, and parts of several others, including Sichuan and Yunnan, were long part of Tibet itself before China’s People’s Liberation Army marched into the area in 1950 to enforce Beijing’s claim.

With so many security forces on hand in this modest town of about 40,000, nestled in a valley surrounded by high mountains, there was little chance of an outright demonstration in favor of the Dalai Lama. The test of wills played itself out instead around a theme unlikely to have been noticed by many of the tourists from China’s Han majority: whether or not to wear animal fur.

The ceremonial wearing of animal fur has been raised to the status of a political issue in western China, since the Dalai Lama released a statement two years ago urging Tibetans to reject the longtime practice as inconsistent with Buddhism. Reportedly, the Dalai Lama was responding to complaints from Indian conservationists that Tibetans’ fondness for skins from tigers and other endangered species was hastening their disappearance.

As word of the Dalai Lama’s suggestion spread across western China, some Tibetan communities responded by publicly burning their furs, while others simply stopped using furs in ceremonies. This perceived act of obedience to a man whom the Chinese government has long vilified as a “splittist,” meaning secessionist, appears to have angered the authorities.

Zhou Hongyuan, deputy governor of Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, denied that participants had been ordered to wear animal skins and furs, but he supported the practice. “We are an ethnic region, and we want to create a festive atmosphere and promote our uniqueness,” he said. “It has been our tradition for thousands of years to wear fur.”

Members of Tibetan performance troupes who came here from towns in Qinghai said local officials had urged them to continue wearing their traditional outfits. Judging from the appearance of one group after another, however, the call went almost completely unheeded. During several days of festivities, a visitor was hard pressed to find any conspicuous displays of fur.

On the eve of their troupe’s performance, a couple of Tibetan dancers from Nangqian County, in Qinghai, practiced twirling moves in their full regalia, including long strands of blue and orange beads that shone in the afternoon sun as they spun.

Asked if he was wearing any animal fur, the man exclaimed, “Absolutely not!” What ensued was a very careful conversation in which the man insisted that wearing fur was against his religion, and then acknowledged receiving “teaching” on the practice two years ago.

Where had the teaching come from? “That’s not convenient to say,” the man’s wife and fellow dancer put in. Asked if their instruction had come from the Dalai Lama, the couple’s faces lit up, and the man reached out to eagerly shake hands. “The government told us we have to wear fur, but we’re not going to do it,” he said. “There are 32 people in our troupe. We’ve agreed that just one of us will wear a small piece.”

The dancers were not alone in their circumspection. With Beijing constantly on guard for anything that smacks of separatism, people here seem to measure their words carefully.

At a monastery perched on a hill high above this town where he receives visitors, Yushu’s holiest Tibetan Buddhist monk, Aenpo Kyabgon, gingerly parried questions about the fur controversy, saying he had avoided the festival altogether.

The monk, who grew up in India and now lives in Australia, was allowed to enter the country recently with a warning against engaging in politics.

“I don’t believe in saying you must or mustn’t do something,” he said elliptically. “These things depend upon the individual. But from the Buddhist spiritual point of view, we definitely have to refrain from certain things, such as violence in killing animals.”