Escape from the Land of Snows by Stephan Talty Page B

officials glared at the Tibetan nobles. “They were getting quite agitated,” Choegyal remembers. “And that’s when we knew His Holiness wasn’t going to come.”
    The Tibetan guests were anxious to get back to their families,but the Chinese insisted on carrying on with a strained lunch and a shortened version of the performance. In complete silence the locals watched the dancers swoop and pivot while grim-faced PLA soldiers glared at them.
    Choegyal watched it all, enthralled and not a bit afraid.
    His mother was growing frantic. A squad of twelve PLA soldiers charged into her house, demanding to see her. Making their way toward her private room, the soldiers were on the verge of finding Diki Tsering when her house manager violently pushed them back, claiming that His Holiness’s mother was ill. “After a look of hatred,” Diki Tsering said, “they left the same way they had come.” She took the visit to mean the PLA was looking for hostages close to the Dalai Lama, and her thoughts turned to the missing Choegyal. Again, she felt she could hear him crying for help.
    Diki Tsering’s son-in-law, the Dalai Lama’s chief bodyguard, sent a car for her out of the Norbulingka, but the crowd, seeing the driver’s Chinese uniform, rained stones down on the vehicle, nearly killing him. Finally, her son-in-law came himself and was just able to get through the roadblocks set up by Khampa warriors, part of the popular government that had sprung up within a matter of hours. With the help of a permit signed by army officials, he collected Diki Tsering and barely made it back to the Norbulingka.
    But now Choegyal wouldn’t know where to find her. She sent messengers to the Chinese camp. Hours later, they returned empty-handed, unable to locate her son among the Tibetan aristocrats and PLA soldiers. “We thought,” she remembered, “they would take him to China.”
    At the summer palace, Norbulingka staff and Tibetan government officials met to discuss what was to be done.“Many officials felt thatthe Dalai Lama was compelled to advise caution because of his religious position (which required him to oppose violence at all times), and because of the fear of the Chinese,” wrote the Tibetan historian Tsering Shakya. Others believed that if the Dalai Lama were to support the resistance, the Chinese would flatten the Norbulingka and attack Tibetans at will.
    Three senior ministers were hurriedly sent to the military headquarters to explain what had happened. The Chinese officials they met with were initially calm and relaxed. But then the acting head of the Chinese government in Lhasa, Tan Guansan, arrived and quickly became apoplectic. He was later described by the British journalist Noel Barber in deeply unflattering terms: “a pair of stooped shoulders, yellow teeth, extremely thin hands, and a habit of reeking with perfume”—an alcoholic and a rock-ribbed party loyalist whom even the kindly Dalai Lama described as looking “like a peasant,” with stained teeth and an army crew cut. Tan slammed his fist onto a wooden table, and his face went beet-red. “Reactionary elements must behave or all will be liquidated!” he yelled. “Up until now, we have been patient, but this time the people have gone too far.” The Dalai Lama’s absence went beyond a social snub: it was, in the minds of the Chinese, a deliberate act of defiance. The Chinese were convinced that the “imperialist rebels” were being secretly backed by members of the Tibetan government. Tan Guansan and the other officials ranted at the Tibetans for several hours, and by the end they were promising “drastic action” to end the revolt.
    In front of the Norbulingka, neighborhood leaders threaded through the crowd, signing up people to guard the summer palace against the PLA. The sixteen-year-old protester Yonten ran up to a man he knew and asked to be put on the list. “You’re too young,” the man shot back, but the teenager persisted. “I cried