dusk, the sun was big and yellow and the shadows were long,” he recalled. “But the road was completely deserted. Where it branched off to Lhasa there stood a large Chinese pillbox. On top of it soldiers were patrolling back and forth carrying submachine guns. I had never seen anything like that before. Normally, the Chinese kept their troops unarmed. Then, when I reached my mother’s house, I found the outer gate locked. It should have been closed only at night, but now even the gate to the inner courtyard was shut. As I walked through, I looked up at the house and there was my mother anxiously staring out of a window. When she saw me, she clapped, she was so happy.”
As the eleventh of March dawned, the Norbulingka readied itself for battle. The previous night, government officials and members of the bodyguard had joined the popular leaders in declaring an end to the Seventeen-Point Agreement, following which the entire Kusung Magar openly revolted, casting off the Chinese uniforms they had been compelled to wear and donning their own Tibetan ones. Taking up positions alongside the volunteer guard, they surrounded the Jewel Park, while dispatching a force northeast to barricade the Xining road against Chinese reinforcements.As a precaution, the Dalai Lama’s family moved from Yabshi House to a small pavilion in the Norbulingka. Following their arrival, Ngari Rinpoché went on a tour of inspection. By each gate in the outer white wall, and again by those in the inner yellow wall demarcating the Dalai Lama’s private enclosure, contingents of armed men had camped, their ponies left tethered in long lines outside the park. “I remember them sitting around their campfires,” recounted Ngari Rinpoché, “resting against their saddles and taking snuff. There was a chill in the air and during the next few days it was overcast, so you could smell the smoke from a distance. Every so often those guarding the walls would descend to drink tea and rest in the old tents they had pitched. They wore big boots, fur-lined hats and robes and they had stuffed the barrels of their rifles with red, green and blue tassels to keep out the dirt. Everyone was always engaged in very vigorous conversation.”
Outside the Norbulingka, Lhasa continued in a state of turmoil. A series of popular meetings took place inside the large government printing house in the village of Shöl beneath the Potala. Here, formal resolutions were signed by the government, representatives of guild associations and monasteries, calling for
rangzen
or independence. Concurrently, the city fortified itself. All of the larger houses and even the Central Cathedral were transformed into heavily manned stockades. The Chinese also prepared for what appeared to be an inevitable showdown. Withdrawing personnel into their own houses, they strengthened the exteriors with sandbags, lined the roofs with barbed wire and, from in between the numerous red flags, mortar and machine-gun nests marking their positions, photographed the constant marches which coursed through the capital’s streets. But their key preparations were considerably more subtle. While the Tibetan people hoped to rout the Communists in the convulsive manner of the 1912 expulsion of Manchu troops, the PLA was busy emplacing heavy artillery around the entire Lhasan Valley, with which, without directly confronting the revolt, they could swiftly suppress it.
“I felt as if I were standing between two volcanoes, each likely to erupt at any moment,” wrote the Dalai Lama, adding that his “most urgent moral duty … was to prevent a totally disastrous clash between my unarmed people and the Chinese army.” The likelihood of such a calamity had long been clear to Tenzin Gyatso. Though reluctant to discuss it, the Dalai Lama had dreamt a year earlier of the Norbulingka becoming “a killing ground.” Other dreams concerned his impending flight to India, an event which the Nechung Oracle had alluded to as
As the eleventh of March dawned, the Norbulingka readied itself for battle. The previous night, government officials and members of the bodyguard had joined the popular leaders in declaring an end to the Seventeen-Point Agreement, following which the entire Kusung Magar openly revolted, casting off the Chinese uniforms they had been compelled to wear and donning their own Tibetan ones. Taking up positions alongside the volunteer guard, they surrounded the Jewel Park, while dispatching a force northeast to barricade the Xining road against Chinese reinforcements.As a precaution, the Dalai Lama’s family moved from Yabshi House to a small pavilion in the Norbulingka. Following their arrival, Ngari Rinpoché went on a tour of inspection. By each gate in the outer white wall, and again by those in the inner yellow wall demarcating the Dalai Lama’s private enclosure, contingents of armed men had camped, their ponies left tethered in long lines outside the park. “I remember them sitting around their campfires,” recounted Ngari Rinpoché, “resting against their saddles and taking snuff. There was a chill in the air and during the next few days it was overcast, so you could smell the smoke from a distance. Every so often those guarding the walls would descend to drink tea and rest in the old tents they had pitched. They wore big boots, fur-lined hats and robes and they had stuffed the barrels of their rifles with red, green and blue tassels to keep out the dirt. Everyone was always engaged in very vigorous conversation.”
Outside the Norbulingka, Lhasa continued in a state of turmoil. A series of popular meetings took place inside the large government printing house in the village of Shöl beneath the Potala. Here, formal resolutions were signed by the government, representatives of guild associations and monasteries, calling for
rangzen
or independence. Concurrently, the city fortified itself. All of the larger houses and even the Central Cathedral were transformed into heavily manned stockades. The Chinese also prepared for what appeared to be an inevitable showdown. Withdrawing personnel into their own houses, they strengthened the exteriors with sandbags, lined the roofs with barbed wire and, from in between the numerous red flags, mortar and machine-gun nests marking their positions, photographed the constant marches which coursed through the capital’s streets. But their key preparations were considerably more subtle. While the Tibetan people hoped to rout the Communists in the convulsive manner of the 1912 expulsion of Manchu troops, the PLA was busy emplacing heavy artillery around the entire Lhasan Valley, with which, without directly confronting the revolt, they could swiftly suppress it.
“I felt as if I were standing between two volcanoes, each likely to erupt at any moment,” wrote the Dalai Lama, adding that his “most urgent moral duty … was to prevent a totally disastrous clash between my unarmed people and the Chinese army.” The likelihood of such a calamity had long been clear to Tenzin Gyatso. Though reluctant to discuss it, the Dalai Lama had dreamt a year earlier of the Norbulingka becoming “a killing ground.” Other dreams concerned his impending flight to India, an event which the Nechung Oracle had alluded to as
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