Years of Poems and Spirits

It is the 50th anniversary of Dalai’s escape from Tibet so the topic is in the news again recently. In my previous exchange with Denis B, he recommended John Powers’ book History as Propaganda. I thought I owe him (and myself) to read the book. Now half way into the book, I wondered why I even bothered.

There is not much I can do if at all. Talking about a sense of frustration and despair … if a dog likes to scratch a healing wound, it is because scratching gives him some comfort at that moment. But I don’t feel any sense of satisfaction learning any more about Tibet. Yet I am still doing so. The appeal of “truth” can be sickeningly overpowering. I probably shouldn’t have picked up this topic to begin with.

It started when I felt that the West’s condemnation of Chinese policy in Tibet was over the top. I thought a new “Orientalism” was clearly present. True, China is practicing some form of Imperialism in Tibet. But (however strange this sounds) that is what nations do!

Since the dawn of civilization, every nation performed some form of Imperialism (in the sense of forcefully incorporating “other” people) during inception . It is part of the nation’s founding myth. In fact, one can’t name any bona fide nation without some blood on their hands. Yet everyone finds a way to turn that blood stain into a badge of honor.

The Israelites blown down Jericho and we wrote a Bible to praise them. The Americans slaughtered Indians and that becomes part of the frontier spirit (aka American Exceptionalism which any public figure would feel proud to defend). The Brits, the French, the Turks … need I say more?

Yet to many Western minds, China is not to allowed to slaughter the sacrifice lamb, so to speak. That is where I had the most grudge against the Europeans. That is why I thought of Said even though he probably would have sided with the Tibetans. And that is the rock I am leaning against as a Chinese native, as a student of history and as a Realist.

But the hard place is found in the presense of the victims, and in the fact that I don’t find the Chinese government a representative of my opinion.

So what do I do? Trying to read more to find some solace in the presence of historical facts. But if any thing, Powers convinced me that unlike histories in other places, the one of Tibet has always been tempered with. In other words, the historians on both sides always had the sovereignty issue on their minds when they wrote history, and the debate we have today? They have been having it for centuries.

Not to say Powers is a nihilist on Tibet. He comes down more on the Tibetan side. I understand one’s need to find justification of the present in history. But is the Tibet question a history issue? Or how much of it is?

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