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Dangers in a strange land
"Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion" makes the plight of Chinese-dominated Tibet palpable with an intimate look at the people living under not only military repression but economic desperation.
By ANDREA GRONVALL
Offoffoff.com
Timing is everything. The theatrical release of Tom Peosay's new documentary
"Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion" couldn't be more auspiciously planned. Not
only does its arrival in New York coincide with the Dalai Lama's highly
anticipated visit, adding to the city's welcome; with any luck, the film
will garner some of the attendant media coverage and win audiences across
the country. This it deserves, not because it's riding a wave of American
fascination with Buddhism and Tibetan culture, but because its depiction of
the bravery and determination of three generations of Tibetans living in
exile challenges audiences to look beyond the lure of the exotic, and
develop an understanding of where the U.S. stands in relation to this
beleaguered country.
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| | | TIBET: CRY OF THE SNOW LION | Directed by: Tom Peosay.
Written by: Victoria Mudd, Sue Peosay.
Featuring: Robert Ford, John F. Avedon, Stephen Batchelor, Robert Thurman, Wei Jingsheng.
Narrated by: Martin Sheen.
Voices by: Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Ed Harris, Shirley Knight, Edward Edwards.
Related links: Official site |
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Produced by Maria Florio and Victoria Mudd (Academy Award winners for their
documentary "Broken Rainbow") and Tom and Sue Peosay, and scripted by Mudd
and Sue Peosay, "Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion" is a seamless blend of the
epic and the personal. Its genesis was Tom Peosay's journey to Tibet as a
tourist and mountaineer in 1987, during which time he and other visitors
witnessed the rioting in Lhasa that followed several pro-independence
rallies led by Buddhist monks and nuns. The Communist Chinese occupiers
quickly and brutally subdued the ethnic Tibetans, for whom writing or saying
"I am a Tibetan," displaying the snow lion-emblazoned national flag, or
possessing photos of the Dalai Lama are punishable as criminal acts. This
experience propelled a team led by Peosay — a director of photography for
PBS, A&E, Discovery and MSNBC — to nine trips over ten years back through the
region, and also Nepal and India.
Because many of the facts they present have been extensively recorded in
other media, the film initially feels like it's preaching to the choir.
Voiceover talent is drawn from the A-list of Hollywood anti-war activists:
Martin Sheen narrates, and Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, along with Ed
Harris and Shirley Knight, eloquently deliver translations of Tibetan
survivors' testimony. The experts interviewed include noted authors and
travelers Robert Ford, John F. Avedon, Stephen Batchelor and Robert Thurman,
who is easily the most recognizable Western authority on Buddhism, and
enjoys a high hip quotient as well. No surprise it's Thurman (father of Uma) who pinpoints
why Tibetan culture is so threatening, and has proved so intransigent to the
rulers in Beijing: "Buddha didn't found a religion; he was a teacher whose
greatest contribution was that freedom [from desire, the cause of all human
suffering] is possible. I can attain it. You can attain it."
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It is in illustrating the force and scope of that idea, as embodied in
Tibetan Buddhism and resistance, that Peosay's film derives its strength,
both as an agenda documentary and ethnography. As a travelogue it not only
takes us into a remote area of the world closed for centuries to outsiders
(and still immensely difficult to enter), it provides an inner tour of the
soul of a people threatened with extinction.
One of Mao Tse-tung's first actions after coming to power in 1949 was to
send the People's Liberation Army into Tibet, a vast region Beijing falsely
claimed was always part of China. Roughly the top half of the country was
absorbed into China; the lower half, containing the capitol of Lhasa and the
palaces and theocratic government of the Dalai Lama, became, in name only,
the Tibetan Autonomous Region. At first, the occupying forces were
instructed to behave in a respectful and helpful manner. Hospitals and
schools were built, and construction of roads began across Tibet's daunting
topography. But it soon became clear these services were not intended
primarily for the Tibetans' benefit.
China's interests in Tibet are strategic and mercenary. With the annexation
of Tibet, Beijing's reach now extends directly to the border with India, its
chief rival Asian superpower. As the movie reminds us, together China and
India represent almost half the human race; both are struggling to emerge
from poverty, and both are in the league of nuclear nations. Atop the
Himalayas, the Tibetan plateau affords large wilderness areas for dumping
nuclear materials. The world's highest mountain range is also the location
of the headwaters of all important Asian rivers. And the Chinese have for
centuries regarded Tibet's huge reserves of precious minerals as ripe for
exploitation.
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| | Marketplaces that used to be hubs of Tibetan commerce have been replaced by Chinese stalls. Starving, dirty, bedraggled children wander the streets, their eyes haunting, their sadness palpable, their future unimaginable. |
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Hence the network of roads, which in addition to allowing ready access to
the border are now being used by China's largest export to Tibet, the
Chinese themselves. Enticed by economic opportunity and incentives (a
Chinese colonist in Tibet can earn three times what he would in China), the
Chinese are arriving in such droves that, if their progress is left
unchecked, within roughly a generation they will significantly outnumber
native Tibetans. The footage gathered by the filmmakers of this cultural
displacement is heartbreaking. We see Chinese civilians having their photos
snapped atop tanks in front of the Potala Palace. Marketplaces that used to
be hubs of Tibetan commerce have been replaced by Chinese stalls. Religious
festivals are co-opted by the presence of military parades. Denied
education, which is being privatized and conducted entirely in Chinese, most
Tibetans cannot find employment, and are increasingly relegated to the slums
that mushroom amid razed buildings. Starving, dirty, bedraggled children
wander the streets, their eyes haunting, their sadness palpable, their
future unimaginable.
Thus what was left unfinished by the Cultural Revolution — with its
destruction of 6,000 monasteries, their irreplaceable artifacts, and even
more priceless, thousands of their inhabitants — now continues apace with the
relentless march of China's new world economy. What a contradiction:
Communist totalitarianism propped up by free-market synergy with the West.
When the film examines America's complicity with the Chinese occupiers, the
paradox is so revolting it hurts. A onetime Cold War-era provider of
covert CIA aid to Tibetan freedom fighters, the U.S. gave enough help to
Lhasa to harass the Chinese, but not to win the struggle. It shifted its
policy in 1971 during Henry Kissinger's efforts toward normalization with
Red China. American corporate access to China's vast market potential was
paid for by betraying Tibet and withdrawing support. How richly ironic that
America continues, in both intellectual and pop cultural forums, to embrace
the Dalai Lama and the cause of Tibetans, while big business as usual wins
the day. According to the film, fully $87 billion of our trade deficit can
be chalked up to U.S. capital investment in China.
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This would all sound too dreary if it were not for the sustaining religious
and ethical beliefs of Tibetan Buddhists. Interviews with survivors of
forced labor camps, of torture and ethnic cleansing, shed light on the
character of a nation. Transplanted to sanctuary in northern India, young
Tibetan refugees receive schooling in Dharamsala; some are even sent on
alone, at great risk to their families remaining in Tibet. And the Dalai
Lama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, remains Tibet's champion and
ambassador to the world.
Although many felt betrayed when Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, sought
a rapprochement with China in stating his willingness to settle for true
autonomy rather than independence, the realpolitik of his stance exhibits
his grasp of both temporal and spiritual needs. A new militant generation
of Tibetans in exile might indeed eventually prevail through violent
rebellion in making the Chinese occupation of Tibet too expensive to be
viable, but at what cost to the Tibetans? Some 1.2 million are already dead in
the wake of the PLA.
Any cause for optismism resides in currents within Chinese society itself,
such as greater literacy, the devotion to lamas practiced by increasing
numbers of Chinese who live beyond the watchful eyes of Beijing, and the
efforts of Chinese human-rights activists such as Wei Jingsheng (the dissident now in exile in the U.S. after almost two decades in Chinese prison). In an
interview he confides, "Many people have talked to me and said, there are so
many problems faced by the Chinese people — why are you spending your time to
also talk about the Tibetan issue? My answer is that this1 . . .is a problem
for all of us living today on this earth." Is it possible, as envisioned by
Tibetan resistance fighter Lhasang Tsering, for the Tibetans and Chinese to
cease being enemies, and even become friends? For the sake of global karma,
let us pray.
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SEPTEMBER 27, 2003
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