(Asian Geographic, No. 17, Xplorer Collector’s Edition 2003)
by Anthony Anderton
Tibetan Buddhism’s Struggle to Survive
Rounding a hairpin bend on the mountainous road to Xiahe in China’s remote Gansu Province our bus suddenly slammed to a halt. The passengers surged forward to see the cause of the commotion. Face down in the gravel was the inert body of a woman. A collective gasp went up. It looked like yet another casualty of China’s often perilous mountain roads. Suddenly the woman hauled herself to her feet, hands clasped high above her head as if in prayer. Then she dusted herself off and moved quickly aside to allow our bus to pass. As soon as we had passed she flung herself forward in the dust, clawed a few feet forward, and repeated the same routine. Hardy Tibetan pilgrims will cover hundreds of kilometres performing this ritual prostration called Kyangcha. For the next hour we passed dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Tibetan pilgrims, invariably women, all performing the same agonising ritual. Their destination, like thousands of other Tibetan pilgrims, nomads and visitors streaming across the Tibetan plateau, was the remote town of Xiahe and the Labrang Monastery, one of the six great Monastic centres of Tibetan Buddhism. Soon Xiahe would host the annual celebration of Monlam Chenmo – the Great Prayer Festival.
Monlam is one of Tibetan Buddhism’s most important and spectacular festivals. The four days of Monlam bring the usually quiet town to the boil with dramatic religious rituals and mass out pourings of devotion.
The town of Xiahe is situated in a pretty mountain valley tucked away in the rugged southwest corner of China’s Gansu Province. There is no airport and no train line. The nearest major city is Lanzhou, Gansu’s sulphurous capital city, a bone-jarring day’s bus ride away. Despite it’s idyllic surrounds Xiahe is a dusty, untidy one-street affair. It reeks of the rapid and unruly change now sweeping across China. Billboard ads for beer, mobile phones and cars are everywhere.lnternet cafes and dark pool halls are jammed with young people. The main street is lined with shuttered Chinese-owned shops, restaurants and food stalls. Television aerials and satellite dishes are tangled across the rooflines. Xiahe could be any one of hundreds of isolated and poor back block towns and villages in China’s west.
But Xiahe is nothing like a typical Chinese town. Xiahe’s heart is pure Tibetan. With the Monlam festival only days away the main streetis packed with flamboyantly dressed Tibetan nomads and countless groups of pilgrims. Many have trekked for days, camping out in the open, in order to reach Xiahe in time for the Monlam festival. Large groups of Tibetan monks move about freely and confidently. At the end of the street is the reason – the sprawling Labrang Monastery.
Established almost 300 years ago, the Labrang Monastery is one of the six great monasteries of the Tibetan Yellow Hat, or Gelukpa sect of Tibetan Buddhism. Great monasteries such as Labrang were the centres of political and economic power in traditional Tibet. Religious life was virtually the only way to gain an education or achieve any level of social status. As recently as 1957 Labrang was an enormously powerful monastic centre. It was home to several thousand monks and more than 500 incarnate lamas. Labrang was also a key centre for religious learning and education, including astronomy and Tibetan medicine.
During the Cultural Revolution Tibetan religion and culture were virtually torn apart. Immense damage was done to both the physical and spiritual fabric of Tibetan life. Labrang itself was devastated and the population of monks decimated. In recent years there has been something of a revival. Key temples have been rebuilt and the number of monks has gradually increased. Despite this the Monastery is only a shadow of its former greatness.
Many visitors are surprised to find such a strong, coherent Tibetan culture within the borders of a Chinese Province. The majority of ethnic Tibetans live outside the borders of what the Chinese Government has defined as the Tibetan Autonomous Region (the TAR), with its capital in Lhasa. China’s Tibetan minority is actually dispersed across a huge arc that sweeps up from Yunnan in China’s extreme southwest through Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai Provinces. This is often called the Tibetan Cultural Area (the TCA).
The TCA is much bigger than modern Tibet, about the size of Western Europe – yet with a total population of only six million people. While most of the world’s attention is focused on the TAR, the fate of Tibetan culture and heritage is being decided in equal measure in obscure, dusty towns like Xiahe.
Xiahe is part of a region which Tibetans traditionally called Amdo, which includes parts of Qinghai and Gansu Provinces and the fringes of the wind swept Tibetan plateau. The Amdo region holds enormous special religious and cultural significance for Tibetans. Tsongkhapa, the founder of the dominant Gelukpa or yellow Hat sect and the greatest reformer of Tibetan Buddhism, was born in Amdo – as was the current Dalai Lama. It was Tsongkhapa who initiated the Monlam festival as anannual reminder of the unbreakable link between the Tibetan people and their Buddhist faith. Each year’s celebration of Monlam is intended to constitute a re-dedication of Tibet and its people to this link.
Unsurprisingly the immense spiritual and cultural importance of Monlam is perceived as a potential rallying point for latent Tibetan nationalism and dissent to Chinese political and social control. Following the Tibetan revolt in 1957, the observance of Monlam was prohibited until 1985 by Chinese authorities. In 1990 it was banned again. Today the festival is being celebrated again with vigour and tens of thousands of nomads and pilgrims flock into Xiahe.
The revival of Monlam in Xiahe puts this tiny place right at the frontline of the struggle to preserve a culture and religion still struggling to recover from the damage of the Cultural Revolution and long years of harsh suppression. Despite the recent easing of overtcontrols, Tibetan tradition still faces the twin challenges of expanding Chinese influence and globalisation. Both forces threaten to further dilute what remains of this staunchly traditional culture.
Four Days of the Great Prayer festival
The Tibetan calender is literally packed full of activities – and it is likely visitors will simply stumble across something interesting. However, if you really want to see one of the major festivals do lots of research on exact timing. For example, the Monlam festival in Xiahe is scheduled according to the Chinese calender rather than the Tibetan calender.
Day One – Sunning the Buddha The first day of Monlam begins with a column of monks streaming out of the main temple. Carrying a giant furled cloth aloft, the column snakes its way through the narrow lanes of the monastery complex and battles to break through the crowds pressing close to see or touch the sacred burden. The cloth is a huge thangka, a giant coloured depiction of the Buddha and a myriad of sacred images and figures. The column strains up the side of a steep hill. At the top the thangka will be unfurled to face the monastery and look down on the surging crowd below. Before being refurled and carried back to its home, pilgrims are allowed to press forward to make offerings to the assembled monks.
Day Two – Cham Dances Fearsome and spectacular are words that might well sum up Day two of the festival. This is the day of the ritual Cham dances, one of the most memorable sights in Tibetan Buddhism. The precise origins of the fearsomely masked and elaborately attired deities and dances are unknown, but they certainly pre-date the arrival of Buddhism from India in the 7th and 8th centuries.
Coming on the heels of the Tibetan New Year, Monlam also symbolises the ushering-in of a new year and the banishment of malignant forces and the accumulated evil of the old year. The festival also symbolises the triumph of good over evil and commemorates the triumph of Buddhism. Thousands of pilgrims and visitors gather around the courtyard of the main temple to see the most important ritual, the performance of the Cham or Yama dances.
Day Three – The Great Debate Many elements of the Monlam Festival recreate or symbolise elements of the Buddha’s life. One of these is Buddhas historic triumph in a religious debate with heretics. On the third day of the festival senior monks publicly debate scriptural questions in front of other monks and the senior Lamas. Despite its highly ritualised and symbolic nature, the demonstration of learning through debate and dialectics is a key part of the Gelukpa tradition. Success in debates such as these is part of becoming a Geshe, the most senior rank of monk (equivalent to a doctorate).
Day Four – Maitreya – The Future Buddha On the final day a long procession of monks carry aloft the golden image of Maitreya, the future Buddha, and other sacred relics around the monastery in a clockwise circuit. In contrast to the sombre and formal atmosphere of the preceding days the final day concludes on a note of merriment, with much good humour, banging of cymbals and skylarking by the novices. The procession concludes at the site of the previous day’s great debate. Here the Maitreya image and other sacred relics are displayed for pilgrims to see and touch.
The Faces and People of Monlam.
Nomads The ancient region of Amdo has traditionally been the home of Tibetan nomads. The grazing lands reach into Mongolia. The Yellow River, which rises in nearby Qinghai, feeds the grasslands. During Monlam Tibetan nomads are decked out in their finest attire.
Monks For over three centuries Labrang has been one of the six leading centres of Tibetan Buddhism. It is a strong hold of the Yellow Hat sector Gelukpas. Traditionally also referred to as the ‘virtuous ones’ the Yellow Hats are the dominant religious order in Tibetan Buddhism. At its peak Labrang was home to more than 4,000 monks and some 500 incarnate Lamas. Since the decimation and destruction of the Cultural Revolution numbers have dwindled, and many of the senior lamas have fled into exile.
Pilgrims Pilgrimage is a cornerstone of Tibetan faith. Devout pilgrims will travel for days or weeks to reach holy places or attend festivals. Thousands of pilgrims flock to Xiahe for the annual celebration of Monlam. Many clutch prayer wheels called manikhor. Turning the wheel constantly is believed to constitute reading the sacred scriptures inside. A manikhor corridor with hundreds of giant prayer wheels encircles the Labrang Monastery. Pilgrims turn these by hand as they complete circuits of the monastery.
Getting to Xiahe and the Labrang Monastery in Gansu Province.
Xiahe in Gansu Province’s Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture is open to foreign travellers with a valid Chinese tourist visa. Xiahe and the Labrang Monastery are about six hours by public bus from Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu Province. There are regular buses from the Lanzhou bus station, although services tend to run only in the mornings. Accommodation in Labrang ranges from adequate to very basic. Hot water and heating often are only available sporadically.
Lanzhou is accessible by air and rail from most major Chinese cities.
>From Beijing it is a two-hour flight or overnight train journey.
>From Xiahe it is possible to continue on by road into Tibetan areas of neighbouring Qinghai or Sichuan Provinces.
Travel in Tibetan Cultural Area of the People’s Republic of China
The Tibetan Cultural Area (TCA) includes Tibetan communities and monasteries in the Chinese Provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai. These areas hug the edges of the vast Tibetan Plateau. For the most part the communities (such as Yunnan and southern and western Sichuan) are open to independent foreign travellers. Travellers only require a valid Chinese tourist visa. Some areas of Qinghai, however,are closed to foreign travellers. If you are unsure it is advisable to check carefully before wandering into remote or inaccessible areas.
Most of the TCA is only accessible by land travel, which usually means taking a public bus of some sort. Well-heeled travellers may consider hiring a car and driver. These road journeys are typically long and rough. In many areas the roads are hazardous, especially during the harsh winters or spring thaw. Accommodation is sparse and very basic.
Basic Travel Tips and Facts
One word sums up travel in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) and the Tibetan areas of Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai provinces in the People’s Republic of China – challenging. The combination of high altitude, climatic extremes and poorly developed infrastructure can be daunting. There are travel restrictions imposed by the Chinese government – especially for the TAR. The best advice is to plan your trip carefully, check on local conditions before you arrive, and make sure you have appropriate clothing and supplies. Altitude sickness can be a serious problem as many zones lie between 3,000 and 4,000 metres above sea level, sometimes even higher.
A Word of Caution!
When attending festivals join in the fun – Tibetans are friendly and welcome outside visitors. But remember to observe some basic etiquette. Photography inside temples is usually banned. With increasing numbers of visitors, the monks can also be sensitive about being photographed especially during key religious ceremonies. It can pay to ask permission first or work from a discreet distance. You do not want to see your precious film nailed to a wall!
