"The Tibetan: Tashi གསུམ་ (3)"

 

My time at the camp flew by. Perhaps because every day was exactly the same. In my dormitory, with 20 other men, we’d be awoken by airhorns at 5 a.m., tidy up our bunk beds, wash up, stand upright for a roll call, then go to the canteen, eat, then go to the classroom, study Maoism, Communism, study Mandarin, study the PRC Constitution, Chinese history, and watch propaganda videos.

Every lesson would begin and end with us passionately singing patriotic songs. Our teachers were police officers; all of them old, cagey, and having serious, sunken, grim facial features, with loads of bluish spots around their thin, jagged faces.

Then, after classes, we’d have lunch, which was the biggest meal of the day. It was standard Chinese fare, rice, noodles, meats, fried everything… I must admit that the food at the camp was surprisingly tasty. This was undoubtably due to the kitchen staff receiving specialized culinary training in preparation for posts at 5-star hotels, high-end restaurants, and military bases throughout China.

Following lunch, afternoons were spent doing light labor around the camp- cleaning, landscaping, farming. Everyone had an assigned task. Some were assigned to a factory on the site that produced children’s toys.

After dinner, we’d take evening exercise, usually running, walking, or marching in place. This was followed by nightly assemblies, where speakers, generally police or low-ranking party members, would deliver motivational speeches or we’d be shown propaganda films. Afterward, we’d return to our bunks and wash up before lights out.

Most there, including myself, followed the program. I told them what they wanted to hear. I read the propaganda with gusto. There were few who resisted. I only saw one who talked back to a guard, in the canteen, and he was beaten severely by that guard and the guard’s guard comrades. The guards made a point of beating him in front of us, kicking and lashing the man, who’d crumpled up and sobbed into a defensive ball on the canteen’s white linoleum floor.

There were “points” we could earn for informing on a fellow prisoner, points which could help us possibly get released early. But I never saw or heard of anybody doing anything suspicious or subversive. And I don’t think I’d tell if I did, although I might have had to, because if I didn’t, there were also penalties you could receive if you didn’t tell the guards about suspicious or illegal, immoral behavior.

So I kept quiet and avoided any unnecessary interactions with my fellow prisoners. I kept my head down. I followed orders.

 

Now and then, at night, if I couldn’t sleep, I’d lie in my bunk and would reflect on what my grandfather had said, about this being karma, Tibet’s punishment for abandoning the dharma. Would this be atonement? Keeping quiet? Shouting Chinese slogans? I hoped so. But most of the feelings, ideas I had soon died. My mind went quiet. My soul was numb, like my back and shoulders had turned when I was beaten. I stopped having feelings and allowed my place, my spot in the universe to be whatever it would be. I surrendered…

 

At my release hearing, I was praised as a model prisoner. I was assigned a job as a tour guide, which shocked me, because it was nothing I’d ever done before. But I realized that if they feared the foreigners receiving bad news about Tibet, I would be the perfect person to not spread bad news, since I was fully aware of bad news’ and rumors’ consequences.

Once I’d returned home, my family, my wife, and young daughter, were overjoyed to see me. Springing at me with soft puppy dog eyes when I walked in the door of my home, they hugged me tightly. We cried tears of joy and anguish. I hadn’t seen them in three years. 

We’ve never once discussed why I was gone. There’s no need. Others in my village have had the same experience. Many remain in the camps. I know how lucky I am to return. Buddha is merciful…

 

Tibet is often closed for foreigners, so most of the time, I’m in my office, which is on the second floor of a government complex, just outside the city. The complex is enormous. It’s a long horizontal line, a series of identical square, glassy concrete office buildings. However, most of the buildings and offices in the complex sit empty, unused...

I’m often sitting alone in my office, watching soccer, or I’m with a Chinese coworker from down the hall. I don’t know what his job is, and I’ve never asked. He doesn’t appear to work much or ever be in a hurry. Many days, he doesn’t show up to work at all.

There’s a Tibetan security guard I play cards with, in my office. We smoke cigarettes and chat. Our talks are always about European soccer. He hinted once at gambling on matches, but I pretended to not hear it.

I collect a regular government salary, which is generous, more than I earned as a teacher. I’ll have a good pension. My family receives state healthcare. Life’s okay.

The foreigners they assign me are almost always curious to know about Tibet, its culture, history, but few ask about politics. Many ask me to help them buy drugs. They think every Tibetan smokes hash. I’ve never smoked anything but cigarettes.

Occasionally a foreigner will ask about the Dalai Lama or a sensitive issue; they’ll twist their eyebrows into question marks, speak in hushed tones, innuendos, expecting me to utter a revelation, picking at me for something they can post to Facebook. But I don’t answer any of the foreigners’ questions that would have me in trouble. I avoid unnecessary interactions. I stick to the script. What would it matter anyway? What would it matter if I spilled my guts to one of these snow-skinned, yellow-haired, blue-eyed men or women?

My grandfather told me that the world knows of Tibet’s plight. I read of it online, too. I read of it before, in an internet café, when we could access foreign media sites. I’d use the BBC, YouTube to study English, to gather learning materials for my classes. I saw articles about Tibet. Maybe they still speak of Tibet, I don’t know. I can’t access those sites anymore. They’ve been shut down.

And these days, I wouldn’t even try to find them. In a neighboring village, a college student was recently arrested for selling VPN software that enabled users to bypass China’s internet censorship controls, allowed access to foreign news. For his crime, he was sentenced to two years of hard labor…

Not only is foreign media banned, but there are times, too, around holidays or anniversaries, the entire Internet is shut down for a day or week…

Does the world know about Tibet? Does the world know of our plight? Does the UN know? Yes, of course they do! The world knows everything about us. They know about our leader, His Holiness, The Dalai Lama. They know that it’s illegal to place a picture of the Dalai Lama anywhere, even in our private homes. They know it’s illegal to fly the Tibetan national flag, even in our private homes. They know. They know! 

They know what’s happened here and what is happening here. But, to be frank, they do not care. No one cares about Tibet. Most Tibetans don’t care anymore. Our youngest children can barely speak Tibetan. Tibetan language has been banned in schools. There are Tibetan children in Lhasa who only speak Chinese. There are children in Lhasa who call themselves Chinese.

And no one cares. No one cares. The world has turned its back on us.

Tibet is a country that doesn’t even exist. We’re just ghosts. 

 

"The Tibetan: Tashi གཉིས་ (2)"

 

The faceless guards led me through a series of dark, narrow, bending hallways and brought me to another cell, another icebox. It had lights overhead. They were golden and intensely bright lights. They were lights like spotlights on a stage.

In the cell were 15 other men, all Tibetans, except for one Chinese, who appeared mute or deaf and was missing about half his left arm.

We weren’t allowed to speak. And we didn’t want to, either. A bird-faced jailer sat on a plastic stool, staring at us from the shadows, behind the harsh light. He’d sit pensively, somewhere behind the cell, and would emerge, with a truncheon, and rattle at the bars if anyone spoke. Another jailer, also with enraged eyes, brought us our food, and, in the evenings, wheeled in a TV, that we were required to watch. It’d show Chinese state propaganda, generally news, documentaries, and sometimes soap operas of happy Han families. 

We slept on the floor. We used a bucket in the corner for piss and shit. There was one small, grimy sink, with a single cold-water tap, next to the bucket for washing. We were fed twice daily, a small bowl of rice and a bowl of clear soup with a chunk or two of pork fat and slice or two of cabbage.

I was there a while. I wouldn’t find out how long until I left. The days and nights, time, became irrelevant. There was no window in the cell, no clock, and the lights were kept on 24/7, so time didn’t really exist there.

In that deathly, luminous cell, we all just sat staring at the gray wall. Since I thought I might be sentenced to death, my thoughts, at first, were of my next life, where I’d be, who’d I’d be, what I’d be, and how much karma I’d earned and how I might be reincarnated.

But then my thinking turned to fear, wondering what I’d be charged with, what my “crime” could possibly be. I worried about being sent to one of the worst labor camps. I feared never seeing my family again.

It sounds horrible. I sound like a monster when I say it, but I actually didn’t think too much of my family during this ordeal. Firstly, because it was too painful. Secondly, though, because I thought, perhaps, that they’d turned me in, for whatever my crime was, and that hurt so much more.

Thinking, about anything, became too difficult, so I stopped. I stopped my mind from racing, from conjecture, and I accepted karma. I began to silently recite Buddhist mantras, over and over, and I’d meditate, revisit the calm of dreamless sleep…

 

Eventually, the faceless men in turtle helmets returned, took me to another room, in another part of the jail. This room actually had a window, and I saw the sun for the first time in ages. The sun! The glorious sun! Its yellowy light pouring into the room, like the aura of a deity.

Sitting down to a hard metal chair, I was not strapped in or bound, but my back and shoulders still ached, from the first day’s beating, and from sleeping on the cold concrete floor. But I could feel the beautiful, merciful touch of the sun’s rays, shining in from that window, and the sunlight tickled and warmed me and brought me back to life, and I shifted my weight toward its glow, like a flower. 

The men presented me a written confession and a pen. I’d have almost signed anything, just to be out of there. I’d have maybe confessed to murder if it meant being outside, working in the sun, breathing fresh air, never seeing that jail again, never again smelling its mutant stench of feces, urine, and bodies.

The statement said I’d been reported by a neighbor for “spreading rumors and subverting state power.” It didn’t say the neighbor’s name. It didn’t elaborate on exactly what “rumor” I’d spread. I couldn’t imagine what I’d said that would have been considered a “rumor.”

But I knew of this charge. I heard of others receiving it, usually for criticizing the government or holding an unsanctioned religious event or gathering. Short of being told that everything was a misunderstanding and declared innocent, a charge like this was the best I could hope for. It meant probably, at most, maybe 5 years, and in a reeducation camp, not one of the hard labor camps.

I signed it without question and was then whisked to another part of the building, brought before a panel of 3 judges, one of whom, not much older than me, looked Tibetan. I don’t know if he was for sure Tibetan, but he looked like it. I’ve rarely felt such anger as I did, toward that judge. I’d expect the Chinese to do this, but a fellow Tibetan, being my judge, no, I couldn’t... Part of me died inside, just laying eyes on him.

Buddha forgive me, but I’d have killed him, with my bare hands, if I could have. I’d have sprung up, charged at him and wrapped my hands around his skinny neck, and strangled him to death, snapped his neck, like a chicken, and stomped on his lifeless face until it was gone, until any trace of his Tibetan features were erased.

I’d never felt such hate for my fellow man. Rage jolted through me, as I stood there, my teeth chattering, and I hung my head and stared at the floor. In that moment, I couldn’t see the judge’s face. I couldn’t bear it…

The panel sentenced me to three years and asked that I apologize and acknowledge my crimes to the court. And I did. I threw my head back. I looked up. I told them what they wanted to hear. That I apologized for my crimes. That I loved Mother China. That I was proud and loyal to the Communist Party. That I would correct my errors. I would have mentioned my errors, specifically, since I know that would have made them happier, but I couldn’t, because I still wasn’t exactly sure what I’d been accused of saying.

(Deep down, it dawned on me how grateful I should be that it was a “neighbor” who’d been the informer and not a family member. I felt horrible, too, that I’d ever suspected my family of such treason. Buddha please forgive me for this sin…)

The judges admonished me. They spoke, sternly, iron-eyed, saying how hopefully “I’ve learned my lesson.” I was immediately led, in handcuffs and shackles, to a van, which had three other men, who were Chinese, and we were transported to a reeducation camp that was fairly close by.

 

 

"The Tibetan: Tashi གཅིག་"

 

I don’t like to talk about it. But I see it in dreams. I dream of it. I’m there. On the floor, that cold concrete floor, where I stayed for what I think was months. I stopped counting the days. But it was probably two or three months. I only know this because the season had changed. It was the dead of winter when they came for me, when they came to my house.

We’re used to seeing them. We’re used to their questionings, or them cordoning off the village. They rope off the village during holidays. Or if there’s an immolation. There were more immolations before, but they’ve stopped almost entirely since the Chinese began arresting the immolator’s family members. Is it guilt by association or that they fear the family members would do it next?

It’s unclear, to me, why they’d care. The cynical side of me believes they’d be happier with us in flames, us eaten by fire. Then there’d be less Tibetans for them to worry about.

My grandfather spoke of our country before it was invaded and captured. He spoke of greed. He spoke of serfdom. I wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not because he’d been in a reeducation camp like I was. He was schizophrenic. He’d parrot the party line in public, but at home he’d speak of the country, the old times, independence, both in nostalgia and disgust.

He spoke of it being karma. That Tibetans had strayed from the righteous path the Buddha had set for us. He’d wished the next life, for him, and for every Tibetan, to be better.

I pondered the next life a lot, my first days in jail.  

 

When they arrested me, they bound my arms behind my back, blindfolded me, and hauled me away. Then they brought me to jail and chained me to a chair, a tiger chair; my arms and legs strapped tightly, by leather bands, to the cold, hard metal seat. I sat rooted in that chair for hours. I pissed myself.

They yelled at me, again and again, demanding that I confess to my crime, but I didn’t know what crime they meant. I’d been an English teacher at the local school. I’d only taught from the books they gave me. I’m a devout Buddhist. I don’t believe in harming others. I’ve never stolen. I’ve never committed an illegal act.

I repeated, over and over, that I’d committed no crimes. That didn’t satisfy them.

I remember the room… The interrogation room… It was dark and freezing. It stank. It’d stunk so thickly of urine, already, when I’d been led in there. The atrocious smell was the first thing I noticed when I entered the room, blindfolded, my hands roped behind my back. I was revolted by the intensity, the heavy punch of the stench. It reeked worse than any toilet or outhouse or manure pit… It made me woozy…

They’d untied my blindfold, but I couldn’t see their faces. All I could see were their helmets. The helmets were pill blue and shaped like turtle shells. I still couldn’t quite see their faces when they approached me, either. It was as if they had no faces. There was only a ball of darkness where a face should have been. There was only a black bubble, a void between their uniformed bodies and turtle helmets. It was as if the turtle helmets were hovering in the air above, like flying saucers.

I believe that I pressed my eyes shut when they approached because I didn’t want to see them. I wouldn’t see them. I would control that, if nothing else. But I couldn’t stop hearing. I couldn’t stop hearing the cries, accusations of sedition. Sedition? That’s what it was about, I pieced together. And I denied that, strongly. I professed my patriotism to the Communist Party. I professed my love for my country.

“What is YOUR country?!” one shouted, before dashing over and whacking me, hard, on the shoulder, with a truncheon.

“China!” I cried, “China!”

“China?!” he bellowed back, before striking my sides and shoulders several times, sending shockwaves of crunching pain searing through me.

There’s only so much a person can endure, and eventually the anguish reached its crescendo. My nerves became blunted, and I numbed up, and thank Buddha, the last couple strikes I felt only the sickening jolt of their sticks whipping my numb body. But at least the pain… the pain slept… Then I figured out what I’d said wrong...

“The People’s Republic of China!” I cried out, and then began to sing the national anthem, “March of the Volunteers.” I’d memorized it by heart, after hearing it, every day for years, blasting from the loudspeakers installed around my village.

Once I started singing the anthem, the men relented striking me.

So I sang louder, and louder, my voice straining, hot-salt tears involuntarily streaking down my cheeks, I sang, “Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves! With our flesh and blood, let us build a new Great Wall! As China faces her greatest peril, from each one the urgent call to action comes forth. Arise! Arise! Arise! Millions of but one heart! Braving the enemies' fire! March on! Braving the enemies' fire! March on! March on! March, MARCH ON!”

I’d had a cousin who’d been interrogated, beaten, and he’d spontaneously burst into the song, thinking it might make his captors let up their assault. And it worked. Fortunately, it worked for me too.

But again, they demanded I confess to my crimes. I knew my options were limited, that I would probably have to confess.

After they’d struck my back, the blows must have damaged my lungs because it hurt to breathe. Between choking gasps of breath, I requested they present me my crimes, in writing, and that I’d sign a confession.

I supposed that as long as I wasn’t being framed for a murder and wasn’t facing the death penalty or life sentence, I might confess, depending on the charges. Once the Chinese arrest you, whatever they arrested you for, you did, whether you really did it or not. I’d learned from others’ experiences that the only way out is to confess, that way you’ll receive a lesser sentence.

A murder or other heinous crime that carried too long a sentence I wouldn’t confess to, since either way, I’d be dead. A death penalty would be better, anyhow, than a life in the Chinese labor camps. I’ve heard of life there, waking up at sunrise, picking cotton all day, digging holes, doing hard labor, or toiling with backbreaking factory work. Being beaten, kept in a small dog cage if you didn’t meet quotas. The prison labor camps in China are hell on Earth. I’d rather they just shoot me in the head...

 

"Immolation in Lhasa, Tibet"

As the evening sky began to purple, I shifted my gaze and spotted a young Tibetan girl, maybe 15 feet from us, down the city block. The girl was in an oversized, floppy white robe, like what a cult member would wear. She’d shaved her head, like a Buddhist nun, and her face appeared reddened, yet blank, emotionless, like a passport or driver’s license photo.

Showing no feelings, she set down a backpack, and from it, lifted out a red canister, held it aloft and doused herself in a clear liquid.

She then whipped out a lighter from under her white robe, flicked it with her thumb, and touched the tongue of the tiny orange flame to her chest.

She didn’t explode. It wasn’t like a bombing. It was more like when you start a fire and the kindle begins small and spreads, grows. The flames began in a small pool on her chest and grew into waves that wrinkled, washed sideways and upwards, slower than I’d have expected, although it could have been that the scene was so surreal that it appeared as if the whole thing was happening in slow-motion.

Standing with her arms outstretched to a “T”, the fulgurate flames fully engulfed her form. She appeared as if a burning effigy, inhuman, particularly given her silence. I’d have expected she’d scream or chant, utter a statement, and maybe she did, but I didn’t hear it.

After a handful of long seconds, she then crumpled to the ground, her forward falling body becoming a burning ball, a heap of tumbling flames.

Then the smell reached us. It was far worse than that of burning hair. It was burning hair mixed with the smell of burning flesh. It was such a nauseating smell, such a stench, that once the smell found me, I felt an ugly sensation tingle and wash over me, sickening my stomach, like I swallowed a thumbtack.

It was then, I swear, that I saw the girl’s soul, like a specter, float upwards and leave her body; her ghost, her soul in a spectral cast, ascending luminously from the fire. 

The girl, in her white robe, was whole, intact, her form translucent and radiant. Her face was resolute, contrite, as she rose from the burning lump, like a butterfly from a chrysalis. Then she broke apart, into a thousand hailstone-like pieces that whirled and washed in with the wafts of bone-gray smoke billowing below the purpling night.

The police in the booth nearby had been playing on their phones, when it happened, and were too late to stop the immolation, though I guess they rushed in once they’d looked up and seen the flames. The cops, panic painted all over their twisted faces, clumsily hurried over, brandishing fire extinguishers, and they desperately shot a volley of gooey white foamy liquid bursts that extinguished the blaze.

But they were unable to prevent the soul from exiting the body, and all that remained on the pavement was a white and black blob, vapors, and curls of smoke…

Our group stood transfixed, watching the scene. It was like some shit from a movie, seeing a person burn themself alive. I’d never seen anyone die before. I was frozen in shock. Then I shuddered, my throat dry as salt, my throat clicking. I was thinking I might vomit.

Even the Welshman was moved by the scene. He just stared at it, somber, his face bleached pink and his upper lip curled, his head cocked to the side. The other guys cried. My eyes teared up a bit, too, I’ll admit.

I wondered if she’d moved on to another life. I hoped she did. I hoped she wasn’t a ghost, an unhappy ghost, wandering the Earth. That wasn’t a sky burial. But did it count? Was it merit? Or would she go to the Buddhist version of hell, Naraka? I wanted to ask our tour guide about it…

But I wouldn’t have the chance. Another group of cops quickly showed, swarmed the scene. They whisked us away and led us to a couple idling cop cars and brought us to police headquarters.

 

Man, that police place was grim. It was a big gray box of a building, and it seemed like everything in it was gray or colorless. Worse yet, it was cold as a meat locker, smelled moldy as an old gym, and practically every cop inside was smoking cigarettes. Smoking cigarettes inside their offices, the hallways, at their desks, even in the elevators. I’d never seen so many people smoking. It was like we’d stepped out of a time machine, stepped into a 1950s black and white movie…

The police didn’t handcuff us, and they weren’t rough with us. But, with the help of an interpreter (a police lady, a young, 20ish Chinese girl, not bad looking, either) a pair of shifty-eyed middle-aged coppers questioned us for an hour or so about the incident, asking the same stupid questions again and again.

We were then shuffled from one drab, gray room to another, made to wait. Finally, an English-speaking policeman arrived to question us. The policeman had a fat head, and the flesh around his eyes was all puffy. The fat head gamboled in, walking in confident, elongated strides. He was smoking a cig, of course, and he sat down to speak with us.

(The fat head’s comportment and his appearance gave him the look of a man who is very important, or a man who just thinks he’s very important. I couldn’t determine which…)

The fat head’s eyes had a quiet kind of animosity to them. He spoke impeccable English, almost in an upper-class British accent. He proceeded to interview us as a group. Then he brought us to other identically drab waiting rooms and interviewed us separately, asked the same shit he and the other cops asked, “What did you see?” “Where are you from?” “Did you know her?” et fucking cetera, man.

(Like any of us would know a random Tibetan chick on the street? Come on!)

Then another set of cops, in different uniforms trudged in. They were more military looking, these cops, had helmets, combat boots, the whole nine. With furrowed brows, lips seemingly curled in disgust, they checked our phones, and one of their gruff superior types, who didn’t speak English, demanded us, through the cute girl interpreter, to delete every single photo we’d taken during the trip.

The cute interpreter maintained a polite tone and trembling smile as she spoke with us. Obviously, none of us wished to trash all our vacation photos, all of which were innocuous, since I can’t remember any of us snapping photos of the immolation. However, none of us protested the policeman’s commands.

 

After they thoroughly inspected our phones, they huddled up, and the interpreter returned, told us we were to be deported immediately. She told us “no why” when we asked why, all the while maintaining her formal tone and polished albeit shaky smile. 

We were stunned. We couldn’t figure out why we were being deported, what part we had in this, aside from being witnesses… Perhaps it was that they saw us as a bad omen, bad luck. Welshman speculated that it was probably because they would lock down the area and that meant kicking foreigners out first. Whatever it was, the decision was final. There’d be no appeals. Peering over at the cops, with their menacing scowls, they didn’t appear to be open to negotiations. 

Once they finished the interrogations, they requested us to sign paperwork, which was entirely written in Chinese, and which the interpreter told us was simply a confirmation that we’d witnessed a “terrorist attack” and an act of “insurrection.” However, flipping through the papers, we wordlessly glanced at the Chinese characters... To me, the words were like strange hieroglyphics, practically an alien script...

Then, glancing at each other, we shook our heads, and, to a man, we refused, on the grounds that we couldn’t read Chinese, and we requested to speak with our countries’ consulates.

Thinking we might be spending a few days, or weeks, possibly, in the police station, we decided that would still be better than signing a statement in a language we can’t read. A statement that perhaps could be a confession or political ploy, form of entrapment.

But only maybe 20 minutes later, the cops returned, without the paperwork, and escorted us out and drove us to the hostel to gather our things. Then we journeyed directly to the airport, to leave on the first flight out to Hong Kong, which was the next morning, and so we spent the night in the airport, accompanied the entire time by angry-eyed, surly police escorts.

The Chinese police didn’t abuse us, but there was a look in their eyes, a seething hatred toward us that I could sense. It was a look like, “If we had the chance to kill you, to shove you in front of a firing squad, we happily would, so don’t try anything brave, you stupid fucking honky…”

“…”

We spoke briefly, by phone, with the tour guide, who promised us a partial refund, because the portion of the trip to Mount Everest, to drive around the foot of the mountain, would be canceled.

“I can’t climb the fucking mountain naked, right? Bullocks!” grumbled the Welshman, disappointed. Though he whispered to me, triumphantly, as we stood at the urinals, with our dicks in our hands, pissing, that his camera and phone were both set to the cloud and the photos would be safe. He’d be posting them to Facebook later. He bragged that he’d once sold a picture to the AP of a soldier shooting a protestor in Bangkok.

“Wonder how much the Firestarter will fetch...” Welshman wondered aloud in a hushed voice, and a cunning little smile touched his lips.

The whole time in Tibet, even though I’d downloaded a VPN, I could barely get online. I guess he had satellite net or something else. A few weeks later, when I was in Japan, he emailed me the pics, but forwarded none of the “Firestarter.” I didn’t ask why… 

 

Though I was bummed I couldn’t check out Mount Everest, seeing that sky burial, then seeing that soul pass from the girl’s body, was far more powerful than visiting any mountain, even the world’s tallest. 

Man, watching the girl’s soul, watching her ghost, witnessing it with my own eyes, it was, to me, a verification that the Buddhists are right. There is a soul. There is karma. There is another life. There is something more. I’d seen it. I’d really seen it.

Ever since then, I became a philosophical Buddhist. I don’t visit the temple or pray, but I’m with the ideology. I can relate a lot to the Buddha. I too was a sheltered rich kid, a prince, who was profoundly changed, after leaving my palace and witnessing the real world, witnessing suffering... I so totally respect and love the Buddha’s story, the Buddha’s whole vibe. I love the Buddha, man; like every other religious figure is all blood and guts and damnation, and here’s the Buddha, totally chill…

Maybe I’ll do like him. Start a new religion. Or start a cult. Colt’s Cult. Cult of Colt. But it’d be a cool cult, like we wouldn’t be into sex crimes or suicide or spaceships. We wouldn’t be weird. We’d just go somewhere and chill. Be chill. Like the Buddha…

I’m still a party guy, a philanderer, sure. I’m far from perfect. But it’s all in fun. Everything I do is fun. I try to create positive vibes because I know they’ll boomerang back to me. And I know that if I create positive energy, my next life will be rad. I totally believe in reincarnation, man. I’m ready for it. Like, death could be awesome, I think, if you’ve been living right….

So, look, I’m not afraid of any ghosts, man. I’m not afraid of that house. I’ll visit it later. I mean, for real, after what I saw, I know that ghosts are a part of something greater. Ghosts are just like you or me. They’re travelers. They’re passing through, and they’re not to be feared.

You know what I have come to believe? I believe that the scariest ghosts and monsters are alive. They’re inside us. They’re the evil living in the hearts of men. They’re the impulses of rage, insanity. They’re what make people kill. They’re the hopelessness, the desperation that would drive a person to burn themself alive. They’re our darkest feelings. Now those… Those are the fucking scariest spirits.

"Killing Mr. Potato Head"

 

The evening’s reception was a resounding success. There must have been over 100 people in attendance!

Smiling through sweet sips of champagne, Mr. Wu gazed proudly around the pristine reception hall. The place was nothing short of immaculate, with its teak walls, jade sculptures, marble-top tables, and crystal chandeliers...

Mr. Wu drew in a deep breath. Then he nodded in satisfaction, and his eyes twinkled as he soaked in the sights and smells of the feast, and his ears perked up at the clinking of wine glasses, hum of chatter, and choruses of laughter.

This was it. His years were coming to fruition. He’d bought a big house and a fancy car. He’d married a beautiful woman and had a beautiful baby. Yes. This was it. He was on his way to being a true tiger. He could see it now. The IPO, the private planes, Swiss bank accounts, luxury ski trips, interviews on TV. It was happening. By Buddha, it was happening!

 

Mr. Wu’s daughter, Lin, eyed her father with disgust. Her eyes blazing as she sat rooted to her chair. Watching her father drink and be merry, it made her sick. Watching him brag about “his” business… Ugh, it boiled her blood.

Lin hated everything about her father, starting with his personality. She hated him as a person, first and foremost. But she also really hated his appearance. Particularly his head. The shape of his head, it was weird. It was like a big, boiled egg, like his face was just a drawing on a boiled egg. Oh, and the way his forehead slopes at too sharp an angle, like a ramp, as it curves to his scalp, to her, that was also highly unnerving.

Not only did he have a big stupid weird head, but she hated his short legs and arms too. With his short legs and arms and big bald head, her father reminded her, unflatteringly, of a Mr. Potato Head doll.

How could any woman be with a man like that, she’d pondered, in dismay… She’d suspected her mother had had an affair. That he wasn’t her real father.

God, she really hoped he wasn’t.  

 

Mr. Wu’s wife, Shan, sat by his side, like always, steeped in silence. While Mr. Wu bloviated, Shan incessantly checked her phone, tapped on her tablet, kept track of products, sales, and clients. Shan was a shrewd, serious, silent, and solemn woman. A woman with eyes like crystal balls. A woman with eyes that always appeared to be staring directly at you, like an Andy Warhol painting.

Shan was a woman of few words. But when she spoke, her words were elegant and refined, shot at measured clips.

And when she spoke, people listened. 

 

Lin glowered at her father, thinking of ways to kill him. She’d most enjoy murdering him with a blunt object of some sort, she fantasized. To feel the flaying of his flesh… To feel his bones breaking as she beat him to death... His big stupid head bursting and squishing open like a watermelon…

God, she hated her father. She hated him more than anyone. It was a secret hate, though, one she’d never confessed. It was a secret hate that manifested itself in fits of silence, lack of eye contact, and, during college, a series of online “hookups” with older men, of varying ethnicities.

She’d read once that a woman’s first relationship with a man is the father/daughter relationship, how that sets the tone for all future relationships with men.

The mere thought of that made her want to jump off a bridge.   

 

 

As usual, they left before the drinking games began. Above them hung an inky-black, starless sky, featuring only a fuzzy outline of its low-hanging crescent moon, and Lin and Shan crossed through the parking lot, in lockstep, arm in arm, stepping swiftly in the heavy cold and its growing darkness.

Shan clutched Lin’s arm tighter. Her opal eyes bulged. Then she peered around, panoramically, and swung her gaze, touched her lips to Lin’s left ear, and whispered in wet hot pulses that perhaps the car had been bugged. That Lin’s father had possibly planted a listening device in the vehicle’s dashboard.

The pair swallowed their words, piled into the Porsche. Their ride home featuring a symphony of sighs, sign language, screenshots and knowing nods.  

 

It was just past midnight when Mr. Wu stumbled home, stinking drunk. His unwelcome arrival like a sudden nosebleed. His arrival announced as he slammed the door, shaking the house’s foundations. In a form of mimicry, a madman’s cries cut the air, and he was acting the fool, kicking the couch, shouting incorrigibly.  

Shan, her face twisted in broken sleep, padded forward, her arms crossed defensively over her chest.

In a red flowery bathrobe, she descended the winding staircase.

The noise hushed into gaping silence. But only for a minute or two. Then the screams began, grew louder, shriller. Shan’s pained shrieks echoing, piercing the character of the night, rousting Lin out of bed.

 

Lin groggily stepped down the winding staircase. Then a frisson of fear passed over her like an electric current. Words were dead and meaningless as she laid weary eyes on her father, Mr. Potato Head… Mr. Potato Head all red-faced, in the atrium, gripping a brick-shaped butcher knife. Mr. Potato Head pinning her mother against the double door. Mr. Potato Head pressing the blade of the knife to her mother’s throat.  

Lin ran to the kitchen, grabbed the first blunt object she saw- a frying pan from off the stovetop- then dashed into the atrium, and cocked back the frying pan like a baseball bat and whapped her father upside his horrible big bald head.

 

Mr. Wu grunted, and the air left his lungs as he dropped the knife, the knife landing with a clink on the hardwood floor. Then Mr. Wu crouched and wallowed in pain, cupping his hands defensively over his skull, and he waddled sideways like a crab, in a lame attempt to escape the oncoming blows.

Lin continued to hammer at her father’s big stupid head with the frying pan, hitting him again and again. The pan clanking as it beat at his skull, the metal reverberating in high-pitched jangles, like a blacksmith hitting hot iron.

Lin lost herself in the violence. It felt so good. Her serotonin surged. Bashing her father’s big bald head was such a release, such a huge release that it was almost orgasmic.

It was the first time she’d ever fought back against her father. After everything he’d done. And there’d been a lot he’d done. There’d been countless slaps and shoves. There’d been countless threats. He’d beat her, her mother with impunity. He’d belittled them. He’d been such a tyrant.  

But that was ending. Ending now. And Lin let a bloodcurdling, celebratory howl. And she swung the pan harder and harder, heaving it at her father’s horribly ugly head, which was gushing blood and beginning to resemble a pepperoni pizza, the way his yellow skin was peeling back over his skull to reveal thick clumpy red patches.

 

Mr. Wu lay unconscious. Shan then tugged Lin away, hugged and comforted her. Lin dropped the blood-splattered pan, curled and cried into her mother’s bosom.

Lin begged her mother to finish him off. It could be self-defense. They could finally break free of him.

Shan gently broke their embrace. Shook her head. Rubbed her red face and stared off into the unknown distance, wistfully.

 

Mr. Wu woke up late the next morning, in the anteroom, his head throbbing and pulsing, his skull feeling like someone was tap-dancing on it.

He pushed himself up from the floor, lurched into the kitchen. No one was there.

Then he moved slowly and lifelessly, like a zombie, making his way into the backyard, where he threaded through the freshly planted rose garden, and he purposely stomped on a few budding plants.

The garden led him to the bean-shaped, empty swimming pool, and he circled the swimming pool, the bright blue crater, a few times, unsure what he was looking for. Perhaps someone just to tell him what happened to his head, and why he’d awakened, on the floor, in a crown of blood.

 

 

"Sky Burial in Tibet"

 

After the palace, we drove out to the countryside and saw something I could never, not in my wildest drug-addled dreams, have ever imagined.

A “sky burial.”

Suffice to say, we weren’t scheduled to see it; it wasn’t on our itinerary; we were to visit a temple nearby, but, on the drive over, from the van, we saw a small procession dragging a corpse up a rocky hill, and we asked the guide about it. Once he responded that it was a sky burial, we hounded him to pull over, to let us see, and he begrudgingly obliged, parked on the side of the road and we rushed out to view the unfolding spectacle. 

The corpse was a plump, brown-skinned old man. His naked, lifeless body was being dragged by three men, two of them youngish, one of them middle-aged. At the top of the earthy hill, the men, accompanied by 5 chanting monks, lay the corpse down. From off their shoulders, the men threw down and opened backpacks, then fished out what looked like small axes, chopping tools. 

Flanked by the chanting, bald-headed monks, the men, in floppy orange clothing, were smiling and nonchalantly chatting, and then the men suddenly raised their axes high in the air and began hacking apart the corpse, chopping the body into pieces.

My stomach shifted, watching it. The others retched. The Welshman didn’t, though. He’d served in the army so he’d seen way more gruesome scenes. Still, he was speechless, awed by it, watching the men laugh, not callously, but so normally, so casually, as they broke the body apart.

Our tour guide was unmoved. But when he noticed how affected we were, he explained to us that in Tibetan Buddhism, it’s believed the soul passes out of the body, after death, so that body is not a person anymore, it’s just an empty vessel, a shell. The remains of the shell, he said, would be fed back to the Earth, be food for vultures.

Hearing him discuss the sky burial was the first time I’d heard any emotion, passion in his voice. Not a lot of emotion, mind you, but certainly a trace…

He said the monks’ chanting was part of a ritual to summon vultures to eat the corpse, that the monks would sprinkle sugar over the corpse to sweeten it for the birds.

The men chopping up, separating the body were a “Todken” a sky burial master, and his assistants, who specialized in these burials. Most Tibetans, the tour guide told us, believe that if they didn’t have a sky burial, they’d become a ghost, wandering the Earth, unable to pass on to the next life.

I asked the tour guide if he’d have a sky burial, and he nodded, reluctantly, not making eye contact. His head cocked back, his eyes were solemnly locked on the scene at the top of the hill, where the men were pulling the corpse’s limp limbs off as if picking apart a crab.

Then I asked the guide if he believed that he’d be a ghost if he didn’t receive a sky burial, and he didn’t reply to my question. An awkward silence hung heavy in the frigid mountain air. 

He went on to say that the ground in Tibet is too hard, cold, and rocky to bury bodies, so sky burials were of a practical nature, but also it fit Buddhist beliefs that humans are a part of something greater, a part of the universe, and the body, being empty of a soul, could be made beneficial, could be made a form of merit, being fed to the wild like this.

“Excarnation,” exclaimed the Welshman, smoothing back his scraggly blond hair that’d been flapping in the increasingly bitter, cold and dry wind.

The icy Himalayan air kicking up, to a man, we were a shivering mass, our jaws twitching, teeth chattering.

“It’s not always a ceremony like this one. Often the family will bring the body out, leave it by the temple, leave it for the vultures…” mentioned the tour guide, shifting his gaze and walking with heavy feet towards the van, and we followed him, like a V of swan, back over to the vehicle.

I wanted to quip to Welshman about being dead, left out like that, on a hill in the Himalayas sure saves a lot of money on a funeral. Is nice to the birds, too, feeding them dinner.

But then I remembered how it’s possible that your brain remains alive, possibly, for days after you die, and you’d maybe experience that... The corpse up there perhaps had just suffered the torture of being hacked apart with axes and would now endure the horrific ordeal of being eaten, picked apart like a Thanksgiving turkey by fucking vultures... Cremation, a big smoky final session in the sauna sounded a whole lot better to me…

We continued onward, drove up to a nearby temple that stood on a mountain spur. It was another white stone, red wood, and gold-trimmed complex and was nestled at the foot of a jagged, rocky hill, overlooking a crystal blue, surging river. Bands of multi-colored prayer flags hung from its front rafters and a gargantuan golden stupa spiraled from its center. 

The temple had tall, whitewashed walls, topped by bands of red ochre and golden circles. There were massive entry doors, made of wood and iron, and high, sloping walls. Like the palace and Jokhang Temple, the walls were decorated in Buddhist-themed motifs, like the ashtamangala. 

Strolling the temple grounds, we kept tripping and stumbling over raised steps in the doorways, which we found amusing, in a self-deprecating way, laughing at one another’s follies. However, the tour guide maintained his poker face and told us in a deadpan voice that the thresholds were intentionally built high, to block wayward spirits. 

In one of the winding halls, the Londoner swung his red face to me, his thin lips barely moving as he spoke, and he mumbled about how he had met a Tibetan girl working at the hostel and was trying to bang her. He then stopped to hand a few small bills to a monk at the temple for a blessing, whispering to me afterward that “I’m doing it for luck, so I can ‘shag’ that Tibetan girl. If this doesn’t work, I can assure you, I am done with Buddhism…”

Though this temple was smaller in scale, inside, it had a curious vastness. Walking about its corridors, I had an uneasy feeling. Glancing around at the lifelike Buddha sculptures and busts in every corner, many of them appeared to be glaring, and it was as if the weight of a thousand eyes were baring down on me. I was experiencing a creeping omen, an anxiety, like perhaps spirits in the temple’s vicinity were trying to warn us about something…

 

After touring the temple, we returned to Lhasa. We had an early dinner, without our guide, at a Nepalese restaurant near our hostel.

(The tour guide was with us during the day, but at night he’d departed in his minivan to go back wherever it was that he went, and we were left to our own devices…)

Staggering out of the restaurant, our bellies stuffed with curry, jasmine rice and nan breads, we went wandering through the city center, then decided to check out a nearby bar. On our way, we must have passed by a police booth at every intersection. Seemingly, on every street, there was a small white and blue police booth, manned by one or two cops. Atop each booth, and installed at every intersection, and all around the city, were a panopticon of security cameras, the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party. Man, I was getting the feeling like the CCP could see more than God…

The heavy security presence, cameras, abundance of police were noticeable to us upon arrival at the airport, and throughout our stay. We’d also passed by numerous roving Chinese police squads, usually consisting of about 10 men, 10 sour-faced coppers, in phalanxes, marching in lockstep, all fitted with fire extinguishers.

And now was when we’d understand why most of the cops in Lhasa wielded fire extinguishers instead of just the traditional police accoutrements…

"A Visit to the Dalai Lama's House"

 

Aside from the Jokhang Temple, Lhasa wasn’t as crowded or peopled as Hong Kong. Perhaps there aren’t a whole lot of people who’d want to live in a place that high off the ground. I wasn’t sure how people could live there, really, living up in the sky like that.

Back in Hong Kong, I’d read an article about how Tibetans had evolved differently than other humans, developing special genes and anatomies that enabled them to survive at a higher altitude. Their very existence, like, an example of Darwinism, these people of the skies…

The Tibetans were interesting people, man. They had a different appearance to them than the Chinese. They were something of a hybrid between the Indians, with their shorter stature and dark brown skin, and Chinese, with slanted eyes.

Visiting different spots around the city, I noticed immediately how friendly they were, the Tibetans. And I’d laugh at how the street peddlers would cajole us, some even trying, absurdly, to wrangle us, pull us into their street side stall, so they could sell us tchotchkes, sweets, or whatever they had sitting under canopies or large umbrellas.

I didn’t know what they were saying since most were speaking Tibetan to us. But it was obvious they were hawking their wares, pointing to things, shoving them in our faces. It was comical, really.  

Although, man, it was sad, some of the street beggars we saw. There was a time or two, when a beggar, holding a little baby, would literally hoist up the baby and thrust it at us, while pleading for money. Welshman said not to be fooled by it, however, because, apparently, in parts of Asia, there’s a “baby renting” racket, where “professional” beggars will rent a baby for a day, to elicit sympathy…

There were little kid street beggars, too, skittering around. One beggar, looking no more than 6 years old, ran up to our group, wrapped himself around the tall lanky Londoner’s leg and wouldn’t let go until the guy gave the kid a couple bucks. It felt more like a form of emotional extortion to me… But really, it was sad, man, to see that level of poverty, to see little kids doing that…

I mean, dude, I grew up rich. I pretty much grew up in a castle. The worst thing I could remember witnessing was a friend in summer camp, on a hike, stumble into a beehive, and get swarmed by angry waves of bees, stung up and down his back. I was roughly 20 feet away, viewed the horrific scene as we trekked up a path, by a clearwater mountain stream. I remember the bees, the buzzing mass, the hovering shadow encircle and swallow him in its clutches, the army of flying insects jabbing and stinging at him as he wallowed, his voice cracking in misery, pain and terror.

Amazingly, he didn’t die. But his back, his face, and his arms and legs were swollen, sheeted in red lumps. Dude looked almost like the Elephant Man... It was ill…

That was likely the worst, saddest thing I’d ever seen in person. But I’d never seen such wide-scale suffering until I traveled to the developing world. I had never seen truly grinding, truly generational poverty. I had never seen such inequity, corruption and failure of leadership until I traveled to Latin America, parts of Asia, the Middle East, Africa. Man, it was fucking visceral, seeing that. Seriously, like, I’d take the worst slum, the worst neighborhood in America, any day, over the slums I saw. Americans really don’t understand how some people are living.

I remember, as a kid, seeing that fat lady in those infomercials, pleading for money to feed starving African children. I didn’t see her anywhere, in my travels. I was thinking maybe I’d spot her in some slum, on the outskirts of a city, filming an infomercial. But I didn’t. I remember that we’d always joked, my friends and me, that she’d been eating all those kids’ food, or she was like a cannibal or some shit, kidnapping and eating the kids. But after seeing those places, for real, all that became less funny. I wonder what happened to that lady. I don’t know.

But, seriously, man, like I really became aware of how fortunate I was, in so many ways, after traveling the world, for real…

Most of the Tibetans we came across had obviously not traveled much outside of Tibet. Most had obviously never seen white people before, with how they were looking at us, gazing at us in wide-eyed, happy amazement. The rural, farmer types in particular. They’d point, wave, stare at us. Here or there one would speak to us, in Tibetan, smiling and asking us questions.

Welshman whispered to me something about how it was a far cry from the first foreigners who’d visited Tibet and were hissed at and spit on. Nope, we were treated far better, thankfully…

When the Tibetans would speak to us, wave, say stuff in Tibetan, we’d just smile back, shrug our shoulders. Our tour guide, you might have thought, would have translated some, but he kept quiet, dour-faced as always; his lips firmly pressed together at all times.

As he led us around, his hard face betrayed little emotion, and he kept his eyes fixed to the ground or in a straight line toward our destination. He only translated when a transaction of cash was necessary, like at restaurants or buying entrance tickets to temples or if we wanted help purchasing a souvenir.

 

It was striking, to me, how positive most of the locals’ attitudes were, given the circumstances, and how much random people on the street smiled.

I only knew a bit of the history. I’d read online, before we came, how the Communist Chinese had invaded Tibet, occupied it since the 1950s and declared it a part of China, how they expelled the Dalai Lama, considered him a terrorist. To the Chinese, the Dalai Lama was like Osama Bin Laden. It was all strange to me, seeing that I’d always viewed the Dalai Lama as a peaceful, friendly old man.

I’d read too that the Chinese had even banned the Dalai Lama from being reincarnated. Man, the Chinese had things in Tibet so locked down that they controlled reincarnations! I wondered how that worked, if the Chinese government had paranormal police, like the Ghostbusters, and if the Dalai Lama’s ghost would be thrown into a paranormal prison, a purgatory of some sort. I couldn’t quite figure that one out. The communists are weird, man. 

 

Speaking of the Dalai Lama, we were able to visit his house, the Potala Palace, which is an immense, mammoth red and white structure atop a hill, in the old city area of Lhasa.

Driving in and stepping out of the van, we tossed our heads back, gawked and gasped at the sight of the palace. The palatial structure towered and skied above us, sat imposingly with the sharp teeth of the Himalayas as its backdrop. Its grandiose appearance gave it a curious aura of seclusion, and to enter the palace, we had to trudge up a small mountain of steps that were almost like an unending stairway to the heavens.

Walking up the vertiginously ascending, zigzagging, endless flights of white stone stairs was like climbing an obstacle course, with how thin the air was. We were all parched, huffing and puffing, hands on knees, once we reached the stairs’ summit, but our moods were slightly lifted upon being greeted by the snow lion statues at the entrance. We then wordlessly panned our gazes, appreciated and soaked in the jaw-dropping views of the Tibetan plateau. 

In contrast to its bewildering façade, the palace felt curiously empty inside. But it was definitely worth seeing for its panoramic views of Lhasa and its environs. Not to mention the breathtaking, lush wooden architecture, columns, and inward sloping walls painted in iridescent reds, golds, and greens. The walls were beautifully decorated, too, meticulously painted in detailed Buddhist scenes and images. With the overall craftsmanship, scale of the 32-acre complex, with its 13 storeys and over 1000 rooms, one could easily understand its UNESCO status, designation as one of the “Wonders of the World.”

Despite its grandeur, there really was an empty feeling in being there, I thought. As if we shouldn’t be there. The palace was a graveyard of sorts, a house of ghosts, a place in enemy hands. It felt like Paris, the Eiffel Tower, during the Nazi years.

Just being a tourist there felt wrong, guilty in a way. I felt like a graverobber, like I was prying open and exploring an ancient tomb…