Word: qinghai
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...first met Dorje in front of the gates of the Longwu Monastery in Tongren, a town in China's far-western Qinghai province. Like the majority there, he was an ethnic Tibetan, a nomadic yak breeder in town on a pilgrimage. While friendly toward foreigners, Dorje nodded at the video cameras mounted above the road and said we'd better speak somewhere private. It's a grim commentary on the iron grip China maintains on Tibetan areas of the country that even a yak herdsman knows to be wary of video surveillance. In a sheltered corner of the monastery...
...shopkeepers to students to monks. "We didn't celebrate anything this year, because we have nothing to celebrate," he says grimly. "We want to respect and commemorate the people who were killed last year," when demonstrations against Chinese rule in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, which neighbors Qinghai, turned violent. Beijing says 19 were killed, mostly innocent Chinese shopkeepers. Tibet's government in exile, led by its spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, put the number at more than 200, mostly Tibetans. This businessman, like many of his compatriots, passionately insists that the real number is in the thousands...
...aged businessman wearing a heavy winter coat against the bitter winds that knife through the monastery's narrow alleys - immediately glances up and then over his shoulder. It is the universal, instinctive reaction of Tibetans I talked to on a recent trip to China's far western province of Qinghai, where ethnic Tibetans make up the majority of the population in the areas closest to the Qinghai-Tibet border. "Cameras," he hisses, nodding upward. "The police have them everywhere...
...mark the anniversary, many Tibetans conducted a widespread campaign of civil disobedience this Lunar New Year against authorities in other heavily Tibetan areas of China, like Qinghai, where around half of the country's 6 million ethnic Tibetans live. And with a probable boycott of Lunar New Year celebrations set to unfold inside Tibet, where the 15 days of festivities begin on Feb. 25 in accordance to the Tibetan lunar calendar, tension is likely to rise further. Even Chinese officials have said they can't rule out an outbreak of trouble, blaming the Dalai Lama for fomenting unrest. Tensions could...
...sentiment in areas like Qinghai is anything to go by, further protests, arrests and possibly worse seem inevitable given the depth of anger among the Tibetan population. Most Tibetans here refused to undertake any of the public activities that usually mark the coming of the New Year. "There was no dancing or singing. No one let off fireworks, even though the Chinese gave people money to buy them," says one young villager. He says the decision was not coordinated by outside forces (officials from Tibet's government in exile have called for a boycott of the celebrations in interviews with...