NYT: An Ambivalent China Affirms the Charisma of the Dalai Lama

[ellisonz]

China rebuilt the Dalai Lama's ancestral home and fixed up all the houses in Hong'Ai, which now attracts tourists. By Dan Levin.

By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: February 18, 2012

HONG’AI, China — Despite the absence of road signs or promotional Web sites, a dozen or so people each day manage to find their way to this sleepy hamlet that sits in the fold of a dusky mountain in northwestern Qinghai Province.

They congratulate themselves for having found the place — and for evading the police — but then come face to face with Gonpo Tashi, a squat, no-nonsense barley farmer who guards the entrance to the house where his uncle, the 14th Dalai Lama, was born 76 years ago.

If the traveler speaks Tibetan, Mr. Tashi, 65, will peer warily out into the road before swinging open the heavy wooden doors and allowing entry to the modest home where China’s most reviled and revered spiritual leader spent the first three years of his life.

If the visitor is Han Chinese, the country’s dominant ethnic group, the gatekeeper might grumble vaguely about “the rules” but then relent.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/world/asia/china-ambivalently-affirms-dalai-lamas-popularity.html