The Economist - USA (2020-07-25)

66 TheEconomistJuly 25th 2020

1

I

f allchina’sTibetan-inhabitedterritory

were combined into a single country, it

would be among the dozen or so largest in

the world by land area, albeit with a popu-

lation about the size of tiny Hong Kong’s.

So vast is the Tibetan plateau that a plane

flying directly from Lhasa, its cultural capi-

tal, to Beijing about 2,500km away com-

pletes nearly half of its journey before leav-

ing the airspace above the Tibetan-pop-

ulated zone.

This scale matters. It is challenging

enough to understand the lives of Tibetans,

given that more than half of the area they

inhabitformstheTibetAutonomousRe-

gion(tar),towhichChinararelyadmits

foreignjournalists.Thenthereisthety-

rannyofdistance—thedifficultyofreach-

ingscatteredTibetancommunitiesacross

theplateau’shigh-altitudegrasslands.The

partsoutsidethetarareadministeredby

fourotherprovinces,whichdoadmitjour-

nalists.Buta longjourneycanreacha fruit-

less end at police roadblocks erected near

trouble spots. That hypothetical Tibetan

country would be by far the least accessible

of the world’s giants.

Barbara Demick, a former Beijing corre-

spondent of the Los Angeles Times, has

therefore achieved something remarkable

with her portrait of a small Tibetan town,

Ngaba (also called Aba), in Sichuan prov-

ince. It is close to the edge of the plateau,

near that halfway point along the plane’s

flight path. Yet its proximity to China’s eth-

nic-Han interior does not make it any

easiertovisitthanLhasa.

The authoritiessee to that—because,

eversinceanexplosionofunrest across the

plateauin2008,Ngabahasbeen a centre of

Tibetan discontent.It was the scene of

someofthemostviolentaction by Chinese

security forces that year. In “Eat the

Buddha”,MsDemicksaysdozens of protes-

tersinNgabawereshotdead. Of more than

150 Tibetanswhohavesinceset themselves

on fire in protestagainst Chinese rule,

aboutone-thirdhavecomefrom Ngaba or

itssurroundings.

MsDemickmanagedtomake three vis-

itstoNgaba,usinga floppy hat and face

masktoobscureherfeatures (this was be-

forecovid-19,whenmaskswere worn to

protectagainstpollution).Her investiga-

tionsofthelivesofselectedresidents were

aided by interviews in less-restricted parts

of the plateau and among Tibetan exiles.

The resulting account is gripping.

Ngaba (pictured) is a little-known town

that got its first traffic light in 2013. Ms

Demick illuminates it as no other writer

has. Through her subjects’ eyes, she de-

scribes its turbulent development from the

early days of the Communist Party’s con-

trol of the plateau in the 1950s to the unrest

of 2008 and its horrific aftermath as Chi-

nese forces tried to crush all opposition.

For weeks after that upheaval, the au-

InsideTibet

Fearandloathingontheplateau

TwobookspenetratethemysteryandevokethetragedyofTibet

Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a

Tibetan Town.By Barbara Demick. Random

House; 352 pages; $28. Granta; £18.99

The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan

Frontier.By Benno Weiner. Cornell

University Press; 312 pages; $45 and £37

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