The EconomistJuly 25th 2020 Books & arts 672 thorities blockaded Kirti monastery, the
town’s religious centre, in what appeared
to be an attempt to starve the 3,000 monks
inside into submission. Eventually they
moved in, arrested 600 of them and locked
them into spaces so crowded that nobody
could sit or lie down. The monks had to ur-
inate and defecate where they stood, Ms
Demick recounts. They were forced to
make statements, sometimes on camera,
disavowing support for the Dalai Lama, Ti-
bet’s exiled spiritual leader. Even now, Ms
Demick says, “The level of fear among Ti-
betans is comparable to what I’ve seen in
North Korea.” (An earlier book of hers ex-
plored horrors there.)
It is striking that an area of Tibet so
close to the relatively prosperous ethnic-
Han hinterland should be so seething with
resentment of Chinese rule. If there has
been any spillover effect of that wealth, it
clearly has not helped win over Tibetans
there. A Tibetan construction worker in
Ngaba tells Ms Demick that most of the
businesses and shops are these days
owned by Han Chinese.
When history rhymes
In “The Chinese Revolution on the Tibetan
Frontier”, Benno Weiner, an academic, fo-
cuses on the early phase of the party’s ef-
forts to integrate another bit of the Tibetan
fringe into the Communist state. His work
draws on official archives from Zeku, a
county in Qinghai province. It is a drier ac-
count than Ms Demick’s, but provides valu-
able detail on how the party tackled the
problem of establishing control in an area
culturally, linguistically, economically and
politically so different from the interior.
Again, proximity to the Han hinterland
did not appear to help. In the 1950s that part
of the plateau was in revolt before an upris-
ing in distant Lhasa that resulted in the Da-
lai Lama’s flight to India. Many thousands
of Tibetans in Qinghai were killed during
the suppression of the rebellion there in- That violence “has not been forgot-
ten” in the region, Mr Weiner writes.
The confrontations of the late 1950s fol-
lowed a period during which Tibetans had
been allowed to maintain their pre-Com-
munist way of life, with the old elites large-
ly still in place. It was when the party lost
patience and began to treat those elites as
class enemies and collectivise agriculture
that widespread unrest erupted. Readers of
Mr Weiner’s book might reflect on how as-
pects of his story are now being repeated in
Hong Kong. Another place on China’s
fringe is discovering what happens when
the party loses patience with a pre-Com-
munist order that it once tolerated.
At least in Hong Kong the world is
watching. By contrast, seldom is the veil
lifted from Tibet—which makes Ms Dem-
ick’s and Mr Weiner’s chronicles all the
more worth reading. 7
I
n his strikinglime-green costume, Oc-
tavio Chacón, a journeyman matador, en-
ticed a bull to charge around him, alter-
nately drawing it forward by the left horn
and the right. Several beasts showed re-
markable strength to shrug off mounted
picadors, remaining on their feet and win-
ning applause even as death in the sand ap-
proached. Meanwhile in the stands, securi-
ty teams ensured that a distance of one and
a half metres was maintained between all
spectators. Loudspeakers broadcast fre-
quent reminders that, following an edict
from the regional government of Castile
and León, masks were compulsory.
Live entertainment of all kinds is strug-
gling to adapt to covid-19, not only because
of the financial blows it has dealt. The elec-
tricity of performance risks being defused
by the hygiene measures now required to
host even diminished audiences. Amid the
gore and pageantry of the first bullfights in
Spain of the covid era, held in Ávila on July
18th and 19th, the contradiction between
drama and health precautions was espe-
cially stark. “At least the toilets here have
sinks,” reflected one enthusiast. “Salaman-
ca has a much prettier ring but there is no-
where to wash your hands.”
Bullfighting was already struggling be-
fore the pandemic, as ticket sales and sub-
sidies dwindled and audiences aged. The
virus had seemed an even bigger threat to
its future than the perennial campaigns by
animal-rightsactivists.The troubleisn’tonly that the largely elderly fans sit cheek
by jowl to enjoy the bloody spectacle. The
upkeep of fighting bulls is expensive—and
in the absence of corridas, the slaughter-
house is a more cost-efficient option than
the bullring. The bullfighting season runs
from March to October; as the first four
months of this year’s were lost, breeders
cut costs by replacing their bulls’ diet of
fodder with grass. Some animals have lost
weight. Some matadors have put it on.
The crowd in Ávila was keen to see the
bulls’ return and clamoured for the liberal
award of trophies (matadors can be award-
ed one or both of a bull’s ears and, excep-
tionally, its tail). But there were sombre
notes amid the excitement. Social-distanc-
ing rules meant the arena’s capacity was re-
duced from just over 8,000 to 2,000. Even
then, in these nervy times some tickets
went unsold. Death may be matadors’
stock-in-trade, but it can ambush even
them—some relatives of Alberto López Si-
món, the weekend’s star turn, are among
Spain’s almost 30,000 coronavirus fatali-
ties. The event began with a minute’s si-
lence in their honour; it was followed by
the national anthem and cries of “Viva Es-
paña”, politically charged gestures against
the backdrop of separatist claims in Catalo-
nia, which banned bullfighting in 2010.
If the opening was muted, so were the
climaxes. The audience was told that the
tradition of showering triumphant mata-
dors with flowers (or other tokens of appre-
ciation, such as chickens) was prohibited.
Police intervened when one bullfighter, Fi-
nito de Córdoba, threw cash at a loud-
mouth who felt short-changed by his kill.
Combining classical moves with crowd-
pleasing tricks, Mr López Simón gave the
best-received performance. But new rules
forbade his colleagues from carrying him
away on their shoulders, and he had to
makedowitha victorylapofthering. 7ÁVILA
Gore and pageantry on the sand, social
distancing in the standsBullfightingThe cape and
the masks
You say corrida, I say corona