【唯色注:除题图外,其余图片为博主所添加。】
图伯特(西藏)被迪斯尼化
——旅游是如何成为占领工具的
作者:Pearl Sydenstricker
译者:傅春雨 @boattractor_cj
在图伯特东部的一座高山上有一处将遗体施舍喂养给兀鹫的天葬台。那是覆盖着像地毯一样的草皮,陡峭得让人眩晕的斜坡,头上方纵横飘动着晒褪了色的经幡。传统的图伯特天葬仪式象征了人的生命返归大自然,而不是试图否认或抗拒这一回归。图伯特人不是将逝者的遗体火化或装进棺椁保存,而是将遗体一小块一小块地喂给一大群叽喳有声的猛禽。不过现在中国政府把这一神圣庄严的仪式,弄成了约合5美元一张参观劵的表演,供汉人游客猎奇。
兀鹫总是最先到达,远远早于喇嘛和天葬师。当遗体从特殊的捆绑中拆解开,兀鹫就一拥而上,先从眼睛和其它容易的部位——手指、耳朵、脚趾开始啄食。在场的天葬师则手持木槌和斧子将遗体分割成兀鹫可啄食的小块,以保证不留下任何残余。这是不适合观看的,所以可以理解天葬不像其他葬礼,家属和朋友都不参加。现场仅有的图伯特人(藏人)是诵经的喇嘛和天葬师,当然,再就是逝者的遗体。
但是现场还有二十多位游客在围观,他们都来自中国。他们乘坐的四轮驱动越野车标有某个越野俱乐部的徽记和小旗,是受中国政府支持的。天葬仪式就这样在难以置信的嬉笑声、摄像机的吱吱声、相机手机的咔嚓声中进行,录拍记录是为了回去后上传网络分享。
5美元的参观劵附带一张到天葬台的地图。如果对究竟是谁在出售这些参观劵还有疑问的话,山脚下的寺院已经被政府接管的事实也许能够说明问题。当地人告诉我,镇里曾经有属于这座寺院僧众的土地,听说已被卖掉了。他们还告诉我,镇里另有一座寺院,试图保持一点点自主性,但根本不可能做到(你大概能猜到哪一个寺院有五重鎏金屋顶,哪一个寺院的屋顶是用石头压着的毛毡)。尽管如此,两处都有观光游客纷至沓来。环绕着寺院的这个佛教小镇在两年内面积扩展了一倍。成片的新旅馆正在建设当中,一位非图伯特人的旅店主人告诉我,是因为中国政府的低息贷款刺激的结果。
这是政府的既定政策:旅游业是一个官方指定的西藏(图伯特)“经济支柱”。目标是要在2015年之前,每年吸引一千五百万游客到达所称之为的“西藏自治区”,而该区仅有三百万人口。据官方媒体报道,2013年上半年访问拉萨的游客增长了百分之三十六。作为用军队威胁僧侣的替代,政府现在是以成群结队的霸道游客窒息他们。这些游客似乎喜欢以最新追逐的时尚——迷彩服来展示他们的温柔和蔼。在最近夏秋的日子里,他们头戴迷彩帽,身着迷彩衫,甚至穿着迷彩紧身裤,仿佛个个都在扮演准军事组织成员的角色。
在中国的传媒中,图伯特人总是被描述成接受中国援助的可怜受益者。他们的习俗很好笑,他们的文化信仰可怕得“落后”,游客们这样对我说。在千里之外的河北,一位村民向我抱怨说他交的税都被拿去救济这些边远的藏民了。看来政府成功地绘制了一幅类似罗纳德·里根所说的“福利皇后”的漫画形象,来形容图伯特人的懒惰。于是也就毫不足怪,汉人们会在佛殿地高声打手机聊天,在转经的朝圣人流中逆行,故意扰乱这些“迷信”仪式。当我经过正在重建中的拉萨“老城” 八廓街,这是整个图伯特最神圣的场所以及游客的最热门景点,装甲车隆隆驶过旅游纪念品商亭。在大约半平方英里的范围内,我数了数,有47处警察岗亭,全部都清晰地标明在路边的导游图上,就像迪斯尼乐园中竖立的导游图一样。游客或许可以充任准军事组织的软实力角色,但真正的军事力量在这里也处处存在绝不是秘密。在我所到之处,看到的工事掩体比学校多。大街上,手持防暴盾牌的警察列队行进。黎明时分,军人的操练声在城镇中回荡。甚至,我碰到一位年轻人,以为是普通的背包客旅游者,而实际上却是从北京国家安全部来的官员。“安全第一”或“安定第一”是无处不在的宣传口号。它写在路边的广告牌上,出现在播放着解放军连续剧的带有高音喇叭的大型电视屏幕上。它印在学校的校服上。它装饰着庞大的新警察局,也装饰在其它耸立在拉萨四周的闪闪发光的政府大楼上。一位年轻的图伯特妇女朋友对我说,这条“安定第一”的口号已经成为“本地笑话”。
拉萨市政府办公大楼的“五领袖像”。 |
图伯特人要走动旅行变得更加困难,更不用说出国旅行。他们的藏族(图伯特人)身份写在身份证上,在拉萨之外和在西藏自治区边界的检查站警察会检查身份证。对大部分图伯特人来说根本就很难进入拉萨,尤其是对那些朝圣者,他们有磕长头到这个信仰圣地的习俗。图伯特人目前担忧在拉萨他们也会变成少数民族,因为政府的鼓励,提供很多优惠政策和新的政府部门工作机会,但基本上这些工作机会只针对汉人,有很多汉人在拉萨地区定居。
政府向西藏(图伯特)投入资金或许应当得到肯定,但是当地人告诉我这些投资的相当部分都被贪污(建设项目规模和资金越大,回扣的数量越大)。政府最近“整修”了八廓街。 “八廓街中心曾经是杂乱的生意区,”中央电视台的新闻主播在一个针对外国人的节目中说道,“如今有了全新的面貌。所有的商贩都被迁置到附近其它地方,给朝圣者和游客留出了更宽阔的人行道。”他一边解说,一边做出大扫除的手势。“这项工程将把八廓街打造成一个高端旅游景点。”
一天夜晚,我正在八廓街转着,那里有若干年长的朝圣者以及几位磕长头的年轻人,忽然我们听见警察练习擒拿格斗的激烈嘶喊声。我们看到他们围聚在图伯特(西藏)最神圣寺庙的一隅,身着黑衣,在奋力击打和刺杀无形的敌人。一位身穿校服的小男孩站在他们前边,有些吃惊地在观看,直到一辆警车呼啸而至,停在他身后,他才赶快溜走。还有一位中国背包客也在观看,后来他的朋友把他叫走:“这不让看!”
在火车上,我与一位从沿海省首府济南市来的26岁背包客聊天,她的英文名字叫莎芮。我说拉萨的气氛很紧张。“噢,你是指军人和警察吧?”她笑着对我说,就像在对一个小孩子解释一个非常简单的概念:“我们在那里感觉很轻松,这是个很安全的城市。要是我们觉得受了商贩的骗,我们可以拨打热线,他们总是站在我们一边。”莎芮围着绛红色图伯特风格的围巾,两只手腕上都戴着佛珠。“我信佛,”她自豪地说,“佛在我心。”
她解释军队的存在说:“你听说过藏独吗?那些人想要分裂国家,反对祖国统一。我们真的不赞成这些。”莎芮在图伯特(西藏)呆了一周,都是住在汉人开的旅店,除了两次例外,吃的全是中餐食品。
《文成公主》剧的宣传牌都紧挨着警务站。 |
中国的宣传把图伯特人描绘得永远是兴高采烈,载歌载舞,感恩戴德,这类宣传在每年的3月28日“农奴解放日”达到高潮。我曾看到中国各个城市,包括拉萨和北京,都张贴着一款新的宣传广告,上面有三位跪姿的梳长辫戴头饰的女性面露笑容,配以“唱支山歌给党听”的字样,“党”用大号红字突出。
绝大部分图伯特人被当成政治囚犯一样对待,不发给护照,不能合法出国旅游。十多年前,图伯特人还能以各种方式逃亡。年轻力壮的徒步翻越喜马拉雅山,通常是在冬季大雪坚硬之后。如今已几乎没人敢于冒险;边境哨兵受命可以就地开枪射击。由于中国在整个该地区的影响力,试图借道尼泊尔逃亡的图伯特人时常被抓住后引渡给中国警方。
为了说明这种情形,一位图伯特小生意人指着他的手掌对我说,周围的国家就像手指头一样,是受到掌心控制的。那些在九十年代曾出走过的图伯特人告诉我,他们很后悔回来,现在根本不可能出走。
一位图伯特人问我:“如果中国真是一个大家庭,就像宣传的那样,那么,是什么样的父亲才会在每一个房间都装上监控摄像机?”在军营外面,配置轻机枪的哨兵站在防弹玻璃的哨亭里。这是戏剧化的夸张,就像老城区有些警察岗亭在窗口故意展示他们的武器一样——电击枪,警棍,以及其它各式各样的警械。“警察是必要的,因为达赖喇嘛总在制造麻烦。”火车上一位汉族游客对我说。
左为洛桑达瓦,右为贡确唯色。他们是 今四川省阿坝藏族羌族自治州若尔盖县僧人。 |
中国游客看起来对图伯特人缺乏同情心。“(藏人)不珍惜生命,”一位62岁从北京来旅游的学校教师说。在甘肃拉卜楞寺的入口附近有很大的游客接待中心和新铺好的停车场,我是在那里碰到她,戴着顶军队式样的迷彩帽,她指着酥油雕塑向我证明“中国文化的多元性”。当我们穿行在如迷宫般的,寺院坚固并粉刷过的墙体之间,她把几位正在工作和诵经的僧人拉出来,硬要他们花上十来分钟摆姿势陪她照相。在一张照片中,她把手放在脑后,胳膊肘外伸。“他们不感激政府给予他们的一切,”她说道,“现在我们还要给他们开工资。”(事实是,共产党官员现在长期进驻各个寺院,如像拉卜楞寺,并掌管财务)在寺院佛殿里嗡嗡的诵经声中,她一直在大声粗气地给我上课,直到一位僧人实在受不了把她请出门外。之后,她就在四处拍照。
附原文:
High
on a mountain in eastern Tibet is a platform where corpses are fed to vultures.
It’s a dizzying slope carpeted in grass, with a web of sun-bleached prayer
flags fluttering overhead. Traditional Tibetan “sky burials” ritualize nature’s
reclamation of human life, rather than denying it. Instead of neatly cremating
or putting the body into a box, protectively, Tibetans feed their dead, bite by
bite, to a flock of massive, squawking birds. Now the Chinese government has
made this sacred rite into a $5 show for Han Chinese tourists.
The
vultures are always the first to arrive, well before the monks and morticians.
After the body is unbundled, the birds move in and start with the eyes and the
easy bits—fingers, ears, toes. The morticians are there with mallets and
hatchets to cut the body into bite-sized pieces, to ensure that nothing is left
behind. It’s hard to watch, and, understandably, it’s not like a funeral, in
that family members and friends do not attend. The only Tibetans here are a
monk saying prayers, the morticians, and, of course, the body.
But
there are also two dozen tourists, all from China, here to gawk. Encouraged by
the Chinese government, they’ve arrived in 4WDs emblazoned with the emblems and
flags of an off-roading club. The burial goes on amid titters of disbelief and
the whirrs and clicks of cameras and iPhones recording the event for online
shares back home.
The
$5 tickets to the show come with a map to the site. If there’s any question
about who is selling them, the monastery down below has surrendered to the
government. Locals tell me there was a feud in town between followers of this
monastery, which they say had sold out, and the other monastery in town, which
tries, impossibly, to maintain a sliver of independence. (You can guess which
one has five gilded roofs and which has roofing held down by rocks.)
Regardless, both are now deluged with tourists. The monastic town around them
has doubled in size in two years. Strips of new hotels are under construction,
spurred by cheap loans from the Chinese government, one non-Tibetan hotel owner
tells me.
It’s
government policy: tourism is an officially designated “pillar of the economy”
in Tibet. The goal is to attract fifteen million tourists a year by 2015 in the
so-called “Tibetan Autonomous Region,” which has a population of only three
million. In the first half of 2013, tourist visits to Lhasa surged by 36
percent, according to state media. Rather than threatening Tibetan monks with
army troops, the government is smothering them with throngs of pushy tourists,
who show their sympathies with their fashion statements: green camouflage is
in. On recent summer and autumn days, they wore camo hats, camo hoodies, and
even camo leggings, as if each were playing a part in the paramilitary.
In
the Chinese media, Tibetans are always portrayed as the poor beneficiaries of
Chinese aid. Their costumes are funny, their cultural beliefs hopelessly
“backward,” tourists tell me. One villager I speak with in Hebei, thousands of
miles away, complains that his taxes are going for charity for this distant
group. The government seems to have drawn up a caricature—somewhat like Ronald
Reagan’s “welfare queens”—depicting Tibetans as lazy. No surprise, then, that
Han Chinese carry on loud cell phone conversations in prayer halls and walk
counterclockwise against the flow of pilgrims, deliberately interrupting these
“superstitious” rituals. As I walk through the Barkhor, the newly reconstructed
“Old Quarter” of Lhasa—one of the holiest sites and top tourist destinations in
all of Tibet—armored vehicles rumble past souvenir stands. I count forty-seven
police stations in half a square mile, all of them clearly marked on the
tourist maps set up in the streets, like at Disneyland. Tourists may fulfill
their role in the soft-power paramilitary, but it’s no secret that the real
paramilitary is here too. Wherever I go, I see more bunkers than schools.
Police with riot shields march in formation in the streets. Military drills
echo across towns at dawn. Even one young person I assume to be a backpacker
volunteers to me that he is actually an officer from the Public Security
headquarters in Beijing. “Safety First,” or “Security First,” is a ubiquitous
propaganda slogan. It’s on roadside billboards and massive TV screens with
embedded loudspeakers playing People’s Liberation Army melodramas. It’s on
school uniforms. It’s emblazoned on massive new police stations and shimmering
government buildings around Llasa. One young Tibetan woman whom I befriend
tells me that the slogan “Security First” has become “the local joke.”
While
Han Chinese enjoy new freedom to travel, Tibetans are being forcibly settled.
For the purpose of control and surveillance, nomads are forced to live in
substandard housing, where the Chinese flag flies on every roof. Every Tibetan
household is also required to put up a framed portrait of the past four leaders
of China, their faces superimposed in the clouds over an image of happy
Tibetans dancing in Tiananmen Square. The Chinese are even trying to force the
yaks to settle in one place. (In the countryside of Gansu, a fifty-seven-hour
drive from Llasa, I see a factory farm recently built for yaks, with
billboards, though no yaks are in it.)
It
has become more difficult for Tibetans to move around, much less leave the
country. Their Tibetan ethnicity is written on their ID cards, which police
inspect at checkpoints outside Lhasa and at the border of the Tibetan
Autonomous Region. It is difficult for most Tibetans to enter Lhasa at all,
especially the pilgrims who once prostrated their way to the religious capital.
Tibetans fear becoming a minority in Lhasa itself, because the government
encourages so many Han people to settle in the area, offering promotions and
new positions in the bureaucracy, most of which are available only to Han
Chinese.
The
government should get credit for pumping money into Tibet, but locals tell me
much of it goes toward graft. (The bigger and grander the construction project,
the more room for kickbacks.) The government recently “renovated” the Barkhor.
“The central Barkhor used to be … bustling with businesses,” said one CCTV newscaster
recently, in a program meant for foreigners. “Today it has a completely
different look. All of the vendors have been relocated nearby, leaving more
spacious walkways for pilgrims and visitors,” he said with a grand sweeping
gesture. “The project will make Barkhor a high-end tourist destination.”
As
I circle the Barkhor one night with elderly pilgrims and a few young people
doing prostrations, we begin to hear the violent grunts of police practicing
hand-to-hand combat. Rounding a corner next to one of the holiest temples in
all of Tibet, we see them in all black, punching and stabbing invisible
opponents. One young boy in a school uniform stands in front of them, stunned,
until a police car screeches to a stop behind him and he meanders away. A Chinese
backpacker is watching too, until his friend calls him away: “You’re not
allowed to watch that!”
On
a train, I struck up a conversation with a twenty-six-year-old Han Chinese
backpacker from the coastal provincial capital city of Jinan, who goes by the
English name of Sarah. I said that Lhasa feels uptight. “Oh—you mean the
military and police?” She laughed and then told me, as if explaining a very
simple idea to a child, “We feel very relaxed here. It’s a very safe city. If
we feel cheated by a vendor, we can call a hotline and they tend to be on our
side.” Sarah wore a pink scarf with Tibetan designs; prayer beards encircled
both of her wrists. “I’m a Buddhist,” she said proudly. “It’s in the heart.”
She
explained the military presence: “Have you heard of Tibetan independence?
People wanted to split the country and oppose the unification of the
motherland. We really didn’t like that.” During her weeklong trip to Tibet,
Sarah stayed in a Han-run hostel and ate Chinese food for all but two of her
meals.
Tibetan
tour guides have told me that Han Chinese tourists employ Han guides, if they
have guides at all. The state-led development of the tourism industry seems to
benefit Han people more than Tibetans, and it comes with a major dose of
propaganda. In fact, while tourism is surging, Tibetan hotel owners are losing
business, because their base was foreign tourists. The newest tourist
attraction this year in Lhasa is a live-action reenactment of the story of
Princess Wencheng, the Chinese wife of a Tibetan emperor, a staple of
government propaganda. The show is choreographed by director Zhang Yimou in a
style similar to that of his opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympic Games in
Beijing.
Chinese
propaganda depicts Tibetans as eternally cheerful, singing and dancing with
gratitude that peaks every year on March 28, “Serfs Emancipation Day.” I have
seen a new poster on display in cities all over the country, including in Lhasa
and Beijing, showing three women with long braids and headdresses, kneeling and
smiling. “Sing a mountain song for the Party to hear,” it reads, with the word
“Party” highlighted in a big, red font.
Most
Tibetans are treated like political prisoners, denied passports to leave the
country legally. A decade ago, Tibetans fled anyway. The young and strong
crossed the Himalayas by foot, usually in winter when the snow was packed and
firm. Today few dare; border guards are allowed to shoot on sight. Due to
China’s influence in the entire region, Tibetans trying to escape via Nepal are
sometimes caught and turned over to Chinese police.
To
illustrate the situation, one Tibetan small businessman points to the palm of
his hand: the surrounding countries are like fingers under the palm’s control,
he says. Tibetans who left the country in the 1990s tell me they regret
returning. Now it’s impossible to get out, they say.
One
Tibetan asks me, “If China is one big family, as the propaganda goes, what kind
of father needs surveillance cameras in every room?” Outside military
com-pounds, machine-gun-armed sentries stand in bulletproof glass boxes. It’s a
theatrical flourish, like some of the police stations in the Old Quarter
displaying their weapons—Tasers, nightsticks, and other batons of various
shapes—right in the windows. “The police are needed because the Dalai Lama
keeps making trouble,” one Han traveler told me on a train.
More
than 120 Tibetans have immolated themselves in protest of the Chinese
government in the past year and a half. In Sichuan, young monks showed me
pictures of two friends of theirs, posing in front of backdrops of European
buildings and, dressed in hoodies, beside cutouts of American basketball stars.
Then, last winter, the friends drank gasoline and blew themselves up together,
sending up black plumes of smoke visible across the valley, herders told me.
“Why did they do it?” I ask the young monks. “I can’t express it in Chinese,”
one tells me, but then he writes a note in Tibetan: “It goes without saying,
without any doubt that these two men, Konchog Oeser and Lobsang Dawa, hoped from
the depths of their hearts for both His Holiness [the Dalai Lama] and His
Holiness Kirti Rinpoche especially to take over leadership for the entire
Greater Tibet … to make Tibetan religion and culture flourish, leading to pure
freedom not in words but in reality.”
Among
Chinese tourists, sympathy for Tibetans seems lacking. “[Tibetans] don’t value
human life,” says a sixty-two-year-old schoolteacher visiting from Beijing. I
met her near a large visitor center and freshly paved parking lot, at the
entrance to the Labrang Monastery in Gansu. Wearing a camouflage military-style
hat, she points to yak butter sculptures as evidence of the “diversity of
Chinese culture.” As we walk around the rugged, whitewashed walls of the
labyrinthine complex, she pulls monks away from their work and prayers,
insisting that they spend ten minutes posing with her for photos. In one
picture, she puts her hand on the back of her head, with her elbow out. “They
don’t appreciate what the government has given them,” she says. “And now we’re
even paying their salaries.” (In fact, Communist Party officials are
permanently stationed inside monasteries such as Labrang to control their
finances.) She lectures to me loudly over the hum of prayer in the meeting
hall, until a distressed monk shoos her out the door. She turns around to snap
his picture.
您好。我是香港人,但作为汉族一份子,希望为内地官民因为无知而作的无理行为,向西藏人道歉。希望黑暗的日子会过去,光明重返拉萨佛土。
回复删除希望香港可以继續保留香港的特色,希望一國兩治不要名存實亡。
回复删除不僅以上講的那些,中國政府每年安排很多藏族優秀学生到中國內地上学,以此進一步同化藏民。我曾在我的文章中慨嘆:五十年、一百年後,西藏還是西藏嗎?
不僅以上所講這些,中國政府每年安排很多藏族优秀学生到內地上学,進行同化及愛國教育。
回复删除我也曾在我的文章中慨嘆:五十年、一百年之後,西藏還是西藏嗎?
看來,不需要五十年,我們心中的聖地、天堂很快便消失了。