[On a recent afternoon, workers in hard hats were dismantling cells that monks and nuns had built along a ridge. As they tossed aside wooden beams and plastic sheeting, nuns looked for their belongings in the rubble. Men who appeared to be plainclothes police officers looked on from a bench across the street.]
By Edward Wong
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A Buddhist nun with a
prayer wheel in Larung Gar, a monastic camp where thousands of nuns
and monks live and study,
in Sichuan Province, China. Credit Gilles Sabrié for
The New York Times
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LARUNG
GAR, China — Atop a hill, a
growling chain saw drowned out loudspeakers broadcasting a lama’s chants from a
nearby temple.
The chain saw, wielded by workers demolishing
a row of homes, signaled the imminent end of thousands of hand-built monastic
dwellings here at Larung Gar, the world’s largest Buddhist institute.
Since its founding in 1980, Larung Gar has
grown into an extraordinary and surreal sprawl — countless red-painted
dwellings surrounding temples, stupas and large prayer wheels. The homes are
spread over the walls of this remote Tibetan valley like strawberry jam
slathered on a scone.
Larung Gar has become one of the most
influential institutions in the Tibetan world, the teachings of its senior
monks praised, debated and proselytized from here to the Himalayas. In recent
years, disciples have popularized a “10 new virtues” movement based on Buddhist
beliefs, spreading its message across the region.
Now Chinese officials are tightening control
over the settlement, in what many Tibetans and their advocates call a severe
blow to Tibetan religious practice.
On a recent afternoon, workers in hard hats
were dismantling cells that monks and nuns had built along a ridge. As they
tossed aside wooden beams and plastic sheeting, nuns looked for their
belongings in the rubble. Men who appeared to be plainclothes police officers
looked on from a bench across the street.
Hundreds of Buddhists had already been forced
out of the area. A monk watching the destruction from a ledge told me he was staying
in a home across the valley. Like others interviewed for this story, he spoke
on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisal from the authorities.
“I heard my home will be demolished,” he
said. “I don’t know whether I’ll be allowed to stay.”
Tensions between Tibetans and the Chinese
government have been high ever since a widespread uprising across the Tibetan
plateau in 2008. Suppression of their culture and religious life remains at the
heart of Tibetans’ grievances, and restrictions at important religious
institutions like Larung Gar stoke that resentment.
Many Tibetans say they fear the erosion of
their language, traditions and ways of worship. China still denounces the Dalai
Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, and bans his image throughout the region.
Some estimates put Larung Gar’s population at
20,000, many of them clergy who have flocked here from far corners of the vast
plateau. Buddhist practitioners who are Han, the dominant ethnicity in China,
live alongside Tibetans in the settlement, which is a winding 16-hour drive
from the provincial capital, Chengdu.
Interviews with residents at Larung Gar and
reports from Human Rights Watch, Radio Free Asia and overseas pro-Tibet groups
indicate that officials intend to reduce the settlement’s population to 5,000
by late next year through mass evictions. Over the summer, officials began
deporting monks and nuns who were not registered residents of this area, Garze
Prefecture of Sichuan Province, which includes a large section of the
traditional Tibetan area of Kham.
Tibetan users of WeChat, a popular Chinese social
networking app, have said that those evicted must promise never to return. As
of October, as many as 1,000 people had been forced out, residents and human
rights groups said.
In June, an article on a state-run website
quoted a local party official, Hua Ke, as saying that the authorities were not
driving away residents or destroying their quarters. Rather, he said, they were
overhauling the crowded settlement “to eliminate hidden dangers and safeguard
the personal safety and property of the monks and nuns.”
When the demolitions began this summer,
officials closed the area to foreigners. The police set up checkpoints outside
the valley. But last month, I managed to enter Larung Gar with two colleagues.
A major checkpoint on the road was
unattended, and we boarded buses at the mouth of the valley that took us into
the heart of the settlement. Chinese tourists were also visiting, many drawn by
the chance to see a sky burial, an outdoor Tibetan funeral ritual in which a
man cuts up a body so that vultures can feast on the remains.
At noon, crimson-robed nuns flocked to a
gathering at the main nunnery. Among the winding alleyways, clergy walked in
and out of their homes, little more than shacks built with wooden beams and
sheets of metal and plastic. Monks speaking Mandarin Chinese — probably ethnic
Han — were digging a sewage
It looked like daily life, nothing out of the
ordinary, until we reached a large prayer wheel on a road winding up the
valley’s north wall. Next to the wheel, four workers in hard hats stood atop a
home, ripping off the metal roofing. Nearby was a plot of dirt with rubble from
another demolished home.
We continued uphill. At the top of the ridge,
we saw a long stretch of homes being torn down by workers. We could hear a
chain saw, and a yellow earth digger was nearby.
This destruction was occurring in a part of
Larung Gar with particular religious significance. The homes had been built
across from the valley’s highest stupa, which pilgrims and residents
circumambulate, often while spinning hand-held prayer wheels.
The government says the settlement is
crowded, and it is. There are open sewage drains and trash pits. In 2014, a
fire destroyed about 100 homes. But Tibetans here say officials could build
newer, cleaner enclaves rather than evict people. The government’s real aim,
they believe, is to weaken centers of power that can rival it.
Elliot Sperling, a Tibet scholar who taught
at Indiana University, shared the Tibetans’ view of the motives behind the
demolitions.
“The party sees Tibet, inside and outside the
Tibet Autonomous Region, as one of the more volatile regions and does not take
kindly to alternate sources of authority, including moral and behavioral
authority, and clearly the growth of Larung is problematic,” Mr. Sperling said.
Larung Gar was founded near the town of
Sertar in 1980 by Jigme Phuntsok, a charismatic lama whose portrait is seen
throughout the settlement. (A gar is a monastic encampment; it starts as a
small gathering.) Then in 2001, officials evicted many of its residents,
demolishing homes. But people returned.
After Jigme died in 2004, two senior lamas
took over, both of whom have expanded Larung Gar’s profile, often going
overseas to give talks and teachings. One of them, Sodargye, went to Europe
this summer, while the other, Tsultrim Lodro, made the rounds of American
universities.
The two abbots have not spoken out publicly
against the demolitions, and have in fact told residents not to oppose the
government. Their view, residents said, is that it is better not to protest the
demolition, and instead let it run its course and live peacefully afterward.
Across Chinese-controlled Tibet, disciples of
Larung Gar have been spreading the “10 new virtues” movement. Based on a
Buddhist model, it advocates a retrenchment in 10 principles: no killing or
selling animals, no stealing, no drinking, no feuding and so on. The doctrine
is especially popular in Garze. Some practitioners wear a pendant with the
image of a white pigeon, and officials have noticed their religious activism.
For some Tibetan nomads, these tenets
filtering down from Larung Gar’s two abbots make life more difficult, since
much of their economy relies on the herding and sale of animals, particularly
yaks. “These lamas are respected very much, but some Tibetans do not agree with
the policies of the lamas,” said Katia Buffetrille, a Tibet scholar at the
École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris.
Monks from Larung Gar have traveled across
Garze to try to defuse local conflicts and help with issues of social justice.
In the grasslands area of Lhagong, called Tagong in Chinese, monks helped
residents draft paperwork when they wanted to protest a large lithium mine.
But residents of the region said the
authorities were not happy with such activity. “They want to control Tibetans,”
said a man from Garze who has visited Larung Gar multiple times. “They don’t
want the monastery to develop too quickly.”
Vanessa Piao contributed research.