Excerpt: “Far From the Rooftop of the World: Travels Among Tibetan Refugees on Four Continents” - Winner of the CWA Book of the Year Award for Traditional Non-Fiction

By Amy Yee

Prologue

When the Dalai Lama saw me, his wrinkled face lit up with interest. There were dozens of other reporters ready to surround him in a large room inside his residential complex, but he ambled over to where I stood and smiled kindly. The Tibetan spiritual leader had just finished a two-hour press conference at his exile home in the northern Indian town of Dharamsala. It was late March 2008. China had forcefully cracked down on the most violent unrest in Tibet in nearly two decades, and the Dalai Lama was pleading for calm.

On March 10, to mark the forty-ninth anniversary of a 1959 Tibetan uprising against China’s rule, hundreds had demonstrated in Lhasa, Tibet’s capital. As Chinese authorities tried to disperse Tibetan protesters, riots ensued. From March 14 onward, at least 100 Tibetans—men, women, and children— were killed in Lhasa and nearby areas in clashes with security forces or due to government repression. At least nineteen Chinese people, including civilians, were also killed in the riots. Many feared the violence could spiral out of control as China deployed police, soldiers, and tanks to stop Tibetans from protesting in the streets of Tibet and western China.

During the press conference, I sat on the floor near the front of the room. All the plastic chairs were filled with journalists like me because I had ar- rived breathlessly late after a flight from Delhi and five-hour car ride to reach the Himalayan hill town. Instead of showing despair after days of escalating tension or fatigue following a barrage of questions from reporters, the Dalai Lama exuded warmth. When the press conference finished, I stood up and he eagerly approached me. “Chinese?” the Dalai Lama asked me brightly.

I hesitated. My parents are from Hong Kong and I am ethnically Chinese, as the Dalai Lama could see, but I was born and raised in the United States. That day, Tibet’s spiritual leader had just spent two hours decrying China’s aggressive crackdown. I told the Dalai Lama the truth—that I am American. The crowd of journalists I was usually a part of had surrounded us, yet for a moment, the Dalai Lama seemed to forget them and he gazed at me. Then he did something even more unexpected. The spiritual leader grabbed hold of my cheeks and squeezed them affectionately. When I was little, elderly neighbors in Boston had loved pinching my cheeks, and now here was a Nobel Peace Prize laureate doing the same thing.

The Dalai Lama grinned at me and his eyes shone behind his big rectan- gular glasses. Then he threw his arms around me and gathered me in a giant bear hug. He dropped his head against my neck. I felt the soft flesh of his bare shoulder protruding from the red robes he always wears. His loose skin felt surprisingly warm under my fingers as I hugged him back.

When the Dalai Lama released me, he gazed at me intensely and brushed my unkempt hair out of my eyes. I was the Delhi correspondent for the Financial Times, the British newspaper, and I’d slept only a couple hours the night before. The previous day I had been on a different reporting trip in Bangalore in southern India, so I took a rushed three-hour flight back home to Delhi, re-packed, then caught a 5 a.m. propeller plane to a city called Amritsar. From the small airport, I took a five-hour car ride up twisting mountain roads to Dharamsala, all while fielding phone calls from an editor breathing down my neck about an unrelated article I was also working on. I literally ran to the Dalai Lama’s press conference, left my suitcase in the courtyard, and was still bleary-eyed as I found a place on the floor. Now he had hugged me and was making a request. Only talks between Tibet and China would resolve the current crisis engulfing his homeland, said the Dalai Lama. “You must tell them,” he commanded.

I was speechless. I was just another reporter at a press conference on deadline. “I will do my best,” I spluttered.

The Dalai Lama continued. “These others are just for show,” he chortled, waving at the phalanx of reporters, photographers, and cameramen who had gathered behind him. I could see Somini Sengupta of the New York Times and Jonathan Allen of Reuters out of the corner of my eye. Cameras clicked as photographers focused on us. “Tibet and China must discuss,” he repeated. “It is between us.” I nodded.

Finally he turned away and began to leave the room. The crowd engulfed him once more, but the Dalai Lama didn’t want the moment to end. “Ni hao!” he crowed gleefully in my direction, showing off a couple words in Mandarin.

When I later recounted to Tibetans and friends that the Dalai Lama hugged me, they were amazed. One friend told me devotees believe that just his gaze can change one’s destiny. I didn’t realize that my first visit to Dharamsala and my unexpected encounter with the Dalai Lama would spark a desire to know more about Tibetans in exile in India and beyond—people between worlds whose homeland is in crisis. Since China’s 1950 invasion of Tibet and the Dalai Lama’s subsequent exile in 1959, by some estimates 1.2 million Tibetans have died. Many other Tibetans—tens of thousands—have fled to and settled in India since 1959, and the Dalai Lama accuses China of waging “cultural genocide” on Tibet. At the same time, China has also oppressed its own: when it invaded Tibet, China was in turmoil when a civil war ended in 1949 after more than two decades of conflict. Over the next thirty years, as many as 47 million Chinese people died of starvation, political purges, and torture because of catastrophic government policies. Tibetans have suffered immensely and so have Chinese people, though the latter is less widely acknowledged and often taboo to discuss.

That week in late March 2008, frustration, anger, pride, longing, and soli- darity were all on display in Dharamsala. Thousands marched daily for more than a week through the narrow streets of this small Himalayan hill town to protest the crackdown in Tibet—then also the worst violence in China since the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations. I passed crowds chanting pro-Tibet slogans and waving hand-lettered signs. “World Stand Up: Don’t Watch Another Genocide” and “China Stop the Lies” read two. Dozens of people sat cross-legged in a makeshift corral where they had launched a hun- ger strike. One sign summed it up well. A young man wore a hand-lettered poster over his chest. It read, “Thank you India for the support. But we want the freedom to go back to Tibet. I miss my family.”

Before the Dalai Lama spotted me during his press conference, he urged all sides to “cool down” rising tensions in Tibet. He spoke to journalists with an intense firmness, sometimes shaking his finger accusingly and furrowing his brow. The crackdown in China reminded the Dalai Lama of the “terrible feeling” he experienced following the 1959 Tibetan uprising and his desperate flight to India. He described feeling like a deer caught by a tiger: the deer can fight and kick, but she cannot possibly win against the tiger.

“On one side, the Chinese were determined to crush. On one side, Tibetans were determined to resist,” the Dalai Lama recalled. “I was between them. Neither side willingly listened. I felt too much anxiety and helplessness. This time it is the same.”

Reporters pressed the Dalai Lama about how he reconciled his own mea- sured approach toward China with the diverging views of some Tibetan activists who want full independence for Tibet; the Dalai Lama espouses autonomy while remaining under China. Some activist groups like the Tibetan Youth Congress wanted a full boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, while the Dalai Lama said the games should go on.

“If we say complete independence, it is very difficult to get support,” said the Dalai Lama. “Independence is out of the question. Just to express strong emotions is very easy. But we are not writing a novel. We are facing life and death.”

There was a sense of gravity in the room, but the Dalai Lama punctuated it with jokes—often in the form of wry jabs at China—followed by chuckles. The cadence of his voice rose and fell, and he would often end sentences with a questioning harumph or sagacious “Hmmm.” The Dalai Lama denied accusations from China’s premier Wen Jiabao that he had masterminded the protests in Tibet. Government officials had called the Dalai Lama a liar, “a wolf wrapped in monk’s robes,” and “a devil with a human face and a beast’s heart.”

The Dalai Lama snorted. “You investigate who is a liar. I want to ask [Wen], please show proof,” he demanded. He went on to invite the Chinese premier to come personally investigate his files, records, and speeches. The Dalai Lama added with a hoot, “They can examine my pulse, my urine, my stool!” The journalists laughed. Jonathan Allen from Reuters asked how the Dalai Lama could remain so composed and light-hearted during these tumultuous times. Was it because of his faith? The Dalai Lama laughed and said he never lost sleep and always slept a solid eight hours, then woke hours before dawn to meditate. Each evening when he settled down to sleep, his mind was completely clear.

I raised my hand to catch the Dalai Lama’s attention and he turned my way. What did he think of allegations that Tibetans had initiated the violent riots happening that week in Lhasa? The Dalai Lama did not hesitate. If Tibetans had engaged in any violence, “it is wrong,” he said simply. “It is wrong.” The Dalai Lama shook his head sadly. He reminded everyone that he had voiced the same opinion in 1988 when pro-Tibet demonstrations erupted in violence in Lhasa: nonviolence was the only way. He had no tolerance for violence.

“If things become out of control I will resign,” insisted the Dalai Lama. The statement set the room abuzz. Later, a reporter used that as the headline for their story, and soon other global news sites carried the same quote. What the Dalai Lama meant by that, a press release from his office later clarified, was that he could not represent the Tibetan people if violence continued, not that he would stop being the Dalai Lama. After all, he couldn’t resign from being the fourteenth reincarnation of the Buddha of Compassion. The clarification went largely unheeded, though; the next day most newspapers and websites carried headlines provocatively blaring his threat of resignation.

Over the course of two hours, the Dalai Lama spoke unhurriedly and often went off on long tangents despite the urgent situation in Tibet. He touched on wide-ranging topics, including memories of meeting Chairman Mao Zedong in China in the 1950s, and “his friend” Jawaharlal Nehru, In- dia’s first prime minister, who gave the twenty-four-year-old Dalai Lama ref- uge in India in 1959. The press conference stretched on, and when it finally ended, the Dalai Lama wanted the conversation to continue. He wasn’t shy. He got up from his chair to mingle with the journalists and chatted jovially with them. I stood up from my seat on the floor to stretch my legs, and that’s when he saw me and gave me that hug.

The turmoil in Tibet did not end after March 2008. Over the next several months, security officials in China would go on to detain more than 4,400 people, nearly all Tibetan, in connection with the March protests. Government repression in Tibet would continue, as would tensions, anxiety, and uncertainty about what would happen next.

A few months after my first visit, I returned for a weekend trip to Dharam- sala, home to the Tibetan exile administration, the Dalai Lama, and about 12,000 Tibetans. It was a grueling twelve-hour overnight bus ride from Delhi up and down the mountain sides. The afternoon of my arrival, I was so fatigued that I dozed off in the sun on a bench outside a restaurant. But I was intrigued by this place that had become a haven for Tibetans, where religion, culture, and politics could flourish freely, unlike in Tibet. Dharamsala is more than just an ethnic enclave; it is a unique microcosm of a culture fighting for survival. Tibetan residents have set up a democratic government-in-exile, complete with a parliament and prime minister; established a thriving spiri- tual center and nonsecular education system; and transplanted their culture to foreign soil while waging a struggle for autonomy and freedom. The plight of refugees and larger questions of how they adapt and assimilate to new cultures is also an important global issue. And as an Asian American, I have long been interested in multiple layers of identity and their accompanying in- sights and tensions. An Indian hill town that thousands of Tibetans call home seemed a place ripe to explore—and write a book about—cultural identity.

By fall 2008, I had left my nine-year tenure at the Financial Times to do freelance journalism. I moved to Dharamsala and lived there for nearly a year, then returned for years as I followed the lives of ordinary Tibetans: Topden, a monk and unlikely veterinary assistant; Norbu, a cook and political refugee; and Deckyi, a recent refugee, and her husband Dhondup. Their lives created a portrait of life in exile and beyond. A project I thought would take one year stretched to fourteen and extended to other parts of India and across oceans to Australia, Europe, and the United States—places where Tibetans have migrated while striving to keep their cultural and religious identities alive.

This book is not an academic history of Tibet; neither is it a memoir. It is a close-up look at the lives of ordinary Tibetans in exile who make their way in the world far from their homeland. It is also a window into what it was like to live in Dharamsala and India and to travel to other far-flung places that became their home. There are many narratives about the Dalai Lama and Tibet, but few about regular Tibetans who transplant their culture in other parts of the globe. Their stories, especially those of four Tibetan refugees I unexpectedly followed across four continents, are told against the backdrop of milestones and events in Tibet’s recent history—some memorable, too many tragic—at home and in exile. I watched and listened and tried to tell the stories I heard and what I saw around me in India and beyond. I aimed to make the writing accessible; I wanted the people I wrote about—some of whom speak limited or no English—to easily connect with the book and any translations.

Writing this book was not a linear or clear-cut journey. I didn’t know my destination, and much was beyond my control. The immersive travelog style of the book’s first part transforms to reportage as the narrative progresses over time. This happened much the way the landscape and weather change during a long, transcontinental train trip, or the colors and textures of a patchwork quilt change when new fabric is serendipitously found.

The book’s shift in tone in its second part also reflects changes in my own life. After seven years living in India, I began reporting mostly on human and economic development issues in Bangladesh, Australia, Africa, and later in the United States. Yet I followed the thread of Tibetan exiles that began in Dharamsala however I could, and naturally over time, its hues and textures shifted.

Through it all, I wanted to focus on the stories of Tibetan people and avoid focusing on myself. But the narrative lenses shift according to the sit- uation. Sometimes the perspective is panoramic; other times it telescopes inward and even becomes microscopic. The balance between my role as reporter and observer and writer or protagonist also evolved with circumstances and time. I tried to strike a balance between journalistic objectivity and unexpected personal involvement; I mostly wanted to be a fly on the wall, but sometimes I became a fly in the soup. When that happened, my perspective became relevant and therefore took the fore.

During my first week in Dharamsala in March 2008 I fulfilled the Dalai Lama’s advice to “tell them.” I spent sleepless nights writing several articles for the Financial Times. I did my job and left when the other foreign correspondents departed. I didn’t expect to return to Dharamsala, live there, and keep going back, let alone report more than twenty-five articles for US and UK media outlets. No one, not even the Dalai Lama, could have known that his advice to “tell them” would result in a book that spans fourteen years and four continents, but that is somehow what happened.

From Far from The Rooftop of the World: Travels among Tibetan Refugees on Four Continents. Copyright © 2023 by Amy Yee. All rights reserved. Used by permission of the University of North Carolina Press. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.