bodhi tree swaying

A rather disturbing article by Robert Barnett, the director of the Modern Tibetan Studies Program at Columbia, and author of “Lhasa: Streets With Memories.”:

THE financial crisis is going to do more than increase unemployment, bankruptcy and homelessness. It is also likely to reshape international alignments, sometimes in ways that we would not expect.

As Western powers struggle with the huge scale of the measures needed to revive their economies, they have turned increasingly to China. Last month, for example, Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, asked China to give money to the International Monetary Fund, in return for which Beijing would expect an increase in its voting share.

Now there is speculation that a trade-off for this arrangement involved a major shift in the British position on Tibet, whose leading representatives in exile this weekend called on their leader, the Dalai Lama, to stop sending envoys

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I’m grateful to BoingBoing for drawing my attention to this rare silent (but color) footage of Tibet in the 1940s.

From the BFI National Film archive, via BoingBoing:

“Tibetan Scenes was made by Tsien-Lien Shen in the early 1940s – he was resident Chinese Commissioner in Lhasa from 1942-47. The colour film records many of the ceremonial events that took place in Lhasa, including the New Year ceremonies, and Shen himself appears in the film. There is also evidence of the presence of the Chinese in Lhasa.

Although the majority of the film focuses on Tibetan ceremonies, there are some invaluable scenes capturing everyday life in Lhasa, as monks, porters, market stall sellers and the occasional yak compete for space.”

This film

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