Anna Louise Strong Reference Archive
The March rebellion in Lhasa did not break from a clear sky. It was a storm that smouldered long, giving many thunders of approach. I have many accounts of eye-witnesses and participants, the most complete of which is from Captain Yang King-hwei of the People’s Liberation Army, who left Szechwan in 1950 on the long, slow approach to Lhasa, reaching it in October of 1951. He was stationed there eight years and took part in the Lhasa fighting in March 1959. Then he came to Peking for the May Day Festival and stayed over long enough to talk to me. I shall give his experiences from the beginning and supplement them from time to time with comments from other eye-witnesses.
When the captain came to my living-room with two other officers who live in Peking, I was struck by the dark ruddiness of his skin in contrast to theirs. Though Han by nationality, he was burned by the sun of high altitudes and flushed by the extra red corpuscles which develop in those who breathe the high, thin air. He wore a uniform of khaki color, with red collar tabs bearing four silver stars.
“Before we started from Chengtu in 1950,” said Captain Yang, “we were given much detailed instruction as to how to behave in Tibet, both as to the general policy of equality and friendship towards minor nationalities and as to the special ways of behaviour among Tibetans in order to respect their customs. We must not enter their places of worship, neither the monasteries nor the special rooms or corners in private homes where each family keeps sacred objects of worship. We learned enough of the Tibetan language for routine contacts and we learned what forms of greeting are polite to different classes of people. We learned in what places the pouring of water is permitted and where it is forbidden. We were instructed that if we are invited to stop in people’s houses, we should not leave without doing some useful work for them, such as drawing water or cutting wood.”
“The hardest discipline,” said the captain, “was that we must not hunt or fish anywhere within the borders of Tibet. This was a very difficult order for we were hard pressed for food and especially for meat since the trail is very long and we carried our own food very far over difficult horse trails. In Tibet there was a stretch of eight days or so when we saw not a living person; the hills and streams were full of game and fish. But our discipline was strict on this point because of the Tibetan religion. They are against all killing of animals which by their religion is a sin. The Tibetans themselves evade this; even their Living Buddhas have ways by which they permit themselves to eat meat but they do not themselves kill it. This is done by special people who are considered very low. We could not excuse ourselves in these ways so our discipline was that we must not hunt nor fish.
“While this discipline was hard, it was very useful. Word went ahead of us that a new type of Hans were coming; they called us ‘Sajami,’ which means ‘the new Hans.’ Some called us ‘Buddha soldiers,’ because we did not kill meat. This began to win the Tibetans even before we met them. It affected the battle of Chamdo so that many of the Tibetan Army came over to our side. Later in Lhasa we learned that our reputation reached Lhasa months before we ourselves arrived.”
The battle of Chamdo in October 1950 was a turning point in the lives of many people. We have heard of it already in the story of Apei, who commanded the Tibetan Army there and was defeated, and later won over by the explanation of Peking’s policies. We have also seen its effects in the lives of Lachi and Gada, two former serfs who escaped through this battle to freedom. Captain Yang did not himself see the Chamdo battle. He was leading a rear guard action that went around Chamdo in a detour that took a week. “There was no fighting at all in the places to which I went,” he told me. “In all those posts the Tibetans came right over and began to fraternize. In Chamdo itself there was battle; it was over before I reached Chamdo. I then learned there had been about two days of fighting, and then many of those Tibetans came over too.”
The battle of Chamdo was also a turning point in Tibet’s modern history, for the defeat of the Dalai Lama’s armies there and Apei’s report of Peking’s new policies, led to the Agreement between Peking and the Dalai Lama which was signed May 23, 1951. The People’s Liberation Army meanwhile halted in Chamdo after their victory, awaiting the signing of the Agreement before pushing on over what was then the border between Sikang and Tibet.
“My company,” said Captain Yang, “was stationed in the Chamdo Area, about sixty miles west of the city. We remained there some eight months while the Dalai Lama was negotiating with Peking. Not until August 1951, when the Agreement was not only signed, but conveyed to the Dalai Lama himself, and when the Dalai Lama and the representative of the Central Government had both gone to Lhasa and expected us, did our army march.”1
I asked Captain Yang flatly as I asked all others who had any experience in the matter: “Did any soldiers of the PLA cross the boundary of Tibet until after the Agreement was signed, which invited the PLA to enter as the army of national defense?”
Captain Yang replied as did all the others: “No, not a soldier went beyond the Chamdo area which was at that time in Sikang Province.”
“After crossing from Sikang into Tibet,” continued Captain Yang, “we went slowly. There was no wide road but only a difficult and even dangerous horse trail; we built the road later. For eight days we met no people; these are high, wild areas where no people live. Then we began to reach villages. We stopped in every populated place to explain our policies to the Tibetan people. We explained that we were the new national army, a people’s army of defense for the frontier, and that we respected their customs and their religion. We explained our Three Disciplines and Eight-Point Regulations, and that we do not take even a needle from the people without paying for it. We had interpreters especially to explain these things in every populated place.”
“How did the people meet you?” I asked.
“Everywhere they were very friendly,” said the captain. “This did not seem to be on orders from Lhasa, for Lhasa was still far away and there seemed to be no instructions sent. But local chiefs had heard of our policies and knew that we paid for transport. This was unusual; the Tibetan government and nobles expect to get transport for nothing, and this is a heavy burden on the localities and especially on the serfs who have to work without pay. We do not know whether the transport workers we paid were able to keep the money or whether this was taken from them by their chiefs. We only know that our transport was mobilized without trouble and with friendly remarks, and that we met no opposition along the way. Because of the stops we made to explain to the people, we did not reach Lhasa till mid-October.”
“Did they give you any official welcome in Lhasa?” I asked.
“A feast of rice gruel was given us after our arrival,” said the captain, “at which representatives from the local government made us speeches of welcome.” (Rice is not grown in Tibet and is considered upper class food — ALS.) “But behind the scenes they were not so polite. They gave us no fuel to cook with. We had other petty annoyances.”
“What was the army’s first task in Tibet?” I asked. Captain Yang replied that some detachments were sent to take posts on the frontier, but he himself was stationed in Lhasa and the first task there was to cultivate land in order to produce the army’s food. Here they ran into a continuing difficulty. “There is very much waste land in Tibet,” the captain said, “but it all belongs to the nobles, the monasteries or the local government and they made difficulties about selling or even leasing any land to us.”
“After we bought some houses from the kasha at a rather high price, they consented to sell us two pieces of land. Later some of the friendlier nobles agreed to let us use land for which we paid them in grain; we were also able later to lease some land for money. In the third year we succeeded in growing all our own vegetables but we never had enough land to grow all our own grain. We had to bring some of it from interior China, 1,500 miles away. At first this was extremely difficult for the journey was by horse trail, but after we built the new roads in 1954, it became easier. It would of course be much easier to grow it in Tibet.”
“Can Tibet produce enough food for itself?” I asked. The captain replied that Tibet could easily produce enough food not only to feed itself but even to export, “if the productive forces are properly developed,” but under serfdom productivity remains very low.
“The nobles,” he said, “import rice from India at present while the common people are half starved. They have very poor wooden implements and they neither fertilize nor irrigate. They grow chiefly barley and a little wheat. The yield is very low, only 70 or 80 catties per mou (eight to nine bushels per acre). Most of this crop goes to the landlord who stores it till it rots. The peasant serfs are hungry and under-nourished. In our army fields the soil was no better than elsewhere but we got up to 480 catties of wheat (53 bushels per acre) and 640 catties of barley (70 bushels per acre). This can be done without difficulty with proper implements and some incentive. Serf labor is of course poor.”
“What progress, if any, took place in Lhasa during these years?”
“While we were cultivating land,” replied the captain, “other troops of the PLA built three great highways, a total of 7,000 kilometers, connecting Tibet with Sikang, with Chinghai and with Sinkiang, and linking Tibet’s main cities with each other. We built in Lhasa quarters for the army and for the Working Committee of the Communist Party. We built two people’s hospitals in Lhasa, first a small one, and then a bigger one with a hundred beds. Outside Lhasa, wherever the PLA had a post, there was medical service and we enlarged this to give medical help also to the local population. In Lhasa we built a primary school, a state bank, a post-office, a state trading company and houses for the civilian personnel working in these places.
“During this time many Tibetans came asking for work. There was much unemployment in Lhasa. All the working people belonged to some owner somewhere, but often the owners had no work for them and did not feed them. Then they would get permits from their owners to go elsewhere and seek work; for these permits they paid the owners an annual tax. There were many such people in Lhasa and also many beggars. It was hard to arrange stable work for them because their owners would not agree to their taking steady work, since the owners wished to have the serfs on call. We set up a small woolen and rug factory and trained some people in technical skill. We also had two experimental farms near Lhasa, one run by the army and one by the civilian Working Committee. Tibetans came looking for work on these farms. Others came to the farms to study the technique. The farms were slow in starting because it was hard to get land for them, and for one of them we had to take a dried up river bed which took time to improve. But finally our farms began to produce and the peasants near Lhasa began to apply new methods in farming, to fertilize and irrigate vegetables and fight pests. Their yield somewhat improved.”
“When did you first notice signs of the rebellion?” I asked.
Captain Yang replied that “ever since the arrival of the army in Lhasa it was clear that some of the upper strata were hostile. In 1953, a top member of the local government named Lokongwa organized a demand that the army and the Hans be driven out, but the Dalai Lama dismissed him and he left Tibet.2 During these years the people have shown that they want a change, but many of the upper class hinder reform, wishing to keep serfdom. At the beginning of 1958 we began to hear of a secret conspiracy that planned a rebellion. Now the people are giving us the details.”
All sources agreed that the rebellion was headed by a group of the biggest serf-owners and that they had help from abroad, both from India and from Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang’s officials boasted and may have exaggerated the arms they dropped. Connection with India had begun in the British penetration of the first half of the century, at which time a small but important “comprador” type of merchandizing grew up in some serf-owning families. They formed connections with the British, sent sons to British schools in India, and monopolized foreign trade, often at fabulous prices. As Britain’s power waned, some of this group still kept the British connection, others transferred to rising Indian capitalists, of the type Peking called “Indian expansionists,” still others aspired to connections with America. These last sent the trade mission to the USA in 1947 and later acted as hosts to Lowell Thomas. They promoted an “independent Tibet” in which they should rule under Washington’s protection, in the style of Syngman Rhee of South Korea or Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam.
Meantime they built a base in Kalimpong, India, where connections with Indians were nearer and more directly useful than the distant USA. The extent of Indian knowledge of the rebellion was shown by the appearance in the Statesman of March 2, 1959 of a detailed prediction of the coming rebellion, which even stated that the Dalai Lama would be taken out of Lhasa March 17, which actually, two weeks later, occurred.
Nor was the help of the defeated landlords from adjacent provinces negligible. Foreign headlines about “suppressing unarmed, peaceful Tibetans” bring grim smiles to those who know Tibet. No feudal land is peaceful, but few so bristle with arms as did Tibet. “Everyone carries a dagger, most men carry swords, and those that have them carry rifles,” reported Alan Winnington in 1955. The accumulation of 50,000 rifles in the Chamdo and Szechwan areas from clan wars and warlord conflicts was noted in the previous chapter. To these out-of-date but still deadly weapons were added the modern American weapons in Chiang’s air-drops. Arms were thus plentiful in Tibet for anyone who wished to start a war.
“Why, however, should the serf-owners wish just now to start one?” I asked Captain Yang. For eight years they had managed to block reform, and they had Peking’s promise to delay reform till 1962 and then to “consider” another delay. Why should the serf-owners make the first move?
Captain Yang replied that the serf-owners knew that the doom of serfdom was written in the 1951 Agreement, even if delayed. They could only hope to keep serfdom if they broke away from China. Also with every year they saw the common people growing more conscious. Perhaps some of the profits of merchants, who formerly monopolized trade were hurt by the new roads and the new state trade. “But I do not think this the main cause,” he said, “for the merchants were not very strong. The main cause was that the big serf-owners wanted to keep on doing what they pleased with the serfs and they felt their dominance slipping day by day.”
“Were there signs of open rebellion before March?” I asked.
“Oh, yes,” replied the captain. “Air-drops of weapons began in 1958 in the Loka Area south of Lhasa. Possibly this was from American bases in Thailand or from Chiang’s forces still in the Burma hills; to fly from Taiwan would be rather far. Disorders increased by those defeated rebels from other provinces, who were looting the local people in Tibet. We got complaints. We referred these complaints to the kasha, which was Tibet’s local government charged with keeping law and order.
“In 1958 they also began raiding our transport. We were building a big new power-plant for Lhasa and the bandits raided our lumber-trucks. This also being a matter of local order, we kept referring it to the kasha and took no action ourselves.”
“What did the kasha do?” I asked.
“They always agreed to handle the matter,” smiled the captain. “Actually they were fomenting the disorders.
“At the end of February some members of the kasha became openly provocative. A kaloon named Neusha demanded the right to occupy the State Trading Offices of the Central Government. They refused. Then machine-guns were set up by the Tibetan Army facing the Communist Party headquarters. When we took no notice of this, the actions of the kasha grew even more threatening towards the Central Government in the first days of March. The open declaration of Tibetan independence was made on March 10. From then until March 19, the rebels were rallying forces and impressing men into their ranks. On the 19th after midnight, they launched all-out artillery assault on the PLA garrison and on all the civilian offices of the Central Government. The PLA waited until 10 a.m. on the 20th and then went into counter-attack.”
Captain Yang drew a rough diagram to show the positions in Lhasa. Personnel of the Central Government were scattered in eight or nine places. The PLA garrison stood somewhat back from the main road that runs from Lhasa city to the Potala Palace; it contained, as the captain recalled, two companies and part of a third.3 Between it and the road stood the headquarters of the Preparatory Committee and the auditorium where the Dalai Lama was to have seen the theatrical performance on March 10. Across the road was the large compound of the Working Committee of the Communist Party. Besides these were the bank, the post-office, the State Trading Office and the State Transport Services, scattered in various places, with only a few people in each. Like most institutions in Lhasa, they were in walled compounds. Their personnel, though civilian, had had military training and had weapons.
According to Captain Yang and confirmed by others, no response to the rebels’ provocative acts was made by any military or civilian personnel of the Central Government in the ten days from March 10 to 20 until 10 a.m. on March 20. Nor did the civilian personnel seek shelter with the army, except for the families of Tibetan employees, who moved from the city to shelter in the offices. In all the compounds, however, they began digging underground shelters against the shelling they knew would come.
I interrupt my talk with Captain Yang to give the sequence of events from March 10 to 20, as recorded in the diary of Shan Chao, a civil servant in the Working Committee across the road. I shall sharply condense.
Tuesday, March 10. It is already too warm for a fur coat. At dawn we just slip on sweaters when we go out for the morning exercises. Usually we hear at this time the temple bells and horns from the roof of Potala Palace, calling the lamas to morning scriptures. Things were different today. There was a great deal of coming and going in that direction, including men of the Tibetan Army.
At the broadcasting station they were getting a tape-recorder ready. “The Dalai Lama is coming to a program of music and dance,” they said. “Our troupe has been preparing for over a month. We shall record the best events. Shall you want pictures? The Dalai Lama will be sure to shake hands with the best performers.” As I went to get my camera I saw the water-cart sprinkling the road to lay the dust for the Dalai Lama’s car.
Eleven o’clock came and still no sign of our honored guest. Refreshments were ready; a velvet arm-chair had been prepared. The performers had put on costumes and make up. Leading people were chatting at the door of the auditorium, awaiting the guest. . . . Then the radio mechanic came rushing in and stammered: “What a disaster! The reactionaries are holding the Dalai Lama in the Norbu Lingka. They are killing progressives there. People who live near the Lingka are in panic, looking for a place to hide.”
We hurried back to the office. From the gate we saw a group of mounted soldiers coming from the direction of Norbu Lingka. A bloody corpse had been thrown on the back of a horse. The rebels had knifed and stoned to death K.S., a progressive noble . . . and were exposing the corpse to terrify the people. People stood silent by the road with tears in their eyes and lowered heads.
Suddenly I heard someone behind me loading a submachinegun. It was Ngawang Kazang. “What are you doing?” I cried.
“We cannot endure this lawlessness. I want to fight them.”
“Did you get orders?”
“I want to shoot even if I get punished for it,” he said.
It took a lot of arguing to make him put down the gun.
I returned to my office. From the windows I looked with binoculars at the Potala and Yo Wang Hill. The window-sills of the Potala are usually a favorite playground of doves; now rifle barrels glinted from them. Half way up Yo Wang Hill rebel troops had taken position; men were hauling artillery ammunition to the summit.
For ten days the diary shows increasing tension. On the 12th word came of a rebel meeting in Norbu Lingka to which all men of Lhasa were ordered to come on penalty of fine for the first refusal and death for the second. Orders were issued by the rebels that all Tibetan employees in Central Government offices and all pupils in the school should leave at once, under penalty of death. Half of the staff of the Central Government offices were Tibetans who were being trained to replace the Hans. They now asked permission to bring their families into the compound for protection. “We don’t mind sleeping in the court,” they said. The families came and were housed in offices and in the auditorium to escape the terror which the rebels were inflicting on the city of Lhasa.
“The bandits are raising havoc through the city,” said Shan Chao’s diary for March 15th. “The worst atrocity was at the nunnery near Jokhan Monastery; not one of the scores of young nuns escaped being raped. The bandits also broke into many shops and carried off goods. In the afternoon incense was being burned in front of Potala. The rebels were forcing the women to swear to drive out the Hans and ‘establish Tibetan independence.’”
On the 16th the diary reports that a tall, dark Tibetan news photographer of the Central Newsreel Studio drove around and made documentary pictures of rebel demonstrations and of fortifications they were digging in various places and of posters that called for the liquidation of the Hans. He also got pictures of a man whose eyes were gouged out by the rebels because he had helped the PLA transport; he was on a stretcher being taken to hospital. Another photograph showed a man whose nose was cut off for the same offence.
On the 18th word came that the Dalai Lama was missing. “The rebels kidnapped him last night,” it was said. Ordinary citizens of Lhasa were coming to the Working Committee to complain that the rebels were “press-ganging people,” beating to death on the spot men who refused to join them. A fifty-year-old Tibetan woman came weeping that a gang of rebels broke into her house the previous night, took her son as a “volunteer” and dragged her young daughter out from the bed where she had hid, and raped her.
“Several tents have been set up in our area,” reads a significant entry March 19th. “Vegetable sellers and mutton venders who say they can no longer live in the city proper because ‘those wolves steal everything.’ . . . ‘I still want to live to see how many more days those monsters can roam around,’ declared an old woman. . . . Word was going around that a large-scale attack would be launched that night against all the Hans. Yet some Tibetans were seeking shelter next to the compounds of these same Hans, to watch for the rebels’ end. The diary for March 20 describes the beginning of battle:
It was long after midnight. The weather had turned cold. I put on my overcoat to take a stroll in the courtyard before going on with my editorial work. . . . As I stepped out, bursts of fire came from Norbu Lingka, Potala Palace and Yo Wang Hill. Instantly the whole city resounded with rifle and artillery shots. I looked at my watch. It was forty minutes past three. The reactionary clique had finally chosen the road to self-destruction.
Everyone was up listening to the guns. People gathered at the dug-out that could be used both for shelter and for broadcasting. The Tibetan woman announcer kept asking: “Why don’t we counter-attack? Are our artillery-men asleep?” Nobody could pacify her. When we said perhaps the time had not yet come, she exclaimed: “I think it came long ago.”
Nobody went to bed; we sat up till dawn. . . . At ten o’clock sharp our troops launched counter-offensive. Their artillery thundered. People from our offices crowded into the courtyard to look; our Tibetan families even came out with their babies. We urged them into shelter. Our woman radio announcer was elated. Her voice came strong and full of spirit on the loudspeaker.
From our tower we could see the whole city. Our Tibetan staff and their families got busy on their own account sending kettles of buttered tea to the fighting men’s positions. They kept asking to join the fighting. They wanted to organize a “shock-brigade” and persuade people they knew among the rebels to come over to our side.
Actually there was no need to be anxious. About three in the afternoon our national flag was run up on top of Yo Wang Hill. From this height our troops dominated the city.
On the 21st the diary reports:
Today civilian personnel went to see the fighting. They came back exclaiming: “What shooting! Our men didn’t destroy a thing at Norbu Lingka; they shelled the forts around its wall.” They added that the only damage there was done by the rebels who knocked out windows and wall corners for gun emplacements.
Artillery fire now turned towards the Potala. People watching wondered why the shells only hit the rocks at the base. They wondered if the marksmanship was bad. Later we learned that the artillery had orders not to hit Norbu Lingka, Potala or Jokhan. They were shelling concealed pill-boxes outside Potala at its base. Our Tibetan workers were amazed. They thought it a very “polite” way to fight a battle. . . .
On March 22 the diary reports:
At breakfast the call came for everyone to help collect the prisoners. All rebels in Potala and Jokhan had surrendered. They filed past. Some were so obviously impressed into the rebel ranks that they were freed at once. One fourteen-year-old boy, for instance, was crying that “the bandits” had dragged him from his herd of sheep three days ago. . . . We thrust some steamed bread into his pocket and he scampered off home.
“People all over the streets walked again freely today,” reported the diary for March 23. “Faces were all covered with smiles. Practically everyone held a piece of snowy white hata (the ceremonial scarf of greeting) but nobody knew who started the idea. When people met us they held the hata high and said: “Chuhsidelai.” This is not the usual daily greeting. It means: “Good fortune.”
The writer’s vivid picture of the ten days in which the rebels built up their attack while the People’s Liberation Army held its fire cannot of course contain everything that happened during those tense days. It gives what was seen from a single civilian compound and contains nothing about the meetings held in Norbu Lingka, the exchange of letters between the Dalai Lama and General Tan Kuan-san, or the destruction of the ancient mosque in Lhasa city, where the rebels terrorized the Moslem inhabitants. Some of this will be given in the following chapter.
To those who asked, as I myself asked: “Why did the People’s Liberation Army wait so long before quelling the rebels, when these were raging through the city, impressing men, raping women, gouging out eyes, I condense answers I had from Captain Yang and others: “The kasha was still the lawful government and the people of Lhasa had not yet taken sides. In such situations our strategy is never to start the fighting but to let the enemy start it and continue it until it is fully clear to the people who is the aggressor. Then when we counter-attack, we have the people with us; this wide support shortens the fighting and lessens the casualties in the end. The rebels lost the first battle by their behaviour in Lhasa. We protected or helped such people as we could reach. But if we had launched attack before they shelled us all night, not only the foreign press but many people in Tibet would say that we were suppressing Tibetans.”
“Did not this waiting, especially on the last night, endanger the civilians in the scattered compounds?” I asked.
“Not seriously,” replied Captain Yang. “The compounds had walls and the civilians had weapons. The night assault was by artillery shelling. Against this we had dug-outs. Many buildings in the compounds were injured and some wrecked, but the people were in shelter. The only place where the rebels seriously tried to break into a compound was at the Transport Service, which is rather isolated and near a rebel headquarters. Here they made several attempts to storm their way in but were repulsed. Before they followed up their artillery by a general assault on the compounds, we went into the counter-offensive.”
Captain Yang then summed up the military aspects of the battle:
“Our orders to counter-attack came for ten in the morning of the 20th, when we had been under artillery shelling from six to seven hours. Our main drive was straight up Yo Wang Hill. The rebels held all the high points in Lhasa and this was the highest. We took it in a little more than two hours. At the same time we took two rebel headquarters near Norbu Lingka; troops for this came from the suburbs. By three or four in the afternoon the main fighting was over. We held Yo Wang Hill and Norbu Lingka and had taken 3,000 prisoners.
“The rebels then scattered all over the city, some fought in small groups, three or four men sniping from behind walls. Only a few fought stubbornly. Most of them did not want to fight us; they had good relations with us earlier. They had been coerced into fighting. Some shouted: ‘Long live the Communist Party’ when they surrendered. Others fled from the city and fought us later in Loka, still others threw away their weapons and hid in the homes of the Lhasa people. Then the citizens began capturing them and bringing them in.”
“Was there much difference in morale and fighting qualities between the regular Tibetan Army and the new recruits impressed in Lhasa?” I asked.
“Not much,” replied Captain Yang. “None of them had much training or discipline. A serf army is never very good. Few of them really wanted to fight for we had had good relations with all of them until the top rebels began stirring them up. The chief difference was that the Tibetan Army had something of a uniform and better weapons and not such a wide difference in ages. The newly impressed people were taken from the ages of 16 to 60, and given the oldest weapons and pushed forward from the rear. The Tibetan Army had the weapons from the latest air-drops. But in morale they were all about the same.”
Captain Yang estimated the number of rebels who fought in Lhasa as about 8,000; he judged from the number of rifles surrendered or thrown away. The number of prisoners captured was about 4,000. “When I left on April 13 to come to Peking,” he said, “we were carrying on education among the prisoners with meetings and discussions. The Lhasa citizens had seen that the prisoners were not ill-treated, and they were still rounding up captives to bring in.”
“What were you personally doing in the three weeks between March 23 when the Lhasa fighting was over and April 13 when you left for Peking?” I asked. “Did you pursue the rebels to Loka?”
“The Loka fighting was done by other detachments,” replied the captain. “I was doing relief work in Lhasa, sending out grain to cities and villages where the rebels had looted and where grain was urgently needed both for food and seed. There were also orphans to look after. There were, for instance, four children whose father was impressed by the rebels and whose mother protested and was ill-treated and died. We are caring for them until their father returns; if he doesn’t return we shall look after them and educate them.
“I was giving out jobs to hungry Tibetans, to repair the destruction and to continue the building of the new power-plant. By the time I left we had given job relief to 1,300 people. We also organized mobile medical teams to care for wounded Tibetans and for women whom the rebels had raped. We also held meetings among the people to tell what the rebels had done, and to organize the rebuilding of the mosque the rebels demolished and the repair of damage they did to the monasteries.”
“What damage had been done to the famous shrines of Lhasa?” I asked. Rebels who fled to India had spread word that these were destroyed. Captain Yang confirmed what Apei had previously told me that this was not the case. The People’s Liberation Army artillery had orders not to hit Norbu Lingka, Potala or Jokhan Monastery, though these were rebel strongholds.
Norbu Lingka is a large walled park, containing many palaces; its outer wall was damaged, as were some houses where the rebels broke out windows and corners to make gun emplacements. “All this is surface damage, easily repaired.”
The holier, more famous Potala Palace was also a rebel base. On the first day of fighting, the artillery demolished pill-boxes around its base but did not hit the palace walls. On the second day, when the rebels still shot on the city from the high slit windows of the palace, they were dislodged by sharp-shooters shooting through the slits. “This injured some of the side rooms,” Apei had said, “but this also is slight and easily repaired.”
Captain Yang confirmed this, adding: “The shooting was accurate, and this was an important factor in the victory. What broke the rebel morale more than our fire-power was our discipline, accuracy and restraint.”
“Do you encounter any hostile feeling towards the Hans from the Tibetan people generally?” I asked the captain.
“None in Lhasa any more,” replied Captain Yang. “When we first came eight years ago, there was considerable suspicion of our intentions and even fear. Many people avoided contact with us. Actual contacts during these years broke down suspicions. We have good friends among the people and among the lamas. People showed us friendship at great risk to themselves when the rebels were taking the initiative. The rebels defeated themselves by their atrocities towards the people. When we put them down and restored order, the people began to help us; they were glad to have order. And when we announced that the rule of the kasha was over and began to confiscate the whips and instruments of torture, there was considerable expression of joy.”
A month after the fighting, the apple trees were reported in bloom in Norbu Lingka, still under the care of the Dalai Lama’s gardeners. His bodyguards still kept for him his summer palace. In the great Potala, the four huge locks on his jewel and jade cabinets were reported still in place, unopened by any conquering hand.
The Dalai Lama himself was in India.
1. This period is given more fully in Chapter 2, but the sequence of dates is worth recalling. The Agreement was signed May 23, 1951. Apei left Peking early in June by rail and horse and did not reach Lhasa till late August. Chang Ching-wu, representative of the Central Government, went by plane to India and by trail to Yatung where he met the Dalai Lama July 14 and conveyed to him the details of the Agreement. The Dalai Lama then decided not to go to India but to return to Lhasa, which he reached August 17. Only after this did the PLA cross from Sikang into Tibet.
2. This was the man who went to Kalimpong to organize the foreign contacts of the rebellion, and about whom the Dalai Lama has since stated, in June 1959 in India, that he was “forced by Peking to dismiss his prime minister.”
3. There are no official figures but from all data I can gather, the garrison was less than a thousand on March 10. Official figures for the entire PLA force in Tibet on that date were 14,000, stationed in many widely scattered places. This small number explains much.