TIBET 2006: Stairway to Heaven
318 sats \ 2 comments \ @moongoon 27 Jun Photography
The walkway up to the Potala palace is long, steep and winding - and there are many things to see.
I pass two local men in their temple clothes - a nice jacket and long pants - or if available, a suit jacket, slacks, and bowler or cowboy hat as they look at me curiously.
As I ascend, I catch stunning upshot view of the palace and its grandeur.
a bit later one, I run into two monks coming down the stairs. With no foreigners in the picture, it makes for an idyllic scene.
About halfway up there is a small ridge line plateau where a spot a PLA officer, seemingly a visitor / tourist like the rest of us, getting his picture taken with a panoramic backdrop.
Near the top, a man spinning a prayer wheel and grinning ear to ear to himself passes me. Lost in his own thoughts he does not even notice me. To this day, I have always wondered what he was smiling about so.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Coinsreporter 27 Jun
It's sad that there's too much of development by China just to establish its reign in the region.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @moongoon OP 27 Jun
Not to stump for China prop, but from what I could see and the things I overheard in private, CCP-driven economic development may not be the core issue, or at least the Tibetan feeling appeared to be quite mixed - prior to CCP rule, the local religious leadership was not interested in development, so to some greater or lessor extent the development is not unwelcome and it has been an economic / technological / quality of life boon for no small number of Tibetans.
That said, what they didn't say but you could just walk outside and FEEL, was that this development has come along with a very apparent technocratic surveillance police state and a whole cart suspension of Tibetan political and cultural self-actualization...and this is at it's most benign.
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