Lhasa: Streets with Memories

This book juxtaposes contemporary accounts of Lhasa from local and exiled Tibetans, foreign observers and Chinese migrants in the city with architectural observations by the author to describe Lhasa and its current status as both an ancient city and a modern Chinese provincial capital. The narrative reveals how historical layering, popular memory, symbolism and mythology constitute the story of a city. Besides the ancient Buddhist temples and former picnic gardens of the Tibetan capital, the book describes the urban sprawl, the harsh rectangular structures and the geometric blue-glass tower blocks that speak of the anxieties of successive regimes intent upon “improving” on the past.

The author’s excavation of the city’s past, the buildings and the streets, interwoven with his own recollections of unrest and resistance, recount the story of Tibet’s complex transition from tradition to modernity and its painful history of foreign encounters and political experiment. For example, the author notes: “In the days of open protest, everything seemed clear. But Lhasa became again a city where, all around, the signs speak more loudly of the global entrancement of desire than they do of politics, and where the foreigner wanders around in an ignorance that he or she has no sure way to measure. It is a city in which the memories and stories that belong to each street and house still speak, if they can be heard, more audibly than the inhabitants” (page xix).

The book starts with an overview of the controversies surrounding Tibet’s history, before delving deeper to explain the complexities that lie beneath the unitary and often contesting views of the city, as presented by the exiled Tibetan elites, local Tibetans and the Chinese officials. In the later chapters, the author presents a narrative of the change in the official Chinese policy on Tibet after 1987 that has had much the greatest impact on the city. The new policy aimed to integrate the local economy rapidly with that of inland China, and to stem dissent by increasing infrastructure expansion, urban wealth and consumer satisfaction. The policy depended, as before, on central government subsidies, but included encouraging Chinese migrants to open private shops and businesses in Tibet in the name of “deepening reform”. From the mid-1990s, the culture once reviled in China as being feudal and barbaric became a tourist attraction for wealthier Chinese, with a million a year visiting Tibet to enjoy its exotic architecture, customs and religious traditions. At the same time, much of the old city of Lhasa was torn down to make way for new developments. All this has led to a rapid surge in Chinese migration into urban areas, and a GDP increase of around 12 per cent per year. The author goes on to describe how religion, the Tibetan language and tradition are increasingly associated with the countryside, the poor, the “uneducated” and the elderly. Although, controls on religion are not obvious to casual observers, the author writes, “…those who work in government bodies and those who study in schools know that they are not supposed to visit a monastery or practice any form of religion” if they are Tibetan Buddhists (page xxix).

This book offers a powerful and lyrical exploration of a city long idealized, disregarded or misunderstood by outsiders. Looking to its streets and stone, the author presents a searching portrait of Lhasa, its history and its illegibility. The book serves not only as a manual for thinking about contemporary Tibet but also for questioning our way of thinking about foreign places.