Stepping Into a Sacred and Political Place

The white, laser-printed piece of paper said little yet announced so much. As Kumbum monastery rose to activity at sunrise, I wandered its cobblestone paths watching a silent parade of crimson robes and shaved heads enter its temples. Soon the monks’ collective, guttural chants echoed in Tibetan through the complex, drawing me to their source.

At the entrance to the Great Hall of Meditation, a note affixed to an ancient wood archway shone in the day’s first light. Its four Chinese characters said, “Tourists, please come in.”

Many do, to the delight of China’s tourism officials. Kumbum is one of Tibetan Buddhism’s holiest sites. The monastery, called Ta’ersi in Chinese, is a favorite attraction for China’s burgeoning domestic tourism industry.

Tucked into a mountainous cleft in central Qinghai Province, the monastery’s region has spawned two Buddhist luminaries: the current Dalai Lama and, five centuries ago, the founder of his Gelugpa, or Yellow Hat, sect, Tsongkhapa.

The original temple was built in 1560 on the site of Tsongkhapa’s birthplace, beside a tree that, according to legend, sprouted from drops of blood that fell from his umbilical cord, with each of its thousand leaves bearing the face of the Buddha.

Kumbum today is hemmed in by more than lush, rolling hills. It also straddles a sensitive divide between two cultures, two histories and the contradicting aims of piety and profit. On the pilgrim circuit, Kumbum ranks behind only the monasteries of Jokhang, Drepung and Sera in Lhasa. I had seen those three on a previous trip to Tibet (as a tourist, not a penitent) and was curious to compare the Buddhist pilgrim culture within Tibet to that just outside its current border, especially since the redrawing of China’s map after 1950. This part of Qinghai was historically a part of Tibet’s Amdo Province.

I had come here last summer for a break from Xining, a railhead 15 miles to the northeast and the capital of Qinghai. Having just finished grad school at Berkeley, I was on a six-week overland trek across the width of China from the Afghan border all the way to Shanghai.

Xining was an intoxicating mixture of Han, Hui (Muslim), Salar and Tibetan traders, perched at 6,700 feet on the Tibetan plateau in northwest China and rimmed by dusty, treeless cliffs. A boomtown infamous for reform camps that use prisoners to manufacture goods, Xining was also the staging point for construction of the train line to Tibet, and it bustled with a frontier air.

Chinese in search of work pushed their bedrolls past performers holding monkeys on chains, touts searching for travelers bound for Lhasa by 60-hour bus ride, and pilgrims to one of China’s largest mosques--and to Kumbum.

At the bus stop for Kumbum, packed vehicles departed every 10 minutes for the monastery, bearing shutterbugs and seekers. The 20-minute ride along a new highway breezed us past fields glowing yellow with rapeseed in bloom. We passed a billboard whose peeling paint showed a rakish couple with a little girl and the caption, “Only having one child is good.” Farther up the road, Chairman Mao, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin waved over a mixture of China’s 56 ethnicities in headdresses. The three leaders had been united by computerized photo manipulation, and their images had a faint glow about them. This scene bore the words, “Hold high the banner of great national unity. Defend the motherland’s integrity. Combat against splitting the nation.”

It was still early morning when the bus dropped us at Kumbum’s entrance, an imposing stone gate crowned with three tiled towers whose eaves curled skyward. They overlooked Huang- zhong’s large market square, staffed by Han and Hui merchants selling rosaries, jewelry and swords. Their chants of “looky, looky” were drowned out by the calls of tour group leaders and coordinated shouts that roared from the new military base adjacent to Kumbum’s eastern wall.

I stopped for a bowl of noodles and wandered about the stalls. One sold cloth shoes large enough to cover my enormous Western-size feet. Shopping beside me was a young monk wearing old loafers two sizes too large. Buddhism teaches that life can be a sea of suffering, and I could think of no better illustration of it than making a long pilgrimage in ill-fitting shoes.

I told the saleswoman to put a new pair for him on my tab. To my surprise, the vendors also openly pitched pendants and photographs of the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama, who until recently was second in spiritual command to the Dalai Lama. The images captured them as young men--laughing on a couch next to an uneasy Mao Tse-tung during a meeting in Beijing--and as elders, sitting in the lotus position in an imagined scene in front of the Potala Palace in Lhasa. Even before I had set foot inside Kumbum, I was face to face with its current controversy, involving living Buddhas and the Chinese government.

After Tashilhunpo monastery in Shigatse, Tibet, Kumbum is the second seat of the Panchen Lama, the monk charged with protecting Tibet and tutoring the Dalai Lama. When the 10th Panchen Lama, pictured on the souvenirs for sale at Kumbum, died in 1989, two searches began for his reincarnation. One was headed by the exiled Dalai Lama, the other by the Chinese Communist Party.

The Dalai Lama recognized a 9-year-old boy from near Kumbum, the government another candidate. The Dalai Lama’s choice hasn’t been seen in public since his selection, and human rights groups call him the world’s youngest political prisoner, a charge Beijing denies, saying he attends school in a “secure” location. The impasse became so tense that the government’s plans to install the 11th Panchen Lama in Shigatse were scrapped because of opposition within Tibet.

Instead, Beijing planned on moving him to Kumbum, a decision that rankled monks here and led to the government’s shutting down a school at the monastery and detaining and expelling students.

The Chinese Panchen Lama is now ensconced in the capital, rumored to be living in an opulent villa that once belonged to Chen Xitong, the former Beijing mayor now jailed on corruption charges. The crackdown also resulted in the unexpected defection of Kumbum’s abbot, Agya Rinpoche, to California in 1998. Had the abbot overseen the installation of the government’s Panchen Lama, he would have legitimized its choice, undermining the Dalai Lama.

These events were, of course, absent from the history printed in Chinese and English (but not Tibetan) on the back of Kumbum’s entrance ticket. And, judging by their happy poses, they were also absent from the minds of the tourists who crowded one another for photographs beside the young Han female guides dressed as Tibetans.

The monastery had recently undergone a $3-million renovation. I wondered whether the money was reparation for the 21 years that Kumbum spent converted into an agricultural commune or whether it was an investment that entrance fees were expected to recoup. The guidebooks I carried failed to provide the complex’s background.

Surfing at a Xining Internet cafe filled it in, though more often my Internet search turned up breathless accounts like: “It’s in a wonderfully desolate area with relatively few tourists compared to sites farther east. You can really get a taste for monastic life and even make friends with the monks!”

No travel story noted Kumbum’s political intrigue, the fact that it was largely leveled by an earthquake in 1990, or the massive rebuilding by the Chinese government. These were left to the few news accounts. I was struck by the division of coverage.

Standing at the row of eight white stupas honoring martyred lamas that marked its entrance, I sensed that Kumbum is a mere shadow of what it once was. Visiting the temple was like taking two trips in one--an experience of what it is and an imagination of what it was.

In the daytime, when they are filled with visitors, China’s Buddhist centers look and feel thriving. Restorations are taking place across the country, and daily I read of the commitment to the Chinese constitution’s guarantee of freedom of religion. In July the government even brought a legion of American reporters to Kumbum to showcase the gains.

But it isn’t until nighttime, when the crowds depart, that the monasteries reveal their sad emptiness. Kumbum was built to accommodate 6,000 monks. Now it had only 500.

I maneuvered around the crowds and their calls of “Hello, foreigner,” pausing to remind one grating man that Siddhartha, who founded Buddhism in India, was a foreigner too.

I asked one of the young Han guides where I could leave my luggage. She pointed across the street to the new luxury Tsongkha Hotel, where a room was a comparatively exorbitant $55.

“I can’t afford that,” I said.

“But you’re a foreigner,” she said.

Then a karmic moment: The newly shod monk passed by and waved me close to him, pointing to a small, hand-painted sign that hung over a narrow doorway: “Pilgrim’s Guest House.” I entered and was greeted by a wizened old man who handed me a thermos of hot water and a padlock with a key.

“Take any room upstairs,” he said, smiling. “You’re the only guest.”

“How much is it?”

“Fifteen yuan [about $2] a night, and you can pay me when you leave.” He refused to take my passport, usually a requirement when checking into a Chinese hotel.

What the guest house lacked in amenities--there were none--it made up for in character. It had existed on this spot since Kumbum was founded. At the turn of the 20th century, Canadian missionary doctor Susie Rijnhart stayed here, an experience recounted in her book, “With the Tibetans in Tent and Temple.” Not long after, French explorer Alexandra David-Neel was a guest for three years.

I crept up the narrow, rickety wood staircase and chose a room with a dirty window and two iron-frame beds stacked with army blankets and lighted by a single exposed bulb. The shared bathroom was on the rooftop, and no water ran from the tap. I decided to stay the night.

Dusk came on slowly, and the last of the tour buses had departed. I wound my way through the monastery’s 30 halls, which housed ancient tapestries, frescoed bodhisattvas, golden Buddhas and rows of prayer wheels. Pilgrims smeared butter on statues, then stuck seeds and money to them. In the Butter Sculpture Hall they bowed to elaborately painted carvings that depicted scenes from Siddhartha’s life and Tibetan folk tales. Kumbum was theirs now and theirs alone.

My favorite thing about seeing temples in China is their color--a rainbow of blue, ochre, white, yellow and red that is even more luminous against the drab modern buildings outside the gates. Nowhere is this better seen than at Kumbum, where the ongoing restoration spruces up wood buildings that hold traditional schools of medicine, institutes devoted to the study of the sutras and Tantra, and, in dwindling numbers, monks. One invited me into his room, him to practice English and me to practice Chinese.

He brewed black tea and offered me a bowl of tsampa--barley eaten by rolling it into a ball with salty yak butter. As we talked I noticed a TV, a DVD player, a stereo, a box of tapes and movies, and a bookshelf of English conversation books and photos of the Dalai Lama. I asked the monk what was the biggest issue facing Kumbum. “All the tourists,” he answered quickly. It is difficult to contemplate emptiness when the space around you is filled with people. The monk followed my gaze to a stack of Jackie Chan films atop the TV.

“Those can’t help either,” I teased.

Before arriving here, I had read that it could be politically dangerous for monks to have guests in their quarters. On this night, the monk said, he would face no trouble for having me over. Was he naive? Was he fearless? Was he a cop?

Were the dangers overstated?

I felt the same uncertainty as when traveling in Tibet--the situation could, and often did, change daily. The Dalai Lama urges people to travel to Tibet and to experience Tibetan culture. So does the Chinese government. One profits spiritually, the other economically. But at what cost? I asked myself throughout the night at the guest house, wondering whether I should be there. The fleas feasting on my ankles certainly were glad I had come.

I emptied my backpack and bundled up in all my clothing to ward off the chill, then climbed to the guest house roof. The Milky Way, called the Silver River in Chinese, throbbed low and bright in the darkness in a way that high-altitude countryside reveals. Low horns reverberated through the valley, blown by a pair of monks from a rooftop.

Dawn’s gentle, golden light woke me a few hours later. I opened my eyes to a world transformed. Magpies and roosters mixed their songs with the incense smoke wafting through the damp air. Monks wrapped in their red wool robes shuffled silently into the Great Hall of Meditation.

Inside, bells rang softly, and a steady drum thumped while a pilgrim stretched out on the ground below me. I hadn’t seen her at the hostel, and the monastery walls were locked. When and from where she had arrived I didn’t know.

She flattened her body, then pressed her forehead to the cold stones, accumulating karmic merit with every motion. Her prayers echoed through Kumbum. The buzz of an approaching tour bus rolled through the valley. The pilgrim took one step forward and began her routine all over again.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

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Guidebook: The Call of Kumbum

Getting there: Kumbum (Ta’ersi) is in Lushaer village, Huangzhong County, 15 miles southwest of Xining. From LAX, fly Japan Air Lines, All Nippon or United to Tokyo, then United or Northwest to Beijing and Air China to Xining. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $1,223. If you’re already in Beijing, you can take an Air China flight to Xining; the restricted round-trip fare is $370.

Minibuses depart dawn to dusk from Ximen (West Gate) bus station in central Xining. A ticket for the 20-minute ride is about 50 cents. Returning, buy your ticket at the new bus depot adjacent to Kumbum, or hop into one of the taxis that bundle four passengers together (60 cents each) for a more comfortable and quicker trip back to Xining. At Kumbum, the $3.60 entrance fee gets you an oversized ticket with 10 punch holes. A monk is supposed to subtract a hole for each temple you enter. It rarely happens.

Most tourists see Kumbum as a day trip from Xining. Staying overnight is recommended because after the crowds depart--from 5 p.m. until 8 a.m.--the temples are most enjoyable and authentic.

Telephones: To call the numbers below from the U.S., dial 011 (the international dialing code), 86 (the country code for China), 971 (the area code for Xining) and the local number.

Where to stay: The new Qinghai Tsongkha Hotel, 57 Ying Bin Road, 614-4888, www.orientaltravel.com/hotel/city/res_Silk_Road_Tsongkha_Hote_lXining .htm, faces the monastery and borders the market square. Its 32 rooms are modern and clean. You’ll pay $42-$56 a night.

The only other option is the Pilgrim’s Hostel, where spartan double rooms cost less than $2. The rooms have no bathroom, no running water, a single exposed lightbulb, thin walls and lumpy steel beds, but--honest--they make up for the lack of amenities with character.

If staying in Xining, the Minzu (Minority) Hotel (822-5951) on Dongguan Dajie has a variety of comfortable rooms. A double room is $12.

For more information: China National Tourist Office, 600 W. Broadway, Suite 320, Glendale, CA 91204; (818) 545-7507, fax (818) 545-7506, www.cnto.org.

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Mike Meyer lives in Berkeley, where he has completed a memoir of his travels through China.