Beijing, China - A high-ranking Buddhist lama who Communist Party officials hope will become a spiritual and political leader for China’s five million Tibetans appeared publicly in a monastery town in the northwestern province of Gansu on Thursday morning accompanied by a formidable police presence, residents and exile groups said by telephone.
They said the lama, Gyaltsen Norbu, 21, the Chinese government’s hand-picked 11th Panchen Lama, had journeyed to the town of Xiahe because it is home to the Labrang Monastery, one of the most cherished centers for Tibetan Buddhism outside the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Senior religious figures at the monastery have said he may spend weeks or even months studying and mediating there, although that partly depends on how he is received by the faithful.
The monastery houses more than a 1,000 monks, most loyal to another young man chosen by the exiled Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama, who died in 1989. That boy, Gedhun Choekyi, then 5, disappeared just days after his selection was announced in 1995. Six months later, Chinese officials anointed Gyaltsen Norbu as the new Panchen Lama, or “great scholar,” traditionally one of the most important figures in the Gelugpa branch of Tibetan Buddhism, also known as the Yellow Hat school. The Dalai Lama is the head of the Gelugpa sect, which dominates religious life in Tibetan parts of China.
The “Chinese Panchen Lama,” as many Tibetans call Gyaltsen Norbu, has spent most of his childhood and adolescence in Beijing but officials, mindful of the legitimacy gap, have increasingly sought to raise his profile among monks and ordinary Tibetans. Experts say the decision to send him to Labrang is aimed at cultivating the respect of fellow monks, although given the ferocity of previous antigovernment protests in Xiahe, the move is not without risks.
“Just forcing him on the faithful cannot win hearts and minds but keeping him in Beijing all the time is also not good for his reputation,” said Arjia Rinpoche, the former abbot of another monastery who fled to the United States in 1998 rather than become Gyaltsen Norbu’s tutor.
Exile groups said the Panchen Lama had been scheduled to come in early July, but his arrival was postponed by skittish officials worried about a hostile reception.
Last week in Xiahe, many of the town’s Han Chinese residents said they were excited by the prospect of his arrival, but several crimson-robed monks complained that his presence might harm Labrang’s reputation. Others fretted about increased restrictions and security presence that would accompany his arrival.
“We Tibetans don’t want anything to do with him,” one young monk said, pausing on the street to talk to a reporter. “He’s not the real Panchen Lama. Why does Beijing think they have the right to interfere with our traditions?”
In preparation for his arrival, foreign tourists were forced to leave Xiahe in recent days and business owners said hundreds of armed police were scattered across the tiny mountain town. One Tibetan scholar who is in touch with senior lamas at Labrang said monks and government workers were told to line the streets for his arrival around 11 a.m. “It was an order,” said the scholar, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions from the government.