China Is Transforming Tibet's Holiest Area Into A Tourist District

[Ensapa]

Oh no. I hope China stops this before they destroy more cultural relics.

China Is Transforming Tibet's Holiest Area Into A Tourist District
by Michael Kelley, Business Insider, May 10, 2013
Lhasa, Tibet (China) -- China is transforming the ancient part of Tibet's capital into a tourist district according to a visiting native of the area, Amy Li of the South China Morning Post reports.



The construction project near the Jokhang temple - the most sacred and important temple in Tibet - reportedly involves building a 150,000 square meter shopping center and an underground parking lot in the heart of the ancient city.

Li reports that the government plans to evict vendors and residents in the area so that their houses and shops could be used to attract new businesses including restaurants, bars, and art galleries.

“Lhasa is being destroyed by excessive commercial development,” Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser, who lives in Beijing but grew up in the capital, wrote in a letter after visiting the area. “Please save Lhasa.”

Li notes that the post received thousands of comments and shares on the social network Weibo before Chinese censors took it down.

“Lhasa doesn’t exist for only tourists,” Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser, who lives in Beijing but grew up in the capital, told SCMP. “There are real people who live here and it’s also a religious place."

Jokhang, built around 642 AD, is Tibet's first Buddhist temple and the ultimate pilgrimage destination for Tibetan pilgrims.

The monastery is an extension of The Potala Palace, which is the winter palace of the Dalai Lama. Both are UNESCO heritage sites and located near Tibet's government.

From UNESCO:

The Historic Ensemble of the Potala Palace, Jokhang Temple and Norbulingka embody the administrative, religious and symbolic functions of the Tibetan theocratic government through their location, layout and architecture.

Several "modernized" areas of China - including another UNESCO heritage site -  have been "criticized for being overly commercialized and having lost its soul after many original residents moved out," according to Li.

[hope rainbow]

No place on world, almost no place, is free from development, from shopping centers, from highways, from convenience stores, from holiday resorts...
I check my whereabouts, let;s all check our whereabouts... Before I can place any judgment on shopping centers and many other infrastructures, let me think: how many times do I go to a shopping center every week, to a super-market, how many times do I take a highway? Pretty much everyday!
Now, many, a great many people do not have access to such infrastructures, and the reason they don;t go to a shopping center is because they CANNOT, they are working fields somewhere, they are too poor, and the 99% of them only dream of one thing: being able to spend in a shopping center, take a plane, check-in into a resort, afford a fancy restaurant...

So I say: if we can't fight this, let's not be over-romantic about it and let's find the best way to still bring Dharma to shopaholics and tourists. More people visit shopping centers these days than a temple or a church, i would guess at least 100,000 times MORE! At least!

When they go to a holy site "shopping center", can this be a bridge for this many people to at least get a seed of a karmic connection with the reality of enlightenment that a Buddha statue can give, that the sight of a monk can give?

Would I prefer to walk a rocky path in a pine tree forest and find an old temple among the trees in a valley? Yes I would prefer, but a 100,000 times more people would prefer to stroll in an air-conditioned shopping center.... So if I care about these people, if I think just for one moment that bringing Dharma to others is the best thing to do, where do I find these people if not in a shopping center, how do I attract these people if not with a shopping center?

I may sound pessimistic? I prefer to think that I am pragmatic.
For those (and it is the minority) that prefers a more romantic and preserved environment to visit holy places, there is still the consciously preserved Bhutan.
For the 99% f the chinese population, there are shopping centers.
Let's hope that in Tibet, they may find Dharma in these shopping centers that are built along sacred temples and monasteries. I really hope they do.

[vajrastorm]

Yes, it does seem to be a great pity that the sacred Jokhang temple, housing  a Buddha statue - Jowo Rinpoche - of immense historical  and religious import,should now be transformed into a tourist attraction and that a whole shopping paradise may be developing around it. It may seem sacrilegious that soon tourists, by the thousands and millions will be coming to 'goggle' at the sacred statue.

Nevertheless, i agree with HR, that though it may not have been the intention, but the result will be that thousands, even millions of these tourists, together with genuine pilgrims, will be making connections with an image of Enlightenment, thus planting the seeds of their own future enlightenment in their mind-streams. What a happy thought!


   

[kris]

Oh no... it is so sad to see that Tibet is being turned in to a modern city... IMHO, Tibet is famous for her "disconnected from the world" feeling... going there is like "lost in time" and not the high rise buildings etc. There are so many modern cities in China, like Shanghai, etc, why go and "disturb" the settings?

Tibet or China should really limit the number of visitors going into Tibet to help preserve the culture, etc. There are already many very beautiful sites in China where the government didn't control the crowd and causing the site being polluted

[Aurore]

It is very sad but the fact is as per what Hope Rainbow has kindly pointed out. There's nothing to stop modernisation which destroys tradition and history. Instead, try to adapt to the situation and find other methods to preserve the holy dharma.

Holy sites in Lhasa serve as a representation of the holy dharma. It is very sacred and highly blessed but yet an empty building does not serve the purpose of preserving the authentic lineage of the Buddha.

With the change of time, how dharma can reach out to people should change as well. New methods for reaching has to emerge. How? Perhaps, social media, online archives and temple, mobile phone, fashion, music and anywhere or anything people are exposed these days. Let's hope the dharma can be preserved as long as possible till the time where the name of Buddha would not be heard even. Sad times that will be. The time for planting seeds now becomes even more crucial.

[Tenzin Malgyur]

I am on the same page with hope rainbow on this view that most people today could not escape from development and modernization of historical and holy sites. It seems to be a fact that shopping and business centers would attract the crowd and bring monetary returns. Yes, if it would bring more people near to a holy site and get a seed planted into their mind, why not? Sure it is sad to see so much construction of modern structures in this ancient city, but lets not dwell not this side of the argument. Look on the bright side- millions of shoppers get seeds of Buddhism planted in their mind.

[dondrup]

Jokang Temple is the holiest and ultimate destination for the Tibetan pilgrims.  Furthermore it had been made the UNESCO heritage sites.  The very purpose of making the site an UNESCO heritage site is to preserve and protect the temple so that its preciousness and sacredness can be appreciated now and in the future for the longest time possible.  When the area is overly developed or commercialised, Jokang Temple will eventually lose its value as the ultimate pilgrimage site.

It is either the Chinese government is blind or they are too ignorant about the importance to protect these precious heritage sites according to the requirements of UNESCO.

[Benny]

I agree with Hope Rainbow and Tenzin Malgyur , that the bright side of these " progress " is that many millions of tourist who might otherwise not have had been attracted to this holy city , would now come in droves to visit . Just as the Vatican city is such a tourist attraction , Jokang Temple would be an attraction and as such millions would be made aware of the importance of this Temple in Tibetan Buddhism .

In this day and age , nothing can stand in the way of progress , so making the best out of the situation is the way to go . No harm in having more people visit this holy site , after all it was built to benefit all of mankind and with impermanence in mind .

[fruven]

On the whole I agreed that we cannot stop the government from developing the places it see fits for development purposes. The government is seeing that it can generate more revenues from visiting this very blessed Jokhang temple. The temple is considered more of a tourist site more than a spiritual site. However not many are attracted to spiritual site. The public would go to a shopping centre rather than a spiritual 'centre'. I agreed with why not make the spiritual site has a shopping centre to attract these crowd. The public who are not into spiritual but they might buy into visiting it because of the publicity generated from the development projects. At least more people would get some blessing when they come to such places.

[Rihanna]

Two things that came into my mind when I was reading this article:

1. I should visit these places as soon as possible, before they are lost in modernization.
2. Modernization is not totally bad, as the convenience brought by improved infrastructure would bring in more tourists and hence help the temples to maintain it's operating costs and refurbishments' expenses.
3. At the end of the day, there is no right or wrong in this move. It all depends which end of the spectrum you are.

[brian]

No place in this world will be able to sustain development. Bright side of this is that more and more people will come and be able to get blessings from holy places. As long as major parts of the holy site is still preserved then I have nothing against it but if it is a demolition of the whole place then I will ask everyone here whether will it bear anymore  value if the historic holy place or structures are being demolished and all you see is another sight seeing place. Will it still bring blessings to anyone of the visitors?