Travel to Tibet - A Lost Shangri-La?

Travel to Tibet at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria: Tour Tibetan Culture in Photographs

I am arrested by the starkness of the black and white image: a tent, which I learn later is woven from yak hair, is pitched on a bleak, stony plain and set against a background of snow-capped mountains in Tibet.

Editor’s Note: This archived article is here for historical and research purposes.

This and other photographs displayed until October 10, 2005 as part of Royal B.C. Museum’s tour exhibition: Tibet: Mountains and Valleys, Castles and Tents depict a people - some wealthy, others nomadic farmers - who live in harmony with a harsh environment in Tibet, one of the planet’s most isolated regions.

As I pause in front of more old black and white photos portraying the rarely seen Tibetan culture, I am reminded of James Hilton’s book and the subsequent movie, Lost Horizon .

In the story, protagonist Robert Conway and his group are survivors of a plane crash in mountainous territory before being rescued by an elderly Chinese traveler. He escorts them to a valley of verdant natural beauty where the air is pure and the people incorruptible. There is no envy and no greed. Life is gentle. And the absence of stress offers the gift of (almost) eternal youth on valley inhabitants.

Conway comes to the conclusion this that legendary Shangri-La is buried in the heart of Tibet.

No matter how idyllic the setting, Conway and his group are, in fact, prisoners, unable to leave without the co-operation of the High Lama. It leads to several underlying questions: is Utopia worth the sacrifice of physical freedom? Does their confinement, no matter how pleasant, amount to coercion-a tactic as psychologically crippling as it is morally wrong? Are the people of this seemingly perfect society anesthetized against life’s inherent dichotomies of good and evil?

Tibet today is under Chinese rule and the parallels to the dilemma faced by the group in Lost Horizon carry a bitter irony. The party line is that the country is now in much better economic shape than ever, and living standards are immensely improved; the underlying barb is that freedom of opinion, of religious worship and of movement in or out of the country, aren’t negotiable at any price.

This is brought home to our group of six during a pre-museum visit to the Buddhist Dharma Society’s premises in Victoria, British Columbia, where we are served Tibetan butter tea (salty and delicious) in a parlor lavishly decorated with colorful wall hangings.

Lama Geshe Tashi Namgyal, who looks like a benevolent gnome swathed in saffron and maroon robes, chats about Buddhist philosophy in particular and Tibet’s troubling politics in general. We are reminded that His Holiness the Dalai Lama was forced into exile in India in 1959, and that much of the priceless historical artifacts in the monasteries have been destroyed by the Chinese following their political takeover of the country.

Later, as we enter the hall at the B.C. Museum, I am at first surprised the Tibetan exhibition appears rather small. It is only when I come to the last of the artifacts on display I realize size has nothing to do with it.

I have been riveted for 90 minutes by an array of exquisitely crafted jewelry, ceremonial objets d’art, wall hangings, costumes, religious artifacts and photographs.

It is probably the closest I will ever come to seeing free Tibet the way it was before China took over the land: a unique culture that was pacifist, agrarian and deeply spiritual.