Born from flowers: Mao and the Dalai Lama

Tibet is a region much bigger than the autonomous administrative region called as such. It expands basically across most of himalayas and the plateau north east of the mountain chain.

In north Yunnan, most people speak tibetan and consider themselves as tibetan more than as chinese. Yet most of them don't need to hate Mao Tse Dong to love the Dalai Lama, even if History gave each of them quite conflicting purpose (Mao brought back Tibet into China in 1949 and followingly he did his best to crush tibetan culture, forcing the supreme authority of Tibetan Buddhism into exile in 1959).



I was trekking there with Gu San, a local guide, and as we went past some beautiful wild flowers, one of his friend accompanying us said very seriously in Tibetan that both the Dalai Lama and Mao were the kind of people born from flowers.

He was clearly granting as much respect to both. As a matter of fact, earlier that day, we saw in the private temple of the house of Gu San, two pictures sitting next to each other, respectively of Mao and the Dalai Lama (while this is strictly forbidden to have and show portrait of the buddhist leader in China!).

Gu San explained it by saying that to old tibetan generations and for some of the least educated, Mao remains as the man who abolished slavery (which a majority of tibetan were into), and of course the Dalai Lama is still considered as the supreme religious authority despite the PRC efforts to make him fall in oblivion.