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Visit to 14th Dalai Lama's last residence in Lhasa

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-03-10 23:56

LHASA -- Norbu Lingka, in western Lhasa, was the last residence for the 14th Dalai Lama before he started his life in exile following a failed armed rebellion in 1959.

Traces of the turmoil have faded over the past five decades in the fast-changing Tibet and can hardly be spotted in the tranquility of early spring in the garden park.

In the spring of 1939, a farmer's son Lhamo Thondup, who was less than four years old, but was already acknowledged as the new incarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama by a search party, left his hometown at a remote village of the northwestern Qinghai Province, in a large party that included his family members, for Lhasa.

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The journey took three months. After a whole-day ceremony in which Lhamo Thondup was conferred the new Dalai Lama, the little boy was brought to the Norbu Lingka -- his first home in Lhasa.

Norbu Lingka means "treasure park" in Tibetan. The place, with evergreen forests and energetic blossom of flowers, is indeed a natural wonder in such a high-altitude plateau city as Lhasa.

It witnessed many unforgettable happy moments in the growth of the 14th Dalai Lama from a child to a young man. So that, of his two regular residences in Lhasa, the Potala Palace and the Norbu Lingka, the 14th Dalai Lama showed an obvious favor to the latter in his autobiography published in 1990, saying "the Norbu Lingka was much the more pleasant of the two places."

"It was surrounded by gardens and consisted of several smallish buildings which were light and airy inside. By contrast, the Potala, which I could see towering magnificently above the city in the distance, was dark, cold and gloomy inside," he recalled in the book Freedom In Exile.

But more importantly, it is the Norbu Lingka, flourishing with natural pleasures, saw off "the last temporal liberty" of the 14th Dalai Lama that he was ever to know, because he "enjoyed a whole year free from any responsibility" there before he was formally enthroned at the Potala Palace in the winter of 1949.

After that, as his predecessors had, the 14th Dalai Lama moved to live in the Norbu Lingka every March and moved back to the Potala Place at the end of every September.

However, those who are allowed to enter the inner courtyard of Norbu lingka, which was surrounded by a conspicuous yellow wall, were mainly high officials of the then-Tibetan government, members of noble families and senior lamas.

PARK OF PEOPLE

The administrators of Norbu Lingka now call people the owners of the "treasure park." The residents now in the park are more than 70 work staffs of the administration, including more than 20 monks taking care of the palaces for the Dalai Lamas.

The palaces are no longer a taboo for ordinary people, while the gardens are a favorite picnic spot at weekends or important Tibetan festivals, particularly the Shoton or "Yogurt Festival," when families camp in the grounds and traditional Tibetan opera performances are staged.

The park used to be on the old course of Lhasa River. It has finally evolved into a garden palace covering an area of more than 46 hectares since the government of Qing Dynasty (1636-1912) set up the first building for the seventh Dalai Lama in the 1740s.

Ma Yigang, head of the Norbu Lingka administration, said visitors, mainly pilgrims, are allowed to visit almost all the buildings, including the Takten Migyur Potrang, meaning Eternal Palace in Tibetan.

"For the Tibetans, the Norbu Lingka is as holy a place as the Potala Palace, so we have received a lot of devotees every year, especially since the Qinghai-Tibet railway opened to traffic three years ago," said Ma.

According to Liu Rongquan, an official with the administration, the annual number of tourists to Norbu Lingka had increased by an average of 18 percent since 2006. The number exceeded 500,000 in 2007, but dived to a historic low in 2008 to less than 5,000 because of the riot in March.

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