When he left his uncle in Norbu Linka, the Dalai Lama's summer palace in Lhasa, on the evening of March 10, 1959, Qiampa Getsang never expected that one day he would follow in the footsteps of his late uncle and manage the royal palace.
But there is a difference. While his uncle, a Buddhist monk and a senior official with Gaxag, the old Tibetan government, looked after the Potala Palace and Norbu Linka for the Dalai Lama, Getsang, as director of the administrative office of the Potala Palace, is taking care of the palace for the people.
"I have more power than my uncle used to," says 60-year-old Getsang. "I'm the legal guardian of the entity and I'm fully responsible for everything in the palace."
And since taking over the post in 1991, Getsang says, cultural relics and Buddhist scriptures collected in the palace have "far outnumbered the collection here up to 1959," when the Dalai Lama fled Tibet.
"Our well-preserved collection has established such a good reputation for us that many people wish to donate their treasures to us," Getsang says. For instance, in 1995, before his death, a living Buddha of Qinghai's Kumbum Monastery, one of the six largest Lamaist temples in China, donated 232 items, including statues and ritual utensils to the Potala Palace.
"Among them are 24 pieces recognized as Grade One and Grade Two national treasures," Getsang says. "The living Buddha believed that we could take good care of them." Today the 232 relics are on display in a special case.
Formidable Responsibility
But Getsang admits that he was "very reluctant" to take the post when he was appointed chief administrator of the 1,300-year-old palace, now listed as a World Cultural Heritage site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
"All my family, my wife and two children, were against me coming here," he recalls, although by that time he had been working for two years on the renovation project at the palace.
"I dreaded the formidable responsibility," he says. "At the time nobody could tell how many pieces of cultural relics were stored in the huge palace and my children warned I would be suspected if our family got rich in the future, as people might assume I had taken something from the palace."
For his part, Getsang says modestly: "I didn't think I was educated enough to administer the palace." Although he was a Buddhist lama for 10 years up to the time he was 17 and learned to speak Mandarin Chinese later, he says he never had any Chinese schooling.
On top of these misgivings, Getsang says: "I considered myself politically vulnerable, as my uncle Angwang Chaba, who had brought me up since I was orphaned at two, took part in the revolt in March 1959."
After the revolt was quelled, his uncle was jailed and died in prison. The 17-year-old Getsang was left to live on his own. He worked for a neighborhood committee in Lhasa for a few months before he was assigned to show films in Laze, a county in Xigaze of western Tibet, in 1960.
"The new government was about to send me to study in China's hinterland, but changed its mind at the last minute, without explaining why," Getsang says. He himself raised no argument, explaining: "I thought it might be due to my family background."
Bearing the mark of being from a "politically incorrect" family, Getsang continued as a film projectionist for the next two decades.
In the early 1980s he became a county official in charge of cultural affairs, a time when China had begun implementing reform and opening up policies. And his family background no longer cast a shadow over his career. He was elected deputy to the county people's congress, the local legislature, and was promoted to head a department of the Regional Film Distribution Company of Tibet Autonomous Rerion in Lhasa in 1984.
"I liked to project films and I preferred my work of film distribution to administering the Potala Palace," Getsang says. "Especially at a time when film distribution was such a profitable business that people courted us for money. In contrast, the palace was so ill managed that it had only 7,782 yuan (US$937) in the bank, plus an overdue electricity bill of more than 9,000 yuan (US$1,088). You felt like a pauper working at the palace as you had to ask for money all the time."
No matter how reluctant he was, his appointment was irreversible. Getsang duly arrived at the Potala Palace and since then he has left his mark.
Tremendous Work
He set about establishing an archive for the relics contained in the palace and to catalogue each individual piece. "We have recorded more than 70,000 sets of relics," Getsang explained. One set, like the stupa-tomb of the 13th Dalai Lama (1875-1933), contains a total of 943.5 kilograms of gold, inlaid with thousands of pearls, gems and jewels.
He also set up an all-Tibetan staff to sort out the Buddhist scriptures scattered throughout the 2,000 rooms of Potala. "The scripture compilation continues to this day and I can't say when the work will be completed as there are far too many of them," said Getsang.
The work is particularly time-consuming because many scriptures, especially those of sects other than the Gelu, or the Yellow Hat sect, have been left undisturbed in storerooms since being sent for safe-keeping to the palace. Compilers had to sort them out leaf by leaf, and put the same scripture together and wrap it up with yellow silk. Hundreds of bookcases have been made to shelve them.
"I'm very annoyed to hear some Westerners say the scriptures in the Potala Palace have gone," Getsang says. "I told them it was not true during my visit to Europe and they would not believe me, assuming I had been brainwashed. I was tired of making further explanations. I just wished they could come to Lhasa and see for themselves."
To date, the palace has produced four books based on the systematic compilations that have taken place. These books include "A Catalogue of Buddhist Scriptures of the Nyingma Sect Stored in the Potala Palace" and "A Catalogue of Buddhist Scriptures of the Gelu Sect Stored in the Potala Palace."
Getsang has increased the all-Tibetan staff of the palace from 40 to 57, including seven narrators and five researchers, all college graduates. In addition, he now has 60 Buddhist lamas, against 12 in the late 1980s, living in the palace, taking care of different halls and presiding over Buddhist ceremonies. Two of them, both in their 70s, were in the palace before 1959. Getsang finds his 10-year experience as a lama very useful for working with the lamas in Potala.
Meanwhile, thanks to his lobbying, the admission fee has been raised from a nominal sum to 70 yuan (US$8.70). "But we only charge tourists and visitors," he explained. "Tibetan pilgrims still pay one yuan (US$0.12) each."
Yearly revenue from admissions increased from 140,000 yuan (US$16,870) in 1990 to over 8 million yuan (US$1 million) in 2001, and is expected to reach 10 million yuan (US$1.2 million) this year.
The 70-yuan admission fee is almost double that for Beijing's Forbidden City, which is 40 yuan (US$5). "We want to use the price to check the visitor flow to some extent," Getsang explained, adding: "Too many visitors may be harmful to the preservation of the palace."
Fire and Rats
Preservation of this world-renowned palace is a major challenge for Getsang and his colleagues. "I'm always haunted by the fear of fire," he says. "All the buildings here are of a wooden structure, yet it is the pilgrims tradition to add butter to keep the butter lamps going. You have to be watchful all the time."
Modern technology is doing its part in watching over the palace. In 1994 a computer surveillance system was installed, which monitors all the important halls and storerooms of the palace day and night.
Aside from the risk of fire, Getsang says he is plagued by an enormous number of rats that inhabits the palace. As followers of Buddhism, Tibetans will not take animal life. And the staff and lamas in Potala are no exception to this cardinal rule. This factor, coupled with tons of butter and other tributary foodstuffs donated by pilgrims, has allowed the rodents to prosper over the years.
"The rats are very destructive, and the wood structure of the architecture and piles of silk tangkas and paper sutras in the palace are vulnerable to them," said Getsang. "The rats propagate so fast and they are so smart that we have no means of getting rid of them."
Partially to his relief, he says, the latest renovation project of the Potala Palace has incorporated a program to deal with the rodent invasion. International experts will be invited to help with the program.
With an allocation of 170 million yuan (US$20.5 million) from central government, the renovation is the second and largest of its kind since the landmark palace on the Red Hill in Lhasa was rebuilt by the 5th Dalai Lama in 1645. The first renovation in the past 350-plus years was carried out between 1989 and 1994 and financed with 50 million yuan (US$6.02 million) from central government coffers.
"That project focused on the reinforcement of major ground buildings like the red and white palaces," says Zhang Zhiping, a senior engineer from the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, who has been working on the renovation project. "This time we will reinforce other structures, especially the foundations."
Zhang is more than happy to work with Getsang. "He is dedicated, meticulous and upright," she says of him. "You can always find him in the palace, even on weekends. With him in charge, I don't have to worry much about the renovation process. Getsang will keep things going on the right track."
Getsang, however, still longs to shake off the burden of responsibility and has applied for retirement on three occasions. All the applications were turned down. "Perhaps I cannot go until the current repair project is completed in five years," he says.
But despite the awesome responsibility of his posting, Getsang insists he has never regretted taking on the job. "It seems my family's destined mission is to attend to the palace," he sighs.
To this day he still remembers how his late uncle Angwang Chaba would go round picking up ornaments knocked or shaken to the ground by gun fire during the upheavals in March 1959 and put them back where they belonged. "He was simply dedicated to his duty," Getsang says.
As for himself, "I've made my due contribution to the history of the palace and have helped save some treasures," Getsang added.
(China Daily April 9, 2003)
