Shiloh
Editor, Senior Moderator
Source: http://wwrn.org/articles/41412/
The Disneyfication of Tibet
Pearl Sydenstricker ("Washington Monthly," January 3, 2014)
High on a mountain in eastern Tibet is a platform where corpses are fed to vultures. It?s a dizzying slope carpeted in grass, with a web of sun-bleached prayer flags fluttering overhead. Traditional Tibetan ?sky burials? ritualize nature?s reclamation of human life, rather than denying it. Instead of neatly cremating or putting the body into a box, protectively, Tibetans feed their dead, bite by bite, to a flock of massive, squawking birds. Now the Chinese government has made this sacred rite into a $5 show for Han Chinese tourists.
The vultures are always the first to arrive, well before the monks and morticians. After the body is unbundled, the birds move in and start with the eyes and the easy bits?fingers, ears, toes. The morticians are there with mallets and hatchets to cut the body into bite-sized pieces, to ensure that nothing is left behind. It?s hard to watch, and, understandably, it?s not like a funeral, in that family members and friends do not attend. The only Tibetans here are a monk saying prayers, the morticians, and, of course, the body.
But there are also two dozen tourists, all from China, here to gawk. Encouraged by the Chinese government, they?ve arrived in 4WDs emblazoned with the emblems and flags of an off-roading club. The burial goes on amid titters of disbelief and the whirrs and clicks of cameras and iPhones recording the event for online shares back home...
The Disneyfication of Tibet
Pearl Sydenstricker ("Washington Monthly," January 3, 2014)
High on a mountain in eastern Tibet is a platform where corpses are fed to vultures. It?s a dizzying slope carpeted in grass, with a web of sun-bleached prayer flags fluttering overhead. Traditional Tibetan ?sky burials? ritualize nature?s reclamation of human life, rather than denying it. Instead of neatly cremating or putting the body into a box, protectively, Tibetans feed their dead, bite by bite, to a flock of massive, squawking birds. Now the Chinese government has made this sacred rite into a $5 show for Han Chinese tourists.
The vultures are always the first to arrive, well before the monks and morticians. After the body is unbundled, the birds move in and start with the eyes and the easy bits?fingers, ears, toes. The morticians are there with mallets and hatchets to cut the body into bite-sized pieces, to ensure that nothing is left behind. It?s hard to watch, and, understandably, it?s not like a funeral, in that family members and friends do not attend. The only Tibetans here are a monk saying prayers, the morticians, and, of course, the body.
But there are also two dozen tourists, all from China, here to gawk. Encouraged by the Chinese government, they?ve arrived in 4WDs emblazoned with the emblems and flags of an off-roading club. The burial goes on amid titters of disbelief and the whirrs and clicks of cameras and iPhones recording the event for online shares back home...