If the Dalai Lama ever makes it back to Lhasa, as excited press reports have suggested he might, he won't recognise the place. The city that he left in 1959 had fewer than 30,000 inhabitants; it is now six times the size. In 1951 it covered one square mile; now it sprawls over twenty. The original city - a warren of low-rise Tibetan houses with their distinctive tapering shape, proof against earthquakes; their double brick walls, proof against Tibet's winters; and their austere white façades decorated with black-painted window frames and enlivened by fluttering pelmets - has largely been bulldozed. The remnants are now known as the Tibetan city, a small island in the sea of the new Chinese city.

LRB 7 September 2006 | PDF Download