Little Emperors (37 page)

On December 6, 2005, however, the police used guns. Farmers in the Guangdong town of Dongzhou were protesting government plans to build a power plant on their land. Local officials called in the riot squad. The crowd became more agitated, even violent, in its clash with police. At about 7:00 p.m., a large truck with floodlights rolled into the fray. The lights were turned on and the police opened fire. The crowd ran. The police kept shooting. Citizens in the town said they could hear gunshots as late as 3:00 a.m.

In the following days, the army surrounded Dongzhou, cutting it off from the outside world, while police hosed blood off the town's streets and searched homes for more protestors. By telephone, villagers told foreign journalists that at least twenty people had died (the official version is three) and that many more had been injured. Dozens of protestors also disappeared that night and, as at Tiananmen Square, no one knew if they were in jail or dead.

And the Chinese government is still railroading Tibet — quite literally ever since the Qinghai to Lhasa railway was finished in 2006, with help from Canadian companies Bombardier, Power Corporation, and Nortel. China can now send more settlers and troops into Tibet more efficiently than ever before. Tibetans are fast becoming a minority in Tibet, as is Tibetan culture and language.

To counter this development, instead of sending their kids to school to be taught the Chinese version of history in Chinese, many Tibetan parents send their kids with guides over the Himalayas, through Nepal, to India. Once in India, the children can get a Tibetan education at one of the many schools set up by the Tibetan communities-in-exile there. Parents send their children away, knowing they may never see them again. The children, in effect, become orphans.

Groups of fleeing Tibetans usually make their journey over the mountains in winter when the snow is deep and cold and Chinese border guards are more likely to look the other way. But at the end of September 2006, Chinese border police opened fire on just such a group, killing Kelsang Namtso, a seventeen-year-old Buddhist nun. Forty of the Tibetans managed to escape into Nepal. At least twenty-five of the refugees were captured and put in jail. Ten of them were under the age of fifteen. The youngest was seven.

And while on the subject of Tibet, I can't conclude a book about children in China without mentioning one child in particular — Gedhun Choekyi Nyima. On May 14, 1995, from information he received at his home in exile in India, the Dalai Lama recognized Gedhun as the eleventh reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, the second-highest spiritual leader in Tibetan Buddhism. Three days later, Chinese authorities took Gedhun and his parents from their home in central Tibet and put them in “protective custody.” They haven't been seen or heard from since. Only six years old at the time of his detention, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima became the world's youngest political prisoner.

At times, thinking about the future of China — and the world — I am close to despair. But then I think back to my students in Guangzhou. How smart and funny they were. How hard-working and warm-hearted and full of beans they were. And I smile. Then I think about how much and how fast China has changed in their young lifetimes, and how much more it could change, really change, as they get older. And I, too, feel encouraged to hope.

A Tibetan monk walks the alleys of Labrang Monastery in Xiahe, Gansu Province
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