By Eve Johnson
LHASA – In the dusty bowels of the Tibet capital’s huge Potala Palace, a handful of labourers slowly chip away at ancient plaster holding together the 13-storey building’s crumbling foundations.
Working far below the feet of hordes of tourists and pilgrims visiting the former home of the exiled Dalai Lama, the small team of workers belies the scale of renovation.
China is spending more than 330 million yuan ($40 million) to patch up the 370-year-old palace.
The rambling red and ochre building, perched atop a craggy hill that dominates Lhasa’s skyline, is well into a four-year renovation begun in June 2002 to shore up the catacomb-like foundations and walls of the UNESCO world heritage site.
Outside in the intense Lhasa sun, a dusty construction manager points to a pile of grey sludge. “If we don’t replace the old mortar with this, then the Potala Palace will collapse on top of itself,” he said.
No one argues about the need to keep up the Tibet Autonomous Region’s most lucrative and culturally sensitive symbol.
Some question the methods used.
Some Tibetan workers have complained to overseas activists of substandard materials and slip-shod work by their ethnic Chinese co-workers who they say know little of traditional Tibetan masonry.
That has put project leaders on the defensive.
The construction manager, Li Lanqing, waves his finger at the wet pile of mortar.
“This is not just ordinary cement, like some people suspect. It is a mixture of mud, sand and limestone, with only a little cement to hold it together,” he said.
Local leaders of the renovation project say they have responded to two letters sent by UNESCO voicing concern about the durability of ordinary cement and about the number of ethnic Chinese workers on the project.
They say they have invited the United Nations organisation to send an inspection team.
UNESCO has yet to take up the offer, they say. UNESCO officials in Beijing declined to comment.
“We do have ethnic Chinese workers. I don’t know how many, but very few,” Champa Kalsang, director of the Potala Palace Administration Bureau, told reporters.
“Ethnic Chinese people don’t know how to do this kind of work,” he said.
CENTURIES OF DAMAGE
Project leaders said ethnic Chinese were being used for more cosmetic repairs such as touching up the floors, ceilings and fading Buddhist frescoes damaged by the flash bulbs of tourist cameras as well as centuries of oily smoke from yak-butter lamps burning in the musty building.
“I expect them to use modern construction techniques,” said John Powers, a Tibet expert at the Australian National University in Canberra.
“It strikes me that the idea of preserving the building is a good thing regardless of the politics. It may be better to use modern methods to preserve it.
But repairs inside the palace do not all inspire confidence.
Recently repaired ceiling beams in the sunlit arcades are already shedding their layers of bright cobalt blue paint and showing water stains.
Project leaders do not seem unduly worried.
“Once we finish this phase of renovation, the Potala should be fine for another 50 years,” said Champa Kalsang.
Critics worry that the hundreds of Tibetan Buddhist faithful making their way daily by tractor, bus, or on foot to worship at the holy site will be turned away at the door by officials intent on avoiding further damage to the building.
Officials say the devout are never denied entrance and are indeed entitled to a special discount on entrance fees — one yuan (U.S. cents 12) compared with 100 yuan ($12) for tourists.
“We do not have limits on a single pilgrim. You can ask those standing right now at the gate of the Potala palace whether there are any restrictions,” said Champa Kalsang.
The earth, wood, and rock structure has become more of a museum since the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 amid a failed uprising against the Chinese government.
Unlike hundreds of the region’s other relics and monasteries, the palace survived the chaotic 1966-76 Cultural Revolution unscathed because then premier Zhou Enlai ordered it protected.
Tourists now visit in droves.
Since repairs began in 2002, the number of tourists has been restricted to 1,800 a day compared with the 3,000 a day who wandered through its estimated 1,000 rooms before restoration began.
Keeping a watchful eye on tourists taking pictures from the roof and within eyeshot of a handful of workers making leisurely repairs to gold leafing on the crown of the palace, a Tibetan security man lounges in the morning sun with a walkie-talkie.
“I think that most of the renovation workers are Tibetan,” he said and then paused. “Actually, it is half Tibetan and half ethnic Chinese.”
Finally, he smiled shyly. “And the Tibetans do the better job.”
(Additional reporting by Jane Macartney in SINGAPORE)
