[1668] Of they just want their country back

For some sentimental reason, I opened up a box which I had not touched ever since I got back from Michigan several years ago. In it, I found a familiar magazine with yellow strip framing its front page. It was an old copy of the National Geographic magazine.

There is an article about Tibet in that edition and the final paragraph worth reproducing:

In these ways do the old and new, tradition and change, exist uneasily side by side. Among the Tibetans, even while those like Norbu, Huadon and Gama Sera are embracing change, I found a people conflicted by that change. Some candidly acknowledge the hardships and inequities of life under the Dalai Lama. Others drudgingly concede economic progress under China. No one wants to return to the old, often abusive, theocracy. But on one wants the Chinese to remain in Tibet either. They don’t miss the old days and its old ways. They simply want their country back. [Tibetans Moving Forward Holding On. Lewis M. Simons. National Geographic. April 2002]