The Buddhas of Drakgo (Traveling in Kham 4)

Traveling in Kham • Jashideley! • Burial in the sky • Kangding, the gateway of Tibet • The Love Song of Kangding • The monastery of Tagong • The Buddhas of Drakgo

The city of Drakgo, in Chinese Luhou, is located on the road from Tagong to Garzê, on the banks of the Xianshui, i.e. Freshwater River, which runs along the road. The name of the city seems to come from Game of Thrones. It offers a pun on the words “dragon” and “Draconian” at the same time. I promise I will not exploit them.

The Oirat Mongols, who conquered Eastern Tibet around 1640, made the riverside city one of their headquarters. They also founded the monastery on the hill above the town in 1650. Since the Mongols – as I have already said – were in alliance with the Gelug reform order founded two hundred years earlier, which supported their conquest, and whose head, the Dalai Lama was then made by them the political leader of Tibet, it is just natural that this monastery also belongs to the Gelug order, the “yellow hats”. Once it had a thousand inhabitants, today about three hundred.

Downtown Drakgo/Luhou as seen from the monastery hill

The current building of the monastery, however, is very new. Exceptionally, it is not the Cultural Revolution that is responsible for the destruction of the previous buildings, but rather the 1973 earthquake, which destroyed most of the city. Today’s temple and monastery were subsequently built on the model of the old ones.

The monastery is a “gompa”, i.e. a smaller monastery, where both meditation and teaching take place. In the gompa of Grakgo, there is a school and a college between the temple and the monastery of the older monks. The school also has a separate small temple attached to the back of the big one. They are still working on it, some of the wooden coverings are being polished, many of them have not yet been painted, but in the temple covered with frescoes, man-sized yak butter lamps are burning, and several people are praying in them, again and again throwing themselves on the ground on the wooden boards prepared for this purpose.

They only open the big temple at ten in the morning. It’s half an hour to go, we’ll wait. The older monks are already gathering in front of the gate, and after a while they start reciting sutras.

The recitation will go on for hours. We cannot wait for it to end and enter the temple. It is not a big loss, since it’s also a new building. I only regret one thing: the big silver Buddha statue, which dates back to the time of the foundation, maybe even earlier.

But giving up desires will reap its rewards. Instead of the silver Buddha, we get a golden one.

After the 1973 earthquake that destroyed the city and left many thousands dead, the monks tried to prevent any repetition of it with the device they knew: by erecting a giant Buddha statue in October 2015. The 6-million-dollar to erect the 30-meter-high gilded statue was raised by local believers. The local authorities also gave permission, but in 2021 an even higher authority visited the city and decided that they could not have given permission for such a large statue, so they ordered it removed. The locals protested en masse against the decree, but the result was easily foreseen: the police scattered the demonstrations by arresting and, according to opposition press, even torturing several participants, and they destroyed the statue along with the 25 large prayer wheels around its pedestal. In October of the same year they also destroyed one of the schools belonging to the monastery, but it is not clear from the press whether this was related to the statue.

I would like to take a picture of at least the former place of the statue, so I ask the monks gossiping at the monastery gate and staring at the strangers, where it stood. “It is standing there, lo”, they point to a large concrete building frame that is currently under construction. I go there, and the golden color of the pedestal shines through the cracks of the frame from afar.

“It is forbidden to enter the construction area”, the signs announce. But since a bunch of monks are loitering inside and looking at the building with critical eyes, I go in too, followed by the whole group. At first we try to peak in through the gaps, then we realize that once everything is forbidden, it is easier to enter the building from the main entrance. We do it, and no one says anything. And beyond the pseudo-traditional Tibetan gate cast in concrete, the great golden Buddha is revealed to us. His face is bandaged. Maybe it was injured? Rather it was bandaged for the same reason as the faces of those Buddha statues in other monasteries, which had been consecrated and were waiting for the owner to come for them, and let the brilliance of their illuminated faces shine in the right moment at home.

What is this? A reaincarnation of the destroyed Buddha? Or was it not destroyed after all, only withdrawn from the open area – where the whole city could see it – into a closed building as a compromise? If so, why does the press not report on it? So many questions (Brecht).