(Pictured: The Qinghai-Tibet rail line, billed as the highest in the world. Tibetans say it has only brought more Chinese entrepreneurs, migrant workers and tourists into their lands, further diluting their culture.)Public schools Tibetans attend give short shrift to the Tibetan language, emphasizing Chinese instead. Ethnic Chinese hold most jobs, and Tibetan civil servants can be fired if their homes contain the traditional Buddhist shrine: a Buddha statue with incense sticks in front. Portraits of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan leader who has been in exile since 1959, are prohibited.
Less than half of what Tibetans consider their historic homeland lies within the bounds of what is now called Tibet in western China. The rest of these lands are within China's Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu provinces, where Tibetans are a minority and treated as second-class citizens.
"It is not a genocide like World War II, but there is just no attempt to preserve our culture," said a 29-year-old student living in Beijing, who asked that her name not be used for fear that she could lose her residency permit.
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