How saddening to read that the Sera monks have succumbed to Chinese control so that they are now mere automatons that “study the Chinese constitution, the law against separatism, the law against demonstrations, the criminal law and other documents requiring us to love the motherland, love the government, support stability and understand the real intentions of the Dalai Lama.”

If the Sera monks continue to follow this Chinese reeducation routine they will soon be real Chinese, unlike their Tibetan ancestors, who, as the Han shopkeeper observed, “‘... are a very strange nation. They do not care about material things but only about the spirit.”