Across China: A new Tibet through homecomers' eyes

Yeshe Palden has never regretted his decision to return Tibet from Switzerland in 1994 after 35 years of wandering.

Before he came home, countless times he had tried to imagine the real situation in Tibet -- changed for sure, but for the worse or better?

A devout Buddhist, Yeshe Palden, now 76, left Tibet for India in 1959 fearful that the Communist Party would deprive Tibetans of their religious freedom. In 1967 he moved to Switzerland and began a secular life.

Language barriers meant he found himself doing manual work in paper mills or doing the most menial of care work for the sick and elderly. In the late 1970s, China's reform and opening became the talk of the world and touched Yeshe Palden's nostalgic heart.

"I knew Tibet had changed," he said.

From the moment he and his wife got off the plane, change was obvious. Before he left Tibet, he was regarded as superior. To bow down before Yeshe Palden, former Lama of Drepung Monastery, had been the normal form of greeting. Meeting him at the airport, followers, friends and family shook his hands and hugged him.

"No individual should be considered superior to another," he said. Life abroad taught him that all people are created equal. That the idea of equality was now ingrained in the hearts of the people of his remote plateau homeland came as both a shock and a joy.

Tibetan women and men sat together in the tea houses of Lhasa: another shock! In Yeshe Palden's day, only men had the right to visit tea houses. In 1994 it seemed, women even owned tea houses, let alone frequented them. "It was then that I knew I made the right decision," he said.

Lhasa's railway station has become Yeshe Palden's favorite place since the Qinghai-Tibet Railway opened in 2006, linking Tibet with the rest of the country for the first time.

Zigme Cedain, 32, returned to Tibet from India with his parents in 1984. He owns a clothing shop in Lhasa and knows all too well how the easy land connections to the "roof of the world" benefit Tibetans. A railway connecting Lhasa with Xigaze went into operation last year. "It halved my transport time to the Nepal and India borders," he said.

These are but a few of the changes in Tibet after 50 years of autonomy. Last year, per capital disposable income for rural residents in Tibet hit 7,359 yuan (around 1,200 U.S. dollars), with double-digit growth for 12 consecutive years. Average life expectancy has jumped from 35.5 years to 68 over the past 50 years, while the infant mortality rate has dropped from a quite staggering 430 deaths per 1,000 live births to a mere 12.

There are around 200,000 overseas Tibetans in more than 40 countries and regions including India, Nepal, the U.S. and Switzerland. More and more of them are applying to come home.

Yeshe Palden takes his daily prayer walk around the Potala Palace or Jokhang Monastery for four or five hours each morning, turning his prayer wheel, counting his beads and chanting. If he is tired, he rests on the roadside benches and shares his home-made pancakes with the pigeons.

Nowadays, he cares more about issues like the environment and protecting his culture. As in other parts of China, changes and modernization bring benefits as well as new problems. Tibet is no exception.

"I hope more returnees will visit the real Tibet. If changes are positive, there is no need to worry," he said. Endi