An Erased Country

Travel stories, travel tales,Type in "Tibet" in Google, then click on "Maps."  What does Google give you?  A map entitled :  "Tibet, China."  Look at Wikipedia.  Is Tibet a country, part of China, or both, and did this change over time?  If you asked native Tibetans, they probably would tell you Tibet was a sovereign country, ruled by the Dalai Lama, until the Chinese invaded in the 1950's.  Very confusing.


To get a better understanding of how this mountainous part of Asia has evolved over time, pick up Canyon Sam's recently released book, Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History.  Sam, a third-generation Chinese American born and raised in San Francisco, went to Tibet to work on an oral history project in 1990.  In 2007, she returned, taking the Beijing to Lhasa Sky Train, the world's highest railroad, traveling at elevations over 16,000' above sea level.  Her book traces the lives of four of the Tibetan women she met over a decade earlier, and reveals how "modernization" has vastly changed Lhasa and its people.  It's clear from her book that "Tibet" really no longer is a place.  As her last words of the story say, '"Tibet" is a state of mind."