In March 1959, a twenty-three-year-old monk held the fate of an entire religion in his hands. His name was Tenzin Gyatso — the Fourteenth Dalai Lama — and the Chinese army had just surrounded his city of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. Their demand: come to a military camp, alone, for what they called a "cultural performance." Nobody in Tibet was fooled.
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Crowns & Conquests·1/2·1′
The place
Potala Palace
The Escape from the Potala
A god-king's midnight flight from his own palace
s Republic of China periodPotala Palace
Moral of the Story
“Sometimes the bravest act is to leave — to carry forward a living tradition rather than die as its final symbol.”
Characters
F
Fourteenth Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso) — the escaped god-kingT
Tibetan resistance fighters who protected himC
CIA operatives who may have assisted the escapeSource
Dalai Lama, "Freedom in Exile" (autobiography, 1990); Jamyang Norbu, "Warriors of Tibet"; CIA declassified records