"What's happening in Tibet right now," says Vancouver's Michael Buckley, author of Cycling to Xian & Other Excursions (Crazyhorse Press $14.95), "is disastrous. Whole monasteries are being wiped out."

Tibet is currently closed to foreigners. News of the country is scarce and unreliable. The Chinese retain control by military force. The English-born Buckley was able to see the current political struggles brewing in 1985 and 1986 when he travelled 4,000 miles overland from Shanghai to Kathmandu, making half of his journey by bicycle, with neither sponsors or Chinese permission for his journey.

"The Chinese weren't communicating with the Tibetans at all," he says, "They looked down on them. For instance, once when my partner and I stayed at a Chinese army base, we gave the soldiers a Frisbee to play with. A crowd of locals gathered, just curious.

"The soldiers started throwing rocks at the Tibetans, driving them away, without any provocation. We asked why they did it. We were told, 'Because the Tibetans are stupid. They don't speak Chinese.' We told the soldiers that we didn't speak Chinese either."

Having co-authored two books on Tibet and China for the Australia-based Lonely Planet series, Buckley is going it alone with Cycling To Xian. "The publishers I submitted the manuscript to said, 'Yes, looks good, but the travel books already out there have cornered the market.'" Giving new meaning to the term mountain bike, Buckley is now trying to market Cycling to Xian with the assistance of Vancouver's Worldwide Maps and Books on Granville Street.

Meanwhile he tries to keep abreast of Tibetan affairs. "On March 5th, the main Jokhang temple in the middle of Lhasa was stormed by Chinese troops," he says, "The monks had no weapons. They threw rocks. Two Chinese policemen and 18 monks were killed."

[BCBW Summer 1988]