Life-changing journey takes IU senior to Tibet, Thailand, back home

Final exams, friend problems and stress about plans for the next school year upset Abby Borger as she walked, crying, down the overcast, polluted streets of Nanjing, China last year.

On her way to unwind at an art museum, the overcast sky suddenly cleared and a flaky snow began to fall. Borger looked up and saw a Chinese monk walking toward her.

Neither the monk nor Borger said a word, but when they passed, he handed her a gold-plated card.

A little smaller than a playing card, it had a picture of Guanyin Pusa, the Buddha of compassion, on one side and a blessing written in Chinese on the other.

“After that moment, I decided to convert to Buddhism,” Borger said. “Like, right there in the middle of the street.”

The card now lies in a music shop in Tibet with the other belongings Borger left behind when she was asked to leave the country.

Borger, a senior in the Individualized Major Program with a minor in Tibetan studies, asked that her name be changed for her own safety. She planned to study overseas at Tibet University in Lhasa this fall semester.

Borger said she arrived in Lhasa about a year after she arrived in China and moved into the dorms at Tibet University on Aug. 28.

Classes began on Sept. 16, a Wednesday. The next day, she went to renew her expired visa and was told that all foreign visitors were going to be asked to leave before Oct. 1, as the government expected outbreaks of violence during the 60th anniversary of Chairman Mao Zedong’s and the People’s Republic of China’s rise to power.

“Oct. 1 is sort of like America’s Fourth of July,” said Gedun Rabsal, a Tibetan language lecturer at IU. “They want to celebrate peacefully and without interruptions. And if there are interruptions, they don’t want foreigners to see.”

On Oct. 18, Borger finally arrived back in Bloomington, missing some personal items but, instead, possessing a story she feels others need to hear.

“Basically, I’ve seen more than the Chinese government knows that I’ve seen,” she said.

Borger witnessed beatings of monks and other natives on an almost daily basis in Lhasa.

“It’s a good thing I got out of there alive and in one piece,” she said. “I didn’t want to see my friends dying.”

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Five days after Borger heard of the ruling from the visa office, Tibet University informed her that classes would be canceled beginning the next day and students would need to find their own ways out of the country, she said.

She obtained a temporary visa and caught a train to Lanzhou, China on Sept. 28, three days before the celebration was to occur.

“In the three months before I got back to the states, I spent about a fifth of my time on trains, planes, buses and backs of trucks with loads of barley and sheep,” she said. “The only thing crazy enough to follow me around is my violin.”

After traveling by two trains and a plane, Borger found herself in Thailand for two weeks, waiting to hear if the situation cleared up in Lhasa.

She tried to contact her friends from Lhasa while in Thailand. Their phones would ring the first time she called, she said, but no one would answer. On subsequent attempts, it would say the line was disconnected.

Borger said she is now on the Chinese government’s watch list. While in Thailand, she said she tried to send an e-mail about her experience to her family and friends. The e-mail bounced back three times, she said, and she could not access her school account for three weeks.

After a friend in China eventually received her message, Borger said her friend’s phone was shut down for the rest of the day.

“If people in Tibet are known to have contact with me, they might disappear,” she said.

Two days after Oct. 1, Borger said the Chinese government reported at least 200 people had died in Urumqi, a city north of Tibet.

“Basically what I know is this,” she said. “These four Tibetans were convicted this past week and publicly executed. Come Oct. 1, many people died when they came out to protest. It happens every year around this time.”

The Chinese government cracked down on security in Tibet after demonstrations that took place on March 10 of last year, said Elliot Sperling, associate professor of Tibetan studies.

The date marked the 49th anniversary of a mass protest in 1959, which eventually culminated in the capitol of Lhasa, where hundreds of thousands of people surrounded the Dalai Lama’s palace to protect him from danger.

The demonstrations spread across the plateau and ultimately exploded into violence.
The protests received worldwide coverage when journalists located in China to cover the Olympics spoke about the violence taking place, Sperling said.

“March 10 has always been sensitive,” he said. “Tibet is under tremendously tight security this year. And if there is violence, they don’t want foreigners to see it.”

In February of this year, Borger said she spent the Chinese New Year with the family of a doctor in Xiahe, China.

The people of Tibet did not formally celebrate the holiday, she said, in order to honor those who were murdered during the 2008 demonstrations and those who died in an earthquake that occurred a few months previous to the celebration.

Foreigners were not allowed in the city at the time, Borger said, and she was not permitted to leave the doctor’s house. Three days after New Year’s, Borger said she left the family so as not to bring them harm.

She wore Tibetan clothing and a scarf shielded her entire face except her eyes, which she hid beneath brown contact lenses. Borger said she disguised herself in order to make it out of the city to a bus station unharmed.

Borger arrived at the bus safely, but as it pulled out of the station, she said she saw three Tibetan men being tossed into the street from a police station.

Afraid she was going to throw up the tea the family had given her, she watched as five policemen beat the men with sticks and broken bottles. By the time the bus left the station, blood covered the ground and the three men were not moving.

“Do I want to be here for a full year?” Borger remembers asking herself. “I don’t know if I can handle this.”

Looking back, Borger’s time in Tibet and China had many ups and downs. She found religion, she said, but she also saw acts of violence that will stay with her for the rest of her life.

“For someone in my position, a 20-year-old white girl from Chicago, that’s tough for me to deal with. ... Tibet has cured me, and it has broken me.”