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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Bad and badder
» Honolulu International Airport
At the very moment that little Elizabeth Resurreccion was attaining enlightenment in Kaneohe, realizing she was the reincarnation of the venerable Sam-yung Kunzang Dechen, a United flight from Taipei was touching down at Honolulu International Airport. It carried two dangerous men who, if they knew of Elizabeth, would have gladly removed her and the dangers she posed to the Communist regime. Instead they came to remove the second Lama Jey Tsong Khapa.
This was Te-Wu, the Chinese secret police, at their duplicitous best, flying out of an island nation they claimed not to be a nation -- just as they'd claimed Tibet was not a nation before attacking and occupying.
And while the FBI and CIA had a record of Le Nip, who was last known to be operating for Te-Wu in the Szechwan region, which bordered Tibet, when he changed appearances again by growing a goatee and letting his hair grow long, and showed a passport identifying him as Professor Steven P.F. Chan, Ph.D. in Business Management, he sailed right through.
He had most recently been active in Hong Kong, going undercover as a proponent of democracy, while in fact spreading false information and rumors among those agitating for democratic reform, aimed at splintering the movement. He was also learning secrets, and based on his reports, already one democratic leader had quietly disappeared.
Le Nip was a rising star in Te-Wu, and one of its big thinkers. It was he who dreamed up the great Sutlej River flood of August 2000. The Dalai Lama was in the area, visiting villages in the steep and narrow river valley that comes down from the Himalayas of Tibet into India. Many Tibetans living in exile resided in those villages, and they were beginning to grow thriving communities with the help of bridges that crossed the river. Tibetan Buddhism was thriving too, and several retreat centers and schools had been built along the majestic river, many public Buddhas erected.
Then on the night of Aug. 1, 2000, the night the Dalai Lama was to sleep in the Sutlej Valley, the river rose 35 feet in just two hours. Entire villages were swept away in the instant torrent, thousands killed.
The Dalai Lama survived, of course, but Le Nip was considered a genius in Beijing nevertheless. Not only did the flood wipe out a thriving pocket of Tibetanism, the flood's cause remained a mystery. One of the many FBI guesses was correct: a Chinese version of Green Berets exploded a Tibetan dam on the Sutlej ready to overflow.
Le Nip was also involved in paying off Indian politicians, getting them to build a dam that would flood the Sutlej Valley, thus preventing Tibetans from rebuilding.
Of the two who disembarked at HNL, though, it was hard to say who was badder, Le Nip or the Dharamsala rapist.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek. His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin. He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com