Seth Faison wrote for the New York Times on November 11, 1998,
"The most striking aspect of daily life in Lhasa today is the passionate worship by Tibetans of every station. One must rise at dawn to see the daily, two-hour march around central Lhasa that draws thousands of worshipers each day, but thousands more pilgrims who come from elsewhere in Tibet to pray at the region's holiest sites are evident everywhere in town."
Faison quoted an elderly monk in Sera Monastery, who whispered, "They try to beat us, to silence us, to overwhelm us. ... You can see they are not succeeding; just look at all the people who come to worship every day."
Before the invasion, Tibet was not the simple, happy kingdom that Westerners sometimes romanticize it to be. There was corruption and abuse of power in the Buddhist clergy, and Tibet was terribly backward. But China expects Tibet to sell out liberty for electricity and make Buddhism nothing more than a quaint artifact for the amusement of tourists.