Gere on the China-Tibet Train

Travel Blog  •  Michael Yessis  •  07.15.06 | 10:11 AM ET

Richard Gere, the actor and chairman of the International Campaign for Tibet, has an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times about the new train from Beijing to Lhasa, Tibet and its consequences. “[It] is a staggering engineering achievement and a testimony to the developing greatness of China,” Gere writes. “But it is also the most serious threat by the Chinese yet to the survival of Tibet’s unique religious, cultural and linguistic identity. In the words of a well-known Tibetan religious teacher who died after many years in a Chinese prison, the railway heralds ‘a time of emergency and darkness’ for Tibet.”