From Jan. 17 issue of the News Week, via phayul.com:
When Baimadanzen was growing up in Beijing at the height of the Cultural Revolution, his Buddhist father sometimes played records of monks chanting. But he knew nothing about the religion until he moved in 1989 to a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the remote western Sichuan region of Sertar to study with a master of the ancient Chinese art of qigong. He lived among thousands of monks and soon became infatuated with their religion. “Their teachings showed me how to live a full life,” says Baimadanzen, now a 42-year-old travel agent who goes by his Tibetan name. The experience also changed his view of Tibet. “My parents’ generation wanted to liberate and reform Tibet,” he says. “But now younger Chinese go to Tibet to learn.”
