CONTRARY to some Western media reports, the Tibetan culture has been well protected by China’s policies, according to French author Maxime Vivas, who is writing a new book on Tibet.

    He found a Tibet different from what has been described by the Western media after his visit to the region in 2010.

    “When I left for Tibet, I had two ideas that had been inculcated in my mind by the media that the religion was oppressed, and the Tibetan culture had been destroyed,” he said.

    However, “when we left the Lhasa Gonggar airport, we started to see signs in Tibetan...and then we saw traffic signs and newspapers, then we heard it on the radio and on the television,” he said.

    “We visited a university where the students and professors were proud to show us how they created a software application in Tibetan script,” he said.

    Vivas saw discrepancy between his preconceptions and what he observed upon arrival. So he began an impassioned investigation into the politics of 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, and wrote a book “Not So ‘Zen’: The Hidden Side of the Dalai Lama,” the first book of its kind published in the West.

    The book has been translated into English, Spanish, German, Tibetan and Mandarin.(Xinhua)