Seven Years in Tibet

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Summary: the biggest idiot
Review: The author of this bookis the biggest idiot in the world. He did not understand the chinese history. Tibet has been one part of the China.Dalai Lama is not only a Tibet man,but also a chinese. The aothor would go to China again. He will find how many excellent,beautiful changes in Tibet. Tibet is more lovely than ever.

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Summary: Once again the book is better then the Movie.
Review: This was the first book that I read regarding Tibet, I have since read several more and have become a Tibetian Freedom Activist. It is a beautiful account of life and religion in a lost era. It makes your heart ache when you realize that China has committed cultural genacide and that the Tibet discribed by Harrer will never exist again.

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Summary: At what price civilization?
Review: Heinrich Harrer's book brings to mind the question," at what price civilization?" Is it to loose our spirituality? Our humanity? Kindness towards others and the lack of good manners? Both the book and the film made me question these things. That an originally independent country that believed in the sanctity of life to the extent that they couldn't kill worms, was taken over by a culture who believed that they had a divine right to invade, murder over a million Tibetans and totally disregard the culture in which they were and still are visitors, in the interests of so called advancement and civilization is mind boggleing!Just as Germany had no right to invade Poland, so China had no right to invade Tibet. "Seven Years in Tibet" made me realize what a gentle and loving civilization was destoyed and this destruction excused by the need for electricity, sewerage, communist education and commerce. The Dali Lama reminds me of Nelson Mandela and like this leader, I hope that Tibet is eventually set free from it's oppressors.

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Summary: A book which opened up my young world
Review: I am from Singapore. I read Seven Years in Tibet about 20 years ago whilst looking for a good book to read in my school library (Montfort Secondary School). I remembered the fascination I had with the book - it was my first introduction to a foreign culture and religion (I was born a Catholic and studied in a mission school) as well as politics (China's invasion and annexation of Tibet). I was pleasantly surprised that the book is now re-published. I remembered the book I read 20 years back was hardly borrowed and yellow with age. Perhaps a missionary-teacher had brought the book from Europe and gave it to the school library.(In his/her wisdom, he/she knew a student browsing for a book would be sure to find it and enjoy it). Now my daughter is growing up. When she is ready, it will be one of the books I recommend for her to read.

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Summary: Technical error
Review: Interesting account of Tibet through the eye of an Austrian. I would like to point out an technical error though. In one passage of the book, Harrer described the "Tibetans" as looking different than the "Chinese". He said that the "Chinese" had slant eyes, and flatter faces, and the Tibetans had more deep-set eyes and features. Harrer was putting all Chinese into one category, with Tibetan in a separate category. Being that China is a country of mutliple ethinic groups, this is incorrect. It's akin to someone describing a minority group in the U.S., saying the "Indians" don't look like the Americans, or the "Chinese" (Chinese Americans) don't look like Americans. The real Chinese are not all slant-eyed, as Harrer described. Growing up in Taiwan, I've seen Chinese people from all 35 provinces of China, including Tibet, who had all escaped from the communist China. I have had classmates and neighbors who were from Tibet. One can often tell at a glance if a Chinese is a Cantonese, who tend to have even deeper eyes; or from Shanghai, who tend to have a refined look; or from Sangdong, who tend to be taller than average. It's an error to separate the Tibetans as if they're not Chinese, while grouping the rest of the Chinese as if they're all alike. There are really many different varieties of the Chinese people. Tibetans are one variety.

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Summary: God king!
Review: This was a well-written book by a very sincere author. But it made me ill to read how dewy-eyed the author described the Dalai Lama, who represented an eternal feudalism of nobility over the masses. The Dalai Lama stayed over at a "governer's mansion", and "no mortal will ever again inhabit" that mansion, that "any place the Dalai Lama stayed was automatically consecrated as a chapel". When the "Chinese soldiers came", the Dalai Lama "consulted with his State oracles", and "decided to be King". The Pope isn't even like this. Unfortunately, the author seems to take that in stride. Coming from a Nazi background, he probably felt very comfortable with this type of superioity by a master. I don't. I give the writing an 8, but the context really deserves a 1. Naturally, after much help and pampering by the Dalai Lama, the author took his friend the Dalai Lama's view, which was wrong. For one, while sheltered in the Lama's domain, listening to the Lama's words about how "China was invading Tibet", the author ought to have questioned this invasion view with some clear thinking. Namely: what reason is there for the Chinese to invade Tibet? There is no resource in Tibet at all. Tibet is a region of mountains, prone to severe snowstorms. What is there to gain? Being a pal of the Dalai Lama, delighting in seeing how the god king exerted power everywhere he went, consecrating mansions into chapels, declaring himself "king", the author failed to see that a modern China was trying to instill some changes to this feudal lord's ways. While the author writes with sincerety about how he loved this old system... As a reader, I find this type of nobility/god-king disturbing.

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Summary: A fascinating and exciting book which had me gripped
Review: Having grown up near where Heinrich was interned by the British in North India, I was keen to read his "diary". Although the translation is less than perfect and the author's style is not that of a professional, the book is a fascinating read and an amazing insight into Tibetan life before the Chinese invaded. My hope is that the movie will inspire many to read the book (which is inevitably better than the movie) and that people around the world will realise the injustice that has been ignored for so long. If Tibet was a source of oil for the West, the Chinese would never have been allowed to get a foothold in this land.

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Summary: A brief, informative piece on old Tibet
Review: Heinrich Harrer gives a personal view of Tibet as it was before Chinese occupation by the Reds in 1959, and shows with an unmistakable wit his love for the country and its people. He emphasizes the hospitality of the Tibetan people, and, at the same time, their wish to be a "forbidden land," a country that wants no foreigners. Harrer's recollection of his journey from India to the Tibetan frontier, to Lhasa is splendidly described, and mildly illustrates the harshness of the Himalayas and its climate. Harrer also tells of his relationship with the present Dalai Lama, who was at the time of Harrer's residence in Tibet only a boy. Harrer's thought's on Tibetan Buddhism, and how superstitious the Tibetans are, is written in an overt, yet skeptical style. A grand read!

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Summary: An excellent storyteller with an excellent story to tell.
Review: Heinrich Harrer is an amazing author who presents to us a superb story of a journey into a land surrounded by much controversy. The final chapters dealing with the young Dalai Lama are very intriguing. I saw the movie and was surprised at the simlilarities and differences. I recommend the movie, but if you see the movie, you have to read the book. It's like the two go hand in hand. The book helps you to understand some of the events in the movie that one could find confusing. His descriptions are excellent. One pet peeve I have is the transition from paragraph to paragraph. Some of the transitions are not some of the best I've read. But the transitions are not unbarable most of the time. It's interesting to see his relations with the government. I love how assuming the government is in how they just assume that since Henrich made it all the way to Lhasa that he must have clearance. Some of the examples of the rituals of Buddhism are amazing, especially the scences with oracles. The questioning of the young Dalai Lama is also interesting.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: Compelling reading covering Harrer's experiences in Tibet. He was a member of the 1936 Austrian Olympic ski team who also had a lifelong love of mountain climbing. Going to Asia to scale the previously unconquered 25,000-foot Nanga Parbat in the Himalayas, he was captured in Karachi while trying to get back to Europe at the outbreak of WWII. Put into a British internment camp in India, he escaped to Tibet, a land that had intrigued him since reading about it years earlier as a boy. The obstacles in his quest for Lhasa, the Tibetan capital not very far from Mt. Everest, were formidable, but gave him eye-opening lessons on this exotic and fascinating country. His accounts of the Tibetan people, the country as he found it at the time and his eventual close relationship to the young Dalai Lama are absorbing. Glimpses of the Tibetan-Chinese relationship and, in more detail, China's eventual invasion of Tibet (the event that caused Harrer to leave the country in the company of the young escaping Dalai Lama) are included in this extraordinary tale.