Unfurling a giant cloth painting of the Buddha over a mountainside beside the great Drepung monastery, monks gave Tibetan pilgrims an annual glimpse yesterday of one of Tibet's great ceremonies.
Chanting mantras and spinning prayer wheels, pilgrims gazed up in awe.
Few of the 150,000 pilgrims gathered for the annual Shoton, or Yoghurt Festival, questioned whether the ritual represents real religious freedom for the deeply Buddhist region of communist China or is as transient as the incense smoke burning from their offerings.
China's destruction of religion during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution when most Tibetan monasteries were dynamited to the ground has been replaced by a tentative relaxation that tightens swiftly at a first sign of anti-Chinese sentiment in the restive Himalayan region.
The Communist Party says it made a mistake by persecuting monks and nuns in the Cultural Revolution, and that officials no longer interfere in religious life.
Tension simmers between the Tibetans' profound faith in a mystical form of Buddhism and the Chinese vision of Tibetan culture and religion, colorful but firmly under Party control.
In a display of devotion, tens of thousands of pilgrims gathered by dawn to watch the unfurling of the cloth picture of the Buddha, or thangka, many clinging to rocks to gain a vantage point, others squatting on the hillside in the hope the sacred cloth would be unfurled over their bodies.
Families of three generations made up the crowd of faithful, although some Tibetans complained that the young were losing their faith.
"I think young people have more freedom today than they used to have, but they are definitely not as devout as before," said Padma Tsering, a 23-year-old Lhasa office worker. "Being part of this ethnic minority, i think it's too bad.
"I'm a Buddhist myself because I believe Buddhism has great significance, not only reaching this place but in the whole world."
This 200m2 thangka, an embroidery by monks of Drepung monastery using gold silk thread on a cotton background, may be only seven years old but it takes center stage in a ceremony dating back hundreds of years. More than 100 monks from the monastery -- once the largest in the world with a population of 10,000 -- carried out the rolled up thangka and set it down at the foot of a nearby hill.
The crowd roared with joy as monks at the top of the hill pulled the thangka open with ropes to display an image of the Sakyamuni Buddha, or Buddha of the Present. They tossed hundreds of white silk scarfs onto the picture.
Pilgrims chanting mantras and spinning prayer wheels circumambulated the thangka, almost hidden by columns of choking smoke that swirled into the air from piles of fragrant juniper branches burnt as offerings.
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