BEIJING — A Chinese-designated Buddhist lama who Communist Party officials hope will become a spiritual and political leader for China’s 5 million Tibetans arrived in a monastery town in the northwestern province of Gansu on Thursday accompanied by a formidable police presence, and a skeptical crowd was forced to greet him with prayer flags and smiles, residents and exile groups said by telephone.
They said the lama, Gyaltsen Norbu, 21, the Chinese government’s hand-picked 11th Panchen Lama, had journeyed to the town of Xiahe because it is home to the Labrang Monastery, one of the most cherished centers of Tibetan Buddhism outside the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Senior religious figures at the monastery have said he might spend weeks studying and meditating there, although that partly depends on how he is received.
The monastery houses more than 1,000 monks, most loyal to another young man designated by the exiled Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama, who died in 1989. That boy, Gedhun Choekyi, then 5, disappeared just days after his selection was announced in 1995.
