In an attempt to counter the impact of the age ban on monastic life, they said that the monks smuggle in boys as young as eight and begin training them in secret. "No one wants to become a monk when they've already danced with girls," the older one said with a little chuckle as he glanced at two gum-chewing young women in diaphanous chubas, tottering past our table on platform shoes.

One afternoon on a roadside in eastern Tibet, I spoke with a monk I'd waved down to ask directions. He told me about his monastery, which once held 500 monks and 300 students and had seen those numbers more than halved by government edict. Like other monks I spoke with, he measured the strength of Buddhism by the length of monastic rolls. "Only when we're many," he said, "can we properly teach the people that it is much better to be poor, as long as you have your faith and know that peace is coming, than it is to live in a concrete house, wear Chinese clothes, and have a lot to eat, if you're not at peace."

Not all Tibetans agree. "One of the main reasons Tibet was so backward is that too many men were in the monasteries and not contributing toward development," said Arzong, a 39-year-old instructor at the Tibetan Language School in eastern Tibet, about 300 miles southeast of Derge. "I continually advise parents to send their children to schools, not to monasteries. Otherwise, our population will remain stagnant, and we'll never be able to compete economically."

In his large, sparsely furnished office, Arzong demonstrated that he was able to communicate on the Internet in Tibetan. "The truth," he said, "is that there are plenty of Tibetan books and literature available, both electronically and in print." Over the summer he was writing a volume on Tibetan grammar for use by teachers and was editing a collection of folktales. He conceded, though, that the only reason for young people to learn their ancestral language was "to preserve Tibetan nationalism."

In these ways do the old and new, tradition and change, exist uneasily side by side. Among the Tibetans, even while those like Norbu, Huadon, and Gama Sera are embracing change, I found a people conflicted by that change. Some candidly acknowledge the hardships and inequities of life under the Dalai Lama. Others grudgingly concede economic progress under China. No one wants to return to the old, often abusive, theocracy. But no one wants the Chinese to remain in Tibet either. They don't miss the old days and its old ways. They simply want their country back.