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Two Paris museums are under fire for adjusting their wording describing works of art from Tibet. Critics say the new terminology reflects Beijing's wishes to rewrite history. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports.
TENAM: I feel, in some sense, so happy that we have a space for Tibet, Tibetan art, Tibetan history.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: Tenam, a leader of Paris' Tibetan community, shows me artworks displayed in Paris' Quai Branly Museum of Indigenous art. But he says, recently, he's been offended by something.
TENAM: Every time I look at the display, there is Xizang. Xizang is the word for Tibet by our Chinese colonial masters. I have not seen any other museum in the free world using the term Xizang.
BEARDSLEY: Tenam, like many Tibetans in exile, only gives his first name to protect family living in the Chinese-controlled autonomous region. On the other side of the Seine, the Guimet Museum holds the largest Asian art collection in Europe. For two weekends, it's drawn hundreds of protesters from France's Tibetan community, Europe's largest. They're incensed that the Tibet exhibit rooms are now labeled Himalayan World.
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YANGCHEN: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: "Are you scared of the Chinese dictatorship in this democratic country?" - yells Yangchen, a member of Students for a Free Tibet. "Are you not ashamed of helping erase the identity and culture of a people?"
Twenty-seven-year-old Tenzin Sangpo says he never thought he'd see this in France.
TENZIN SANGPO: France is a country of human rights. So seeing something like that happening - it's alarming.
BEARDSLEY: In open letter in newspaper Le Monde, 27 researchers condemned what they called certain museums' passivity in the face of Chinese interference. Tibet expert Katia Buffetrille is one of the signatories.
KATIA BUFFETRILLE: These follow what is doing - the Chinese authority - which is to erase the existence of Tibet itself and its population by changing the name.
BEARDSLEY: She says the museums are likely bowing to pressure from the Chinese government to preserve their access to Chinese sources and artworks. This year marks the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between France and China, and the Guimet has several important exhibits with objects on loan from China. Director Yannick Lintz defended her museum in an interview on French TV.
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YANNICK LINTZ: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: "It's never easy," she said. "You have to respect everyone while keeping to the historical truth."
But critics say the new titles do not reflect historical truth. The centuries-old Tibetan art existed well before the People's Republic of China invaded Tibet in 1950. The Chinese embassy did not respond to NPR's request for an interview.
BERTRAND GUILLET: (Speaking French).
BEARDSLEY: Bertrand Guillet knows a little about Chinese pressure to rewrite history. Director of a museum in the western city of Nantes, he was putting together an exhibit on the 14th-century Mongol Empire in cooperation with a Chinese museum when the Chinese government got involved.
GUILLET: (Through interpreter) They wanted us to deny the grandeur of the Mongol Empire and reverse the historical reading so the Han Chinese dominated. And they didn't want us to even mention the name of the Mongol Conqueror, Genghis Khan.
BEARDSLEY: That would be as absurd as talking about the Napoleonic era without mentioning Napoleon, says Guillet. He pulled out of the exhibit.
TENAM: We are a living culture. We are a living people.
BEARDSLEY: Back at the Quai Branly, Tenam says the museum has admitted its error and promised to return the name Tibet to the exhibits and the online catalog. He says they're still waiting for a response from the Guimet Museum.
Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Paris.
(SOUNDBITE OF ALEX VAUGHN SONG, "SO BE IT") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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