In a Tibetan stall, Wen asked the price of something in Chinese. The shopkeeper ignored her, and then muttered bitterly in English, "No good Chinese." She wanted to find out what lay at the root of that sentiment.

"Before, this was the best place, but now it's like a prison." This is how one young Tibetan man describes life in Lhasa these days in an interview that was smuggled out of Tibet.

Tenzin Norgay has been following reports of human rights violations coming out of Tibet for over six years now. The hardest part, he says, is the unrealistic hopes of those helping: "Everybody expects things to change overnight."

Since March, the monks of Kirti have not been allowed to conduct their usual Buddhist rituals, but on May 15th, they received special permission to make an exception.