Gyaincain Qoinpe-Member of the Lhasa
Municipal Committee of the Chinese
People's Political Consultative Conference

　　Gyameam Qoinpe: Lhasa is my ancestral home. I am 74 years old now. In 1959 1 followed the Dalai Lama to India as one of his aides. In India I was not rich. In 1962 I resumed secular life and got married. I lived abroad for nearly 30 years.
In 1985 I came back to Lhasa to visit my relatives and friends for the first time. They told me about the great changes that had taken place in recent years, the improvements in their lives, freedom of religious belief, and so on. They said that they hoped I would return to Tibet to live with them. What I saw tallied exactly with what they had told me. I was very excited, and so in 1986 I brought my wife and children back with me to China.

　　While we were settling down, the government showed us great concern and gave us lots of help. I am satisfied. We live a good life now. My wife has retired, and stays at home to spend her remaining years in happiness. My son is nine years old, a third-grade pupil at a primary school. He is receiving regular education like other children in Tibet. The happiest thing for me is that soon after I returned to Tibet. I was elected a member of the Lhasa Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. I have worked for it for over 10 years now, carefully listening to the people's opinions, preparing reports on them and submitting them to the local government for solutions. In this way I have won respect from the people.

　　In some ways my life was better in India, but since I chose to return to my homeland I have had no regrets. After all, Tibet is my home, the place where my roots are located. Now I am back home. Though I am old, I hope I can still contribute to my homeland in my remaining years.

　　Tibet started to receive overseas Tibetan compatriots returning to China to visit their relatives and friends, engage in sightseeing. pay religious homage or settle down in 1979. In the past 19 years governments and their administrative departments at all levels in the Tibet Autonomous Region have done a great amount of useful work to help returned Tibetan compatriots settle back in their homeland. To make proper arrangements for returned Tibetan compatriots, governments at all levels have invested large amounts of human, material and financial resources. Their work has been spoken highly of by the returned Tibetan compatriots. Now, many of the 100,000-odd Tibetan compatriots still living abroad have expressed the hope of returning to China to settle. But the Chinese government believes that returning to China to settle is not the only way for overseas Tibetan compatriots to express their love for their motherland. So long as they admit that they are Chinese, and safeguard the unification of the motherland and the national dignity, they are patriotic no matter where they live. The Chinese government hopes that overseas Tibetan compatriots will abide by the laws of the countries where they reside and create their own wealth with their own hands; welcomes overseas Tibetan compatriots to visit their relatives and friends in the homeland, engage in sightseeing, and pay religious homage; and encourages overseas Tibetan compatriots to return to their motherland to participate in the economic construction of their native places, and construct and develop Tibet together with the local Tibetans. The door of China is always open to overseas Tibetan compatriots.