Panchen Lama led life of suffering with one bright spot - a happy marriage

Renji's father had a tragic life. Born in 1938 to a poor Tibetan farming family in Qinghai , Qoigyi Gyaincain was chosen as the 10th Panchen Lama on June 2, 1949, and officially enthroned on August 10 that year.

After the flight of the Dalai Lama to India in 1959, he became the most important political and religious figure in Tibet.

After spending a year visiting Tibetan areas, he wrote in 1962 a 70,000-word petition that attacked the central government for mass jailings, starvation and efforts to wipe out Buddhism in his homeland. He sent the petition to the authorities in Beijing.

Chairman Mao Zedong dismissed the petition as 'a poisoned arrow shot at the Communist Party by reactionary feudal overlords'. The Panchen Lama was dismissed from all his official posts and brought from Lhasa to live in Beijing, where premier Zhou Enlai gave him a courtyard house.

In 1966, he was subject to mass criticism sessions at the Beijing Minorities College and in 1968 sent to prison. He lived in a room of 9 square metres, with a bed, table and chair and a small window: he could not see the outside and was not allowed to see even his own family. He used the time to recite Buddhist scriptures, learn Chinese characters, write a Tibetan-Chinese dictionary and read books on Marxism.

Released in 1977, he was taken on a two-month tour of China in 1978 with other 'minority' leaders. The time in prison had worn him down physically and psychologically and he craved the comforts of family life.