Gonpo Tso was born a princess.
As a young woman, she dressed in fur-trimmed robes with fat ropes of coral beads strung around her neck. She lived in an adobe castle on the edge of the Tibetan plateau with a reception room large enough to accommodate the thousand Buddhist monks who once paid tribute to her father.
Then, one night in 1958, when she was 7, Gonpo returned from an outing to find the People's Liberation Army encamped in front of her house. Chinese soldiers were taping over windows and doors. Women were rushing from room to room in tears trying to pack up the family's possessions.