James is back. He asked the authorities for permission to stay longer in Tibet but was (of course) refused. He is now decompressing… he describes the week as the most surreal experience of his life. Coming a week after a trip to North Korea, he's overdosing on surreal. So now there is very little in the way of eye witness reporting coming out of Lhasa and other Tibetan areas – many journalists are trying to get close to the areas concerned, but they are usually stopped miles away. And of course, when no one has facts to work with, their imaginations work overtime. What are the Chinese authorities up to, which they don't want the outside world to see? Well, we have seen before what they are capable of. Even where they don't go in with guns blazing, there can be terrible cruelty. From the point of view of the western world, it is complicated, of course, by the fact that what happened in Tibet really was an ethnic riot, with a lot of violence directed at Han businesses, and indeed at Hans themselves. This wasn't the usual monk-led peaceful protest that the west has come to expect. This was a vicious outburst of pent-up frustration, and one which the Chinese authorities allowed to let rip for hours.