evidence: Though Tawang has been administered by independent India for 72 years now, China maintains that the town is culturally and historically a part of Tibet and therefore Chinese territory. Since 2020, China is estimated to have occupied almost 1,000 square miles of previously Indian-controlled territory in border regions. Satellite images show Chinese-built bridges, roads and watchtowers stretching several miles into what was commonly considered the Indian side of the so-called "Line of Actual Control." [...] I steered our conversation toward his opinion, as an Arunachali in close proximity to the border, on China’s assertion that Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory. Younger people, Jambay said, "know only that they are Indian." His grandfather’s generation, though, saw themselves as Monpas who were part of a sprawling Tibetan Buddhist land, their cultural totems being the Tawang monastery and the Dalai Lama’s seat in Lhasa. Until 1951, when China annexed Tibet, trade and travel between Lhasa and Tawang — thousands of miles of mountain wilderness traversed on foot and on horseback — was ceaseless, Jambay said.