THE CHINA-TIBET FRONTIER 



Ward, to whose memory 



The Land of the Blue Poppy:. Travels of a luituraliit in Eastern Tibet. 

 By F. Kingdon IVard, B.A., F.R.G.S. 



Royal 8vo. pp. xii + 284. With 40 plates from photographs by the 

 author and 5 maps. Price 12s. net 



A son of the late Professor H. Marsha 

 the book is dedicated, the author 

 explains the raison d^etre of the 

 volume in his first paragraph : 



" On my return from Western 

 China in September 1 9 10, I settled 

 down to humdrum life with every 

 prospect of becoming a quiet and 

 respectable citizen of Shanghai. 

 But.., travel had bitten too deeply 

 into my soul and.. .when after 

 months of civilized life something 

 better turned up, I accepted with 

 alacrity. This was none other 

 than the chance of plant-collecting 

 on the Tibetan border of Yun-nan." 



The results of this expedition 

 are recorded in the book and a 

 preliminary list of 200 plants col- 

 lected (several of them being new 

 species) is given in an appendix ; 

 but Mr Ward studied men and 

 manners as well as plants. Here 

 is part of his description of a 

 Tibetan festival : 



" The Tibetans always strike 

 me as being so much more jolly 

 and irresponsible than the Chinese. 

 ...The children picked bunches of 

 flowers just as English children 

 love to do, romped, made swings, 

 and swung each other and finally 



sat down to eat cakes In the 



evening they all trooped back to 



the village to dance in the mule 



square and skip. Three or four 



little girls would link ;arms and 



facing another similar line of girls 



advance and retreat by turns, two steps and a kick, singing a not 



unmusical chorus — a most delightful parody of ' Here we go gathering 



nuts and may '." 



II 



A Tibetan girl of A-tun-tsi 



