LIFE AMONG THE PEOPLE OF EASTERN TIBET 



By Dr. A. L. Shelton 



For Seventeen Years Medical Missionary at Batang, near the Chino-Tibetan Border 



WHERE East meets West on the 

 border line between China and 

 Tibet, the broad roles that have 

 come to be understood by those brief 

 terms are completely reversed. There it 

 is the East, personified by China, that has 

 represented the greater progress; and 

 Tibet, which stretches far to the west, 

 that has preferred to exist for centuries 

 behind the world's greatest rampart of 

 mountains, inhospitable to the knocking 

 of ideas more modern than its own. 



Of all the great forces that have molded 

 the outside world, only Buddhism, it 

 might be said, has left its impress behind 

 Tibet's towering border, and even that 

 force, having once gained access, has been 

 almost swallowed up in the devil-worship 

 which is the highest religion that the 

 Tibetans themselves have evolved. 



Until recent years, practically nothing 

 was known of Tibet by Caucasians except 

 the doubtful information contained in the 

 writings of a few adventurous travelers 

 who in the Middle Ages made brief ex- 

 cursions into the country. The few reso- 

 lute modern explorers who won their way 

 behind the barriers of mountains and 

 deserts were invariably turned back after 

 brief sojourns, usually in the sparsely 

 settled regions of the north. 



LHASA REVEALED TO THE WORED IN I9O4 



The expedition of Sir Francis Young- 

 husband to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, in 

 1904 made that hitherto forbidden city 

 known to the outside world. More recent 

 visits of travelers have added still further 

 to the general knowledge in regard to 

 Lhasa and a few other important valley 

 towns close to the Indian border.* 



But just as a familiarity with New 

 York or Paris leaves much to be learned 

 about the United States or France, so the 

 knowledge that has been gained about 

 Lhasa and its neighboring communities 

 fails to afford an adequate picture of 



* See, in the National Geographic Maga- 

 zine, "The World's Strangest Capital," by 

 John Claude White (March, 1916), and "The 

 Most Extraordinary City in the World," by 

 Dr. Shaoching H. Chuan (October, 1912). 



Tibet and the Tibetans. In regard to the 

 nomadic people of the uplands and life in 

 the villages of the agriculturists, that dot 

 the many smaller valleys of Tibet, much 

 has remained unknown. 



While the complete picture of Tibet 

 and its inhabitants probably will not be 

 filled in for many years, my long sojourn 

 in the border country where western 

 China meets eastern Tibet, and my close 

 association with its people, who with a 

 very few exceptions are the people of 

 Tibet, enable me to sketch in a few lines 

 regarding Tibetan conditions outside the 

 larger cities. 



SCENE OE STRIFE BETWEEN TIBETANS AND 

 CHINESE 



The southern portion of the border be- 

 tween China proper and Tibet is approxi- 

 mately the valley of the Yangtze, where 

 that great river flows almost due south 

 at the eastern end of the Himalayas be- 

 fore making a great swing to the north- 

 ward through the most populous part of 

 China. Where the Yangtze separates 

 China and Tibet it is already a river of 

 considerable size, its waters being be- 

 tween 700 and 1,000 miles along their 

 way in their 3,400-mile journey to the sea. 



Quite apart from the political divisions 

 and nominal government, the region on 

 both sides of the Yangtze where it flows 

 south is in reality Tibetan. A territory 

 approximately the area of Alabama, with 

 Batang as its center, has been the scene 

 in recent years of much strife between the 

 Tibetans and the soldiers of China, whose 

 officials were expelled from Tibet during 

 the Chinese revolution in 1912. 



Such authority as China maintains in 

 this border region is most tenuous, and to 

 the west of the Yangtze Valley it may be 

 considered to vanish entirely. 



This region contains both Protestant 

 and Roman Catholic missions, and con- 

 nected with the former is a medical mis- 

 sion. It marks the closest approach from 

 the east of Christian influences and 

 modern conceptions of sanitation, medi- 

 cine, and surgery toward Lhasa, strong- 



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