HIDDEN ASIA

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 135, 4 December 1935, Page 10

HIDDEN ASIA

TEN ANXIOUS DAYS

lII.—AMONG THE LAMAS

(By Peter Fleming.)

World Copyright Reserved.)

At the West Gate of Lanchow we said good-bye sadly to the two Russians and set off after our mules along the bank o£ the Yellow River. Our immediate destination was Sining, the capital of Chinghai Province, and we did not seriously expect to get much nearer India than that; but we were glad to have postponed, however temporarily, the admission of defeat. A motor road to Sining exists, but was impassable at the time. Not sorry, after our experiences, to have finished with mechanical transport, we did the six stages to Sining in five days, walking most of the time, but sometimes sitting on top of our luggage on the mules.

On the second day we crossed the Yellow River in a great flat-bottomed ferry and followed the dusty road up the valley of its tributary, the Sining Ho. Before us the bare and jagged hills sprawled interminably, red and yellow under a bright blue sky. Occasionally we passed a caravan of donkeys, tripping demurely under disproportionate loads; travellers of consequence in litters or carts drawn by the famous Kansu mules; once a fur-hatted detachment of provincial troops, coming down from Sining to the anti-Communist campaigns, their officers riding Tibetan ponies, their equipment on camels, and their two superannuated cannon dragged by coolies. On the swift waters of;the Sining Ho huge rafts, made of anything up to 30 inflated skins, were poled skilfully through the rapids, carrying wool and hides on the first stage of their tremendous journey from the Koko Nor pastures to Tientsin. Here and there at the water's edge men squatted, washing gold. At night we halted in villages of an inconceivable poverty, and slept on k'angs reeking of opium, while the animals munched and stamped outside. At the start, before dawn, it was cold, for the road climbs from 6000 ft to 7000 ft above sea, level; but the chill soon vanished in the brilliant, windless sunlight. Except for occasional eggs and the remains of a cake from Peking, we lived entirely on bowls of kuan mien (a kind of spaghetti), violently flavoured with red pepper and bought at the wayside for a few coppers. PATIENCE. We eyed the single telegraph wire with misgiving; but no attempt was made to stop us at the Kansu-Chinghai frontier, and on the evening of March 10, after a 40-mile stage, we came in unde§ the walls of Sining, on whose battlements sentries armed with stocky automatic rifles were silhouetted against a. fiery sunset. We found an inn and feasted on meat at a Moslem eating-place. In Sining (the Sin-ju of Marco Polo, the Seling of the Tibetans) the Moslems, an important minority in Sian and Lanchow, predominated at last numerically; the provinces of Chinghai and Ninghsia were recently formed by the.Central Government in. order to forestall the inconvenient expression of Moslem desires for autonomy in the-north-west. We spent 10 anxious, rather squalid, days in Sining. . • - •

On the first we discovered that the Lanchow authorities, with a characteristically Chinese desire to-evade responsibility, had sent us on to' Sirring without issuing the requisite passports, thereby delegating to their neighbours the invidious task of holding us up. Our fate remained uncertain pending the return from a hunting trip of General Ma Bu-fan, an energetic young autocrat who, as military governor, controls the destinies of Chinghai. Meanwhile the forefingers of the curious punctured the paper windows of our grubby quarters at the inn where we spent rsuch of the day playing Patience and simulating optimism. The rest of our time was devoted to ordering (very provisionally) stores and equipment, and to sifting the current rumours about our prospects. In both these activities we had two most sympathetic helpers in Lv Hwa-pu (an influential Chinese who spoke Russian and ran, rather inscrutably, a photographer's shop) and Lieutenant-Gen-eral C. C. Ku, of the Nanking General Staff, a graduate of Cornell University, who was doing military ' intelligence work on China's North-West Frontier.

In the long main street the untiring thud and clank of the ingenious local form of bellows, installed in most of the open-fronted shops, measured the pulse-beat of the city's life. Mountains of wool lurched; down towards the East Gate on carts; with screaming axles. In the inn yards camels endured with glassy hauteur an interlude of urban life. On Fridays the large mosque in the more specifically Moslem quarter of the town was thronged by white-capped or whiteturbanned worshippers. But for us it was the people from outside who made Sirring exciting with the promise of remoter places. Mongols from the Tsaidam, Tibetans from Labrang or even Lhasa, lounged at the sunny street corners, not altogether mastering a tendency to gape. Both dressed in the Tibetan style. Huge sheepskin robes, worn with the wool inside, were gathered round the waist by a sash, above which, and concealing it, capacious folds overhung, making a kind of pocket in which all personal possessions, from the inevitable wooden bowl to a couple of mastiff puppies, were carried. Below the waist the skirts of the robe hung in pleats like a kilt, swinging outwards as gracefully as a ballet skirt when the wearer leapt on to his horse or camel.- Stocky boots with upturned toes were worn on the feet, and in these was stowed the long pipe,' with its tiny metal bowl and- heavy jade mouthpiece. Except in the bitterest weather the robe was slipped back leaving one brown arm and shoulder free. In Sining the whole barbaric outfit was usually crowned by a cheap Homburg hat, the first fruits of a shopping expedition reckoned in terms of months; the hats enhanced an air of callowness and bewilderment which clung to these country cousins. From their waists dangled a metal-shod pouch containing flint and tinder and a cheap knife in a sheath; and round their necks hung a heavy amulet enshrining a picture of Buddha. Many of these amulets came, by way of Lhasa, from India; we were obscurely (and unwarrantably) comforted by the sight of them. IN A MONASTERY. Unwarrantably, because our telegraphic inquiries from unofficial sources at Nanking had produced the most unhopeful results: "visas doubtfullest," wired a Chinese colleague in the'capital. But at last the situation eased. The Sining officials informed us that passports authorising our shooting trip in the Koko Nor region were being prepared; and that in the meantime we might visit (under escort) the great Tibetan monastery at Kumbum, a short day's journey to the south-west. The escort proved to be a fragile and defenceless dotard in uniform, in whose company we rattled down to Kumbum in a hooded Peking cart.

The monastery, which has been fully described by travellers better qualified than myself to treat of such things, is

one of the richest and most powerful in all Tibet; it is said to have grown up round a sacred and still extant tree which sprang, in the fourteenth century, from the blood of Tsong Kapa, founder of the Yellow Sect of lamas. Its buildings, prominent among them two magnificent roofs of pure gold, crowd the steep slopes of a narrow ravine. As soon as we saw them we felt that, whatever political maps of Asia might say to the contrary, we had done at last with China. Everything, from the style of architecture to the demons which played so large a part •in the mural decorations, belonged to another race and another culture. Lamas with shaven heads, in red robes or in yellow, paced and squatted in the courtyards; others, seated rank upon rank in semi-dark-ness, endlessly intoned their prayers, sending up waves of rhythmic, hypnotising sound to beat upon the wooden pillars and the hangings between which a dull gleam betrayed the smiling and gigantic god.

Outside the devout turned prayerwheels in the sunlight, or mechanicallyprostrated themselves - before the I greatest temple, sliding their bodies up j and down in grooves which generations of their ancestors had worn deep fti the wooden floor. Gongs sounded from time to time, and horns. Stuffed tigers, bears, and yaks, their flanks shiny with butter ritually applied, goggled fantastically from wooden balconies. In the monastery kitchen stood three huge copper vats which are used to prepare the butter for the most important festival of the year. In Kumbum we saw many strange things which we had not, alas, the learning to appreciate, and which I have not the space even to enumerate. ROOKS AND CONCHES. We were entertained by the lamas in one of the more secular departments ol the monastery, sleeping in> panelled upper rooms which were warm and spotlessly clean. Next morning, awakened by the cries of rooks in the trees outside incongruously mingling with outlandish drums and conches, we walked over to Lusar, a Chinese trading settlement which, has grown up next door to the monastery. Here we were received by Ma Shin-teh, a rich Moslem merchant who was a friend of our erstwhile guides the Smigunovs, and who possessed one of the most important qualifications for business success in China—that of being related by marriage to the military governor of the province. In a small, richly-furnished room, containing no fewer than eight far from unanimous clocks, I strained my Chinese to the utmost and solicited his help for our journey. Ma Shin-teh was (so, far as we could understand him) charming; one of his agents (he said), a certain Li, was shortly leaving for the Tsaidam with a caravan, and this man would look after us on the road. ■ He warned us that travel in those parts was highly dangerous, but I assured him, untruthfully, that we were heavily armed and induced him to write a letter to ( the authorities impressing on them that we should be travelling in safe hands and had no need of an escort. Much cheered, we return to Kumbum, presented our lama hosts with a little money and a fountain pen, and bumped back to- Sining in the teeth of a biting wind. .

; We ' still did hot dare to hope; but the next day the Governor's secretary duly issued us a passport authorising us to. travel in the interior of Chinghai (we discovered later that, once more, it;was not the right sort of passport, having nothing- on it in Tibetan; but this, as things turned out, did not matter). Hastily collecting' the provisions which we had ordered, we left Sining, in two carts provided by the mayor, for Tangar, the last outpost of Chinese civilisation on the edge' of the Tibetan ; plateau. -We were again encumbered with an escort; but -the excellent fellow was only too glad to accept my visiting card, which after two days of intensive opium smoking at home, he would present to the autttorities in token that his mission to Tangar had been faithfully discharged.

(To be continued.)