£1000 for a Bath!

Taranaki Daily News, 27 September 1930, Page 18 (Supplement)

£1000 for a Bath!

Alodern decorators are fast reverting to the Roman way of thinking about baths—that nothing is too precious or too costly with which to make them, states an English,exchange. Princess blue and blue John are- two semiprecious stones of-, a deep and light blue, flecked with grey and white, which are now beino- made into wash-basins for the very rich. Both of these stones would cost the owner over £lOOO. Woman Envoy to Tibet/

A- correspondent of the Daily Mail, writing from Kalimpong, Bengal, India, states that Leu _ Men-chin, the woman agent of the Chinese Nationalist (Nanking) Government, passed through there on her way back ■to China, via Calcutta, after a stay of about three months in Lhasa, the sacred city .of Tibet. The Tibetan authorities accorded her the highest honours. Officials and a military escort were sent to meet her, and an officer was detailed to look after her comfort. She was the bearer of letters from, the Nanking Government to ' the Dalai Lama, the supreme ruler of Tibet, who had approached the Chinese for aid. He was (iiiitiiiiiiinmiintniiiiimiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiHHHiiiiiiiiiMMUtmimiHiiinuiHlinwMHii’ttlittMUitint

then involved in a dispute with Nepal, the independent kingdom between Tibet and British India,"but it was subsequently settled satisfactorily. Eye-wit-nesses state that Leu Men-chin’s entry into Lhasa was similar to that of an Amban in the days when two of these representatives maintained Chinese supremacy there. Similar honours have never been shown to the representative of any other nation, except possibly to Sir Charles Bell when he visited Lhasa as an agent of the British Government in 1920. Leu Men-chin stated that the Dalai Lama, who gave, her his blessing, was sending no reply through her, but the presumption is to the contrary, and that she is keeping this fact secret.