The bleak, windy plateau of Tibet—some 463,000 square miles, with an average altitude of 16,000 feet—is one of the coldest places in the world. For all its long history, it is also one of the most benighted. Tibet is one of the world's last theocracies: its culture centres about its religion, Lamaism, a form of Buddhism which was brought up from India through the Himalayan passes in the 7th Century. This hierarchical faith, with its priests, abbots, lamas (monks), hutukhtus ("Living Buddhas"), is headed by two infallible incarnations—the Panchen Lama, a spiritual teacher or "Buddha of Boundless Light," and the Dalai Lama, a temporal sovereign, the "Buddha of Mercy."
In Lhasa, a dirty, disagreeable town which was once the "Forbidden City" to foreigners, a fourth of the male population belong to the Lamaist priesthood. To help keep the Lamas out of mischief, an early Dalai Lama decreed that Tibetan women should paint their faces bright red.
Even unpainted, Tibetan females are among the world's ugliest. Yet Tibetans practice polygamy, polyandry and all forms of sexual perversion, and almost everybody (doctors estimate 99%) has a venereal disease. What modern improvements Lhasa has are the work of the Chinese and British. Tibet is not only a back door to China, but its religion is observed by 2,000,000 Mongols whom China very much wants to keep as buffering friends. Likewise Tibet is for England a buffer between the U. S. S. R. and India.
During and after the reign of the late, 13th Dalai Lama, China and England jockeyed for influence in Tibet. The Chinese established a radio station and a school (said the China Year Book: "The curriculum of the school consists principally of Chinese and commonsense"). The British put in another radio station (which worked better than the Chinese) and established a diplomatic mission, headed at present by a capable civil servant, Basil john Gould.
British and Chinese power in Lhasa seemed amicably divided last week, as the city prepared for the coronation of the 14th Dalai Lama. In Tibet had arrived a chubby, button-eyed, four-and-a-half-year-old boy, nicknamed by reporters "the Kokonor Kid" (after his birthplace in western China*), who seemed indubitably to be the 14th incarnation of the Buddha of Mercy. His coronation as Dalai Lama was scheduled for this week. To make sure that the enthronement takes place, the Chinese Government appropriated. $30,000, sent a special emissary, General Wu Chung-hsin, to this land where nothing can be done without bribery. Last fortnight General Wu visited Tibet's three greatest monasteries, whose abbots supervise the selection of a Dalai Lama, and distributed "alms," tea and rancid yak butter (Tibetan delicacy as well as lamp fuel) to 17,000 Lamas.