The Last Frontier

INSPIRATION: When I started writing this column, I assumed that many of the few who would read it regularly would know the inspiration for the title. I realize now that this is not the case. James Hilton's Lost Horizon, a cult novel well over half a century ago, is now barely read.

It was set in what was clearly Tibet, in a monastery called Shangri La where the secret of eternal life had been discovered. The repository of the secret was a Catholic priest who had reached the monastery a couple of centuries previously. The hero (played in the film by I think James Mason) suddenly realizes that he is dealing with the famous Father Perrault of the distant past.

My mother, not a great reader of novels, had a copy which I read avidly forty years ago. I cannot be sure that I remember it well, but certainly from then on I had a deep desire at some stage to visit Tibet.

In those days one felt there was time for everything. It is only in the last few years that I have been conscious of mortality, the need to do now whatever seems urgent, the realization that one is not going to see everything that seems desirable in this strange but wonderful world in which we live.

One needs to prioritize, and in the last decade I have used as a touchstone a book we commissioned for the pre-University General English Language Training Course that Oranee Jansz and I used to run.

We wanted a simple text that also gave to students entering university some of the General Knowledge that their peers elsewhere would have, but which our bizarre education system deprived them of. We thought a record of Historic Buildings would be of interest, and we asked Goolbai Gunasekara, one of the most imaginative and exciting of school history teachers, to produce a text.

She covered the Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, the Parthenon, Hagia Sophia, Angkor Wat, Machchu Pichchu, the Taj Mahal and the Potala in Tibet. In short, readily readable accounts, there was lots of interesting history, as well as superb insights into political strategies that are relevant even now (as with regard to how Shi Huang Ti unified China).

I knew the other buildings, but not the Potala, which seemed yet another reason to travel to Tibet. Being in China last month therefore I thought I would stay on for a week, to get there on my own. The original quotation from the travel agent our hosts put me in touch with was far more than I could manage, but by dint of going down the scale of stars for the hotel, and other economies, getting to sites on foot or on my own, I was able to go ahead.

Despite one night of scarcely being able to breathe, along with a splitting headache, the impact of the sudden increase in altitute (Lhasa is 12,000 feet above sea level), I found the whole experience enchanting. The monasteries are wonderful complexes, with several small temples full of statues and colourful tankhas and manuscripts piled on shelf upon shelf.

All those I visited still had several monks, who gathered together at noon to chant until, at some signal, the younger ones rushed off flapping their robes like large birds to collect their lunch. This was doled out in the assembly hall in which they changed, chunks of bread and what seemed a thick soup cooked in huge vats in an archaic kitchen which we could inspect (photography charged extra).

The Potala itself was a superb sight, 13 stories rising sheer in the center of the town, the White Palace on one side with the rooms of the Dalai Lama, unfortunately closed for restoration. The Red Palace in the middle was however enough in itself, including the tombs of several of the last lamas, and statues of the king who had established the kingdom in the 7th century, along with his three wives, one Tibetan, another Nepalese, the third a Chinese princess of the Tang dynasty.

That last marriage seems to have been what brought Tibet within the Chinese sphere of influence, though the relationship has continued complex since then. The fifth Dalai Lama, who really established the theocratic nature of the Tibetan State, seems to have derived his legitimacy from a grant from one of the Manchu emperors in the 16th century.

Then, as now, the Chinese seem formally to have accepted the autonomy of the Tibetan State provided Chinese hegemony were acknowledged. Unfortunately, in the 20th century, demographic developments as well as improved transport facilities have shifted population ratios in a manner that was inconceivable before.

One can therefore understand the worries of the Tibetans, brought home to me dramatically when a woman trying to sell me souvenirs, furious at my refusal to offer the price she wanted, accused me of being Chinese. At first I misunderstood, and thought she was describing herself, but she spat out, 'I Tibetan.

You Chinese,' as though it was the worst insult she could offer. In all fairness to the Chinese government, I should note that they understand the problem, and their policies - exemptions to minorities with regard for instance to the one child principle - seem intended to protect regional identities. But the incident made clear the difficulties of nation building, difficulties we need to appreciate in the far less complex situation of this country too.