The official diary of the Gould mission to Lhasa sent by the British government. Read more about the mission diary.
Lunch with Lanchunga Shape the senior member of the Cabinet. As he is a quiet old man we had not expected a lunch lasting from 1 P. M. to 5 P. M.
Lanchunga who proved to be a very good host is a staunch conservative. He owed his promotion not so much to a successful career in politics as to a whim of the late Dalai Lama who, when a vacancy occurred in the Kashag, being annoyed with those who canvassed too assiduously for their friends, ignored all recommendations and chose Lanchunga, whom nobody had backed, from the obscurity of Western Tibet.
Lanchunga considers that Lhasa is not what it was when he was a boy and that electric light and wireless have made the winters stuffy. When the National Assembly wanted to instal a wireless transmitter here some years ago he was strongly opposed to it and the plan fell through. The Chinese, however, managed to bring a set when General Huang Mu Sung came to Lhasa and since then they have enjoyed the strong position of sending the Tibetan Government's messages for them and controlling news f rom or to Eastern Tibet. They are greatly upset by the fear that our wireless installation may mean the end of their monopoly, so much so that on hearing of its arrival, their leader Mr. Tsiang went to the Kashag to protest and not being favourably received was overcome with emotion and burst into tears.
Author: Hugh Richardson [see handwritten annotations in Diary by Hugh Richardson in MS. Or. Richardson 2, Bodleian Libary, Department of Oriental Collections, University of Oxford]
Page Reference: Pt VII p.3