Hairline Decision

Ever since the Communists conquered China, Tibet has peered uneasily from its mountain fastness at the ominous doings on the plains below. In other days Tibet was an "autonomous" province of China, but Mao Tse-tung had made it clear that he would like to establish firm Red rule over the province, if & when his armies get around to establishing same.

As a sign that it wishes to stay independent, Tibet decided last year, after centuries of mountain isolation, to send an ambassador to London. A prominent Tibetan, one Yuthok Dzasa, was chosen for the post, started his long trip down from the capital of Lhasa. He stopped off at Kalimpong, a small outpost in the hills of northeast India, to clear up the diplomatic preliminaries with Britain. In anticipation of the barbaric fashions of the Court of St. James's, Yuthok cut off his waist-length hair, the mark of a Tibetan layman* of distincton.

Then, still at Kalimpong, Yuthok got word from Lhasa that his trip was off. Britain had never signaled a welcome for the Tibetan emissary: it did not want to antagonize the Chinese Communists, with whom it has been trying to shake hands ever since it offered recognition of the Reds last January. Lhasa, getting nervous about Mao Tse-tung's increasingly noisy promises to send his armies in to "liberate Tibet," thought Yuthok had better turn around and come home.

That was not as simple as it sounded: it was impossible for Yuthok to return to Lhasa with his London-length hair. But the envoy was not worried. "A Tibetan order doesn't have the same sense of immediacy as a Western order," he explained. It would take "several months" to prepare for the journey home, several more to wait for the Himalayan spring thaws. By that time Yuthok's hair would again be respectably long--and perhaps Tibet might still be waiting for the Communist blow to fall.

* Tibet's ruling lamas, by contrast, shave their heads from the day (at nine or ten) when they are confirmed as priestly "disciples of the gods."

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