In the summer of 1944, when China was still suffering from the Japanese invasion, I followed Shen Zonglian to go from India to Tibet with the same wish To show the world the situation in Tibet, which, long separated with the hinterland, was under the manipulation and control of the British imperialists. Shen, with the Mongolian and Tibetan Commission of the KMT Government, was Director of the KMT Tibet Office, and I was his English secretary. He was an expert in finance and I had majored in English literature at university. Both of us were ignorant about the Tibetan race and had to learn everything from scratch.

The following year was dominated by VJ Day. Shen was ordered to return home, and I had to shoulder his duties by myself. He left behind all the materials he had gathered and advised me to persist. He also asked me to write some articles before joining hands with others in writing books.

During my stay in Lhasa, I wrote three essays in English on Sino-British ties in relation to the Tibet issue, and one report on the Razheng event in Chinese, which I sent to Shen, who had it published in Shanghai newspapers.

When I later went to India, Shen and I cooperated in writing. I produced the draft on the basis of materials I had collected, and he did the editing work. As he had to lecture in the United States, I had to complete the book in English myself. The book, entitled Tibet and Tibetans, was published by Stanford University Press in 1952.

My study of Tibet was confronted with the question of how to view the history of the Tibetan race. According to my understanding, history is the twin brother of politics, and the problem becomes how to separate politics from religion. All the lamas in the upper ruling class whom I had chance to meet in Lhasa were very knowledgeable, but shunned talking about politics, as well as history. When they mentioned history, they would jump from the period of Songtsan Gambo in the 7th century to the period of the 5th Dalai Lama in the 17th century. And they talked about the two great men’s religious positions and role, not their political achievements.

One lama explained that they paid little attention to some of the history books such as History of Tibetan Kings and Ministers, A Mirror of Genealogy of Kings, and Origin and Development of Religion. In some monasteries, such as the three major ones in Lhasa, lamas and monks were not allowed to read these history books, which senior lamas regarded as “foreign knowledge.” Leafing through these books I found they contained foreigners’ accounts of what took place some 40 or 50 years ago in the Lhasa or Xigaze areas. However, most people in Lhasa did not know about them.

Things took a turn for the better following the founding of the PRC and the peaceful liberation of Tibet in 1951. Beginning in 1956, experts and scholars were sent to Tibet to study the Tibetan history and society. Study results were treated in books published later. Research institutes were set up to produce more findings related to history and politics. Many books have been published since. A more gratifying situation with regard to further study of Tibetan history looms large in the new century.