Ü-Tsang དབུས་གཙང་
As the twentieth century got underway, the Chinese rulers in faraway Beijing were talking about turning Tibet into a province of China, and in the following decades the number of Han people living in the border areas greatly increased. Although it was to be another 50 years before the Chinese achieved their goal, when Communist tanks rolled across central Tibet, this 1908 report foretold what a later generation would experience:
The Chinese have great changes in view, and contemplate forming the whole of Tibet into a Chinese province . . . No doubt the Dalai Lama will be shortly asked to return to his own country. All this portends a speedy and far-extending change over all Tibet.1
Although they didn’t attempt to reach Lhasa, in July 1906 a small group of three CIM missionaries set out from Kangding in Sichuan Province. They entered Ü-Tsang, or central Tibet, only to find sparsely populated grasslands with occasional tents of nomads dotting the landscape. The missionaries, however, were full of hope for future prospects, with Theo Sorenson of Norway reporting:
Tibet cannot now be looked upon as entirely closed to missionary effort, as this journey is a practical proof of the possibilities which now lie before the Church. Barriers, hitherto considered insurmountable, have now been removed, and the glorious possibility of possessing the land for the Lord Jesus Christ need not alone be left to the prayer of faith.2
The group continued across swollen streams and were drenched by driving rain and midsummer snow for six days, until they reached a small settlement. Wanting to share the gospel with the local nomads, one of the missionaries and his Tibetan co-worker approached the tents, only to find that:
the occupants were too frightened to either buy or accept our books . . . It is impossible to approach these tents in any other way than on horseback, as the occupants would set the dogs on to you, suspecting you had come for some evil purpose.3
Several days later they reached the village of Dawo, where they happily reported:
Today Dawo has received the true Light, not preached but distributed, for scarcely a single house will be without a copy of the Gospel. May He from whom the true light shines, cause it to shine in many of these hearts and lives, and hasten the day when the truly awful power of the devil may be broken. Altogether 300 Gospels were distributed . . . During the afternoon a great many monks came to see us, sometimes there being as many as a dozen in the room at one time. All accepted Gospels.4
When they reached Qamdo (also called Chengguan) on July 25, they were the first white men anyone had seen. The group was still 370 miles (600 km) east of Lhasa, but after distributing 300 more Tibetan Gospel tracts they were content with their exploratory journey, and turned back toward Sichuan, arriving at Kangding 28 days after the start of their trip. They were welcomed back with open arms by the “little church of some 14 Christians, Chinese and Tibetans.”5
Amdo ཨ་མདོོ་
The town of Dujiangyan (formerly Guanxian) in north-west Sichuan Province was strategically placed on the edge of the Tibetan frontier. Each summer, Tibetans from many tribes and clans visited the town to gather supplies, before returning home.
Two Amdo monks, Sen-ce and Sang-Je. The younger man became a Christian in 1906
James Hutson of the CIM lived in Dujiangyan during the early twentieth century. In 1906, he told a gripping story of how a single Gospel tract had helped open the hearts of people in one Amdo area:
Several years ago I sold a Gospel to a Tibetan who lived 15 days’ journey northwest of the city. He took it home and gave it to the lama in charge of one of the monasteries. This lama happened to be the brother of a Tibetan chief. He took the Gospel to the chief, and the two looked at it and talked about it. They said to themselves that this was only one portion of a volume, and they would like a complete copy. So they sent that man back, 15 days’ journey from the Tibetan border, to get the whole New Testament in Tibetan . . .
That book is today a light in the midst of the darkness in a place where a missionary has never yet penetrated. Later on there came an invitation to go and preach the gospel to those people.6
During the first decade of the twentieth century the Tibetan Border Mission of the Christian and Missionary Alliance grew significantly, boosted by the arrival of several new recruits. The missionaries’ goal was to reach the dozens of unevangelized Amdo tribes and clans scattered throughout the region. The Golog were one such tribe, with a dozen or more subgroups in their midst.
Little was known about the mysterious Golog people, except that when they ventured into Labrang or one of the other monasteries to celebrate festivals, other Tibetans were terrified of them. Later historians retraced the history of the Gologs, finding that:
A gathering of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Tibet Border Mission
In the seventh century, the Tibetan king dispatched his fiercest warriors, ancestors of the present-day Gologs, to guard the country’s mountainous northern frontier against Chinese invasion. When the Tibetan kingdom eventually collapsed, the Gologs stayed in their mountain retreats, defiant of outside authority.7
Kham ཁམས
Further south in the Kham region of Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, the work of Catholic missionaries continued to advance, and by 1907 their flock numbered 2,050 believers (both Tibetan and Chinese), meeting in 14 churches.8
A succession of French missionaries and their Tibetan converts were called to lay down their lives during the decade, including Henri Mussot and Jean-André Soulié, who were viciously murdered by Tibetan lamas at Batang in April 1905. The barbaric head lama had Mussot imprisoned in the monastery, where he was “tortured with spikes, and finally shot. His torturers cut off his head and displayed it like a trophy above the entrance of the monastery.”9
Eleven Tibetan martyrs
Many people around the world who are fascinated by Tibet are unaware that one corner of the vast territory has a rich Catholic heritage which survives to the present day. The small town of Yanjing, nestled just within the border of the present Tibet Autonomous Region, has long contained Catholic believers. The church was established there in 1865 after their community at Bonga had been pillaged and burned to the ground. The French missionaries “led their faithful followers to Yanjing and established themselves on a few bits of ground, thanks to the connivance of the local populace and the silence of the native chiefs.”10
The Tibetan Catholic church in Yanjing where the Dalai Lama instigated a massacre in 1905
Julian Hawken
By the start of the twentieth century, this burgeoning group of more than 200 Tibetan Catholics did not go unnoticed by the leaders of Tibet. The Dalai Lama dispatched men from Lhasa to force the Christians to renounce their faith. The believers at Yanjing respectfully listened to the Dalai Lama’s edict, but politely replied that they would not change, for they had found the one true religion. In response, the Dalai Lama’s emissaries:
shot several Christian families in a field that is called the “Field of Blood” to this day. Instead of intimidating the believers, this cruel act solidified their faith and caused them to permanently turn away from Buddhism. Yanjing has remained Catholic ever since, and by 1922 there were a reported 1,610 Tibetan converts in the area.11
Another account of the persecution at Yanjing says:
The lamas and their paid assassins pillaged and burned the mission at Yanjing. Since the stars were unfavorable that day, they were afraid to attack the living and so, like sinister hyenas, they dug up the missionary graveyard and threw the bones into the Mekong River . . . Eleven Christians were bound to the pillars in the chapel. The next morning, April 18, 1905, they were dragged out into a field which from then on was to be called “the field of murder.” They refused the offer to apostatize, and a hail of bullets cut them down. Their bodies were thrown into the river.12
A Tibetan believer from Yanjing
Julian Hawken
On July 23, 1905, the French mission was struck by yet another outbreak of violence at Deqen in Yunnan Province, in the southernmost part of the Kham region. The heads of three martyrs, along with the heart and liver of 46-year-old Frenchman Pierre Bourdonnec, were carried like trophies to the large Deqen Monastery, where they were presented to the head lama. The depraved man, with a broad grin from ear to ear, commended the murderers for successfully completing their assignment.
Most of all, the head lama was overjoyed when he was presented with the head and organs of Jules Dubernard. For more than 40 years the Frenchman had loved the Tibetan people and was much more highly respected than the lama. The missionary had sacrificially served thousands of needy people without demanding anything in return, whereas the local monastery was known as a den of iniquity and the abode of lazy and corrupt lamas.
Dubernard’s head was triumphantly hung on the monastery gate as a warning to the people not to follow Christ. The Church in this remote area suffered only a temporary setback, however. More workers soon came to replace those who had been martyred, and the local church survived and grew. By 1998, there were a reported 9,500 Tibetan Catholics in northern Yunnan and southern Tibet, in areas where Dubernard, Bourdonnec, and the other martyrs had laid down their lives.13
Evangelical progress
The early twentieth century saw an influx of many new Evangelical missionaries into the fringes of the Tibetan world, and a growing awareness arose that unreached Tibetans lived across a vast area of China. Even towns as distant as Dali and Lijiang in Yunnan Province were visited by hundreds of Tibetans during festivals and fairs, and the missionaries in those places eagerly shared the gospel by distributing Tibetan Scriptures.14
Three barefoot Tibetans who visited the CIM medical clinic at Dali
The Evangelical enterprise in the Kham region showed signs of progress in the 1900s. Cecil Polhill reported from Batang:
It will be remembered that when we left Kangding in 1900, there were no enquirers and the work was not particularly encouraging, but when our brothers went back two years later, after the Boxer troubles, and reopened the station, they found a great change in the state of affairs, so that in a few months’ time 150 names of enquirers were enrolled . . .
The king of the Tibetans showed great friendliness and gave our brothers the use of his summer palace at Litang for their holiday. The inhabitants of the large monastery near this town had hitherto shown themselves to be bitterly hostile. This is all so changed that there is now a wide opening for work there.15
In 1907, Edward Amundsen—a surviving member of Annie Taylor’s failed mission—traveled extensively throughout the Kham region, sharing Christ with Tibetans wherever he went. The following excerpts from Amundsen’s diary reveal both the tense spiritual atmosphere and the openness to the gospel at the time:
In Kangding I went about and chatted with the friendly lay people and a few portions of Scripture were accepted as gifts! The lamas would not even speak with us. They are strictly looked after. The day I stayed there, no less than three monks were carried out dead, having been beaten to death for acts of immorality. Being told by the abbot to shun me, they would shun me; being told to befriend me, they would be friendly; being told to kill me, they would do so—of course all in the interest of religion.16
On May 10th I left Kangding again, for Litang, Batang and the west . . . On the third day I reached my former Tibetan home at Golok. The people were delighted to see me after eight years absence. Seasoned and buttered tea and “tsamba” were offered, as well as cheese and milk . . . They gathered round my inn and chattered till late . . . How readily these people would accept the gospel were there no lamas to forbid them! I left a number of Gospels with my host to be given away as he had opportunity.17
At Litang we had a great time distributing Gospels to the monks and others; in all 145. They were eager to get them. Not long ago they would ask foreigners to pass on at once and would scarcely allow them to stay a night even outside the monastery. Now I was able to go unhindered all through the great building which they say can accommodate 3,700 lamas. I do hope these books will work mightily among this great multitude of spiritual leaders!18
Notes
1 Cecil Polhill, “Some Notes on a Journey to the Tibetan Border,” China’s Millions (August 1908), p. 124.
2 A. H. Sanders, “Forward into Tibet,” China’s Millions (January 1907), p. 6.
3 Horace S. Sanders, “Forward into Tibet,” China’s Millions (March 1907), p. 44.
4 Horace S. Sanders, “Forward into Tibet,” p. 46.
5 Polhill, “Some Notes on a Journey to the Tibetan Border,” p. 128.
6 James Hutson, “The Station of Kwan Hsien,” China’s Millions (July 1906), p. 113.
7 Galen Rowell, “Nomads of China’s West,” National Geographic (February 1982), p. 244.
8 Bertram Wolferstan, The Catholic Church in China (St. Louis, MO: Sands & Co., 1909), p. 451.
9 My translation of the Henri Mussot Obituary in the Archives des Missions Etrangères de Paris, China Biographies and Obituaries, 1900–1999.
10 Robert Loup, Martyr in Tibet: The Heroic Life and Death of Father Maurice Tornay, St. Bernard Missionary to Tibet (New York: David McKay, 1956), p. 68.
11 Milton D. Stauffer, The Christian Occupation of China (Shanghai: China Continuation Committee, 1922), p. 282.
12 Loup, Martyr in Tibet, pp. 147–8.
13 See Alex Buchan, “Catholic Church Hangs On in Tibet,” Compass Direct (September 1998).
14 For example, see W. T. Clark, “Gospel Work amongst Tibetans,” China’s Millions (December 1909), p. 186.
15 Cecil Polhill, “Notes of the China Inland Mission Tibet Band,” China’s Millions (March 1905), p. 34.
16 Edward Amundsen, “The Diary of Journeys through East Tibet,” Chinese Recorder (December 1907), p. 651.
17 Amundsen, “The Diary of Journeys through East Tibet,” p. 653.
18 Amundsen, “The Diary of Journeys through East Tibet,” p. 658.