By Michael Glover
The British mission to Lhasa in August 1936 was modest. Headed by Sir Basil Gould, it consisted of eight men (plus attendants). However, it brought with it a huge assortment of technical equipment, drawn by several hundred yaks, much of which was photographic. Frederick Spencer Chapman (1907-71) had come along to decipher telegraphs – that was the official justification for his presence in the Tibetan capital, anyway. The fact that he had also brought along five stills cameras and three cine-cameras suggests something slightly different.
The British wanted a political presence in Lhasa to establish friendly relations with the elites of Tibet in the interests of empire, to counter the influence of China and to record the reality of Shangri-La itself, that magical place.
This fascinating exhibition at Oxford’s Pitt-Rivers museum displays about 100 images from those years, many of which have not been seen before. They range from a survey of courtly and aristocratic customs to formal meetings between two great elites whose habits often appear to mirror each other, from lavishly posed portraits of the Tibetan aristocracy as sumptuous as any Gainsborough, to seething and unruly street scenes. There is also a moving- picture show with brief, tantalising scenes, such as “New Year at Potala”, which gives us a taste of New Year ceremonies at the Dalai Lama’s great Winter Palace.
The British were bemused, if not transfixed, by the colour and the splendour of it all. Spencer Chapman wrote: “I have the impression of watching some gay medieval pageant, some fantastic Hollywood production, or a throng of people in fancy dress.”
The two aristocracies often met over dinner. One of the menus, dated October 1936, and given for the British mission by the Lord Chamberlain of Tibet, is featured. The food is a marvellously ribald mingling of east and west: Indian tea with Jacob’s biscuits, tinned pineapple slices, shark’s stomach, sea slugs, and something described as “very firm fleshed fish”. Nearby there is a photograph of several stiff and wary members of the British mission poking and prodding at those sea slugs with chopsticks.
The influences were two-way. The British taught the Tibetans football without conceding a single goal. They brought microphones, golf, gramophones – and a pleasing photo-realistic watercolour artist from India called Kanwal Krishna, whose uncanny likenesses of local notables (also on display), executed for the most part in two hours flat, were a marvel to the Tibetans, who, with no tradition of realistic painting, had never seen such pictures before.
But it was the moving pictures that they were shown in the British mission house – films of British ceremonial, Charlie Chaplin, Rin Tin Tin and, best of all, themselves – which proved most seductive. “The sight of themselves on film was convincing proof to Tibetan audiences that what they saw was real,” wrote Gould, from some considerable height.
Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford. Tel 01865 270927. Until November 30
