I entered the reception room of the Living
Buddha. It had a throne and a place for
about 14 people on bright coloured mats around the wall. The High Lama was in a salmon coloured silk
robe with a purse of gold. I liked him
very much. He had a frank smile with
white teeth. He had a sense of humour. He did not sit on his throne, but beside
it. He ‘told’ brown beads all the
time. Priests came in with gifts of silk
- in rolls of bright blue and red. We
were given Mongolian tea. Then Diluwa
took some Mongolian butter like cream and stuck masses in my cup of tea. He started speaking in Mongolian to his
secretary who was wearing a dark long brown robe. He translated into Chinese, which Müller translated into German
and which I wrote down in English. It
was an appeal for help for refugees from Soviet Outer Mongolia. Many, about 40,000 to 50,000, had had to
flee, unable to rescue much of their property and arriving at most with only
their riding animals, either camels or horses. The poverty among them is terrible.
They have few household utensils and only a small pot. They started to come in 1931 when the
Communists started to press their ideas. They did not bring their herds, because the Bolsheviks confiscated
these. They had a difficult time to
escape the guards. The Nanking
Government has given £30,000 for rice, but this is not enough. While we talked lamas peeped through the
windows like schoolboys. Then a
Japanese man rode by in brilliant Mongol dress, on a fine Mongol saddle, with a
little skullcap and a button on top. Müller says: “A lot of them do
it. It is much more comfortable and
they think it makes them more popular”.
After
my interview with Diluwa, we motored on and got stuck in a river for three
hours and twenty minutes and eventually we arrived late at night at Ujmutchin,
not far from the Soviet and Manchukuo frontier. The leader of the Buriat Banner, Prince Otcheroff gave us a room
near his palace and we slept well. Next
morning, we went to the Yamen and paid a visit to the Japanese representative
of the Kwantung Army, as the Japanese occupied it. The leading Japanese in the yurt was a man of great charm with
fine teeth, a tuft of beard and brilliantly humorous eyes. They had a wireless there.
Into the room came a Mongol who had a purse
with a swastika, black on white with a red border. The Japanese man said he, himself, had been there since
March and had not yet had a
bath.
|
Gareth at the Lama service.
|