Page:Three Years in Tibet.djvu/183

Rh I stayed for three or four days. Here there were about one hundred and fifty tents, trade being carried on even more vigorously than at Gya-nima. Gya-karko is a trading port for people coming from the north-west plains of Tibet on the one hand and the Hinḍūs inhabiting the Indian Himālayas on the other, who are allowed by the Tibetan Government to come as far as this place.

Here I saw many merchants from the towns and villages of the Himalayas. Among them was one from Milum, who spoke English. This man invited me to dinner on the quiet, so to say. I accepted his invitation, but the moment I had entered his tent I at once saw that he took me for an English emissary. When left to ourselves he immediately addressed me thus: "As I live under the government of your country, I shall never make myself inconvenient to you. In return I wish you would do what you can to help my business when you go back to India." I thought that these were very strange words to speak to me. On interrogating him, I found out that he had conjectured that I was engaged in exploring Tibet at the behest of the British Government. When I told him that I was a Chinaman, he said: "If you are Chinese, yon can no doubt speak Chinese?" I answered him boldly in the affirmative. Then he brought in a man who claimed to understand Chinese. I was not a little embarrassed at this turn of affairs, but as I had had a similar experience with Gya Lama in Nepal it took me no time to recover sufficient equanimity to answer him, and I felt much re-assured when I found that he could not speak Chinese so well as I had anticipated. Then I wrote a number of Chinese characters and wanted him to say if he knew them. The man looked at me and seemed to say:

"There you have me." Finally he broke into laughter and said: "I give up; let us talk in Tibetan." Then my host was greatly astonished and said : "Then you are indeed a Chinaman! What can be better? China is a vast country.