Reddit mentions: The best tibet travel guides

I got it from this book here, though I lifted the body of the quote from the Wikipedia article on historical Khotan.

It's a work by the 7th Earl Dunmore recounting his travels in Central Asia and is certainly a product of its time period, reflecting many of the culture mores, biases, and prejudices typical of 19th century Western visitors to foreign lands. It details the author's perception of how things were in Khotan, though the degree to which this perception reflected actual reality may be subject to debate.

That said, I mainly included the point to emphasize the fact that Khotan in the 19th century was of relatively minimal regional import (such that courtesanship, as opposed to some other economic or political contribution, was its major claim to fame/notoriety) and to juxtapose it against Paris's cosmopolitan reach and comparative global importance.

Tibet is an autonomous region in China and Nepal is an independent country, so I don't think this was your question.

But let's back up a bit.

Tibet was pretty much a vassal state to the Chinese empire for most of the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368–1912). For all purposes, if you drew a map of China at that time, its lines would include Tibet (and what is today independent Mongolia, for that matter).

When the Qing government fell, the country broke apart into warlords. Because Europe was still demanding China pay them more silver for the privilege of being invaded and robbed blind from 1800–1900, the new republican government was a lame duck.

And then Japan invaded. And there was a civil war going on at the same time.

So basically, from 1912-1949, China lacked the ability to pull itself back together.

After the civil war, the communists came out on top. They pulled the territory back together, and by all accounts the first 10 years of communist rule were a bloody awesome time for China. People were optimistic about the future, proud to have the country back together and glad to see the Japanese gone. Even Tibet was down with it, and the Dalai Lama didn't seem to mind the communists at all.

The problem was that communist rule brought a big change. For the last 800 years, the Dalai Lama basically got to run the god damn show. His word was law, and he was the head of the theocratic government. And in this fashion, he ruled over a nation of people who were ripe with STDs, who died by the age of 40, who had no access to any form of medicine, and who had no hope of using education to improve their life situation.

Why? Because the only schools were monastic schools, which you could not get into unless you were selected, and the only you got selected was to be reborn until Buddha hands you the right raffle ticket. Or if a monk had a boner for you and thought you might make a singer (aka rape doll).

In Tibet, you were a slave who worked the lands owned by the monks and gave up the fruits of your labor to people with better karma... or you were a monk at the top of the food chain.

The communists decided this was fucked up, and started building schools and hospitals and sending doctors. They also told the Dalai Lama he sucked ass at running Tibet, and wanted to create a local government that would give Tibet preferential treatment while following the same top-down planning policies as the rest of the country (which would be a complete goddamn disaster from 1965-1979).

The Dalai Lama and his friends didn't like that, so they ran away to India with the help of the CIA.

And that pretty much brings us up to present day.

If you want to know why China wouldn't let Tibet split off and become a separate country, the only explanation I can give you is that it's pretty much the same reason the United State of America wouldn't let the south break away to form the Confederate States of Jesusland. On some level, there was a moral obligation to help the people, but more realistically it was about maintaining your territorial integrity, which in the case of China went back 800 years instead of 100.

For more Shangri-la–smashing images, check out The Timely Rain or The Making of Modern Tibet to learn how monks used to punish their runaway slaves (as late as the 1930s) by ripping out their eyes and tongues, mutilating their sexual organs or gutting them and leaving them to die on a freezing mountain because Buddhism teaches that you cannot directly take a life.

(Edited for clarity and useful links)