I was surprised while reading The Last Secrets of the Forbidden City Head to the U.S. by Auston Ramzy.
I was surprised that evidence like this slipped past the Western media censors — sorry, it is politically incorrect to say that there are media censors in America. In the United States, the censors are editors that work for huge autocratic, for-profit media corporations.
The Time Magazine piece Ramzy wrote was about an exhibit traveling to the United States with treasures from the Forbidden City that have not been seen since 1924.
Ramzy wrote, “Many of the 18th-century objects that will be displayed are symbols of the emperor’s devout Buddhism. They include a hanging panel filed with niches that hold intricate figurines of Buddhas, deities and historical teachers from the Tibetan Buddhist sect to which [Emperor] Qianlong belonged.”
I didn’t know the powerful Qianlong Emperor followed the teachings of Buddhists from Tibet. There are four Buddhist sects in Tibet. The Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of one of the four, the Yellow Hat sect.
Why would the Qianlong Emperor belong to a Tibetan sect of Buddhism if Tibet were not considered part of China? In fact, Tibetan Buddhist monks traveled to the capital of China to serve the emperors.
China considered Tibet a vassal state or tributary. In fact, starting in the 13th century, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasty troops are known to have occupied Lhasa.
In fact, the October 1912 National Geographic Magazine describes how the Imperial government in Beijing managed a difficult Tibet, and I’ve mentioned letters Sir Robert Hart wrote in the 19th century that also mention Tibet as part of China.
In 1890, a Convention between Great Britain and China was signed that offers more evidence that China’s emperor considered Tibet part of his realm and Great Britain agreed. Tibet is mentioned twenty-nine times in this treaty.
Tibet declared freedom from China in 1913 after about seven-hundred years of occupation soon after the Qing Dynasty collapsed and China fell into chaos and anarchy while warlords fought over the spoils. Tibet did this because the British Empire convinced the Dalai Lama to break from China.
Discover China’s First Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi, the man that unified China more than 2,000 years ago.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.
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