And yet the valley was accursed. It had probably about 300 households or more of Szechuanese settlers and there was at least one leper in every house. So bad was Moshimien's reputation for leprosy that the people of Tachienlu, the provincial capital just across the Yajagkan Range, would not buy a chicken or egg, not at any price, if they knew it came from the Moshimien valley.
I decided to make a close observation of the people's habits and food in order to form, at least, a hypothesis of the cause of the dread disease in this happy corner. The inhabitants were dirty, in fact dirtier than usual, and the houses were dingy and filthy. Why? I asked. The water was too cold for bathing, they told me. As to their diet, they ate twice a day, late in the morning and soon after sunset, on beancurd, powdered chillies to make it palatable and soup made of sliced potatoes; and of course there was rice. Day after day and night after night they ate the same poor food. Sometimes it was a turnip soup, instead of a potato one, or boiled horse-beans were added to the menu. Once a week a slice or two of old salt pork might be added to the potatoes in the soup. I asked about eating chickens, eggs and fresh pork and vegetables, like those grown in the mission garden, which they could plant likewise. No, they said, it would be too luxurious to eat chickens, eggs and fresh pork — that was all for sale and they needed money. Yes, I thought, they certainly needed the money to buy opium which they smoked all day long. As for the new-fangled vegetables in the missionaries' gardens, their ancestors had lived well enough without them, and what was good for them is good enough for us, they said. Besides, they added, certain vegetables, especially the tomatoes, were reputed to be poisonous as they had originated as a fruit of the sin between dogs. What about the missionaries? I retorted. None of them has died from eating these vegetables. 'Ah,' men replied knowingly, 'you foreigners have different bodies, and what is good for you is death for us.'
They all looked weak, emaciated, with parchment-like skin, their eyes feverish with opium. What could one do to help them, to persuade them? The kindly Catholics certainly tried everything they could, but all was in vain against the dullness and obduracy of these people fanatically entrenched in their ignorance.
At the invitation of some Black Lolos I went from Moshi-mien to a village called Helluva further down the wonderful Tatu River. Then I had to climb to the mysterious Yehsaping plateau, 11,000 feet high, where these Lolos lived. Their houses were poor but very clean and they looked hale and hearty. I stayed with them several days. Even apart from the special feasts arranged for me, they ate well. They used pork, chickens and beef constantly — roasted, fried or boiled. They ate potatoes and buckwheat cakes and drank buckwheat and honey wine, called zhiwoo, with every meal. They did not smoke opium. They were dirty too, but very healthy. Not one of them had leprosy and the very mention of it made them shudder.
The Minkia around Likiang existed on a monotonous diet of rice with a little of beancurd or its equivalent, or rice and chillies only. And they had leprosy. The Szechuanese and White Lissu were also mean about their food and also had leprosy. It was only among the Nakhi, of the tribes in and around Likiang, who had such a varied and rich diet, both poor and wealthy, that there was no leprosy.
Whatever other factors cause leprosy, the disease seems to find fertile ground among the people who exist on a poor and monotonous diet. Dirt may or may not be a contributing factor: malnutrition, due to unvaried food, certainly is. The Tibetans of lower classes also have an unvaried diet, consisting of the eternal tsamba — parched barley or wheat flour — and butter tea, and they too have leprosy.
The treatment of leprosy, even with the present-day revolutionary sulpha drugs, which had not yet appeared there in those days, was at best very slow and uncertain. I felt I was not qualified to handle such cases and passed them on to the missionaries in the south to their infinite delight.
I thought the real plague of Tibet and border regions was not leprosy but the venereal diseases. Judging from all reports and travellers' accounts, Tibet and Yungning region had at least 90 per cent of their population afflicted with one form or another of these souvenirs d'amour. Such a widespread prevalence was due, of course, to the practice of free love still prevailing in those parts. Likiang was comparatively free from this blight, thanks to the strictness of its marriage institution and the injunction that all Nakhi men should confine their amorous attentions strictly to the female members of their own tribe. If there were any Nakhi afflicted with these unmentionable diseases, they certainly had picked them up outside Likiang. Returning soldiers were the most likely suspects in such cases.
The Tibetans, and to some extent the Liukhi, the matriarchic tribe living in Yungning territory, had during decades or perhaps even centuries developed very considerable immunity to syphilis. With most of them it now has a very mild form and even the third stage is not so destructive as it could be among other races. However, this benignity of the syphilis of the Tibetan variety does not extend to other races, particularly in the case of Europeans. In a European the virulence of the disease, contracted from a Tibetan, is so great that, without prompt treatment, a fatal ending ensues in about three months.
The prevalence of syphilis and gonorrhoea in Tibet and Yungning has a marked effect on the birth-rate. The population in Tibet is definitely shrinking, and the children in Yungning suffer from keratitis which is a result of congenital syphilis. The Tibetan Government has been greatly concerned and had plans for a wholesale treatment of venereal diseases, but nothing much has been accomplished because of the magnitude of the undertaking. This immense and heartrending problem is further aggravated by the light-hearted carelessness and utter unconcern of the afflicted parties. They never think, for instance, that syphilis is anything more serious than a common cold and, since its first stage does indeed resemble the onset of a cold or flu, the ignorant man thinks that his own diagnosis is correct. Therefore, when they came for treatment they always said that it was just a cold and there was really nothing to worry about. They always got a shock when I told them that it was something else, and I remember a well-to-do Tibetan who came to see me with well-defined symptoms of this confidential disease. He was horrified when I told him the truth.
'No, no!' he cried. 'It is only a cold.'
'How did you get it ?' I asked.
'I caught it when riding a horse,' he replied.
'Well,' I said, 'it was the wrong kind of horse.'
In a long procession they came — the Tibetans, Liukhi and occasionally other tribesmen. But I do not remember really that I had any Nakhi with syphilis or gonorrhoea. As I have said, the Tibetan syphilis was benign, and after two or three shots they usually recovered, but in most cases it was an ungrateful and hopeless task. In two or three weeks they returned with a fresh infection. It was a Sisyphean work for the most part, and I must admit I got tired of it.