The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1911-12-28
CAN'T GO TO WORK
DR.. A. L. Shelton, Missionary,
Must Wait for Peace.
Kansan Assigned to Tibet Ter
ritOry Many Years.
CHRISTIANS SENT OUT
Missionaries Not Allowed in
That Zone Now.
Minister Describes Thanksgiv-
ing Dinner in China.

Hutchinson, Kan, Dec. 2S-Dr A.
L. Shelton, Kansas Christian minis
ter, who returned from the mission
field in Tibet over a year ago, expect
ing to go back to Central Asia this
winter, finds that it will be impossible
for him to return to his post before
next August
The Chinese rebellion has resulted in
all missionaries being driven from
Batang, on the Tibetan frontier in the
most remote section of China, and it
Will be impossible for DR.. Shelton to
get back to his mission until after the
end of the war.
DR.. Shelton is staying at his old
home in Anthony, and visiting in
Hutchinson and elsewhere in this sec
ton of the state. He spent seven
years in the interior of Tibet and on
the western frontier of China.
He had many interesting expert
ences while in that little known land
He tells of the Thanksgiving dinner he
had two years ago at Ia Chen Lu,
about 1000 miles in the interior of
China.
IT and my companion went on a.
hunt to get some birds for a Thanks
giving dinner, said DR.. Shelton, in re-
1ating the story. I'VE bagged seven
teen pheasants, and took them home
and gave them to the natives, poor
members of my church, who prepared
a feast
1.-The feast consisted of cutting the
flesh from the bones of the birds and
very carefully mixing the bits through
a big pot of mush made from corn
meal, spacing to the limit of the meat
to flavor the meal
Tells of Chinese Dinner.
1.-The regulation Tibetan Thanksgiv-
ing meal (and almost every other
mead is a coarse meal ground from
parched barley; the meal is made with
the primitive stone mortars and is a
staple diet, sharing in common with
buckwheat and wheat flour made the
same way.
This parched and broken barley is
scattered in handsful in the tea that
is their common drink Sometimes for
supper, having more time the women
make a dough of buckwheat which has
a markedly bitter taste, using a weak
I've water in moistening it, rolling into
a worm the size of finger, then
breaking into finger lengths, which
cooked. With the bitter of the buck
wheat and the I've flavor it makes a
fierce combination.
1.-The better classes sometime eat
wheat, prepared in a paste and then
baked until as hard as bone; but the
staple dish is parched barley YAK
meat from animals fairly fat, may be
had In the fall and the rest of the
year tn meat is in the condition the
animll may be from grazing scanty
herbage Grain is too valuable food
for humans to be used for animals
Sometimes sheep may be had in the
Iali OF the year anu SOdNSs eAAlAACu5A-
plentiful. are scare on the markets
Chickens and Mongolian pheasants
supply a really good meat and eggs
may be had.
When Tea Isn't Tea.
1.-THE tea. so universally used comes
from the tea districts of China, where
the fallen leaves and other trash under
the tea bushes are raked up, wet with
rice water and pressed into oblong
bricks weighing about seven pounds
At the west border of China these
bric- 5 cost from seventy cents to q dol
lar: at Lhassa, three or four times as
much A bit of the brick is broken of
and boiled, the infusion, which has no
tea taste, odor or appearance and con-
tains practically no tea, is put into
wooden bowls used. each carrying his
own. Then fingers, unwashed since
birth, are dipped into the butter bowl
and a liberal helping Tipped into the
tea, after which a handful or two of
parched barley is added and eaten
with chopsticks or drank as may be de-
termfned by it's limpidity.
1.-THE tea leaves are saved for sec
ond boiling that there may be no good |