Yatung

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Mandarin 亞東／亚东 (Yàdōng).

Proper noun

Yatung

1. (dated) Synonym of Shasima (Sharsingma; Xarsingma; a town and the administrative headquarters of Yadong County, Tibet Autonomous Region, China).
   • 1905, Perceval Landon, The Opening of Tibet: An Account of Lhasa and the Country and People of Central Tibet and of the Progress of the Mission Sent There by the English Government in the Year 1903-4‎^[1], New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., page 26:

     The Tibetans had encroached upon our territory in Sikkim, they had established a customs post at Giao-gong, fifteen miles inside the frontier, and had forbidden British subjects to pass their outposts there; they had thrown down the boundary pillars which had been set up along the undisputed water-shed between the Tista and the Ammo chu. They had insulted the treaty rights of the British by building a wall across the only road from Tibet to the market of Yatung, which had been thrown open to trade with India by the stipulations of the Convention of 1890-3; more than this, they returned unopened letters sent by the Viceroy to the Grand Lama in Lhasa.

   • 1926, Norman Dwight Harris, Europe and the East‎^[2], Houghton Mifflin company, page 331:

     In spite of a further trade agreement on December 5, 1893, between Great Britain and China, which was nominally accepted by Tibet, providing for a trade mart at Yatung (in Tibet just beyond the Sikkim frontier) and for free trade (except in certain prohibited articles) for five years between Tibet and India, the Lhasa Government continued its policy of obstruction. The boundary pillars between Tibet and Sikkim were torn down, a wall built across the trade route to Yatung, and Tibetan merchants were forbidden to cross the border. Yatung proved an impossible market-place; a ten per cent duty was levied at Phari on all goods that reached there; and letters of protestation from the Viceroy of India were returned unopened.

   • 1953, Fosco Maraini, translated by Eric Mosbacher, Secret Tibet‎^[3], New York: The Viking Press, →OCLC, page 105:

     We have just arrived at Yatung, which the local people call Shasima, possibly a name of Lepcha origin. It seems that we shall stay here for some time. Does this mean an opportunity for travel of the second kind? Yatung is situated nearly 9,000 feet above sea level, at a point where the valley of the Amo-chu, up which the caravan route climbs in the direction of Lhasa, divides into two.

   • 1963, Margaret W. Fisher, Leo E. Rose, Robert A. Huttenback, Himalayan Battleground; Sino-Indian Rivalry in Ladakh‎^[4], New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., →LCCN, →OCLC, page 82:

     At Yatung, the question of whether the Dalai Lama should go into exile or come to terms with the Chinese became the subject of protracted debate. In the end it was decided that he should return to Lhasa. An agreement establishing Chinese suzerainty over Tibet—but also containing provisions that purported to guarantee Tibetan regional autonomy and religious freedom—was signed at Peking on May 23, 1951. However, the Dalai Lama remained at Yatung until well into July, and did not enter Lhasa again until August 17.

   • 1970, Neville Maxwell, India's China War‎^[5], London: Jonathan Cape, →ISBN, →OCLC, →OL, page 62:

     British influence reached across the Himalayas, and was expressed in Tibet in the presence of a permanent British official in Lhasa, through whom Tibet could be said to be in quasi-diplomatic relations with Britain. The British also enjoyed the right to maintain small military escorts for their trade officers at Yatung and Gyantse, and had set up postal, telegraph and even telephone services linking the main trading centres in southern Tibet.