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Old Lhasa – A Biography of a Sacred City

Michael Aldrich joins John Ross to discuss Old Lhasa: A Biography, his richly detailed portrait of Tibet’s historic capital. It’s the third book in his trilogy on Asian cultural centers. He wrote the first two, on Beijing and Ulaanbaatar, while living in those cities, where he worked as a lawyer. There was no opportunity for this with Lhasa, so he had to rely on multiple trips (from his home in Taiwan) and an incredible amount of reading and research. Rather than writing a conventional history, Aldrich set out to present Lhasa as a living character – a city whose temples, alleyways, legends and surviving traditions can still tell their own stories.

Books mentioned

M.A. Aldrich

The Search for a Vanishing Beijing: A Guide to China’s Capital Through the Ages
(Hong Kong University Press, 2006)

Ulaanbaatar beyond Water and Grass: A Guide to the Capital of Mongolia
(Hong Kong University Press, 2018)

Old Lhasa: A Biography
Originally published by Camphor Press in January 2023 and subsequently reissued in 2025 by Speaking Tiger Books with a new epilogue based on Aldrich’s 2024 return to Tibet.

The episode touches on the amazing story of Ekai Kawaguchi (河口慧海 1866–1945), a Japanese Buddhist monk who spent time in Lhasa in the early 1900s. He is the subject of Scott Berry’s A Stranger in Tibet.