Post & Telegraph System

The modern Tibetan postal system was built on the older messenger system of the early Tibetan Empire and the later Mongol courier system. A Post and Telegraph Office (dak-tar laykhung) was created in 1920.40 Postage stamps of various denominations were Indigenously designed and hand-printed, and they are now collector’s items.41 Though not a signatory to the International Postal Treaty, a system was created so that letters from Tibet could be delivered to foreign addresses, and letters from abroad be delivered inside Tibet. Spencer Chapman, visiting Lhasa in 1936, declared that “the postal and telegraph system is most efficient.” 42 The Czech filmmaker Vladimir Cis had a letter from his family in Prague delivered to him in the wilderness of Tibet by a postal runner.43
A telegraph line from India to Lhasa was completed in 1923, along with a basic telephone service.44 Both were open for public use. The Tibetan capital was electrified in 1927. The work of installing both the hydroelectric plant and the distribution system was undertaken near “single-handedly”45 by a young Tibetan engineer, Ringang. All these projects were initiated and paid for by the Tibetan government. Radio Lhasa was launched in 1948 and broadcasted news in Tibetan, English and Chinese.46