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During the Mao Zedong years, China was off-limits to Western researchers. Some came to Taiwan as a substitute, among them American anthropologist Frank Bessac. John chats with Michael Aldrich, author of “Old Lhasa: A Biography,” about Bessac’s work in Taiwan. They also recount his adventures in China, including an epic, ill-fated, months-long escape from Xinjiang to Tibet in 1950. Listen and you’ll see why John and Michael consider Frank Bessac (1922–2010) to be the epitome of the generation that earned the title “the Greatest Generation.”
Cover: A young Frank Bessac in Mongolian dress. Via The Telegraph.
Below: LIFE Magazine coverage included a first-person account of the Tibet killings by Frank Bessac, 13 November 1950. Via Lodi News.
Below: Image via the New York Times.
Book references:
For this episode, we drew largely on: Death on the Chang Tang – Tibet, 1950: The Education of an Anthropologist (2006) by Frank B. Bessac, Susanne L. Bessac, and Joan Orielle Bessac Steelquist.
And we mention this work (Bessac’s book was partly written in reaction to it):
Into Tibet: The CIA’s First Atomic Spy and His Secret Expedition to Lhasa (2003) by Thomas Laird
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Check our very first episode, the story of a very white man who showed up in London in 1703... and claimed to be from Formosa. Or try a foodie episode from Season 3. Or, for those who want some harder-core history, hear the tale of the Lockheed U-2 pilot Wang Hsi-chueh 王錫爵, who became was famous for defecting to the PRC by hijacking China Airlines Flight 334 on May 3, 1986.
