Note 56 — Chapter III · JOURNEY TO DONGTSE.

At noon we dined with the minister and the Chyag-dso Kusho. The dishes were prepared and served in the Chinese fashion. Chopsticks and spoons were used. The first course was gya-tug, a tape-like preparation of wheat-flour and eggs, cooked with minced mutton, and soup. The minister did not eat it, as he had, in common with all lamas, taken the vow of abstaining from eggs. The second course was rice and half a dozen preparations of mutton curry, rice, mutton with preserved vegetables, white and black mushrooms, Chinese green grass, vermicelli, potatoes, and fresh shoots of peas.56 The third course (leu, literally, “chapter”) was buttered and sweetened rice; the fourth, and last, boiled mutton, tsamba, and tea. The Tung-chen told me that at sumptuous entertainments thirteen courses are usually served.