Minutes of the meeting between Chairman Mao Zedong and Nepali Deputy Prime Minister Kriti Nidhi Bista

(Not reviewed by Chairman Mao)

(28 May 1966)

Date and time: May 28, 1966, 4:55 PM to 5:35 PM

Location: Room 118, Great Hall of People

Participants:

Nepali side: Ambassador to China Ranadhir Subba, Secretary of Foreign Affairs Yadunath Khanal, Editor-in-chief of Samaj Mani Raj Upadhyaya, and Chief of Foreign Affairs Basudev Toofan.

Chinese side: Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai, Chen Yi

Translator: Ji Chaozhu

Rapporteur: Luo Jianming

___________________________________________________________________

Deputy Prime Minister Kirti Nidhi Bista (hereinafter referred to as Bista): First of all, please allow me to convey the greetings from His Majesty the King of Nepal to Chairman Mao. His Majesty the King wishes Chairman Mao a long life.

Chairman Mao: Thank you very much. Is the King in better health now?

Bista: The King is in good shape now. He had a minor heart attack two months ago, and now doing well, back to Kathmandu, and currently resting.

Chairman Mao: Well, we are very happy to hear it. The King has a heart attack in the west, and the west terrain is high right?

Bista: Not high. When the King fell ill, I was with him all the time, in the plains, and terrain was not high.

Chairman Mao: How tall is it?

Bista: About 200 meters.

Premier Zhou: The highway we built is only 2,000 meters high at the highest point in Nepal. Their side is flat, our side is tall.

Bista: Right. There are many high mountains in Nepal, but the road goes along the low lands.

I am very grateful to Chairman Mao for his reception. China is a great country, and the purpose of our visit this time is to further strengthen the already very friendly relations between Nepal and China. We have had friendly talks with Premier Zhou Enlai and Vice Premier Chen Yi, and we are very satisfied.

We would like to take this opportunity to once again express our gratitude to your great country for your continued financial assistance to us. We have not forgotten that when I had the honor to visit you in 1965, you told us that China always respects the independence of other countries, big or small, and is willing to help us develop our nation. You not only expounded this wonderful thought in theory, but also in practice, your attitude towards Nepal is very correct.

Chairman Mao: It mainly depends on actual actions, whether it is beneficial or harmful to you. It depends on whether it is true mutual friendship or false friendship actually tearing you apart. Your country is led by your king; foreign interference is not good. Giving you aid with political and economic conditions is harmful to you, not good. India always says that we invade them, and we still don't want to go to that place.

Bista: We also don't believe what India says.

Chairman Mao: At the beginning, India said that we invaded Tibet. This is true.

Bista: Tibet is an integral part of China, and there is no issue of aggression at all.

Chairman Mao: That's what they said. We have no plans to invade India. India has a population of more than 400 million. How can China invade? There is no agreement in one place, there is the so-called McMahon Line, which was drawn by the British. That area is not small, with an area of 90,000 square kilometers. We do not recognize the so-called McMahon Line. Not crossing this line is called the line of actual control. In 1962, Nehru invaded our side, we said you come, I can also go, and as soon as I hit it, I went in, and I got close to Tezpur. But we quickly withdrew, because the other side had no troops, and their troops were wiped out, scattered, and there were no targets. As soon as they retreated north of the so-called McMahon Line, they returned their guns, bombs, trucks, etc.

Bista: We have all seen reports on this. China's unilateral withdrawal from the occupied territories is an act of magnanimity.

Chairman Mao: If we don't withdraw, they can't do anything about it. We go out to fight, but they don't have an army, who shall we fight? Indians are a bit of a joke sometimes.

The nation of India should be said to be good, and the people of any country are good. The Indian government is not friendly to us. But our two countries still have diplomatic relations.

Bista: If India is a little bit accommodating, it won't take long to solve this problem.

Chairman Mao: It's not easy, we can't admit that line, and it's not easy to give up. It doesn't matter if it drags on for a hundred or two years. India was a colony in the past. Unlike your country, you have resisted the British and have always been independent.

Bista: It's not good for India to go on like this. They still have a lot of problems that they can't solve themselves, and doing this externally won't do them any good. They should be friendly to China, and Asian and African countries should respect each other and coexist peacefully, but they don't understand this.

Chairman Mao: They have different perspective(s).

Bista: There is no conflict between our two countries (Nepal and China). We can see how friendly and close our two countries are. We respect the great China, and our people respect Chairman Mao very much and the Chinese people very much.

Chairman Mao: Very good, we must respect each other.

Bista: We visited China and were loved and respected everywhere. We have seen the Chairman's thought deeply rooted in the factories, communes and sports colleges, and we have seen the Chinese people are very energetic and lively building their country. We ourselves talked to the Chinese people and asked questions, and their answers made us very satisfied. It can be seen that the viewpoints and thinking methods of the Chinese people are obviously different from the last time I came here.

Chairman Mao: Who is the ambassador?

Ambassador Ranadhir Suba (hereinafter referred to as Suba): I am Suba (苏巴)

Chairman Mao: How do you write it?

Basudev Dufang (hereinafter referred to as Dufang): Soviet Union's (苏联)“苏”, Cuba's (古巴) 巴¹ .

Chairman Mao: How do you write it in your own language?

(Bista writes Suba's full name in Nepali)

(Chairman Mao looks at Bista's name) Suba.

(facing Bista) Where's your surname?

(Bista writes his name in Nepali)

(facing Ambassador Suba) How long have you been in China?

Suba: Two years and eight months.

(Bista wrote his name and handed it to Chairman Mao)

Chairman Mao: (Looking carefully at the name written by Bista) Your writing is also very beautiful, similar to Tibetan, right?

Bista: No.

Yadunath Khanal (hereinafter referred to as Khanal): There are some similarities, not same, but similar.

Premier Zhou: Does it have anything to do with Hindi?

Bista: Nepali stems from Sanskrit.

Chairman Mao: Sanskrit is very ancient.

Premier Zhou: It is the “oldest hometown” in the subcontinent.

Bista: Very old.

Premier Zhou: Is it Pinyin?

Bista: Yes.

Chairman Mao: More advanced than Chinese.

Premier Zhou: There were also hieroglyphs in West Africa such as Mali and Senegal, but they were later lost.

Bista: I heard that Chinese characters will be reformed.

Chairman Mao: It is reform, not revolution. Revolution requires Latin alphabet.

Premier Zhou: It needs to be translated into pinyin.

Chairman Mao: Pinyin is very simple.

(facing Toofan) Didn't you go to school in China? Chinese is hard to learn, and it doesn't look good.

Premier Zhou: Can you read the Chairman's poems?

Du Fang: I can read it, but some meanings have to be explained by others.

Chairman Mao: (to Toofan) How many years have you studied Chinese?

Du Fang: 7 years.

Premier Zhou: Five years of university, right?

Toofan: One year of classical Chinese, then one year of modern Chinese, and five years of university.

Chairman Mao: Don't learn classical Chinese, it's useless even if you learn it.

Toofan: Right now, the past is overshadowed by the present.

Bista: Chairman Mao looks very healthy.

Chairman Mao: Barely

Can the king take a walk indoors?

Bista: Now the king does normal physical exercise every day, taking a walk for half an hour every day.

Chairman Mao: Initially, don’t rush it. Most worrisome part of Heart disease is dizziness and dizziness is not very good for recovery. Do not easily undergo surgery. There is a general in Vietnam who is in bad condition after surgery. Fortunately, the king is not serious and only suffered a mild heart attack.

Bista: We guess it was a minor heart attack. But the king was in an inappropriate place when the heart attack occurred, and the king was hunting on a tree.

Chen Yi: They hunt tigers on trees. They used elephants to drive tigers out and then hunt them.

Chairman Mao: Is it a little dangerous?

Bista: Only hunters like it.

Premier Zhou: Was the tree tall?

Bista: Very tall.

Lin Biao: An elephant can roll up a tiger and make it fall to his death.

Bista: When the tiger saw the elephant, it rushed over, the elephant backed away, but another elephant came running. Because the tiger was too fierce, the elephant backed away. When the tiger pounced, it grabed the elephant's trunk first, and the elephant rolled up its trunk first.

Premier Zhou: Why can't an elephant roll a tiger with its nose?

Bista: Tiger's power is too great.

Khanal: Small tigers can, but big ones can't.

Chairman Mao: Does your country have many elephants?

Bista: There are many, many tigers and others too.

Chairman Mao: Can an elephant be used to plow land?

Bista: Yes. The problem is that raising elephants is too expensive, and elephants eat too much.

Chairman Mao: What do they eat?

Bista, Suba, Khanal: grass, bamboo leaves, grain, etc.

Chairman Mao: Eat plants.

Premier Zhou: Yes, no meat.

Bista: There are rhinos in Nepal.

Chairman Mao: Rhino? Do rhinos eat grass?

Bista: Yes, rhinos sometimes damage crops.

Chairman Mao: Is it wild?

Bista: Wild.

Premier Zhou: Do they have any hair?

Bista: No.

Lin Biao: Its horns are very expensive.

Bista: Very expensive.

Chairman Mao: It is also a weapon.

Thank you all.

Bista: Thank you for meeting us. Thank you very much for taking the time of your busy schedule to meet us.

Chairman Mao: Please convey my greetings to the king when you return.

The link to the original archive can be found here.

The picture in the preview is taken from Jaya Raj Acharya’s paper “ An intellectual in the corridor of power” and is not related to the above translation.

Yet a point to consider is Jaya Raj Acharya’s account records Bista’s visit to Chairman Mao in 1968 while the above was transcribed in 1966. So we believe it must have been in 1966. Any comment on this will be helpful.

1. While introducing with a Chinese name, it is common to be asked the Chinese characters in order to avoid mispronunciation.