Laku Village

In June 2026, I drove into this village and interviewed the village head Rgyal mtshan 江初. He came to this village after marrying the granddaughter of A bo ‘Jigs med, the son of the village head of Laku, who had hosted Henry N. Demenil in 1907. A bo ‘Jigs med was a child then. On the day when Demenil killed the Tibetan monk, he was holding the riding horse for Demenil in front of his house in Laku, and was an eyewitness to the entire homicide case.

During my brief stay, Rgyal mtshan showed me all the houses identified in the 1907 case. A bo ‘jigs med’s house is now abandoned. It was located on the upper part of the village. On its site, we could only see some electric poles and a transformer, ruins of a collapsed fence, and overgrown grass. The platform in front of the house, where Demenil and A bo ‘jigs med stood in 1907 on the day of the killing of the monk, is still visible. When standing with one’s back toward the gate of A bo ‘jigs med’s house, there is a narrow winding road descending from the left to the right of the house. The left side is higher, and the right side is lower. The left side of the road quickly turns further left. This confirms the investigation in the 1907 case that the Buddhist monk appeared suddenly from the higher part of the road.

A bo ‘jigs med later married and moved to a different site lower than the original house. That site is also not abandoned. His family built a nice new house down the road, to the west of the original house. But A bo ‘jigs med has died over a decade ago. His children are now working and living in Deqin and Shangri-La 香格里拉 (and Kunming?).

The house of Byams pa 农色, another villager in the 1907 case, was also mentioned in the case. The Chinese soldier Li Yushan came back after Demenil called him back. As soon as he reached the west side of Byams pa 农色’s house, Demenil fired a shot at him. That house was surrounded by wheat fields in three directions: west, south, and east. Li Yushan dodged the bullet and went to hide in the wheat field behind Byams pa 农色’s house.

When I visited in June 2026, Rgyal mtshan showed me the original site of Byams pa 农色’s house. The house had recently been abandoned because the family built a new house down toward the river. The original house is now a flat field, with trees and grass growing there. The fence is still there. A wheat field is still there today, located to the right of the house when one stands facing the mountain, with their back toward the river.

Again, Byams pa 农色’s new house is also vacant. Nobody lives there now.

The entire village, including the village monastery, is scheduled to be relocated to a yet-unknown new site on an unknown date.