Lhalu's father was Lungsharwa Dorje Tsegyel, an influential official in the Lhasa government and a favourite of the 13th Dalai Lama's.

[2] Lungshar was born into the noble Lhalu family whose ancestors lived in Tana of the Tsang region at the time of the 5th Dalai Lama.

He is famous for taking four noble youths – "the Rugby Four" – to the United Kingdom to receive a modern education (for the first time in Tibet's history).

By making the public claim that Lungshar was not his biological father, and by applying in the name of Lhalu se and paying large bribes,[8] he was able to become an official again in 1937, after which he became increasingly influential.

In his book Captured in Tibet, Robert W. Ford, a former British radio operator in Kham, portrays Lhalu "as typical of the more progressive Tibetan officials.

Although Lhalu had never left Tibet (unlike his father, who "was one of the very few Tibetans who ever went to Britain"), he "was keenly interested in the outside world and studied the pictures in [Ford's] illustrated magazines.

[17] According to American journalist and Marxist writer Anna Louise Strong, unlike some of the sincere signers of the 17-point agreement, Lhalu continued plotting for Tibet's secession from China.

[20] At a mass meeting of ten thousand people in Lhasa circa 1959, he was implicated in the murders of former Regent Reting and tulku Geda, both supposedly sympathetic to the Chinese.

Lhalu, then 43 years old, was to reply to the accusations levelled at him by former serfs and slaves from one of his 24 manorial estates: mistreatment, non respect of his peasants and servants' rights, imprisonment in the manor's jail.

I sincerely wish the Fourteenth Dalai Lama will return, in the interests of the motherland, at an early date and join us in socialist construction.