亲历旧西藏的中外人士无不被其落后的社会场景所触动，并留下许多身临其境的描述。1945年，李有义在西藏实地考察数月后观察道：“在沿着雅鲁藏布江中下游约1700多英里的旅程中，我所看到的是一派衰败的景象。在每天的旅程中都能看到几处人去楼空的废墟，垄亩痕迹依稀可辨，人烟却已杳杳。我所经过的这种‘鬼镇’何止百处……我出发考察时正是秋收季节。这个季节就是在内地比较落后的农村里，你也可以在农民的脸上看到收获的喜悦。但是在1945年的西藏农村，我却不曾看到一副喜悦的面孔。我所看到的是贵族和‘差领巴’(收租人)对农奴的怒吼和鞭打，我所听到的是农奴的哭泣和叹息声。”
原英国《每日邮报》驻印度记者埃德蒙·坎德勒在1905年出版的《拉萨真面目》中也写道：拉萨“这座城市脏得无法形容，没有下水道，路面也没有铺砌石块。没有一栋房子清洁干净或经常有人打扫。下雨之后，街道就成了一洼洼的死水塘，猪狗则跑到这些地方来寻找废物渣滓”。
Those who had visited Tibet in person, whether Chinese or foreign, were all struck by how backward the place was, and many of them have left factual records. Li Youyi recalled, after a field survey of a couple of months in Tibet in 1945, "What I saw on my 1,700-mile journey along the mid-lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo was a state of complete decay. Every day I would pass by a number of abandoned houses, and expanses of barren fields with no one tending to them. I saw more than 100 such 'ghost towns'... I set out in the season of autumn harvest. At this time of the year, you would expect to see the joy of harvest on the faces of peasants, even in backward inland areas. But in rural Tibet in 1945, I saw no sign of any happy face. What I saw was the nobility and their rent collectors whipping and yelling at the serfs; what I heard was the weeping and moaning of their victims."
In his 1905 book The Unveiling of Lhasa, Edmund Candler, the former British journalist in India working for Daily Mail, recorded details of the old Tibetan society: Lhasa was "squalid and filthy beyond description, undrained and unpaved. Not a single house looked clean or cared for. The streets after rain are nothing but pools of stagnant water frequented by pigs and dogs searching for refuse."
曾任西藏自治区广电厅厅长的杜泰(藏族)回忆说：“当1951年我来到拉萨的时候，这座城市的贫困和破败确实也出乎我的意料。那时候，拉萨除了大昭寺周围的八廓街，几乎没有一条像样的街道，也没有任何公共服务设施，没有路灯，没有供水和排水设备。街头经常看到冻饿而死的人的尸体，还有乞丐、囚犯和成群的狗。大昭寺西面是叫‘鲁布邦仓’的乞丐村，小昭寺周围也是乞丐聚合地。当时乞丐竟有三四千之多，占城市人口的十分之一强。”
1950年，原西藏地方政府噶伦、后来担任过中国全国人大常委会副委员长的阿沛·阿旺晋美向噶厦发电反映昌都地区情况时说：“因时世混浊，民不堪命，这里有的宗(相当县)内仅有七、八户还有糌粑，其余全以食元根(即蔓菁)为生，乞丐成群，景象凄凉。”
In the memory of Dortar, who once served as director of the Radio and Television Department of Tibet Autonomous Region, "When I came to Lhasa in 1951, I was shocked at the shabby and poor conditions. With the exception of the Barkhor near the Jokhang Temple, there was hardly a decent street in town. No public facilities, no streetlights, no water supply and no drainage. What I often did see were the corpses of those frozen to death, in addition to beggars, prisoners and packs of dogs. To the west of the Jokhang was a colony of beggars, and there was another near the Romache. The beggars numbered as many as three to four thousand, or one-tenth of Lhasa's total population."
In a telegraph to the Gaxag (Tibetan name of the local government of Tibet) in 1950, Ngapoi Ngawang Jigme, then a local government Galoin (minister) and later vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of China, reported on the conditions in Qamdo: "The people live in dire poverty in this time of turmoil. In some counties roasted barley is to be found in only seven or eight households, and all the rest have to rely on turnips. It is terribly bleak, with hordes of beggars."
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