Little Tibet bay the Bay

Little Tibet bay the Bay

Richmond is now the hub for Tibetan Americans living in exile in the Bay Area.

Growing up near Mount Everest in Nepal, Thupten Donyo thought he might follow in his family’s footsteps. His parents were Sherpas. But when he was 12 years old, Donyo’s parents asked him if he wanted to become a monk. For a reason that, to this day, he cannot fully explain, he replied, “Yes.”

So he left his home in Nepal and moved to Dharamsala, India, to begin monk-training. Luckily for him, his teacher came directly from the spiritual lineage of the Gyuto Monastery, which dates back to 1475. The monastery was founded in Tibet and is now based in India.

The Gyuto monks are known for their guttural chants, made famous to Westerners when a group of the monks—including Donyo—toured with members of the Grateful Dead in 1988. The monks recorded their chants in George Lucas’ studio in San Rafael. “George Lucas was there and Jerry Garcia was also there,” said Donyo, who was visiting from India at the time. “I didn’t know who [they] were. I didn’t speak English.”

Before relocating to Northern California, he lived in Australia for eight years after being recruited to help with a dharma center there. Many spiritual leaders like Donyo have been recruited by diasporic Tibetan communities around the globe.

In 1997, Donyo founded the Gyuto Foundation in San Jose. At the time, there were only about 400 Tibetans living in the Bay Area. In fact, because the local Tibetan population was so small, many of the temple’s members and visitors were Chinese American or Vietnamese American.

But since the 1990s, the Bay Area Tibetan community has grown to about 3,000 members, and it continues to expand. Last year, the Gyuto Foundation moved to a larger center in the Richmond hills, near Wildcat Canyon Regional Park. With a view of San Francisco and with the temple’s prayer flag blowing in the wind, the Gyuto Foundation looks like a temple in the mountains of Tibet. The grounds of the temple are beautiful, peaceful, and welcoming to everyone. All programs are free, and every two years, new monks come here from India, Tibet, or Nepal.

Considered the spiritual center for Tibetans in the East Bay, the Richmond hills temple is also one of the only Tibetan-run monasteries in California. Along with the temple, the Tibetan Association of Northern California, or TANC, also in Richmond, and the Sunday language and arts school run by TANC at the Berkeley Adult School are the local community’s major cultural and religious centers.

While Donyo is often referred to as the Venerable Thupten Donyo, he prefers to be called “Donyo,” which means “meaningful.” He has personally hosted the Dalai Lama (known as His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Tibetans) when he has visited and delivered speeches in the Bay Area. The Dalai Lama refers affectionately to Donyo, who is just over 5 feet tall, as “the little monk.” In 2007, Donyo organized a teaching by the Dalai Lama that filled the Bill Graham Auditorium in San Francisco.

Today, the East Bay is home to the fourth-largest Tibetan community in North America, after those in New York, Toronto, and Minneapolis. Most Tibetans have arrived here as refugees or asylum seekers, and they continue to do so, from Nepal, India, and Tibet. For them, living in exile means that they have a chance to meet their spiritual leader in real life, as Tibetans in Tibet are forbidden to even have a photo of the Dalai Lama.

But the majority of those who live in exile in the East Bay and elsewhere also will never be able to return, even for a visit, to their homeland.

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If the Gyuto Foundation is the spiritual hub of the community, then TANC is the cultural and political center. “The struggle for every new immigrant community is to fit into the mainstream and also keep their culture,” explained Kelsang Jungney, president of the Tibetan Association of Northern California. “It’s becoming a big challenge for us to transmit that knowledge to our youngsters.”

TANC was founded in 1990 by 12 people, the majority of whom are Tibetan. One of its most popular programs is the Sunday school, which teaches children Tibetan language, music, and culture and is at the Berkeley Adult School. For decades, TANC did not have a physical space to call home, but in 2011, it moved into a large building in Richmond. It is still under-going renovation, and organizers are seeking funds to complete it.

The East Bay has always been a welcoming place to Tibetans, said Jungney. “I think in the Bay Area, people are more open to other cultures,” he said, noting that TANC’s success, in part, is due to the fact that local, non-Tibetan communities have supported them. Berkeley has several Tibetan shops, the adult school hosts the weekend language school, and Dharma Publishing is based in downtown Berkeley. But in recent years, the cultural hub has planted roots in Richmond.

The first large group of Tibetan refugees arrived in the United States in the early ’90s after passage of the 1990 U.S. Immigration Act, which specified that 1,000 Tibetan refugees from India and Nepal could receive special visas. Prior to 1990, there were only about 20 to 30 known Tibetans in the Bay Area, according to Jungney. The 1,000 refugees were selected out of an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 refugees to represent a cross-section of the Tibetan population, from educators and artists to entrepreneurs and elders.

With the support of the Bay Area Friends of Tibet, which formed in 1989, 50 or so Tibetan refugees came to the Bay Area under the resettlement program, and in following years, they brought over extended family members.

Prior to the 1,000 Tibetans resettlement program, there was concern that bringing more Tibetans to the United States would water down Tibetan identity and culture in India and Nepal, and that Tibetans should remains closer to their homeland where significant refugee populations could maintain the political, cultural, and historical spirit of the exiled peoples. But ultimately, Tibetans agreed that the resettlement program in the United States was a worthy cause.

“Our goal of bringing 1,000 Tibetans to the United States is not only to preserve and promote the Tibetan culture in this country, but to try [to] save Tibet itself from dying,” a 1994 article in the Tibetan Review noted.

From the beginning, the effort to bring Tibetans to the United States was not only a quest to help individual refugees, but to save a culture that was under siege by the Chinese government. The exiled community also serves as an example of newcomers who have held on to their language, culture, and religion despite being displaced several times during the last two generations.

Tibet lies in the Tibetan plateau of Asia on the northern side of the Himalayas, nicknamed “the roof of the world” for its tall mountains. It was once the home of the Dalai Lama. Tenzin Gyatso is the 14th reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and was but a teenager when the Chinese communist revolution broke out. In 1951, China took over Tibet, and then eight years later, the Tibetan Uprising began, leading to the Dalai Lama and many others fleeing the country. Tibetans established an exiled government in Dharamsala, India, which is now called the Central Tibetan Administration.

To Tibetans today, Tibet is an occupied country with no United Nations representation. This remains a key point for many in exile, whose views range from fighting for Tibet’s complete independence from China to a more moderate view of wanting Tibet to be an autonomous region within China.

In the United States, there is an Office of Tibet, which includes branches of the Tibetan government in exile. The Office of Tibet in Washington, D.C., is connected to all of the Tibetan community organizations, like TANC, of which there are 30 or so across the country.

The United States is a third country for many Tibetan refugees, after leaving Tibet and resettling in Nepal or India. “Individually, I think Tibetans here are doing really well,” Jungney said. He notes that many East Bay Tibetans are entrepreneurial, opening small shops in Berkeley and elsewhere—even some former monks have opened small businesses.

But the struggle to maintain a culture is made more difficult by the fact that exiled Tibetans cannot return to home or even visit it. If Tibetans become U.S. citizens, they can apply for a visa, but may be rejected or persecuted once they arrive in China or Tibet.

Very few have successfully visited their homeland, and anyone who has been associated with the Dalai Lama or is considered an activist has virtually no chance of doing so. These are the same people who feel a deep sympathy for fellow Tibetans suffering from atrocities in the Tibetan region, including the Chinese government burning monasteries and imprisoning activists, and monks committing self-immolation (suicide as a sacrifice) in protest. Tibetan Americans interviewed for this story all said they feel it’s their responsibility to continue to bring awareness to what is happening in Tibet.

“We really want some freedom for Tibetans in Tibet,” said Tsering Choetsok, a mother whose children attend the weekend Tibetan school in Berkeley. “They are the ones who are suffering the most right now.”

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Like many immigrant parents raising children in the Bay Area, Tibetan-American parents want their children to learn their language and culture. A core part of the community is the Sunday school, named Namchod Kyetsel (roughly translated to “garden of intellects”). About 175 children attend every weekend in Berkeley. The school was started by TANC in 2007, and kids start going there at an early age; there is a “0-5” program for the youngest ones. The Bay Area Tibetan school currently operates out of the Berkeley Adult School. The school is unique in that it focuses not only on language learning, but on learning traditional arts.

“I think they have more interest in music, song, and dance and traditional Tibetan instruments,” said Dhonyo Tenzin, educational councilmember of the Sunday school, referring to Tibetan-American school children. “They see a variety, so they are more happy to come to the school.”

The leaders and instructors try to remain relevant, not only by teaching language and arts, but by making learning fun. Anyone who has attended weekend language school knows that it can be a chore, especially when peers are relaxing or playing during the weekend.

In addition to using traditional folk music and art to teach language, parents and instructors say they’re using YouTube videos to share Tibetan culture. “There is no shortage of videos, from music videos to [Tibetan] opera and performances,” said Ugyen Tsering, a past principal of the school. Parents and teachers said that the internet has also allowed for a resurgence of interest and awareness of Tibetan issues for the younger generation.

For parents, the weekend school is also a way to stay connected to the larger Tibetan-American community. Choetsok, who is in nursing school, said that her kids don’t have a lot of Tibetan friends at their local school in El Sobrante, but every weekend, they get to see their Tibetan school friends. “It is like a family now,” she said.

She has even reunited with a childhood friend. Both attended the Tibetan Children’s Village school, a boarding school originally founded by the Dalai Lama for impoverished or orphaned Tibetan children in Dharamsala, India. “We didn’t talk much in India.” Now, they are best friends, reunited across the Pacific Ocean.

In addition to attending the Sunday school, her children take music lessons from Tsering Bawa, a renowned Tibetan-American performing artist who teaches the tungna, a stringed instrument.

On a recent Saturday morning, several children were practicing in Bawa’s studio, which includes outdoor space for kids to enjoy some sunshine, too. Most of the children, ranging from 6 to 12 years old, were beginners, and the songs they learned were in Tibetan.

Bawa was recruited to the United States to teach young Tibetans and to continue a tradition. He attended the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts, or TIPA, in Dharamsala. TIPA preserves the community’s cultural arts, including folk music and dance, and many former students become teachers and are highly regarded as cultural-bearers of the Tibetan arts. Bawa has performed throughout Europe and the United States, and moved to the United States for better opportunities for his children. He is also the cultural consultant and choreographer for The Oldest Boy, a play by Sarah Ruhl that premiered in 2014 at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City.

For younger children, learning the language and dance of their homeland keeps them connected. Tsering, the former principal, said most of the children who attend the Sunday school are fluent in Tibetan. “Ninety-five percent of the school children can speak and understand,” he said. He added that although there is fear that members of the third generation will lose their culture, the younger generation is actually more interested in learning.

“I think the most important thing is that they grow up feeling like they are Tibetan,” said Dechen Chonzom, whose children take language and music lessons at the Sunday school and with Bawa.

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Many Tibetan Americans remain politically aware or active. Artist Chungpo Tsering said he sees himself as much an artist as an activist; he’s been chronicling the politics and culture of his people.

The artist, who lived in El Cerrito until earlier this year, has held international art shows. Born in Tibet, Tsering was brought to India by his father when Tsering was a toddler. His father promised to pick him up from the orphanage, but never returned. Tsering does not know what happened to his father, but heard his mother died when he was about 5 years old. He attended the Tibetan Children’s Village in Dharamsala.

After India, he lived in Nepal, before coming to the United States in 2012 because he feared for his safety. “If you look at my art, most of my work is activist,” he said. He sees his role as an artist as “sharing my story, and also relating to the 6 million Tibetan people around the world and their suffering.”

He said that even though he struggled a lot as an orphan, escaping threats and persecution from the Chinese government, he feels as if he’s one of the lucky ones, because he escaped Tibet. “We are kind of like the successful ones,” he said about how his father was able to smuggle him out of Tibet when he was a child. To do this, they had to take a dangerous path during winter in the high peaks of the Himalayas, a journey that took many lives, he said.

Tsering uses his art to represent the struggles of Tibetans. Several years ago, he helped produce the documentary Bringing Tibet Home, where his friend and artist Tenzing Rigdol, whom he grew up with him in the Tibetan Children’s Village, smuggles dirt from Tibet to bring to the elders to touch.

In recent months, they’ve collaborated on a new project called The Roadbuilders; the first Tibetans in India after 1959 helped build the northern state highways there. Much of that history has been forgotten, he said, and the elders have never had an opportunity to tell their stories. Tsering said that is unfortunate, especially for the elder generation that was born in Tibet and whose final life wish would be to go back to the homeland. Tsering and Rigdol have interviewed more than 80 Tibetan elders across the globe.

“They dream one day to go back and die there,” he said. “They want to go to Tibet, but it’s impossible. For me, I know it’s impossible, too.”

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Four years ago, the Dalai Lama separated himself from politics. He is no longer the political leader of the Tibetan government-in-exile and instead focuses only on being the spiritual leader.

The lingering question for many in the Tibetan diaspora is what will happen to Tibet after the Dalai Lama dies—and by extension, what will be the future of Tibetans across the globe. When the wildly popular global figure visited Sacramento in May, TANC organized a group of 200 to see him. During the Dalai Lama’s birthday this July when he turned 81, there was a large gathering and celebration with food, music, and dance at the center. He is the glue that holds the dispersed communities together.

“Every Tibetan has this concern,” said Jungney, president of TANC, referring to life without the Dalai Lama. “We worry a lot about what will happen, because he binds all Tibetans together.”

Much of what holds the diasporic population together, beyond language, culture, and YouTube videos, is the Dalai Lama himself.

Jungney believes that Americans can learn from Tibetans living here, in part because the community is proud of its heritage and plans to maintain it for generations to come. “Tibetan culture has a lot to offer in terms of dealing with stresses of life and to gain happiness,” Jungney said.

Artist Tsering said that as long as the Sunday schools keep operating and the dharma centers like the Gyuto Foundation exist, there will be hope for Tibetan culture and the future of Tibet. “Tibetans in exile are strong in preserving culture,” he said. “Even if we have a country or not, we will have a culture, and people will believe that we have a country.”

After serving as a leader of Gyuto for the past 15 years, Donyo recently decided to dedicate the remainder of his years to a new nonprofit he founded, the Delek Children’s Foundation. The foundation seeks to raise money so children in the Himalayan region can attend school. As with all communities, access to education is key to ensuring the livelihood of families.

As a Sherpa from Nepal who has never stepped foot in Tibet, he is also unsure whether he will be able to ever do so, even though he is now a U.S. citizen. “My face is all over the internet with the Dalai Lama,” he noted.

Faces of the East Bay