A Portrait of Boston's
Tibetan Community

Jampa Phuntsok stands at the blackboard in the basement of Cambridge's Swedenborg Chapel. As a group of Tibetan school children watch and listen, he instructs them on the intricacies of reading and writing the Tibetan language. Later in the evening, when the language lesson is over, the children will also receive instruction in Tibetan arts and culture.

Like Boston's overseas Chinese community, Boston's fledgling Tibetan community values its language and culture. Determined to ensure that it is passed on to the younger generation, local Tibetans meet at the Swedenborg Chapel on Sundays to teach their children the language and culture of their homeland.

Before 1991, says Ngawang Jorden, a Tibetan Buddhist lama and a graduate student in Buddhism at Harvard University, "there were only 20 or so Tibetans" in Boston. The size of the local Tibetan community started to grow in the early 1990s after Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank sponsored legislation providing 1000 special visas for Tibetans living in the exile community in India. Under the legislation, the Tibetans received visas but were not allowed to receive welfare or other special benefits allowed refugees from countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia.

The Tibetans who received visas were resettled in cluster sites, the first of which was Boston. Local Tibetans as well as the Office of Tibet in New York, which represents the Dalai Lama in the US, and the International Campaign for Tibet in Washington, also contributed to the resettlement effort. Most of the Tibetans who received visas had been living in India and Nepal, though some had only recently left Tibet. Also aiding the resettlement effort was the Tibetan Association of Boston which serves as a bridge between the new immigrants and the local community.

The Tibetan community of Greater Boston now has more than 200 people, most of whom have arrived here over the last few years. Initially 50 visas were issued for Tibetans settling in the Boston area, but the size of the local Tibetan community has grown in recent years as the first group of immigrants sponsored family members to migrate under US Immigration's family reunification policy.

Because most of the Tibetans had been living in India before arriving in the US, many can speak English. The children are attending local schools and the adults have found work in hotels, supermarkets, and construction companies. Most are living in Somerville and Cambridge.

Tashi Lokyitsang, president of the Tibetan Association of Boston, says the Tibetan community's adjustment to the US is going reasonably well, though the children are still getting used to the loss of the more closely knit Tibetan communities they had grown accustomed to in India. In India, the Tibetans lived in one of 32 settlements, including Dharamsala, the site of the Dalai Lama 's exile government.

"They (the children) like it but they feel something is missing," says Lokyitsang. who has been in the US a year now. The biggest adjustment for the Tibetans is adapting to American culture's emphasis on individualism. Lokyitsang observes that Tibetans tend to put the interests of the "we" before the "I."

"Over here the self comes before the others," he says, adding that the Tibetans believe "you cannot survive alone. We are dependent on each other....When we pray to God we pray for all sentient beings."

Raising children in a new culture also puts added pressure on Tibetan parents. "We parents have a big responsibility," says Lokyitsang, a purchasing clerk at the Hyatt Regency Hotel who left Tibet for India in 1959 when he was 1 year old. "The kids can change anytime. It's very quick in the United States."

For 15-year-old Tenzin Keyson, living in America means getting used to the way American students interact with their teachers. "In our culture when you talk to the elders you'll be looking down," says Keyson, who arrived here six months ago and whose parents operate a Tibetan artifacts store in Cambridge's Porter Square. "In India you weren't allowed to argue with the teachers."

A student at Cambridge's Rindge and Latin High School, Keyson feels that some American students "just don't want to respect the teachers." While she says she enjoys being able to question her American teachers, she believes students shouldn't abuse the privilege.

Although most of the adults and children in the local Tibetan community had either been born in India or spent much of their lives there before immigrating to America, many overseas Tibetans still dream of one day returning to a Tibet free of Chinese control.

Whether they left Tibet not long after the Chinese invasion of their homeland in the 1950s or after the anti-Chinese demonstrations and subsequent crackdown against dissidents of the late 1980s, most of the Tibetans - like the Dalai Lama - traveled to India to escape the Chinese occupation.

Although there are intense arguments between the Tibetans and Chinese over whether Tibet is a separate country or part of China - a dispute on display when Tibetan critics of Chinese President Jiang Zemin vied for sidewalk space with Jiang's Chinese supporters during the Chinese leader's visit to Harvard last month - the history of Tibet suggests that the only reason Tibet is considered part of China today is because the Chinese empire coveted it, just as Western imperialists coveted Hong Kong and other parts of China.

A strong kingdom in its own right before it was conquered by Genghis Khan in 1206, Tibet was eventually incorporated into the Chinese empire in the 17th century during the Qing Dynasty. Over the next two centuries, however, Chinese control over the remote area gradually diminished, leaving the Buddhist kingdom free to determine its own destiny. In 1904, the British invaded Tibet at a time when Tibet was largely free of Chinese control. Although an Anglo-Chinese convention of 1906 again gave Chinese control over Tibet, Tibet regained its independence from China and expelled Chinese officials and troops following the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty in 1912.

In a 1914 convention attended by British, Tibetan and Chinese representatives, tentative agreement was reached on a convention calling for an autonomous Tibet and Chinese control over an area known as Inner Tibet. The Chinese, however, ultimately refused to sign the agreement, and fighting eventually broke out between Chinese and Tibetans in 1918.

In October of 1950, the Chinese military under the control of the Communist Party invaded Tibet, and in 1951 a treaty was signed in which the Dalai Lama was allowed to maintain control over domestic affairs and the Chinese Government given control over military and foreign affairs.

Starting in 1956, however, Tibetans initiated an uprising against the Chinese invaders that culminated in the decision by the Dalai Lama to leave the country and create an exile government in India. During this same period many of the Tibetans who are today in Boston left China to join the Tibetan exile community in India.

While most members of the local Tibetan community left Tibet many years ago as children or were born in the exile communities in India, Kalsang Namgyal and his wife Chungdak left Tibet in 1990 to escape harassment by the Chinese authorities. Namgyal, who speaks Tibetan, English, and Mandarin, had a good job working for a government film distribution company for 15 years before leaving Tibet.

A resident of Lhasa, Namgyal, 38, witnessed Tibetan demonstrations against the Chinese occupation on March 5, 1988. He said the Tibetans were demonstrating in Lhasa for a free Tibet and the return of the Dalai Lama.

"I saw the demonstration," he said. "They (the demonstrators) weren't doing anything." Namgyal said he saw Chinese soldiers start shooting unarmed Tibetan demonstrators, one of whom died before his eyes on the street that day. From 20 to 40 people were shot by the soldiers, he says, adding that his younger brother was jailed for 15 years following the demonstration and remains in jail to this day. His mother and another younger brother have also been jailed at various times by the Chinese authorities.

Namgyal, who was born on March 17, 1959, the day the Dalai Lama left Tibet, grew up in a Tibet under Chinese control. During the Cultural Revolution, numerous Buddhist monasteries were destroyed by the Chinese, who considered Buddhism superstitious and taught that pre-"liberation" Tibet was feudal and primitive.

For 15 years Namgyal worked mostly with Chinese. "We had a very good friendship," he says, adding that some Tibetans "are very friendly with the Chinese."

Although most Chinese would prefer to live and work in China, the Chinese Government lures them to Tibet by providing them with opportunities and benefits that would not be available if they remained in China, he says.

Namgyal emphasizes - like the Dalai Lama - that his complaint is not with the Chinese people but rather with Chinese government policies. He and other Tibetans - as well as some Chinese - argue that the Chinese people do not really know what to think about the Tibetan issue and may not clearly understand it because they have been fed government propaganda for so many years. Without a free press or free speech, the government can make people believe whatever it wants. Tibetans as well as some Chinese point out that the Chinese must also contend with the human rights abuses of the current Communist Party regime.

"The Chinese people need a good life too," Namgyal says. "I know the Chinese Government is bad, but I don't want to hurt the Chinese people."

In Tibet and China today, Tibetans must contend with subtle forms of discrimination. Chinese, for example, will sometimes insult Tibetans because they can't speak English as well as native speakers or because their skin may be darker than that of the Chinese. Namgyal recalls how he once entered a restaurant in China before a group of Chinese but was seated after them because he was an ethnic minority.

Subtle insults have also been woven into the revolutionary logic of the Chinese Communist Party's Tibetan policy. Chinese - and Tibetans - were taught that Tibetan society before the Chinese "liberation" was uncivilized and that Tibetans practiced torture and engaged in other atrocities against the less powerful in their society. While the Dalai Lama himself has criticized some Tibetan practices from an earlier era and vowed to make Tibet a democracy if he returns, the Tibetans believe that the shortcomings of Tibetan society have been grossly exaggerated by the Chinese propaganda machine.

"When you're young you don't know if that is true," says Namgyal, who adds that most Tibetans at the time were afraid to question the propaganda publicly because of the presence of the Chinese officials and soldiers. Eventually, says Namgyal, older people would say to him: "'That's a lie. It was never like this.' My parents didn't tell me lies," he adds.

What worries Namgyal and other Tibetans today is that the forced occupation of their country will lead to cultural genocide. Like the Chinese, they say they are proud of their own culture and want to see it survive. Namgyal and others point out that Tibet has had its own language, its own style of clothing, its own food, and a unique Buddhist culture.

Namgyal believes there are more Chinese than Tibetans living in Lhasa today. In a visit to Inner Mongolia, he saw people who claimed they were Mongolian but who could barely speak the Mongolian language. "When I saw that I was very worried about my Tibetan people. Soon it's going to be like that."

The arrival of the Namgyal family and other Tibetans in the Boston area in recent years has been " like a dream come true," for Yeshey Palsang and her family. When her husband, Kuncho Palsang, arrived in Boston in 1965, he was the only Tibetan living in the area.

"Sometimes I have to think to myself that this couldn't be happening," she says. " So it's a great great benefit for my family." The arrival of Tibetan families in recent years means that Tibetans can create a genuine local community, she says.

In 1959, her husband escaped overland from Tibet to India following the Chinese invasion. In India, he met former Roxbury Latin School Headmaster Richmond Mayo-Smith and his wife, who helped him immigrate to the US. Kuncho later returned to India to marry Yeshey, who joined him here in 1978. Since his arrival in 1965, Kuncho Palsang has lived and worked at Roxbury Latin School in West Roxbury.

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of immigrating to America for the Palsangs and other Tibetans was adjusting to life in a fast-paced and less close-knit American society. "Fortunately so many Americans are interested in Buddhism," says Yeshey, "So I have a lot of friends through the Buddhist centers."

Though the local Tibetan community hasn't a temple like many other Asian ethnic groups, most Tibetan families here have small Buddhist altars in their homes on which they make offerings of water, light, and food. They are also passing the religion on to their children.

"During dinner my mom would teach us a new prayer," explains the Palsangs' 18-year-old daughter, Tenley, who was born in the United States and will attend Wheaton College next year. Tenley says she strives to incorporate the essential ideas of Buddhism into her daily life. "It's always hard but I try to remember to show compassion, forgiveness and patience," she says.

"You try to mingle your everyday life with the teachings," adds Yeshey. "For us we try to sit down and read prayers. We try to think if what we did today was appropriate."

At the heart of Tibetan Buddhism is the concept of compassion for the "myriad sentient beings, not just your family," says Yeshey. "So that helps a great deal."

She says the Dalai Lama, whom many of the local Tibetans have met or worked for over the years, likes to say that if you can't help someone, just be sure not to harm anyone.

Incorporating the teachings into daily life can influence such mundane events as a chance encounter with a boorish driver. While a person's instinct may be to "see him (the driver) as a devil or demon," compassion allows for a moment of self-reflection - and a question: "Maybe it's my life that's making me do this." Subduing the ego - the sense of self as the center of life - is central to the Buddhist teachings, says Yeshey.

Although the Tibetans were out in force to protest during Jiang Zemin's visit to Boston last month, many Tibetans like to emphasize that they don't blame the Chinese people for the plight of their country. The overseas Tibetans have in fact made alliances with members of the overseas democracy-for-China movement, emphasizing that they are all working for the common goal of a democratic China in which the human rights of both Chinese and Tibetans are respected. In his trip to Boston several years ago, the Dalai Lama met with Chinese students and emphasized the importance of gaining support for theTibetan cause in the overseas Chinese community.

Yeshey Palsang and others point out that the Dalai Lama is seeking a course that takes into account the "happiness of both countries (Tibet and China)." Rather than calling for complete independence from China, the Dalai Lama has said he is willing to negotiate with China to discuss a possible relationship in which Tibetan domestic affairs would be controlled by Tibetans while defense and international affairs would be controlled by China.

"His holiness wants to save what's left of Tibet," she says, adding that a whole generation of Tibetans may be slowly losing their Tibetan identity since China began occupying the country in the 1950s.

"We know Tibet is not part of China, whether they says its part of China or not" says Yeshey Palsang, who recently traveled to Tibet with her husband and daughters to visit relatives.

Although most Tibetans would prefer complete independence from China, members of the exile community also follow the Dalai Lama, who has been proposing a compromise with China.

"I honestly think the Dalai Lama wants to see good for both Tibetans and Chinese," says Jorden, who notes that some members of the younger generation have criticized the Dalai Lama's non-violent approach. The Dalai Lama is in the peculiar position of being criticized by both sides - the Tibetans and the Chinese - for his willingness to compromise to solve the problem. "The irony is the Chinese government is not really responding to the Dalai Lama's proposal," says Jorden.

"The problem for Tibet is not only a problem for the Tibetans, it's a problem for the Chinese as well," he says, adding that the Chinese are unwilling to negotiate directly with the Dalai Lama unless he states unequivocally that Tibet has been part of China for many centuries.

"He says he can't do that," says Jorden, who is disturbed that many Chinese accept the Chinese government's pronouncements on Tibet without analyzing them.

"Many of the Chinese do not hesitate to say that Tibet is part of China without any reason," says Jorden. "But that really bothers me."

"What I'm really suggesting to my fellow Chinese is to at least take some kind of interest and do some research," he adds.

In an effort to promote democracy within the exile community and to respond to forces in the community who have been arguing that the old tactics have failed, the Dalai Lama recently allowed all overseas Tibetans to vote in a referendum to guage their opinions on Tibet's relationship with China and the future of Tibet.

Four options were offered: complete independence; a "middle path" in which Tibet would negotiate with China to develop a mutually acceptable relationship; the right to self-determination in which Tibetans would use international law to realize its goal of controlling its own affairs; and Satyagriha, or proving the truth, a Ghandian approach involving civil disobedience, boycotts, and initiating activities inside China. Jorden said the result of the referendum has not been released yet.

When he was living in Tibet, Namgyal says, he supported complete independence from China. But he says he recently voted for a Hong Kong-style, one-country, two-systems option because he believes the Chinese government would be unwilling to relinquish complete control over Tibet.

Moreover, even countries such as the US are unwilling to recognize Tibet as an independent country, though Secretary of State Madeleine Albright recently named Greg Craig as a "special coordinator" of Tibetan affairs to give the Tibetan issue a higher profile and put pressure on China to negotiate with the Dalai Lama.

Many Tibetans, however, worry that time is running out for one of the world's most unique cultures. If current conditions continue unchanged, says Namgyal, the native culture of Tibet will be further destroyed.

"That's why I changed my mind," he says,. "First, save my Tibetan people. Save my Tibet."