2007, Lhasa: I awoke each morning to the sound of local people doing their morning kora,or
circumambulation, reciting mantra while turning handheld prayer wheels, as they passed along the
alleyway outside my window. Each morning I would buy Tibetan flatbread from the lady who gave her
profits to wandering street children.
At the alleyway crossroads of Tsongsikhangmarket, dried Tibetan cheese was piled high at stalls.
The fragrance of red chili and yellow cumin overflowed from the wooden trays of spice vendors.
This juncture between alleyways was an ancient traders’ market, in unbroken service since the
seventh century when the city was first built. Nomads from Kham wearing chunks of amber and
turquoise
around their necks and red tassels tied to their hair from which coral pieces dangled, chatted into
dusk excitedly trading semi-precious stones, saddles and pelts. All of this occurred daily, just
minutes from the front door of my Tibetan courtyard house. I observed each day how every aspect of
the kaleidoscope of color in these alleyways was actually part of an integrated economy. I realized
that the success of what we wanted to achieve with our social enterprise would depend upon joining
that integration.
In the afternoon Pembala and I usually walked through the neighborhood, visiting artisans in their
shops, asking if they wanted to work on our products. Together Pembala and I designed everything
needed for this little hotel. We sketched designs with pencil on scraps of paper and gave them to
the artisans. Only traditional materials were to be used.
Soon the whole neighborhood became stakeholders in Shambhala.
When we wanted to create coffee cups, plates and bowls for our first restaurant, Pembala and I
traced
the source of Tibetan ceramics. We did this by talking with migrant street vendors squatting in the
alleyways selling earthenware. The source led to a village about three hours from Lhasa. Here the
earth was a deep red. The pottery village specialized in ceramic vats to store chang. However,
production was in decline because Chinese-manufactured plastic and aluminum products were cheaper.
With no money in pottery, young people were leaving to find work in cities. Pembala and I suggested
modifying the natural shape of traditional ceramic vats and storage bowls to create cups, plates,
and vases for shampoo and bath lotion. With three hotels and three restaurants in the planning
works,
we kept the villagers quite busy revitalizing their craft. The best thing about the plates and
coffee
cups they made for us was that no two matched at all. It was all just pure art.
We decorated the restaurant tearoom with antique door panels collected from western Tibet during
the
filming of Shambhala Sutra. When it turned out that guests were keen to purchase and collect them,
we made reproductions small enough to pack in a suitcase. Before we knew it, the entire
neighborhood
was making them.
We had sparked an artisan revival without even knowing it.
People in the neighborhood were thrilled to see one of their old buildings being restored so
painstakingly. It amused those that soon discovered a foreigner was behind it. Sometime they sang
lyrics from a popular song. "Shambhala is not far away" adding with laughter "Shambhala is my next
door neighbor".
Tibetans live by a natural rhythm. There was no separation in their minds between the spiritual
and material worlds. Their thought process is intrinsic. Time is somewhat irrelevant. For instance,
the word guongda "afternoon" really means anything from lunchtime onwards, including all night.
Things
flowed without specific context or deadlines. By living in the old city interacting with Tibetans
each
day, I was making a conscious effort to step out of our western pre-conceived rational thinking box.
Walking through these busy alleyways, I often stopped to chat with a monk who sold yak butter in a
little shop. He always cut a tiny sample with a broad knife, offering it as I walked by. Yak butter
is essential for Tibetans. Mixing it with black tea, they drink it all day long, and it provides
calories and vitamins they need to survive at this high altitude. Throughout the day every Tibetan
household burns yak butter as offertory candles adorning home shrines. Of course it is used in
cooking. I found that yak butter proved the best protection against sharp ultra-violet rays of the
highland sun. Every morning I rubbed it on my face and arms.
The yak butter sellers in my neighborhood came mostly from Amdo, or Eastern Tibet, which is a
nomadic
region. I remembered what the monk Jigme Jensen had taught about the importance of letting nomads
continue to live as nomads. Yak-grazing patterns have been on the highlands since people crossed
the Bering Straights. Yak migration is an integrated part in the delicate bio-diversity of the
Tibetan plateau.
I began to think about the economic interconnection of all things. Whatever was happening in our
neighborhood was intimately connected with the sustainability of the Tibetan plateau, and in turn
global climate change. All things were interconnected, in ways that often were not apparent, but
always present.
By restoring traditional homes as small family businesses, shops, teahouses or guest lodges,
people would not have to move out, as developers wanted, and some government officials insisted.
The neighborhood could have an economic platform that would evolve and sustain culture rather than
change or break it. People would continue to live in the old neighborhood, buy yak butter for their
tea and family shrines. The nomads in Amdo could continue herding yak. And the patterns of grazing
that had kept balance in the grasslands for millennia could remain.