Saldon Tenzin: There’s one day out of the year that I look forward to the most: Losar, also known as Tibetan New Year. In Queens, where I live, hundreds of Tibetans turn out to celebrate.
[Sound of Tibetan music.]
Saldon: I always meet up with my friends. at the Tibetan Community Center. The morning starts off with prayers — and then the adults usually ask us to help hand out food.
Saldon’s friend: Hi Saldon, wanna help us?
Saldon: Yeah
Saldon’s friend: You know what someone said to us? That we’re the future of Tibet.
[Laughter]
Saldon: Then, we head to the auditorium to watch Tibetan school students sing and dance.
[Sound of Tibetan music and children performing.]
Saldon: Losar is the one day we do stuff we normally wouldn’t do: We try to speak in Tibetan and make fun of each others’ bad grammar. We sing Tibetan songs. And we dress up. We all wear a chuba, which is Tibet’s national outfit. It looks like a long robe that ties at the waist and has traditional designs woven into it. This year, I wore a long white chuba made out of silk from India. I wanted everyone to see my outfit. But I didn’t always feel this way about Losar and growing up, I never wanted to be seen wearing a chuba. I used to wear a really long coat to hide everything. Chubas made me feel self-conscious because they were just so different. When my non-Tibetan friends dressed up for their family events, they wore dresses with flowers and lace. The type of party dress you would see on an American Girl doll. I didn’t really have Tibetan friends until I met my friend Chemi in seventh grade. I remember one day, she told me she couldn’t decide which one of her chubas to wear. By then, I had stopped wearing mine. Watching Chemi talk, enthusiastically, about her chubas confused me. But it also helped me realize I didn’t have anything to be ashamed of.
Saldon, speaking to Chemi: I didn’t realize like, oh, like she actually enjoys Losar and wearing the chuba and I didn't really like to do that, but you kind of switched my perspective on that. So did you know you had that impact on me?
Chemi: I never realized I made such a big impact on you.
Saldon: [Laughs] Okay. So were you always so proud of your heritage, or was there someone else who inspired you, just like you did to me?
Chemi: Um, well, I think that like so many children go through the same feeling of being almost ashamed of your culture and especially if it’s so different from the ones that you grew up around. If you grew up in America, for example, you probably would be more influenced by, like, American traditions rather than your own.
Saldon: I totally agree with you because I grew up watching Disney and stuff.
Chemi: Mhmm.
Saldon: And my dream, like, was to be Emma Ross from Disney.
Saldon, narrating: Emma Ross was super skinny and had long blonde hair.
Saldon: I wanted, you know, her outfits, I wanted her hair, I wanted my name to be Emma.
Saldon, narrating: I spent a lot of my childhood feeling unconfident and wishing I looked like the girls on TV. But once I got to high school, I made more Tibetan friends and I found myself wanting to spend more time with them. I didn’t feel different or self-conscious around them. And these new friends didn’t seem ashamed or embarrassed about our culture. A lot of them went to Tibetan school growing up, including Chemi.
Chemi: I feel like Tibetan school was one of the only places in my daily life where I could just be fully Tibetan without any judgment or confusion from people who, like, really didn't understand what I was talking about.
Saldon: I started to feel the same way. And these new friendships I made helped me see there’s beauty in being Tibetan. But I still don’t really feel that close to my identity.
Saldon, speaking to parents over dinner: This Sunday… [Switches to speaking Tibetan] NHS event…
Saldon, narrating: When I try to speak Tibetan at the dinner table, I have to interrupt myself to ask my parents how to say every other word.
Saldon: How do you say control in Tibetan?
Saldon’s mom: Control? [Switches to speaking Tibetan.]
[Saldon repeats her mom.]
Saldon: I feel like I have so much to catch up on. I don’t know how to cook any Tibetan dishes. I only know four prayers at best. And at all the big gatherings, everyone else knows all the dances — but I don’t know a single step. I wanna tell myself it’s because I didn’t grow up in Tibet. But my parents didn’t grow up in Tibet either. And that didn’t make them any less Tibetan.
[Saldon’s mom speaking in Tibetan]
Saldon: That’s my mom. She was born in South India.
[Saldon’s mom continues speaking in Tibetan]
Saldon: Her parents fled Tibet when the Chinese government forcefully took over more than 70 years ago. Tibet is still under Chinese control. Children there have to learn Mandarin in school. And people are scared to speak up about preserving our own language. They also can’t display photos of our highest religious leader, the Dalai Lama — people even fear saying his name. The Dalai Lama is known as the face of Tibetan Buddhism. He lives in exile in India. When he fled there, tens of thousands of people followed him.That’s how my mom ended up in a village made up entirely of Tibetan refugees.
[Saldon’s mom speaking in Tibetan]
Saldon: She says these refugee villages were committed to preserving our language. and culture.
[Saldon’s mom speaking in Tibetan]
Saldon: She says her parents always told her to never forget. Never forget the Tibetan people, never forget the Tibetan language and never forget the Tibetan practices. My parents tell me the same thing. But I only know Tibet through Google Images: Pictures of mountains, grasslands and elderly women in traditional clothing. I used to think: How do I hold on to something I’ve never experienced? Now I realize the work my parents have done to rebuild the type of community they left behind in India. And that their parents left behind in Tibet.
[Traditional Tibetan dance song plays.]
Saldon: We live in Woodside — just 10 minutes away from the Tibetan community center and a few blocks from a Tibetan temple. There’s even a street called “Tibet Way.” I used to think that it was my parents’ burden to pass down our culture. But I have a role to play in that too. And now that I’ve stopped pushing my identity aside to try to fit in — I realize my culture has always been all around me. I just had to learn how to embrace it. For WNYC, I’m Radio Rookies reporter Saldon Tenzin.