This article about the effects of globalization in Bhutan gave an incorrect figure for the country's population. Bhutan has an estimated 635,000 people, according to a government count.
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'A Society on the Threshold of Change'
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"Apparently it was making the youth too violent, since they were wrestling each other all day. The government felt this violence was not Buddhist and goes against our gross national happiness philosophy," Zam, the DJ, said with a laugh. She said she opposed the ban, but also saw the reason for it. "Maybe it was a good thing to be able to understand our Bhutanese identity first, and then open up to the world," she said.
Bhutan likes doing things its own way. It is the only country in the world to ban the sale of tobacco. Thimphu is the only capital in the world without a traffic light; instead, a white-gloved traffic officer directs cars, pedestrians and yak herds. The city had a zoo, but freed the animals, saying it wasn't in the Buddhist spirit to cage the national mammal, the takin, which has the head of a goat and the body of a moose.
While Bhutan's ways are quirky, the culture, at least in urban areas, is morphing into something new.
Thimphu's central square is filled with teenagers strumming guitars and wearing buttons with the names of rock bands such as Metallica. A transvestite recently went out in public to a disco -- a sign, the DJs at Kazoo said, that youth culture is open to previously shunned ideas.
Many younger Bhutanese have started to fuse their culture with the tastes of the West. The Zone Cafe in Thimphu, for instance, serves yak burgers and pizza with yak meat. A Bhutanese fashion designer, Sangay Choden, put Velcro around the waist of her traditional kiras to make them easier to wear.
"I wanted to be creative and voice what our youth feel today. But I also wanted to keep being Bhutanese," Choden said. "It can be done."
That's what parents at Gurung's day-care center are hoping for.
Because the government is wary of permitting too much change too quickly, it has placed restrictions on day-care centers, licensing only those that watch children over the age of 3. The decision has effectively pushed grandparents to stay at home for the first years of a child's life or working parents to hire a nanny. Now, parents at Gurung's center are lobbying the government to allow day care for younger children. They say the rules could require them to be at the center during work breaks and lunches.
"Day-care centers will keep evolving," said Gado Tshering, secretary of health. "But we don't always want to completely copy the West. Imagine if we opened those, how do you say . . . old-age homes? Imagine if Bhutanese people actually started to kick out their grandparents? We just couldn't allow such a thing."
