For Rural Tibetans, the Future Is in Town

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New Opportunities for Tibetan Farmer

Jian Hong Mei, a 19-yea-old Tibetan farmer, was selected for a vocational program that teaches English and skills for the tourism industry. She now works at a guest house in Shangri-la, a tourist town in the Yunnan province.

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Photos of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, have been hidden away, in deference to a Chinese mandate not to display images of the man the authorities call a "separatist."

In general, though, Tibetans say that they are benefiting from the tourism economy and that standards of living are rising, even if they are conflicted about the impact of tourism on their culture.

Lobsang Tenzin, an ethnic Tibetan who co-founded an adventure tour company called Khampa Caravan, once lived as a nomad, riding horses wherever his family took him. It was a hard life, he said. Now he has enough money to buy most everything he wants and voices the lament of the upwardly mobile the world over: "I've already changed my TV three times. Every three or four years I need a bigger, more expensive one."

Tourism, he said, "in one part helps and in one part destroys" the culture. "In some villages, they are very traditional, but then they get more and more tourists. Later you see everyone in blue jeans and leather jackets."

Ben Hillman, an expert in Tibetan culture at Australian National University, said it's better for tourism to be shaped by locals than controlled by mega-tourism companies and hotel chains. "If we can help local people get into the tourism industry, we can let them present their culture how they see it," Hillman said.

Hillman is co-founder of the Eastern Tibet Training Institute, a small nongovernmental organization that provides vocational training each year for about 100 rural youth, mostly poor ethnic minorities living in villages near Shangri-La. The four-month program teaches English and basic skills to help the young people get jobs with some of the town's tonier hotels and tour companies.

Illiteracy among Tibetans is among the highest in China. Jian's older sister, for example, did not attend school because her family could not afford even the marginal fees of primary school. She cannot read or write and can speak only Tibetan. She was married at 17, unhappily, and divorced. Now, she has no opportunity to leave the family farm as Jian did.

"I don't want to get married," Jian said, as she rode in a car back to Shangri-La after visiting her family. "Many people in my village have gotten divorced."

Jian attended the vocational training in Hillman's program, free to those who qualify, and landed a job at a small, funky guesthouse in Shangri-La, called the Upstream Poet Hostel. Its manager, Tian Yong, is a Chinese poet who came to Shangri-La, as many Chinese do these days, seeking something more meaningful than just making money.

"I want to stay here many years," he said, sipping tea and lounging on a bench near a potbellied stove in his hotel's lobby. He pays Jian and his two other Tibetan workers 1,500 yuan a month, almost $220, plus free room and board.

In this environment, young Tibetans are defining their own identity while also trying to attain a more secure and comfortable life.

Jian prefers her Chinese name to her Tibetan one. She eschews the traditional Tibetan garb that her mother and sister wear. She keeps her hair in a bob and her cellphone close.

But Jian also visits a Buddhist temple four times a week and says her dream is to make a pilgrimage to Lhasa, the spiritual and political center of Tibetan culture.

She loves to sing Tibetan songs. A guest at her hotel once heard her sing and promised to make contacts for her in Kunming, the provincial capital, to see if there were scholarships available for Jian to study music.

Jian said she will divide her first paycheck of $220 this way: $175 will go to her family, $30 for gifts and $15 for herself.

She loves her family and the farm but also loves her new life -- a room to herself, books and access to a computer, her first. Her mother, she said, worries and has told her to come home at the first sign of trouble.

But Jian is looking ahead and out at a wider world. She recalls her amazement the first time a guest gave her a tip -- about $1.50. At first she wouldn't accept it, money for nothing. But she finally did, and now it serves as a reminder of her next goal. Jian says, "I dream that one day maybe I would have so much money I could give someone a tip."