20th Anniversary Report

20 YEARS IN TIBETAN COMMUNITIES TWENTY-YEAR REPORT

Andrea E. Soros Founder and president Eric Colombel Vice-president Trace Foundation’s Anniversary Report is published by Trace Foundation, 132 Perry St., Suite 2B, New York, NY 10014 USA Tel.: +1-212-367-7380 Fax: +1-212-367-7383 www.trace.org Paola Vanzo Editor in chief Johnathan Wilber Writer and editor Bagnasco & Bossa Layout and design Contents and Photos © Trace Foundation, 2015. Neither may be reproduced in any way without permission from Trace Foundation. For more information contact pressroom@trace.org.

Note on Transcription System Used: All Trace Foundation publications use The Himalayan Library (THL) Simplified Phonetic Transcription of Standard Tibetan for Tibetan terms that appear in our English-language articles. More information on this transcription system can be found at http://www.thlib.org.

In cases where Chinese and Tibetan names exist, the Tibetan is used with the Pinyin in parentheses— e.g., Lhoka (Shannan). For the sake of simplicity, where Tibetan names are only transliterations of Chinese names, the Tibetan has been dropped (e.g., Sichuan, not Sitrön). Where Chinese names are transliterations of Tibetan names, the Pinyin has been dropped (e.g., Nakchu, not Naqu). In some cases Pinyin is used for Tibetan names where Tibetan names were unavailable.

TWENTY-YEAR REPORT

For twenty years,

Trace Foundation has supported the continuity, development, and vitality of Tibetan communities.

We work with people to better their lives and reinforce the uniqueness of Tibetan language, culture, and places.

Trace Foundation is a non-profit, non-governmental organization based in New York City.

It has no political or religious affiliations.

20/20 Looking Back

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Over 5,000 individuals supported for higher-level studies, including

More than 1,600

More than 1 million books published and

5 new college level majors established and taught in the Tibetan language,

Over 3,500 teachers trained in a range of subjects from

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12,000 books in

7 issues of the Latse Journal published

100 talks and events hosted

300 interviews recorded as part of the Oral History Archive,

971 individuals assisted through

the first two Tibetans to complete law degrees and the first Tibetan to attend the most prestigious film school in China.

Tibetan, Chinese, Dzongkha, and English catalogued and made publicly available through Latse Library.

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scholarships awarded to young

Tibetan women to earn bachelor degrees and more than 150 to pursue graduate degrees.

to promote its collections, spread awareness of the library’s programs and services, and represent and highlight modern and secular traditions that are not covered elsewhere.

distributed to 900 elementary and middle schools, universities, monasteries, and libraries—including Tibetan encyclopedias for young people, rare and ancient texts, and textbooks.

on Tibetan culture, development, science, the arts, and much more.

in business management, law, computer science, traditional Tibetan medicine, and Western medicine.

documenting local and individual histories and religious, artistic, and cultural practices.

English and science to teaching methodology and school management.

emergency relief during crippling earthquakes.

A year after I visited Tibet for the first time, I took a position as a volunteer English teacher in the northwest of China at the Hainan Prefecture Teacher Training College in Qinghai Province. These experiences made a deep impression on me. I was fascinated by the places I visited and felt a great deal of respect for the people I met. Living and teaching on the QinghaiTibetan Plateau, I developed a strong affection for the unique beauty of the region and for the culture that has evolved there. I was also struck by the challenges faced by local communities and impressed by the efforts being made to improve harsh conditions. As a result of these experiences, I established Trace Foundation to support Tibetan people and culture in western China.

Andrea E. Soros

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334 villagers enrolled in smallbusiness training;

54 villagelevel schools

30 rural clinics constructed, 50 equipped, and 1,200 healthcare workers trained.

10 conferences and symposia supported on culture and development,

200 rare journals collected and made available to the general public.

27 villages engaged in multiyear development projects to improve livelihoods, clean water, health, and access to health care.

supported through infrastructure, teacher salaries, and capital grants.

including the Third International Conference on Tibetan Language.

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1 dairy-processing facility that supports more than 1,000 students in a

7,000 DVDs, cassettes, and VCD recordings acquired

Nearly 10,000 photographs and

120 children immersed in Tibetan language, games, songs, stories, and crafts

Over $70 million invested in programs to support Tibetan culture and communities.

sustainable manner through innovative dairy production practices.

of traditional and contemporary Tibetan music and other performing arts spanning the 1980s to the present.

slides acquired, documenting the life, history, and culture of the Tibetan Plateau from the 1950s on.

through Latse Library’s Children’s Class.

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Message from our President

It can be a challenge to wrap your head around the changes the world has seen over the last two decades: the heady economic highs of the nineties, the global financial crisis and the ripples it continues to send out, the astonishing strides made in technology, communication, and medical research. The news is dominated by the tragedies of war and terrorism, and political changes abound. We are global and local, connected yet self-interested, listening as never before, but not always hearing or agreeing. The whole world seems to be in transition: destination unknown.

The Tibetan Plateau is no exception; it has been through its own set of changes, some gradual and some lurching. Now, more than ever, we need hope, solidarity, and support of human dignity.

When I think of Trace Foundation at twenty years, I think of a web of connections. I envision the thousands of people who are part of the work and relationships that have come into being around this enterprise. Some are in the earliest years of their lives, still forming a sense of place and identity, and some are in the latter years, looking to pass on their knowledge 6

and passions. Individuals search for new ways to understand their place in the world, the culture they carry, or the language that roots them.

I think of the lives connected by learning, by writing, by solving the problems of daily life, by caring for others, preserving precious traditions, and stretching beyond those traditions to meet new opportunities and find new futures. These connections, these people, are what I see at the heart of Trace Foundation.

The web of connections that makes up Trace Foundation is full of unlikely stories. My own experience—that of a young American woman who visits, almost by chance, a distant part of the world and is so taken by the place and the people that it leads to two decades and tens of millions of dollars of engagement—is an unusual place to start. There’s a quote that I came across once: “It’s unusual, obviously, but it’s something that could happen, and did.” In some ways, that is my story, the story of Trace Foundation, and the story of many in our web—the monk who runs a cheese factory, the nomad girl who now holds a PhD, the short

story writer who becomes an internationally recognized filmmaker . . . You could say that Trace Foundation is about making the unlikely happen on the Tibetan Plateau.

Over the years, most of the web of connections that constitutes Trace Foundation has been characterized by trust, common purpose, friendship, and optimism. But of course there are circumstances when suspicion, misunderstanding, and even aggression have flourished. This is the way of the world, and on the Tibetan Plateau every person is touched by this reality in some way. As I consider the past and the future at the twenty-year mark, it saddens me to see these more corrosive elements playing such a central role in people’s lives and in the life of our organization. Over twenty years we have seen many restrictions fall away only to see them return. Most of our truly local work—with rural villages, schools, or clinic-level projects that you will see described in this report—is no longer possible. To those who set the tone for so much of the interaction, I would offer this: there is no single more important thing to do for the future of this part of the world than to broaden the circle of trust.

Trace Foundation has been fortunate to have had many great partners over the years, from government officials to English teachers and yak herders. These partnerships are absolutely essential to any successes we’ve seen in the field of development work; I hope that any of you reading this report take some pride in it. Working on the Tibetan Plateau is hard, and there are too many obstacles to overcome if we don’t work together. There are huge physical distances involved, layers of complexity related to race, gender, traditional and modern outlooks, legal frameworks, and political mindsets. There are banking challenges, visa difficulties, and linguistic barriers. There are competing priorities, personal interests, limited funds, waste, and unforeseen impacts. It takes time to build relationships and it can be difficult to find the right expertise or connect through shared values. There are misunderstandings. There are lots of mistakes.

But there is also potential—huge potential.

The unlikely stories of Trace Foundation show the potential that is present on the Tibetan Plateau for positive collaboration, accomplishment, and fulfillment. They are a testament to this, as is the list of the many “firsts” we have been part of. For example, our scholarships sponsored the first Tibetans to complete their law degrees and the first to attend the most prestigious film school in China.

Working with universities on the Tibetan Plateau, we supported the establishment of new majors in business management, law, computer science, traditional Tibetan medicine, and Western medicine—all in the Tibetan language. We also supported the first dictionary of Tibetan sign language and the first dictionary of technological terms in Tibetan, among others. The first participatory workshop in a village, the first native-speaking English teacher, the first library in a school—you will read more in the following pages. While one can never know what kind of long-term impact these firsts may have, they are bells of human progress that cannot be un-rung.

People often ask me “Why Tibet? Why does it matter?” What can I say? I like the Tibetan Plateau. I like the places and the people, the colors and wide-open spaces, the depth and breadth of the culture, and the blend of the familiar and unknown that I experience there.

As for why it matters, I can list many reasons— the natural resources, including the four major rivers of Asia that originate on the Plateau; the unique language and culture in rapid transition; the importance of diversity globally; or the growing schisms around ethnicity and religion that challenge the stability of far Western China and beyond. But the answer is really much simpler than that: it matters because everywhere matters.

Trace Foundation has always been about improving people’s lives and opportunities. We are engaged in areas critical to human development, where we can add value that would not be present otherwise. We always aim to make a long-term 7

difference and view development as not just about material advances but about the broader picture of what people care about—relationships, beauty, culture—the intangibles that should not be lost. On every page you read in this report, you will find traces of culture, and traces of what has come before. You will find the imprints of those whose lives were impacted, as they have traced new futures for themselves.

As we look forward, our work and vision remain steadfast. In the coming years, we are as committed as ever to strengthening the education system by investing in people— students, educators, and scholars. That means supporting young Tibetans who are trailblazing with new teaching methodologies, as well as exploring new contributions to be made, for instance in the field of early childhood education.

We’re adding scholarships tailored specifically to rural science teachers, to women training in law, business management, and the sciences—all crucial areas in the coming years.

We are similarly committed to preserving and promoting Tibetan culture. From the digitization of ancient texts to support for contemporary Tibetan artists breaking new ground, Trace Foundation has sought not only to preserve the incredible heritage of this region, but also to foster a living culture. We are exploring and innovating ways to make cultural resources accessible to Tibetan communities—whether that’s via an online repository accessible around the globe, or face-to-face with one of our expert librarians in our New York office.

Over the past ten years, our library holdings have become a boon to both researchers and nearby Tibetans. In addition to making available thousands of resources in three languages, our library hosts events year round that bring together Tibetans, Westerners, Chinese, and many others to encourage an active, ongoing conversation on the state of contemporary Tibetan communities.

At our twentieth year, Trace Foundation continues 8

to foster and look for the connections that allow cooperation and humanitarian values to advance on the Tibetan Plateau. One of our priorities is to broaden our international community. Last year, I challenged the Foundation staff to start bringing in outside funding. Trace is a private foundation and, as such, has never operated with more than a few years’ reserve at any time. If the Foundation and its activities are to have any long-term sustainability, then the circle of support must be broadened. The goal, over the next five years, is to reduce my support to operating expenses and a special project budget only, and for all other work to be done with outside funding or through partnerships. We are starting to have some success in making this transition, which is exciting to see.

As important as a community of support is to our financial sustainability, it is even more important as a sign of ongoing, broad support of Tibetan culture and people within the international community. At the moment, the possibilities for project implementation are diminishing, the impacts of the financial crisis are still being felt, and the world’s attention is drawn to global concerns and crisis situations. It is becoming harder to see where the connections between the future of Tibetan communities and the future of global development and the global community can be made. I do not expect that everyone will experience the connections I have. But I nevertheless believe the Foundation has a role to play in broadening appreciation for this part of the world, and in creating avenues for those who care about cultural traditions, linguistic diversity, the advancement of women, tackling poverty, the power of education, environmental sustainability, the rule of law—the list goes on—to be able to include the Tibetan Plateau in their geographical areas of concern. I believe that the track record of the Foundation, and of other like-minded organizations, shows the value of international cooperation on the Plateau, as well as the continuing need.

Perhaps most important, I believe that the Trace Foundation web can do more to connect

Tibetans to their broader communities.

What can happen when Tibetan singers, lawyers, doctors, computer engineers, artists, filmmakers, teachers, and development workers deepen their connections within their own professional communities? Of course we, and many organizations, have done a great deal to support these connections over the years, despite the constant barriers of language and distance. I nevertheless believe there is a further level to be achieved, through our support and community efforts, one that requires a more sustained commitment and a closer look at new forms of communication.

So let me end these reflections with an invitation—an invitation to form a connection.

Perhaps you are Tibetan, and the connection is obvious. Perhaps you are a Web designer, who would like to think about how to present educational materials on the Internet. Perhaps you are an official in the Chinese Bureau of Civil Affairs, who would like to help us navigate new regulations. Maybe you are passionate about early childhood education and would like to support local kindergartens. Perhaps, like me, you are drawn to the beauty of this unique culture and love to see human potential flourish.

To trace means to redraw, while respecting existing lines. Join us in supporting the heritage of the Plateau while redrawing the lines of what’s possible. Let’s build on the present and the past for something new—a future greater than what we foresee, full of the surprises of the unlikely and the joys of the newly imagined.

Andrea E. Soros New York City 2015

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Highlights: 20 Years in Tibetan Communities

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1995

A first grant in China The real work of the Foundation begins when severe snowstorms deluge the QinghaiTibetan Plateau, affecting more than 100,000 people. As part of the humanitarian response, Trace Foundation makes its first direct grants in China, providing humanitarian aid in the form of nutritional supplements and fuel to the communities affected.

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1996

The first international scholarship Anyone familiar with modern Tibetan history knows his name.

Tsering Shakya was among the first five students to receive scholarships from Trace to study internationally in 1996. With Trace’s support he obtained a PhD in Tibetan Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London—the first step in being able to teach at a university. He is the author of the definitive history of modern Tibet, Dragon in the Land of Snows, and he is now the Canadian Research Chair in Religion and Contemporary Society in Asia at the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia.

We are proud to count Tsering Shakya among our very first scholarship recipients and to applaud him for the great work he’s done over the past fifteen years. We are just as proud of our most recent international fellow, Tenzin—and excited for the success we know lies ahead for young Tibetans like him:

At the International Language Institute, where Tenzin studied first, mornings were devoted to grammar and vocabulary, and afternoons to poetry, to art, to music. His favorites.

I started my undergraduate in England and did my studies, and after that I went to work. I couldn’t really get a scholarship to continue with my research so I was working in London local government. But in my heart I really wanted to do research. It was only much later that I had the opportunity and funding from Trace to go back to Global and African Studies to continue my research.

My scholarship from Trace allowed me to obtain my doctorate.

Tsering Shakya

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1996 That’s how he learned that teaching English is not just about reading, writing, and speaking, but about opening his students’ eyes to the bigger world.

It was here that he fell in love with country music, and it was here that he read Robert Frost for the first time.

Then he went on to an intensive academic training (a three-week orientation), a masters program in teaching English at the SIT Graduate Institute, and an internship at an immigrant-learning center, where he taught English to ten students ranging in age from eighteen to fifty-five.

Teaching all ages is not new for Tenzin. In the nomadic area where he grew up, it’s not uncommon for middle schoolers to be as old as nineteen. If a kid’s family needs support at home—whether it’s in herding sheep or running errands—school can wait.

The school he teaches at does little to encourage English and students don’t want to learn English because the instruction relies on memorization, on tests, and on one-size-fits-all textbooks. Tenzin is one of five English teachers, and of them, he is the only teacher who has studied English abroad and the only one with a graduate degree.

Trace gives students from very remote places—small villages, small counties—the opportunity to see the bigger world. These students take what they learn back to their homes. That will make a difference. Teachers influence a lot. The young generation in these remote counties is the future. If you can open their minds, if you can give them a hint of what’s going on in the world, that’s the beginning of change.

You ignited that.

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Middle school English teachers, he tells us, don’t need to have studied English. And because his school doesn’t employ history, geography, or political science teachers, it falls on all the teachers to cover these subjects. With as many as 280 students a year, each student gets a weekly average of four minutes of a teacher’s class time. Students work toward one final test. Then, a week before, they cram, and afterward they forget everything.

“I don’t want that to happen. I want to have them working hard up until the final test. My evaluation starts with the first homework assignment. I’m really trying to connect what I’ve learned with where I’m going. I see the challenges. I can’t avoid them. I won’t quit, because I love teaching. That’s my passion. I’ve developed a curriculum during my stay and study here that I will bring that to my students. That curriculum is really based on the Tibetan context. What Tibetan students know. What they should know. What their interests are. This opportunity and this scholarship totally changed my life. This will be my lifelong treasure.”

As the cornerstone of social and economic development, education is one of our largest areas of activity. A strong education system, relevant to the needs and culture of its students, not only prepares individuals for future employment, it empowers them to participate in the conversation about their future and guides development across the region. Our work in education has expanded access at all levels, improved the quality of instruction, and rebuilt critical infrastructure. We have focused on improving primary and secondary education, particularly in math, science, and English—subjects critical for success in the Chinese education system.

Through our projects and grants, we have trained well over one thousand teachers in the past twenty years and supported more than five thousand scholarships for Tibetans to study domestically and internationally.

1996

Trace partners with Tibet Heritage Fund Trace has been a strong supporter of cultural heritage work in Tibetan areas since its inception. One of the best and most dedicated organizations working in this field is Tibet Heritage Fund. Since 1996, we have provided this organization with $770,000 for communitybased cultural preservation.

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1996 Pimpim de Azevedo Director, Tibet Heritage Fund

Lhasa, and later registered as an NGO in Berlin, Germany.

In 1993, André Alexander witnessed the demolition of Surkhang House in Barkhor Street, the heart of the old city of Lhasa. He realized the urgent need to document historic houses before they completely disappear, and to raise awareness of the ongoing demolition of the houses in the old city. The Lhasa Archive Project (LAP) was founded that same year.

The generous financial support of Trace Foundation made possible the first pilot project that would launch THF’s work in the field of Tibetan architecture and conservation. Over the following years, Trace Foundation has supported THF’s projects in Lhasa and elsewhere in the Tibetan world. Through our cooperation with Trace, THF could revive the traditional building techniques and the use of traditional materials; i.e., arga roofing, pembe-frieze making, and wall plastering. This was necessary for the restoration process, but more important was to transmit the knowledge and skills through the training of local craftsmen.

But, as André said at the time, “Documentation and research alone cannot save the old city of Lhasa from demolition.” In 1996, we chose the Trapshishar house in the Barkhor, which was slated for demolition, as a pilot restoration project in the campaign for an alternative to the demolition of the traditional houses. During that time, Tibet Heritage Fund (THF) was founded in

Photos © Tibet Heritage Fund

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The support of Trace Foundation was very important from the start of the organization. We

1996 can say that many projects were made possible only with Trace Foundation’s support. Trace helped to preserve Tibetan architecture, improve people’s living conditions, and make local people proud of their own houses and culture. At the same time, it provided them with a source of income by training them in building skills and special techniques, making it possible for them to find work and sustain their livelihoods.

THF’s experience cooperating with Trace Foundation is based on people and trust. The projects supported by Trace Foundation have a strong impact in the local communities and on people’s lives. Trace’s staff has good knowledge of the region (Tibet-Himalaya), what the needs of the local people are, and what will benefit the local people the most.

Trace supports projects that work and are meaningful to local people and communities.

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1997

Collection of AV material begins Collection of AV material begins at Himalayan and Inner Resources (HIAR), the predecessor to Latse Library, and Pema Bhum, now director of the library, joins Trace Foundation.

Pema Bhum, director of Latse Library remembers his early years at Trace Foundation and HIAR, which would later become Latse Library.

By the end of 1997, Trace had already decided to establish a library that would be known as Himalayan and Inner Asian Resources (HIAR) with Gene Smith, who would bring in his entire collection. They were looking for people to assist him and approached me. I happily accepted, as it was a good job with a good boss.

On my first day of work, there was no physical library yet. Half of Gene’s library had arrived in boxes. When I arrived for work that day, I encountered Gene surrounded by boxes.

We started discussing the new library that day. I spoke about the need for some kind of resource that could follow the work of the new generation of Tibetan intellectuals and writers. I had already compiled some information on who was producing prose literature. He was very excited and agreed. This list of works that could be found in literary journals would be incorporated into the Byara Database, one of Latse’s most popular resources (see page 27).

HIAR opened in a space on Charles Street.

An additional three hundred boxes with the remainder of Gene’s collection were shipped directly there, and then we transferred the other three hundred from the Trace offices. I was so busy. Gene was often away on business trips, so I oversaw the move from Perry Street to Charles

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Street, the arrangement of the books on the shelves, and then the physical shelving of the books. Over the years, we had the support and advice of many wonderful scholars in developing the collection.

often several texts wrapped together; I would go through, and separate them out. Gene would be pleased. “Pema, you are doing a good job. You should get to know this collection as well as you can.�

As Latse does now, we had a lot of visitors to HIAR. All sorts of scholars and students and lamas came by HIAR. Gene was especially cordial to monks, often going to the airport to personally welcome them to New York. We also received different delegations, including highranking delegations from China. We convened a conference on the Kingdom of Derge, and offered reference services and photocopying for patrons.

My main work was acquisitions. In the beginning, we got a high volume of books from China and focused on filling in the gaps in our holdings.

We had a big team of vendors in different cities in China who purchased books for us. I helped to process the pecha collection. There were

Gene was a very generous listener and boss and trusted my instincts and suggestions.

The Latse collections that are rare and unique now are a result of his open-mindedness back then. Our audiocassette collection and private journal collection, unique in the world, are due to this.

The core of the Latse Library collection is the result of systematic, careful, and comprehensive acquisition work undertaken in the HIAR days.

In 2003, HIAR reopened as Latse, with a refined aim and collection scope that makes it a unique collection in the world.

1997

Recognizing the importance of reading to the development of Tibetan education, culture, and people, Trace Foundation establishes the Publishing and Reading Program to support publishing houses to produce and distribute books in Tibetan. The first such partnership is with Beijing Nationalities Publishing House.

Students loved the Trace-supported books so much that many students wouldn’t return them, in some cases paying double or even triple late fees. According to Jigme Gyaltsen, principal of Jigme Gyaltsen School in Golok Prefecture, his school required students to pay double the price for each copy of a book distributed by Trace Foundation if they failed to return the books. Even then, many students eagerly paid double price for the books and refused to return them. When he asked why they did so, they replied: “The books are too interesting.”

Reading was not the established norm with the majority of Tibetan people in 1990s. The reasons?

High illiteracy rates, poor distribution, and a lack of readable materials in Tibetan. Although publishing houses started to publish books in Tibetan in 1952, most publications were either too professional or too dull. According to book order lists distributed by Tibetan publishing houses and departments and the Catalogue of Chinese Publications in Tibetan Studies, just 5 percent of all books published in the Tibetan language were children’s books, books translated from foreign languages, and reference books. Of these, there

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1997 were no books on foreign history, music, art, economics, science, or technology.

Without access to readable materials in their own language, Tibetans had few chances to explore their culture and the world at large through the joy of reading. The great majority of children did not have any books at all. In most Tibetan areas, especially in rural areas, almost all elementary schools and even many middle schools did not have libraries. Even those that had libraries were mostly stocked with out-of-date professional or technical materials or with books that were simply too difficult for school children.

Early on, Trace Foundation identified official publishing houses as potential vehicles to address the lack of Tibetan language books in terms of both the number and diversity of books. In 1996, Trace Foundation made its first formal contact with the Beijing Nationalities Publishing House (BNPH) and made an initial grant to the publishing house in 1997. Since then, Trace Foundation has developed relationships with Tsongön, Gansu, and Sichuan Nationalities Publishing Houses and implemented a number of projects.

The Beijing Nationalities Publishing House has remained its major partner. With Trace’s support, it has published and distributed nearly 1 million copies of more than 180 titles of books in the past twenty years.

More than 500,000 copies of children’s books and educational materials have been distributed free of charge to over 800 Tibetan elementary and 30 middle schools, as well as major higher educational institutes in Tibetan areas of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan, and Yunnan provinces, laying a basic foundation for the

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establishment of libraries and reading rooms.

The children’s books were selected after consultation of schoolteachers and students to better meet the needs of students. A series called Stories of Famous Businessmen introduced Tibetan children to everyone from Walt Disney and Bill Gates to Li Ka-shing and Zeng Xianzi.

Roaming the New World of Technology covered topics such as robots, medicine, and space exploration. In Roaming the New World of Science, students could learn about dinosaurs, plants, fish, the human body, weather, and much more.

The Illustrated Encyclopedia for Young People included sixteen titles. Originally written by a group of Italian educators, writers, and scholars, the series tells stories from the creation of the universe and evolution of life to the dramatic social, cultural, political, and economic changes that happened in the twentieth century, with lifelike illustrations on each page. This series systematically provided Tibetan children with comprehensive and fundamental knowledge of the world, as well as the fascinating stories of human activities and their consequences— topics never before covered in the history of Tibetan literature.

The enthusiastic reaction of students toward these newly published books clearly indicated that we were on to something: Creating lifelong readers meant providing interesting books, and the Tibetan language was more than capable of transferring modern knowledge and engaging readers.

Our work in children’s publications continued for the next twelve years. We continue to support cultural publications to this day.

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1998

The Byara Database is created The Byara Database is created to provide Tibetologists and other researchers around the world with a searchable database of secondary research in Tibetan language by scholars and researchers in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Lauran Hartley Tibetan Studies librarian, Columbia University The Byara Database provides access to the vast amount of research written by scholars in Tibetanlanguage academic and other journals in China since the 1980s. To this day, it remains the most comprehensive bibliographic tool available for searching titles, authors, keywords—and even abstracts. Many entries also include biographical information on the author.

Together with Alexandru Anton-Luca and Pasang Thackhhoe, I co-created this database in 1998 with an initial cache of 4,000 bibliographic records. Our purpose was to bridge the gap between the growing scholarship among Tibetan intellectuals in China and Western scholars who might otherwise be unaware of the valuable research being done in China.

Hosted and maintained by Latse Library since 2004, the Byara Database offers bibliographic and content details for more than 12,500 article titles from the leading journals in China today. The quality of the research and the wealth of findings are startling in some cases, far too undervalued outside the PRC. In this way, Byara gives voice to scholars in Tibet—who, for lack of English, are otherwise shut out of most academic discussions in the West.

The Byara database has been instrumental in my research on two projects: the history of the Jowo Shakyamuni and the history of Wencheng Gongzhu. Without the Byara Database, it would be extremely timeconsuming to stay informed of Tibetological research in the PRC. Cameron David Warner Professor, Aarhus University (Denmark)

In the age of easy online searches for journals and other serial runs, Byara is the only digital search engine to host modern Tibetan magazines and periodicals. It’s a real boon to scholars.

Gray Tuttle Professor, Columbia University

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1999

Trace creates economically oriented majors in Tibetan The Tibetan Medium Higher Education Institutional Development Initiative (TMHEIDI) is created to enlarge Tibetan departments and to help establish majors in the Tibetan language, such as business management, law, computer science, and medicine.

In the 1990s, the Tibetan education system was lacking. It did not directly extend from elementary through higher education institutions.

Limited recruitment by Tibetan departments of nationalities institutes and low potential of employment after graduation for those pursuing degrees in Tibetan Studies discouraged Tibetan parents from sending their children to Tibetan medium schools. Instead, the trend was to send children to Chinese schools as early as the primary level.

Tibetan higher education fared no better. All Tibetan Departments at nationalities institutes offered only courses such as history, literature, religion, language, and politics in Tibetan. Tibetan graduates were left with just two options: undergo vocational training or remain unemployed.

In 1999, that all changed.

Computer Sciences As a part of TM-HEIDI, more than a hundred computer instructors from fourteen schools underwent training and twenty-one instructors received master’s degrees from the Northwestern Polytechnical University in China. A group of Tibetan instructors who underwent computer training through HEIDI translated a college-level computer textbook into Tibetan in 2001. With qualified teachers and translated textbooks, TsongÜn Normal University was able to establish a Tibetan Computer Science Department and the TsongÜn Nationalities Institute to establish the computer science major in Tibetan.

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1999 Legal Studies Organized by TsongĂśn Law and Police College, a total of seventeen Tibetan instructors studied and received BA degrees from the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. In addition to training these instructors, a set of twelve college-level law textbooks were translated into the Tibetan language on everything from civil and criminal procedure law and economic law to private international law.

business management textbooks were translated into the Tibetan language, covering topics such as marketing, accounting, finance, human resources management, and much more. Through these efforts, the Northwest Nationalities Institute established the Business Management Major in Tibetan in 2003.

Tibetan Traditional Medical Education

Business Management Through TM-HEIDI, fourteen Tibetan instructors studied business management at the Science and Technology University of China and four of them received master’s degrees. A set of fourteen college-level

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Though there were four major Tibetan traditional medical colleges in Tibetan regions in the late 1990s, there were no systematically compiled textbooks for teaching and learning Tibetan medicine at any of these colleges. To address this issue, Trace supported TsongĂśn Tibetan Medical College to invite ninety-four of the most knowledgeable and well-respected

1999 doctors and scholars in the field of Tibetan medicine from all regions of Tibet to compile twenty-six college-level Tibetan medical textbooks from 2001 to 2005: among them, books on medical ethics, genetic studies, public health, pharmacology, pediatrics, surgery, epidemiology, and much more. Today, these textbooks are not only used by all Tibetan traditional medical institutes in China but are also the most-consulted resource at the Tibetan medical institutes in United States and India.

Western Medical Textbooks With Trace’s support, TsongÜn Tibetan Medical Institute invited ninety-six Tibetan and Western medical experts from Tibetan areas and translated twenty-eight titles of collegelevel Western medical textbooks into Tibetan,

including titles on organic chemistry, anatomy, microbiology, parasitology, ophthalmology, and much more. In 2005, TsongĂśn Tibetan Medical Institute was able to establish the Western Medical major in Tibetan language.

The Tibetan Medium Higher Education Institutional Development Initiative has changed the landscape of the Tibetan education system.

The newly established majors have created a wider range of disciplines for Tibetan students to learn much needed applied knowledge and skills to participate in the social, cultural, and economic development of Tibetan communities.

And in doing so, they have reinforced Tibetan medium elementary and secondary education by providing better opportunities to Tibetan students to pursue higher education.

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1999

First domestic scholarships awarded to students pursuing advanced degrees in China.

Two of our domestic scholarship recipients talk about what their studies meant.

In a field not just dominated by, but exclusively run by men, Tsokyi is among the first Tibetan gynecologists, trained both in the Westernand Tibetan-medicine traditions, with Trace Foundation’s support. Tsokyi had been a Tibetan medicine doctor at the Tibetan Medicine Hospital.

For the past thirteen years, she has worked as a Tibetan medicine doctor at the Tibetan Medicine Hospital, overcoming traditional biases again women practicing medicine and trailblazing as the first female doctor in her region. Today she is the most sought-out gynecologist in Xining.

The majority of the Tibetan rural population is still poor and their living standards are low. They can’t afford education, and their parents can’t help them. My brothers, sisters, and I couldn’t have pursued higher education without Trace Foundation. . . .

I believe that simply giving money to poor people is not the best means of supporting them. If you can instead support their children’s education—supporting even one child’s college tuition can make a big difference for the child, and even for the entire village. This can help to improve Tibetan communities as a whole. This is what Trace Foundation’s work means to me.

Tsokyi

INTERNATIONAL SCHOLARSHIPS DOMESTIC SCHOLARSHIPS

BY DEGREE 1999-2013

BY DEGREE 1999-2013

86 TOTAL

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4,764 TOTAL

6 VOCATIONAL TRAINING 1 POST-DOC 14 PHD 59 MASTER’S 5 BACHELOR’S 1 ASSOCIATE

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1

76 448 4,191

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VOCATIONAL TRAINING POST-DOC PHD MASTER’S BACHELOR’S ASSOCIATE

1999 Lhamo Tsering, a professor of chemistry at Qinghai Normal University, is the only Tibetan woman who holds a PhD in her field. She grew up in a nomadic family, herding cows, sheep, and horses in Haibei Prefecture, and went on to earn a master’s in chemistry and chemical engineering from Northwest Normal University and a PhD in natural medicinal chemistry from the China Academy of Sciences. Despite the many professional offers she received upon graduation, she returned to Qinghai to train other young Tibetans in science—a field where Tibetan women are largely underrepresented today.

Science is a very important subject, but we have very few Tibetan science teachers. And though Tibetan medicine is a very rich and comprehensive tradition, it is difficult to develop Tibetan medicine under current conditions—without contemporary knowledge, tools, or technology. I believe that this wonderful tradition should be preserved and promoted. Through Trace Foundation’s and the government’s support, I wanted to earn my PhD and provide the best education possible to our students Lhamo Tsering

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20 00 34

2000 $8.5 million invested

Opening up and preserving resources

Upon the tragic passing of Michael Aris, Trace Foundation provides support to the Michael Aris collection to refine, enhance, preserve, and organize its existing collection, and to expand its resources for scholars.

When you keep a book for four or five hundred years, the glue you use to attach a bookplate in the books—and how you apply the glue—can mean a lot, explains Charles Manson, the Tibetan Subject consultant librarian of the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford. He smiles as he holds up a paper bookplate that he personally glues into the inside cover of every book bought with Trace Foundation support.

Our work with the Bodleian began in 2000, after we learned of the tragically early passing of Michael Aris. Most people know Aris as the late husband to the Burmese Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. But Aris was also one of 35

2000 the world’s preeminent Tibetologists and experts on Bhutan.

Aris was only in his early twenties when he accepted an appointment as the private tutor for the royal family in Bhutan. He spent six years there, learning the national language, Dzongkha, and became an expert on the Himalayas. Before long, his interest extended to Tibet, inspiring him to write a study of Pema Lingpa and to co-found the International Association for Tibetan Studies (IATS). The organization was dedicated to promoting the study of Tibet from all disciplinary perspectives and to providing a forum at which both established and aspiring scholars can present original academic research. IATS conferences have since developed exponentially.

Aris’s accomplishments were manifold. Among them, he convened the Second International Conference on Tibetan Studies and edited the collected writings of Hugh Richardson on Tibetan history. From 1989, he was a fellow of St. Antony’s College in Oxford, where he taught Tibetan language and Tibetan Studies. However,

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before he could realize his ambition to establish Tibetan and Himalayan Studies at an institutional level at Oxford, he died at the young age of fiftythree. On his death, the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford received the generous donation of Michael Aris’s entire private library of Tibetological primary and secondary materials.

In 2000, Trace offered the Michael Aris Memorial Trust for Tibetan and Himalayan Studies the first of two grants in support of this collection.

With this funding, the Libraries were able to hire Ralf Kramer, a Tibetologist from Hamburg, to refine, enhance, preserve, and organize the existing collection, and to expand its resources for scholars. In 2009 Charles Manson took up position of Tibetan librarian left vacant after Ralf’s return to Germany. Charles has worked to complete the Trace grant with the last Trace acquisitions being made in 2013.

The Aris Library for Tibetan and Himalayan Studies collection, one of the few collections in the Bodleian Libraries that is an “access” or browsing library, focuses on material in Tibetan language, and as such is a vital part of the

Bodleian’s Tibetan language holdings. In addition to modern Tibetan publications, the Bodleian holds a collection of Tibetan manuscripts numbering 200 items, the earliest dating from 1688.

Over a period of thirteen years, the funds from Trace were also used to purchase • 1,082 books for the library in Tibetan, English, and other European languages.

• 10,000 Tibetan texts from Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center.

• about 36,000 microfiches of Tibetan works acquisitioned by the Library of Congress in India, Nepal, and Bhutan from the 1960s to 1986.

• and much more.

Trace Foundation’s financial involvement with the Aris Library has been a blessing for Tibetan studies at Oxford and the carefully glued bookplates will remain where they were put, a fitting memento of a fruitful partnership.

Charles Manson Tibetan subject consultant librarian of the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford

With the generous support of Trace Foundation, it has been possible for the Bodleian Libraries to build one of the major Tibetan library collections in Europe and support Oxford University’s growing research and teaching needs in Tibetan Studies.

Dr. Gillian Evison Head of the Bodleian Libraries’ Oriental Section and Indian Institute librarian

Right: photograph © Nick Cistone Left: photograph of Michael Aris courtesy of Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (2012.119.1618)

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20 01 38

2001

The Yak Cheese Project The Yak Cheese Project begins providing sustainable income for nomads through traditional work. Jigme Gyaltsen partners with Trace Foundation to establish Snowland Treasure Co., Ltd., which makes Europeanstyle cheese from the milk of the dri, or female yak, incorporating traditional Tibetan dairy production practices with guidance from international cheese artisans.

Golok Prefecture in southwestern Qinghai, situated in the high Bayankala Mountain Range (Tib. བ་ཡན་ཧ་རི), is sparsely populated by a few pastoralists who carry on a centuries-old way of life. Dramatic changes throughout Asia have brought significant new challenges to this remote part of the world. Concerns about overgrazing and environmental degradation in the rest of China, coupled with Golok’s important location at the source of the Yellow River (Tib. རྨ་ཆུ།), have lead to new restrictions on the size of herds, fencing of open grasslands, and the relocation of nomadic families.

The project was designed to help the nomadic population of Golok make a genuine choice about continuing their way of life by presenting a viable economic alternative to relocation.

Working with Jigme Gyaltsen, a senior monk at Ragya Monastery and the founder of Golok

Prefecture’s Jigme Gyaltsen Welfare School, Trace Foundation constructed the Snowland Yak Cheese Factory in 2001. The factory bought excess milk from local nomadic families, providing them with a new source of income. The milk was then processed, using European-production techniques, and developed with the help of the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity and the Regional Government of Valle D’Aosta. The resulting variety of cheeses could then be shipped to both foreign and domestic markets.

In 2003 the project’s main objective became providing financial support for two local schools through the sale of the Snowland Cheese Factory’s products. To this day, proceeds from the factory support not only the Jigme Gyaltsen Welfare School but also the Prairie Talent Girls School, which has provided free education in modern and traditional Tibetan subjects to over eight hundred children from nomadic families.

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2001

In collaboration with the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and the Henry Street Settlement, Trace supports fourmonth residencies in Brooklyn for four artists from Lhasa: Tsering Dorje, Tserang Dhundrup, Gade, and Bianba Qiongda.

Images courtesy of Gade and Tserang Dhundrup

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2001 This project was dedicated to introducing Tibetan artists to contemporary art in New York City through experiences with artists, art professionals, and art institutions and to establishing a dialogue between artists of both countries to promote understanding and future cultural exchange.

In Tibet, you would never have this opportunity to see so many exhibitions.

Before I came, I had a certain prediction that we would probably be able to see lots and lots of things and artwork but that I wouldn’t be greatly affected on a personal or spiritual level. However the opposite was true when I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and saw the Ancient Greek exhibit, as well as things from the Renaissance and from Picasso’s work.

We’ve seen so many things. In New York City you have everything, even the things you would never think of in your dreams, people have already created here. For example, the environment in Times Square is completely different from the environment in Tibet. So, different environments, different cultures, will of course have completely different viewpoints. Tibetan artists have a very special kind of environment. And what we come in contact with in many, many aspects is very traditional. Temples, and the thangka paintings, wall paintings, as well as folk art. But towards contemporary art comparatively, we have very little opportunity to directly have contact or participate with contemporary art. In New York we got to see so much directly in the museums and galleries.

Gade

Tserang Dhundrup

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2001

Trace Foundation awards Handicap International, an international organization that works alongside people with disabilities a grant: “Development of Tibetan Sign Language and Support Structures.”

Handicap International

In 2001, with the support of Trace Foundation, a project aiming at supporting the development of a Tibetan Sign Language (TSL) started in Lhasa.

During its first phase (2001–2003), the project mainly aimed at developing and formalizing a sign language specific to the Tibetan context. To do so, natural signs that were used by the Tibetan deaf community were gathered by the project’s team. Each one of the gathered signs was then discussed with a group of deaf persons in order to “elect” the most appropriate signs and, as needed, create missing signs. These signs were then formalized in pictured dictionaries and distributed throughout the deaf community.

Even though a Chinese sign language already exists, it made so much sense to develop a Tibetan Sign Language.

Indeed, sign language reflects a local context that cannot be easily expressed by using a signs that have been developed in a different context.

D. Member of the Tibetan Deaf Association

Photos © Handicap International

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2001 Another important activity at that time was to train Tibetan deaf persons, as well as their family members and communities, on using the Tibetan Sign Language.

Now that we are all using the same language, I feel less isolated since I can communicate with many more people from the deaf community and in my family T. A Tibetan deaf person who learned Tibetan Sign Language with her parents

Following this first project phase, the project continued working on the development and dissemination of Tibetan Sign Language, but it also started to work on other types of activities, such as awareness-raising activities on issues related to deafness.

More than ten years after its first steps, it’s clear that Tibetan Sign Language was a success: not only did it allow for the development, formalization, and spread of a sign language adapted to the local context, it also provided a means of communication for deaf persons, a cornerstone for access to services.

Most important, the project empowered a whole community, one that represents about a fourth of the people with disabilities in the Tibet Autonomous Region. The Tibetan Deaf Association, along with the two other Disabled Persons’ Organizations in Tibet, has become a significant resource and model for all activities and services implemented by the other Handicap International projects in the Tibet Autonomous Region. It is one of the most successful projects ever implemented in the region.

Today, the Tibetan Sign Language project has become the Tibetan Deaf Association project.

The association still supports the development of the Tibetan Sign Language but also provides access to vocational training and employment opportunities by referring its members to vocational training centers and special schools.

It also supports them to set up their own businesses through access to small grants.

I now feel that my voice is being heard and considered thanks to the Tibetan Deaf Association. It is good for us to gather on regular basis to share our concerns and ideas about overcoming the challenges we face. The association is a good place to connect with people we probably would have never met without the association.

T. Member of the Tibetan Deaf Association

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20 02 44

2002

A training program for English teachers Trace Foundation begins supporting English-teacher training programs through the Tibetan English Teacher Training Project.

In Tibetan areas, high quality English instruction is stymied by the short supply of English instructors. Trace Foundation's Tibetan English Teacher Training Project, a five-year initiative, aimed to improve the availability and quality of English instruction in Tibetan regions. Through this project, the Foundation supported teacher training degree programs, the publication and distribution of English-language teaching materials, and the placement and maintenance of native English-speaking teachers in universitylevel English degree programs.

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2002 A Young Tibetan Man and His Dreams Jahua Dorjee Like many other Tibetans from rural areas, I grew up in a small village. The harvest and herds were totally dependent on rainfall. And because drought was constant, tuition and the related costs were an enormous expense for my family.

My sister and brother sacrificed their chance to study and began working at home and in construction for supplemental income.

When I graduated from Malho (Huangnan) Prefecture Teacher Training School in 2002, the job market was very bad, and further studies would have been impossible without a two-year scholarship from Trace Foundation that allowed me to enroll in the English Training Program at TsongÜn Normal University. This program’s aim is to train qualified Tibetans to become English teachers. I began to learn English intensively with thirty other

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students at an intermediate level. From the start, I began brainstorming ways I could use what I learned there to help others who hadn’t had the chance to study as I had. This encouraged me to learn more, to think more seriously about how to make my life meaningful.

I wanted to travel the Plateau and learn about areas I had only ever heard of. Using my English skills, I soon found a job as a tour guide at a travel agency in Chengdu. Traveling to different regions on the Plateau, I witnessed the circumstances and challenges many rural Tibetan communities were facing: poor education, high illiteracy, poverty, and lack of access to information are a few of the most common. Local people were marginalized in the business sector and in modern development despite the availability of resources; all opportunities were seized upon by outsiders. Tourism is just one example, and I began to focus my mind on this industry.

2002 In 2007, a colleague and I registered our own travel agency, the Qinghai Himalaya Travel Company.

We began by hiring Tibetan staff and collaborating with leading tour companies abroad, taking tour groups all over the Tibetan Plateau and its neighboring provinces in southern and western China. All our team members joined us, knowing the social challenges of Tibetans nowadays. We all believe that the participation of local individuals and communities, that equal competition with others, will bring benefits not only to participants but also to our own company.

I’ve never stopped thinking about other business opportunities for Tibetans. Computer use among Tibetans has exploded as more and more computer programs are developed for Tibetan language, creating new business opportunities for Tibetans in the IT industry. Still, very few Tibetans are prepared for this field. My next dream is for a group of Tibetans to set up a business to

serve Tibetan language users in the IT industry—whether in website design, advertising, printing, or publication. Demand for these services is increasing, but few Tibetans are working in these fields.

While I know I will face numerous hardships, I am ready to confront them with full confidence. I’m always looking for a personal challenge myself, always looking to do something meaningful, as much for local communities as for myself. This is what I learned at school, particularly in the English Teacher Training Project. I will always be grateful to Trace Foundation, which provided me the opportunity to learn English. Trace Foundation changed my life.

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20 03 48

2003

Latse Library opens Why “Latse”?

The term latse connotes a mountain peak or a high place. Latse Library was conceived to represent the culture of the highest place on earth: Tibet. Latse also refers to the custom of erecting ritual mounds of stones, prayer flags, and implements on mountain passes and other high places—a custom common to all Tibetan regions and practiced by all Tibetans. The library collection, which covers the lands and culture marked by latse, highlights the richness and diversity of Tibetan culture.

Erecting latse is a custom practiced from preBuddhist times until the present. Contemporary Tibetan culture is deeply rooted in the past.

Through its focus on contemporary times, Latse celebrates the strength of Tibetan culture—past present and future.

The focus of our library’s collections and programs is contemporary Tibet— indeed the original name of our library was Latse Contemporary Tibetan Cultural Library, which was later shortened to simply ‘Latse Library.’ In Tibet and around the world there are many library collections of Tibetan classical literature. However, Latse is the first library to focus on resources for the study of modern Tibetan society and culture.

Pema Bhum Library director

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2003

Trace Foundation has really carved out a unique presence—not just in New York, but really in the world outside Tibet. Latse is a tremendous resource.

Elliot Sperling The Department of Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University

Five of Latse’s Most Treasured Resources Head Librarian Kristina Dy-Liacco 1. An audio recording of the Tibetan classical music genre nangma töshé, circa 1930s From among our holdings of nearly 7,000 audiovisual materials, the rarest is an audio recording of nangma töshé by the Nangma Kyiduk in Lhasa from the late 1930s. This particular recording features Acho Namgyel, a blind musician whose popularity and legend lives on to this day.

2. Letter from the Thirteenth Dalai Lama to an unknown recipient, 1933 Although the recipient of this letter of reply from the Thirteenth Dalai Lama is unknown, it can be inferred that the addressee was a Westerner, perhaps British or American. The letter mentions Theodore and Kermit Roosevelt, sons of President Theodore Roosevelt (the two had traveled in Tibet and India in the 1920s and had met the Thirteenth Dalai Lama), and the anticipation of gifts they are sending to His Holiness.

3. Phuntsok Dhumkhang Photo Collection Just as we began to develop our Photo Archive a few years ago, musician and teacher Phuntsok

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2003 Dhumkhang graciously shared with us his personal collection of photographs—some old, some new. Among the earliest are images from his days as an instructor in some of the first schools and groups established in Mussoorie, Darjeeling, and Dharamsala. Phuntsok Dhumkhang taught music and drama, and the photographs of teachers and students engaged in performances, field trips, and practice sessions capture the spirit with which the Tibetan community moved forward in establishing new lives in India.

4. The Silent Holy Stones 35-millimeter reels The Silent Holy Stones was the first feature film by Tibetan filmmaker Pema Tseden, who has since become one the foremost figures in cinema from Tibet. Even as filmmakers and movie theaters are moving away from the print film format, we still receive requests from film festivals and other institutions to borrow our 35-millimeter copy for special screenings. Some prefer the unique qualities of print film, and feel that the very act of handling the reels and projecting a 35-millimeter as being theatrical, an event in itself. The classic film reels symbolize the foundations laid down by Pema Tseden—and his all-Tibetan film crew—with a new vision of filmmaking, reinventing cinema about Tibet and Tibetans, and firmly making it their own.

5. A Story Book for Tibetan Boys and Girls /

ལྷ་མོའི་རྣམ་ཐར།

Published in 1922 in Calcutta, India, this small book compiled by Flora Beal Shelton, is one of, if not the, earliest children’s book in the Tibetan language. This rare tome, elusive in the marketplace, is a treasured addition to our wellregarded Children’s Collection.

Bottom right: photo © Peter Aaron/Esto

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2003

Trace provides its first grant to Humchen Chenaktsang, a scholar of the ngakpa tradition of Tantric Buddhism— and the first of many grants to Ngakmang, the institute he cofounded in 1998.

Since 1994, Humchen Chenakstang has worked as an editor in the Literature and Arts section of the Tibetan-language newspaper Qinghai Tibetan News. At the Ngakmang Institute, he has collected and edited rare ngakpa texts, which he publishes in a series entitled Ngakmang Collected Works.

To date, the series comprises thirty volumes, many of which have been funded by Trace Foundation.

Humchen Chenakstsang The Ngakmang Research Center was founded in 1998 to publish the ancient books of ngakpa— to recover those damaged and develop those undamaged—edit their histories, as well as to renovate the Ngakmang library, reading house, and practice temples. In 2003, I heard that Trace Foundation was supporting publishing projects. I had just written a history of Rebkong ngakpa, so I applied for support for the project. That was the beginning of our partnership.

At the time, I had little experience preparing proposals, and I had received little support from others. After Trace supported the publication of The History of Ngakpa, we began implementing other projects together. Since these first projects,

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I have published more than thirty books, a third of which were supported by Trace Foundation.

Books about ngakpa don’t hold a high place in Tibetan society, and for a long time, no one took care of them. It is important to publish and protect books like the works of Maksar Gengsang Topden Wangbo, a monk of the Gelukpa sect who later studied the Nyingmapa tradition and established a monastery of ngakpa. He wrote many books about the ngakpa, and his works are invaluable. We’ve collected all of them, because I knew if we did not, they would soon be lost.

Now an increasing number of people are interested in reading about ngakpa. Medical students studying the ngakpa tell me that the publication of these books has made a great difference for them, and around the world, many others have echoed this sentiment. We have distributed books to the ngakpa communities, in particular to the temples, academics, lamas, schools, and research centers.

Without Trace Foundation’s support, we could not have published these important books.

When any one of them is not published, it’s a big loss. And none of the books were acquired without hard work.

I will forever appreciate the support of Trace Foundation. It is important to protect culture, spoken and written language. It is important to love our own culture and work hard for it now.

2003

The Universal Tibetan Font Converter (UTFC) is developed.

If you’ve ever used the Tibetan keyboard or the Microsoft Himalaya font in Windows, you’re one of the millions of users who can thank Tashi Tsering.

Hailing from a farming family in Gyalthang County in Diqing Prefecture, Tashi first worked on a computer in 1986 while he was studying an early computer language, Fortran 77, at Tsinghua University.

This work changed the direction of his life forever.

He and his brothers and sisters didn’t have many toys growing up. Mostly, he says, “we just made toys out of earth and wood.” His first memory of technology? Going to his friend’s house to listen to the radio, though he didn’t own his own until high school.

After graduating from Tsinghua, Tashi Tsering received a scholarship from Trace in 2001 to study for a master’s degree in computer science at the University of Virginia.

As he completed his studies, we awarded Tashi another grant—this time to develop a Universal Tibetan Font Converter.

“We developed UTFC because there are many legacy Tibetan encodings and fonts, which makes it difficult for Tibetan users to exchange Tibetan data and take advantage of old Tibetan data for present usage.”

This work wasn’t without challenges. With seventeen Tibetan legacy fonts, Tashi had to take into account 272 conversion directions in every kind of file—from .txt to .rtf to .html—on many different operating systems. But the result was worth it. Today, the UTFC is helping Tibetans around the globe convert thousands of Tibetan-language files and encodings.

Today, Tashi is working on developing more Tibetan fonts and another Tibetan keyboard. He plans to complete a project that includes the development of seventeen Tibetan fonts, two Tibetan keyboards, and a Tibetan spell- and grammar-check.

The UTFC has been maintained by Tashi Tsering with full support from Trace Foundation since 2003. The converter provides the Tibetanlanguage research and publishing community with a free tool for converting files between different Tibetan encoding and transliteration schemes with different file formats.

It can be accessed, free of charge, at www. trace.org/utfc, and is also available on Trace’s GitHub account for anyone interested in further developing it.

My time at UVA was a great experience.

Although the work was hard, my family and I really enjoyed our time in Charlottesville.

I learned a lot from the school. Without my studies, I wouldn’t have the career or success I do today. I was fully able to concentrate on my studies. I didn’t have to worry about tuition or my family.

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2003 What the UTFC Users Are Saying

Without the UTFC, it would be necessary to re-enter text, a very time-consuming process—both in typing and then in proof reading–a process that requires a relatively high level of language skill. People with these skills are scarce and their time and talent is precious in a community such as ours.

The UTFC helps me to rescue and recycle all relevant teaching materials written in the Sambhota font— grammar exercises, stories, plays, stories, poems, extracts from articles, etc. Without the UTFC, a very large part of my earlier resources developed and accumulated for the teaching and learning of Tibetan language would have been lost.

Bill Spangle Associate teacher, Kagyu Changchub Chuling, Portland, Oregon

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T. D. Gonkatsang Oriental Institute, University of Oxford

2003

Trace Foundation hosts the first of more than one hundred events, bringing together dozens of researchers, development workers, musicians, artists, writers, and more. Through our Children’s Class, Tibetan language classes, conferences, art talks, screenings, concerts, and much more, public programming at Trace is exploring and celebrating the vitality and uniqueness of Tibetan communities.

2003

Latse Library publishes its first volume of the Latse Newsletter (now Latse Journal) to promote its collections and spread awareness of the library’s programs and services. In engaging the community, it aims to represent and highlight modern and secular traditions that are not covered elsewhere.

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In time for the Tenth Seminar of the International Association of Tibetan Studies in Oxford, England, the library staff, along with Guest Literary Features Editor Lauran Hartley and contributors from around the world, produced the inaugural issue of Latse Library Newsletter.

It was envisioned as an annual periodical that would feature news of the library, its programs, collections, and acquisitions; a literary portion devoted to contemporary Tibetan literature; book reviews; a selection from the world of Western literary theory translated into Tibetan for the benefit of Tibetan readers to whom access to such resources might be limited; and a translated selection from contemporary Tibetan writers for the benefit of an audience that transcended Tibetan readers. Edited and designed in-house, the full-color, bilingual English-Tibetan publication— the first of its kind—was highly anticipated and warmly received by the academic community and general readers alike.

2003 Over the years, the roster of contributors has come to include notable scholars, cultural figures, and artists working on contemporary Tibetan culture and literature today, as is reflected in the rich, diverse content of the publication.

Great efforts continue in the distribution, free of charge, of both print and digital editions as widely as possible. We ship boxes of each new volume to schools, libraries, and individuals around the world, into Tibet, India, and beyond. Avid readers often send in messages inquiring when the next issue will come out. Library Director and Editor in Chief Pema Bhum notes, “Some readers have expressed frustration when an issue is late, referring to the absent newsletter as a toripo (mtho ris po), someone who has died and is dearly missed. This kind of sentiment and positive feedback encourages us to continue producing new issues.”

With the establishment of a general Foundation newsletter, Künpen Tamsar (meaning “news from Trace”), in 2008, which covered the news of Latse, the library publication fine-tuned its content to focus solely on literature, literary theory, history, and contemporary culture. This change was reflected in the adoption of a new title with our most recent volume to simply Latse Journal.

By continuing to work with leading figures in the field as guest editors, and featuring contributions from important figures in Tibetan academic, artistic, and cultural circles, the journal is certain to remain a strong and welcome presence in the world of Tibetan publications.

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2003

Trace Foundation celebrates the 100th anniversary of a Tibetan legend’s birth with the Gendun Chopel Centennial Conference November 7–9, 2003

Trained as a religious man, Gendun Chopel challenged tradition, while steeped in it . . . He is often referred to as the first modern Tibetan scholar, and he takes center stage in the discussion, and debate, on what Tibetan modernity means.

Andrea E. Soros

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Gendun Chopel (1903–1951) is widely regarded as one of the most important Tibetan figures of the twentieth century, famous for his skills as a poet and infamous for his controversial views.

In November 2003 a remarkable event at Latse Library brought together from all over the world Tibetans who had known Gendun Chopel, as students, friends, and family members, as well as American, European, Chinese, and Tibetan scholars of Gendun Chopel’s life and works.

Since then, we have published both a book and a digital collection of conference transcripts. We invite you to check out the transcripts, which are now available on our website at trace.org/ latse-library/special-collections/gendunchopel alongside additional videos, photos, and interviews. The book, Gendun Chopel: Tibet’s First Modern Artist, with essays by Donald Lopez and published by Serindia, brings together the many insights gained at the centennial conference and is available through Amazon and Serindia.

The aim of both publications is to provide a comprehensive overview of Gendun Chopel’s life and works, and to celebrate his art.

Gendun Chopel as depicted by twelve artists of the Gendun Choephel Artists’ Guild 59

20 04 60

2004

Trace supports the Tibetan Traditional Medicine Project Trace Foundation dedicates $671,202 to the Tibetan Traditional Medicine Project, providing medical training in clinic management, medicinal-herb recognition, and documentation of traditional Tibetan medical practices.

With a history of approximately 2,500 years, Tibetan medicine is one of the oldest indigenous traditions in Tibetan culture. It is a repository of rich cultural and botanical knowledge and is widely respected within Tibetan communities, as it is a form of culturally congruent, affordable health care.

Despite increasing government support for Tibetan medicine, by 2000 the Tibet Autonomous Region had a mere 500 beds in Tibetan-medicine hospitals and 1,100 formally trained Tibetan-medicine doctors, serving a population well over two million. In rural Nakchu Prefecture, only 113 Tibetan-medicine doctors had achieved the minimum certification (a zhongzhuan degree, equivalent to a U.S. associate’s degree) required to practice medicine.

More than half of the medical personnel in the prefecture had received only short-term training, ranging from two weeks to six months.

Recognizing the dire state of health care in Tibetan communities, Trace Foundation began working to support the tradition of Tibetan medicine with a variety of initiatives across the Tibetan Plateau.

The Traditional Tibetan Medicine Project, a three-year initiative, was designed to strengthen Tibetan medicine and provide high-quality training for health workers who could in turn provide affordable health care to the people of Nakchu Prefecture in the Tibet Autonomous Region.

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2004 In partnership with educational and government institutions, this project

• • • •

Trained 72 Tibetan medicine health care workers.

Helped 98 Tibetan medicine health care workers earn degrees in Traditional Tibetan Medicine.

Distributed 72 sets of medical training materials and medicine kits.

Compiled a comprehensive catalogue of indigenous medicinal plants.

One alumnus of Trace’s Traditional Tibetan Medicine program, Sonam Tenzin, went on to set up a clinic with six rooms and two classrooms, where he has provided literacy instruction to more than 200 people. Since 2005, he’s treated 4,000 patients.

Traditional Tibetan medicine does not only cure all kinds of disease but also prevents disease. That’s why I’m dedicated to health education. Traditional Tibetan medicine not only passes on traditional knowledge but benefits humankind, too.

Learning it and teaching it—these are my sole missions in life.

Sonam Tenzin

Through the continuing efforts of Sonam Tenzin, and others like him, the millennia-old traditions of Tibetan medicine are offering new hope for the future for rural residents across the Tibetan Plateau.

To read more about traditional Tibetan medicine, check out the article “Reviving Tibetan Medicine” at www.trace.org.

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2004

Latse Library purchases over 500 early Chinese Communist Party and PRC government publications in the Tibetan language on government policy, ideology, and political systems—vital documents for better understanding modern Tibet, and the ideas, language, and other forces that shaped it.

Due to small print runs, cheap print quality, and other forces that pose challenges to collecting publications from some of the most tumultuous decades of Tibetan history—the 1950s, the Cultural Revolution era, and early years of reforms in the 1980s—a great number of the books have since become very rare. Acquisition work for these materials was slow in the beginning, but in 2004, the library made a major purchase of over five hundred books of publications of the Nationalities Publishing House in Beijing, with publication dates ranging from the late 1940s to the late 1990s.

The collection has become one of the most complete in the world. A digitization project focusing on this collection is nearly complete and will enable researchers and the general reader alike easier access to this unique set of resources.

After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, as the Chinese Communist government was securing control of Tibetan areas in the 1950s, it faced the challenge of integrating these regions both administratively and ideologically. In order to further this aim, the party offices that had been established through Amdo, Central Tibet, and Kham, together with regional publishing houses, set out to translate a mass of Chinese administrative documents and ideological materials.

At a time when many institutions were focusing on religious texts, Latse Library recognized the importance of these kinds of books for future research, and set out to systematically and comprehensively acquire these largely overlooked publications.

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2004

Trace initiates the Tibetan Medium Schools Support Initiative, a three-year program intended to challenge a trend of struggling Tibetan schools and promote Tibetan-language education.

In 2002, for the first time, senior middle school graduates were given the option of taking the national college entrance exam in Tibetan.

To prepare Tibetan students for these exams and to strengthen the education system in Sichuan and Qinghai provinces overall, we

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Donated 24,000 library books to 38 primary schools and 7 middle school libraries.

Provided continuing education for 34 junior middle school teachers in 8 subjects, 12 senior middle school teachers in 3 subjects, and 55 teachers in curriculum development.

Instructed 230 teachers in new methodology in student-centered teaching.

Trained 823 Tibetan-medium graduates for college entrance exams: during each year of the project, we conducted short-term enrichment classes for recent Tibetan-medium graduates to prepare them for new Tibetanmedium college entrance exams.

Produced a Tibetan-language primer.

Today, we still hear from primary-school teachers who tell us they continue to use the studentcentered teaching methodology they learned every day.

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The training I received through the Tibetan Medium School Support Initiative was not just one-of-a-kind, it has also been the most helpful I’ve experienced.

A Tibetan primary-and middle-school teacher of ten years and alumnus of the program

2004

The Qinghai Integrated Rural Development and Primary Health Care Projects are born.

In the often harsh climate of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, numerous factors converge to keep rural families in poverty: poor healthcare systems, limited local water sources, a disproportionate labor burden on women, restricted access to and quality of education, low income, and challenging agricultural conditions. Over three years, the QIRD and QPHC Projects worked with villages in Bayen/Hualong County to address locals’ needs while maintaining their traditional ways of life.

Through community-driven activities, the projects

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Built or improved 12 drinking water and irrigation systems, reducing health risks, increasing agricultural production, and lightening women’s burden in water collection.

Constructed or expanded 13 primary schools.

Promoted women’s literacy by enrolling 114 older girls in primary school and vocational training and supporting 434 women to complete literacy classes.

Spurred economic growth by providing microloans to 60 women and small business training to 220 people from 11 villages.

Increased access to and improved the quality of health care by training 5 health care managers, equipping 61 clinics with basic medical supplies, and training 94 health workers in emergency medicine, epidemiology, Traditional Tibetan Medicine, and much more.

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2005

$30.5 million invested

Latse hosts its first Children’s Class Seeing a need for a program geared toward young Tibetan children, Lauran Hartley, a parent and Tibetan Studies Librarian at Columbia University; Tashi Yangzom, a Tibetan medical doctor; and Kristina Dy-Liacco, librarian here at Trace Foundation, create the Children’s Class to connect more than 120 Tibetan children with their heritage.

Every two weeks, for a few hours, area youngsters can be immersed in Tibetan language, games, songs, stories, and crafts in the relaxed and cozy atmosphere of the Children’s Corner in the library’s Reading Room.

The class was conceived in response to a number of parents in the local community who voiced their concerns for early education and cultural learning opportunities in Tibetan for their younger children. The New York City area already has an excellent weekend class for Tibetan children, but enrollment is for ages seven and older.

We developed the Children’s Class as a way to meet the demand for a class for very young children, but also as a way for our new library to engage the local community while carrying out the mission and aims of Trace Foundation.

Kristina Dy-Liacco Head librarian

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2005 The program was popular from the beginning.

Families came from as far as Philadelphia to take part. Pema Sommer of Manhattan has been bringing her two children to the class since it began. Her younger son, Tennor, who accompanied his sister as an infant, has since grown into a regular student who talks about it constantly.

Trace’s program is the only option for our children to learn Tibetan culture and language, and at the same time socialize with other Tibetan children in NYC. Pema Sommer

The program’s success comes not only from parents’ commitment and enthusiasm but also from the excellent instructors who have taught over the years. Currently, the program is under the charge of Tsering Choedron. Originally from Lhasa, Tsering has a strong dedication to early

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childhood education and an ability to establish immediate rapport with the students. She has been the instructor of the Children’s Class for the last few years, first as a volunteer and now as a Foundation intern, and has developed a curriculum for the program that offers the class better structure and well-roundedness. Tsering stresses the importance of the library’s holdings of children’s literature and learning tools as a strong basis upon which the Children’s Class can develop. Many of the resources she’s used over the years will soon be available for download from our website.

Latse is a great place for young children in the city to explore the rich culture of Tibet through its collection of children’s books, traditional Tibetan games, programs designed for the children, and so on.

Tsering Choedron Instructor of the Children’s Class

2005 The children’s literature collection at Latse Library is parallel to none. Nestled invitingly on the shelves within reach of small arms, and presided over by a large fuzzy stuffed toy yak in the brightly decorated Children’s Corner, the collection offers young patrons a window to the world of Tibet and the Himalayas.

Comprising over four hundred books in Tibetan, English, and other languages, the holdings consist of picture books, young adult fiction, works of reference, folk tales, and graphic novels, on all subjects related to Tibet.

The collection provides a solid foundation from which our Children’s Class can draw inspiration for lesson plans, activities, and crafts. The library also has a wide variety of educational games, toys, textbooks, and other educational resources, which we invite you to explore, whether or not you have little ones of your

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more—over 120 publications in total.

Coloring pages of the Tibetan alphabet.

Audio-visual resources including songs, children’s performances, short films, and cartoons like Tom and Jerry and The Fox & Hound dubbed in Tibetan.

Traditional games: the popular dice and shell game of sho; sheep knuckles or abchug, and paper kites.

Story-telling videos: created in-house, these videos feature storytelling in Tibetan with audio in Lhasa and Amdo dialects.

Sand-paper letters: a fundamental tool in the Montessori method, these wooden cards produced in India allow children to learn each letter by sight and touch.

Roughly 180 children’s books published in Bhutan in the Dzongkha language.

own.

Here are just some of the highlights: • Reference books on science, nature, and technology; folk tales and other stories; textbooks with teachers’ editions, and

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2005

Organized by Trace Foundation with the Modern Tibetan Studies Program at Columbia, a Losar concert features artists from both inside and outside the Tibetan Plateau and legends in the music world: Palgön, Lobsang Palden Tawo, and Tsering Topten Nelung.

On a cold but bright afternoon in February 2005, and just in time for the Tibetan New Year, three giants of contemporary Tibetan music assembled in front of a sold-out crowd in the Miller Theater on the campus of Columbia University.

For many among the local Tibetan community, it was the first time to see in person the composers and singers of beloved songs of their youth. Emotions of nostalgia ran high as Nelung and Tawo presented older classics, and when Palgön (a singer and dranyen, or Tibetan lute player) performed the opening strums of “Akhu Pema,” the first song of his set, the hall

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erupted into cheers and applause. After this song became popular across the Tibetan Plateau, it inspired countless young musicians to copy and innovate the style.

It was vastly rewarding to share with a large audience the works of these three masters, whose work embodies our own commitment to celebrating the vibrancy and continuity of contemporary Tibetan culture. On another level, the concert was an event of pure enjoyment.

As one Tibetan concert-goer breathlessly exclaimed after the concert, “This is the most fun I’ve had since moving to New York.”

2005

October 14–16, Latse Library welcomes eight experts from around the world to take part in a landmark event: a workshop—the first of its kind—devoted to Tibetan calligraphy, calligraphic art, and Tibetan writing culture.

The workshop was conceived to recognize tradition and explore innovation in Tibetan writing and, in doing so, to make these calligraphic arts better known to a wider audience. As with all of our programs, it was also our goal to bring together calligraphers of different backgrounds, life experiences, and styles, so that the workshop could fully represent the past and present of Tibetan calligraphy, inspiring younger generations and new audiences with the beauty and importance of this medium so that it may be continued into the future.

The three-day event, which was open to the public and free of charge, included demonstrations of various calligraphy styles and traditions—from uchen (print) to “seed” script—paper-making and ink-making, panel discussions, and an exhibition, as well as opportunities for visitors to meet calligraphers and learn techniques firsthand. The presentations ranged from the fundamental to the fanciful.

audience, the beauty and value of Tibetan calligraphy if it is to survive.

In addition to hosting a number of events over the past decades celebrating Tibetan calligraphy and paper arts, we have also proudly offered grants to leaders in these traditions. One such grant was awarded in 1996 to Paper Road/Tibet, a project that aims to research the history of paper-making in Tibet, revitalize the tradition of paper-making by hand in Tibet, and encourage and introduce new methods of recycling clean wastepaper and alternative fibers.

To learn more about the extraordinary Tibetan traditions of calligraphy, paper-making, and sand letters, check out “A Tour Through Tibet’s Writing Arts” at www.trace.org.

The event culminated in a panel, during which the calligraphers of the older generation considered the fate of Tibetan calligraphy and handwriting in the face of the increasing prevalence of uchen in modern publications and the Internet.

After much discussion and sharing of views, the speakers unanimously emphasized the importance of impressing upon younger generations of Tibetans, as well as a world 71

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2006

The Oral History Archive is born Trace begins conducting interviews for what will become the Oral History Archive, an ambitious effort to document the legacy of Tibetan culture for future generations.

After centuries of near isolation, rapid change has come to the Tibetan Plateau. The past fifty years have witnessed dramatic changes in Tibetan ways of life.

The first phase of the Oral History Archive focused on the older generation of Tibetans living in exile in India and the Himalayan region. We traveled to Tibetan settlements and communities in India—including Sikkim and Ladakh—and Nepal, conducting interviews with individuals from all walks of life.

With stories from ex-Tibetan cabinet ministers to musicians, this portion of the archive represents both the pre- and post-1959 history of Tibet, local and personal stories, specific events, folk literature and traditions, as well as life in refugee settlements.

We then worked with Dr. Tenzing Chhodak to create records for the several hundred hours of interviews, with summaries and keywords, to

make the collection more accessible to users.

The second phase of the Oral History Archive involved the acquisition of 150 hours of video from Amdo documenting cultural events, festivals, and everyday life and customs.

Staff also conducted interviews in-house with visitors to the Foundation, and with elder Tibetans living in the United States.

In 2013, we released the first oral histories on our website. Currently we are featuring subtitled clips, with full-length versions to be released in batches.

Although not yet subtitled, each released history will include a summary and tags.

To date, the Oral History Archive includes more than three hundred interviews, documenting local and individual histories and religious, artistic, and cultural practices, and is accessible in person at the library.

We plan to eventually make all interviews accessible through our website.

Photo: “Untitled” 2008 © Laurent Zylberman

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2006

Trace Foundation begins supporting the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center (TBRC) to create 500 person records, 250 place records, and 50 topic records—with the goal of making Tibetan literary heritage accessible to a wide audience.

Anyone who has browsed through TBRC’s resources online has used them: outlines.

To explain what outlines are, Jeff Wallman, executive director and director of technology at TBRC, asked us to imagine a card catalogue of a one-hundred-volume collection. In a traditional card catalogue like this, you’d search and retrieve one hit for a record. With outlines, you might receive thousands, all linked to one top-level record.

With the outlines project funded by Trace, we were able to create thousands of these individual records, which expanded searching exponentially.

Before the outlines were created, searching TBRC’s collection was superficial. If you were searching for something in particular, you had to read an enormous volume of literature to find it.

Now with approximately 5,000 visitors a day— and roughly 125,000 texts downloaded each year—the impact of this work is undeniable.

Since its founding in 1999 by E. Gene Smith, TBRC has

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Scanned 17,000 volumes.

Entered more than 500,000 bibliographic, biographic, and geographic documents and mapped them to texts in the library.

Developed cutting-edge technology and released three versions of the library, the latest of which provides native Tibetan and Chinese scripts.

Distributed the library to universities and monasteries all over the world.

Provided 3,200 library accounts to lineage masters and translators who download more than 100,000 texts per year.

2006

The creation of such an annotated research database was very much the brainchild of the late director E. Gene Smith, and it’s TBRC’s ongoing mission to maintain and expand this annotated research library.

We are proud to have supported this critical work for researchers, Tibetans, and many others. We invite you to check out the ever-expanding number of resources TBRC has to offer through their website, www.tbrc.org.

The vision is to continue to defragment the whole Tibetan literary world and bring it under one big umbrella that’s totally open so that people can have unlimited access in perpetuity. We are widening our net, trying to collect and preserve as much as possible at the same time ensuring that people can connect in—to have access. In other words, we don’t want to create a dark archive, but to create a light archive with open access.

There was a very critical time when we released the new library in 2006—when a lot of Trace’s funding came—and that was really instrumental in getting us the momentum of adding a considerable number of bibliographic records. The funding from Trace was instrumental.

Jeff Wallman Executive director and director of technology, TBRC

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2006

Trace Foundation collaborates with TBRC to support two Russian developers associated with the Rime Buddhist Center to develop an Optical Character Recognition platform for the Tibetan language. The Web application—now up on the site dharmabook—will eventually allow users to upload images of Tibetan text and receive a text document in return, free of charge.

“The OCR project that Trace helped fund was really a foundational technology,” Jeff Wallman says. Before the OCR, “there just simply wasn’t anything in the world that was usable.”

There is a lot of material out there in Tibetan, an enormous amount of text, but a disproportionate number of people who can read or understand it. With that in mind, Jeff approached Trace Foundation in 2006 about teaming up with two developers in Russia who were seeing some good results with optical character recognition of the Tibetan language.

“This was really kind of a Wild West,” Jeff explained. The developers needed everything.

They were running programs off obsolete computers. With the help of Trace Foundation, TBRC bought these developers equipment to test their algorithms.

With the help of Trace we were able to provide a kind of momentum to that technical development.

Jeff Wallman Executive director and director of technology, TBRC

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There were—and remain—many challenges to such technology. One of the constraints is that the OCR is very dependent on the kind of fonts used. That’s why the developers started their work with the Kangyur and Tengyur, building a group of font families for those texts that the program could work on.

Despite the challenges, the Russian developers succeeded in 2011 in producing a program that can optically recognize volumes of the Kangyur and Tengyur that were printed in Beijing. Though TBRC and Trace have wrapped up this initial phase of work, these developers continue to finetune the technology.

2006 Why is OCR necessary?

The footprint of a digital file [produced from OCR] is really tiny because it’s text. That’s mostly what the Tibetans are interested in: e-books. Being able to download easily on all kinds of mobile devices—texts that have a very small footprint. Our scans don’t fit that profile.

They’re pictures, they’re not text files.

The use among Tibetans is going to be mobile devices and e-books using either recognized text or input text.

And this isn’t limited to casual readers, Jeff explained. “In the academic world it’s huge.

Everyone acknowledges that the next phase of inquiry into the tradition is searching.

Just being able to search through vast amounts of material.”

Jeff estimated TBRC receives about a thousand visits a day from users searching inside the canon. About half of those, he told us, are inside the PRC.

Openness ensures preservation.

It guarantees you always have access to the text. Sometimes that’s a tricky notion.

There’s this sense that libraries are precious.

That they should be carefully guarded. The digital opportunity takes a different spin on that. Yes, they’re precious and should be carefully guarded. The way that you do that is you make them accessible.

The Web-based OCR can be found at www. dharmabook.ru/OCR, and the open-source code can be downloaded at www.dharmabook.ru/ ocrlib. We invite Web developers to view the open source code and to further develop it.

Trace Foundation partners with the Peltsek Ancient Tibetan Texts Research Institute, providing $270,000 to preserve, compile, and make accessible rare Tibetan texts and supporting literacy and vocational training for teachers.

I am so grateful for Trace’s financial support. In the beginning, we had eight students come to the institute reading at the level of fifth graders. After four years, they all passed their college exams. Six of them graduated from college, and two are still studying. Trace’s support enabled us to preserve numerous pecha and collected volumes of Kagyu teachings. Everyone who has benefited from these projects tells us they were not just helpful, they were also meaningful. Trace Foundation’s support has been enormously beneficial to the success of our projects.

Karma Delek Director of Peltsek Ancient Tibetan Texts Research Institute

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2007

Building schools Trace provides two capital grants to Doctor Zengtaijia in Henan County, Huangnan Prefecture, to purchase computers and build dormitories, fifteen rooms, a computer lab, and a cafeteria for his newly established Galsang Traditional Medical Technical School.

He’s sixty-three years old and he’s been practicing medicine since the age of fifteen. He started out as a barefoot doctor in Rebkong, became the vice-president of a county hospital, and then retired and returned to his roots, founding his own school of traditional medicine.

It started with a few rooms, an enclosing wall, and a gate. But without outside support, construction and capital costs fell entirely on Doctor Zengtaijia’s and his children’s shoulders. That’s when Trace Foundation offered him funding to build a dormitory and cafeteria.

When Doctor Zengtaijia speaks, he gives thumbs-ups and smiles. “These days our school is in great shape. We have seven teachers. They are very good.” He gives another thumbs-up. “We have monks, a female lay Buddhist, and other scholars.”

Students came from Lhasa, Qinghai, Gansu, and Yunnan—all to learn about medicine. And none of them enrolled without first learning one of the doctor’s most-valued skills: kindness.

Before 2006, medical students were coming to him in droves, seeking help in preparing for their diplomas. With no other place to teach these students, Zengtaijia invited them into his home.

Working with the Prefectural Health School, he established a program whereby these students could receive diplomas after three years. And when hosting the students in his living room became unsustainable, he made plans to build a school.

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2007

“Kindness has to be cultivated,” Doctor Zengtaijia says. “When I arrive at school, students often give me khatak [a Tibetan ceremonial scarf]. I tell them that this is unnecessary, but I appreciate the kindness. It’s important that, when you arrive in a town to meet elders and patients, you speak with them politely, and that you be a kind, good person.”

When you know this, it’s easy to see why Doctor Zengtaijia won’t accept tuition. “I don’t have a million dollars to spend. Now that we have the classrooms and canteen my aim is to develop the culture.”

After a few years, Doctor Zengtaijia was able to develop a medicine factory, a factory that now covers teachers’ salaries, students’ costs of living, and many other clinic and school costs.

Yartsa Gunbu (དབྱར་རྩྭ་དགུན་འབུ་)

The communities around the school are made up of herding families—people who live off the fat of the land: meat, butter, leather, and increasingly, Yartsa Gunbu, the caterpillar fungus that’s transforming the economic landscape of Tibetan communities from (below) the ground up.

the Cordyceps Sinesis (in Tibetan: Yartsa-Gunbu) became a boon to Tibetan nomads. Today, the caterpillar sells for more than $25,000 (US) per kilogram in the hands of wealthy Chinese businessmen, and some nomadic Tibetan communities bring in as much as 80 percent of

In these communities, Doctor Zengtaijia has reached his end goal: training his students to return to their villages and monasteries to open up clinics for local people.

“I encourage those who have private clinics to donate medicine as much as possible to the elderly and poor.”

Today, what started as 20 students gathered in Doctor Zengtaijia’s home is a school of 150.

• 60 of these students are women.

• 60 computers make up a new computer lab.

• The campus has expanded to include 15 classrooms, dormitories, and a canteen.

• 80 percent of the school’s alumni have opened their own private clinics.

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“Trace is like this—” Zengtaijia gives the thumbsup. “Your work is great. You help the places and people who seriously need the support. There is a medical tradition in every nationality of the world. Traditional Tibetan medicine has special characteristics based on the local herbs. It not only has great research value, it inspires creativity in our Tibetan mother language. That’s why it is important to develop Tibetan medicine. We have to protect our own culture. We have to treasure the chances we have at this time and do whatever’s needed.”

It’s been called “Tibet’s Golden Worm” and “The Viagra of the Himalayas.” When it was discovered thirty years ago as a natural remedy,

their income in from collecting Yartsa Gunbu, often risking their lives for phenomenal profits.

The wonder remedy is also the topic of a highly anticipated new documentary, Yartsa Gunbu: The Precious Caterpillar, created by visionary Tibetan filmmaker Dorje Tsering Chenaktsang with the Foundation’s support. The film touches on different aspects of the caterpillar—how the outside world gained knowledge about this remedy; the preparation and expectations of its collectors; and the history and context of the place of harvest. In August 2014, we were thrilled to organize this documentary’s North American premiere with The Museum of Modern Art, as part of the ContemporAsian film festival and our “Gatön” anniversary celebrations throughout the fall (see page 109). Visit www.gaton.trace.org for more information.

2007

Trace Foundation offers the first of eight research fellowships to professionals, scholars, and artists advancing knowledge in the fields of the humanities, social sciences, and hard sciences.

The program contributes to the understanding of the ongoing modernization process in the Tibetan areas of China and to the identification of sustainable and culturally relevant development models.

Scholarships for Tibetans make a huge difference, both to the individual and the communities where they’re from.

Hoping to better understand the risks and opportunities attendant to the policies Kenneth Bauer, a lecturer at the Asia and Middle Eastern Studies Program at Dartmouth College, applied to us for a research fellowship. In 2011, we supported his field research on the effects of resettlement on Tibetan nomads. With this grant, Kenneth observed more than sixty households, representing about 300 members of pastoral communities at different stages of resettlement in Sichuan and Qinghai Provinces.

His aims were many: to gauge the impacts of resettlement on household incomes and labor allocation; access to and interactions with markets; employment and patterns of mobility; changes in infrastructure and built environments; delivery of government services; governance, land tenure, and resource management; and cultural identity and social reproduction.

Upon completing his research, Kenneth presented his findings to the Institute for Ethnic Minority Groups Development Research Center of the State Council and at the Thirteenth International Association of Tibetan Studies Seminar in Mongolia.

His research—geared toward policymakers who may not have a technical background— has long-term implications for the protection and management of rangeland ecosystems and the welfare of millions of people.

Kenneth Bauer Lecturer at the Asia and Middle Eastern Studies Program at Dartmouth College and 2011 Trace Foundation research fellow

In the 1980s, the PRC began resettling more than one million Tibetan nomads into villages with the aims of improving the economic viability of animal husbandry and lessening the effects of natural disasters on the livelihoods of herding families.

Resettlement was meant to bring material benefit to Tibet’s nomads in the forms of a wider market for their products and higher incomes, and better access to education and health services.

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2008

Indigenous languages in a modern world Coinciding with the UN-declared International Year of Languages, Trace Foundation convenes its first lecture series, Minority Language in Today’s Global Society, inviting a diverse group of experts, scholars, and linguists to discuss the challenges indigenous people’s languages face today.

In China, over 120 languages are spoken; of these, 60 are officially recognized and are protected and supported by legal and policy initiatives. However, one language, Mandarin Chinese, is essential for participation in the broader national economic and cultural life. Because of the challenges this situation poses, China has in recent decades adopted bilingualism as a policy goal.

For minority language communities, what education models are most effective for ensuring both achievement and multilingualism? What models are in practice in western regions of China today? And what do these models imply for the vitality of Tibetan language? These are just some of the questions and issues we explored through the Minority Language lecture series.

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2008

At one event in the series, Joshua Fishman, a renowned authority on sociolinguistics, spoke with Elliot Sperling, of the Department of Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University, about a key way to reverse language shift: starting small.

Comparing English to a twenty-ton gorilla, he explained how cultures and languages exert pressure on one another, much like combative species, and he offered three solutions for balancing these pressures.

We know now that every two weeks, the last fluent speaker of a language dies. At this rate, more than half the world’s linguistic diversity will disappear in the next century. The vast majority of languages lost will be those of minority communities. When these languages die, we lose not only a key element of the rich diversity of human societies but also an invaluable store of human knowledge.

Through conversations, like this one, though, we can build an understanding of the state of minority languages and the efforts that can be made to ensure that they not only survive, but thrive, in the future.

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I personally believe,” Fishman concluded, “that there is no language for which nothing can be done. . . . Although they may not win the race quickly, slow and steady wins the race for small countries.

Other guest speakers discussed everything from legal issues surrounding minority language use and strategies for language revitalization to the role technologies play in preservation, enhancement, and sustainability of minority languages.

To read more from Joshua Fishman about language reversal shift, we invite you to read a transcript of this talk, “The Structural Concepts for Reverse Language Shift” in the first volume of Dendzom, Minority Language in Today’s Global Society—available for purchase on Lulu.com.

Video recordings of all the lecture series talks, with Tibetan and Chinese subtitles, are also available on Trace Foundation’s YouTube channel.

2008

Geshe Nornang devoted his life to Tibetan language—up to the very end.

He was an instructor in the first Tibetan Studies program in the United States, at the University of Washington, and over the course of his life, he taught Tibetan to some of the greatest Tibetologists of our generation. Even after retiring, he volunteered to teach children in the local Tibetan community for many years. He was a cultivated man, with a gentle and friendly disposition. We will miss him dearly.

geshe nornang 1924–2014

Pema Bhum Library director

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2009

Momo-tasting workshop Trace holds a momo-tasting workshop, where participants learn to create both meat and vegetable Tibetan dumplings under the guidance of Tibetan culinary expert Yangchen Lakar.

It’s not every day in New York City you get to taste—let alone prepare—authentic Tibetan cusine. This workshop was a unique opportunity for everyone involved: for Tibetans who grew up eating momos, it was a rare chance to revisit a Tibetan staple. And it was likewise a joy to watch Westerners who were new to the dumplings experience for the first time the flavors of this most beloved Tibetan dish.

Tenzin Gelek Trace project coordinator/office manager

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2009

Trace offers the first of two capital grants to Gongbaoji, a native Tibetan teacher, to support the building of a classroom and teachers quarters and the purchase of classroom and playground equipment.

In the beginning, local parents didn’t understand the reasoning behind sending their young children to preschool. Before 2003, when Gongbaoji established her kindergarten in Wendu Township, Xunhua Salar Autonmous County, there were no schools in the area for young children to learn Tibetan.

It was typical for kids to reach eight or nine years of age without any formal education.

Parents who wanted to enroll their children in preschools were faced with few options: Most schools were too far, taught only in Chinese, and cost too much.

Preschool education opportunities for Tibetan children, specially, rural kids, are so limited. Ninety percent of the rural kids in Tibetan villages have no access to preschool education. But if quality education is offered, these kids do as well as urban children in education. In some cases, rural children can do much better.

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So Gongbaoji started small—with just twelve children—in two back rooms of a local shop.

Each of the children paid about $50 (US) to cover the costs of teaching equipment. The rest of the funds came out of Gongbaoji’s pocket.

Over the next few years, as the kindergarten grew to thirty-two children, the classroom changed locations six times. What didn’t change was her curriculum: She taught the children Tibetan, Chinese, math, English, drawing, music, and crafts—emphasizing storytelling, song, and Tibetan customs. She invited elders from neighboring communities to visit and teach the children those songs, traditions, and stories that their parents could no longer remember.

One of her primary goals was that her students entered the first grade of primary school possessing not just a solid foundation in Tibetan spelling and grammar but also basic Chinese skills. For many years, Gongbaoji had taught first graders herself. “The Chinese teachers I worked with didn’t understand Tibetan, and the Tibetan children didn’t understand Chinese.”

It’s a problem most Tibetans know well: Not understanding their teachers, Tibetan children quickly lose interest in school. Seeing disinterest, the teachers direct their attention on other students. And a vicious cycle begins.

In 2008, Gongbaoji applied to us for support in creating a permanent home for her school.

With two grants, a kindergarten was constructed

2009

using traditional Tibetan construction style, with local stones and materials, and employing local young Tibetans. The school also constructed a playground (complete with a see-saw, trampoline, and slide), and purchased athletic equipment, educational games, a television, and several camcorders.

The school now comprises three classrooms and teachers offices and quarters, employs two teachers, and can accommodate as many as forty children. “My work has influenced many local people from nearby villages. Nowadays, all the local kids receive a preschool education. I think, for kids, it’s most important to develop good personalities and habits. And now the villagers agree: kids who receive preschool education perform better in their primary schools.�

Trace Foundation presents Postmarked Lhasa, a unique exhibition featuring Tibetan postage stamps, covers, and letters from the first half of the twentieth century.

This exhibition, which explored the complex history of the multiple postal systems in early modern Tibet, consisted of materials from five different collections and covered not only the Tibetan Kashak government stamps, but also the British and Chinese imperial postal systems, hand-carried letters, and wired and wireless telegraphs. The exhibit included examples of both personal and official correspondence. In the end, Postmarked Lhasa demonstrated how, through the ephemeral scraps called stamps, we can read the complex histories of industries, empires, and individuals.

As we invest in childhood education and schools for Tibetan communities, we have proudly supported projects with the intention of not just building a single school or purchasing just a hundred books, but to instead bear fruit for many years, and a little bit at a time, transform education for Tibetan families on the Plateau.

In this sense, the Mari Village Preschool was a success for everyone involved. In the eleven years since Gongbaoji started her pilot preschool, four other kindergartens have sprung up in surrounding villages, inspired by her work. We look forward to seeing what these schools inspire.

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$53.5 million invested

2010

Relief for hundreds of families affected by an earthquake April 14: A 6.9-magnitude earthquake strikes Yülshül, claiming the lives of nearly 2,700 people and injuring more than 12,000. Trace Foundation staff members volunteer as interpreters in hospitals and distribute 175 tents, two-month supplies of traditional Tibetan medicine, and emergency kits containing food, blankets, and personal hygiene materials to 800 people affected.

The Butter Lamp Compassion Group—whose education and book-purchasing projects we first supported in 2008—provides relief to hundreds of families affected by the earthquake, establishing the Butter Lamp Home for Children and providing education free of charge.

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2010 When Butter Lamp first came to us in 2008, one of the group’s first projects was a preschool. It started with forty kids and four teachers in Yüshül Prefecture, where there was not one Tibetan-language preschool available to Tibetan families.

Our goal was to focus on the kids from migrant families and on nomads who had emigrated from other counties. We wanted, of course, to improve public welfare; but our first priority was to introduce mother-tongue education and then to import the best pedagogical methods from the outside.

Qiuyong Angdai Butter Lamp Compassion Group

As in many rural Tibetan communities, the overall living conditions of pastoral kids were poor.

“Children have to search caterpillar fungus and herd livestock,” Qiuyong Angdai explains. “A rural child of a pastoral family typically comes to the prefectural primary schools at the age of seven— much later than those from cities. Some of these rural kids can’t hold a pen properly and don’t even know how to blow their noses.”

When these kids first come to school, they are typically mixing Chinese with Tibetan. At home, the kids are immersed in Chinese through TV cartoons and through the Internet.

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Only in Tibetan preschools are these children exposed to pure Tibetan. Over the years—as the Internet has taken off—children’s books in the Tibetan language have become rarities. And most of the books in Tibetan are translated from Chinese or Western languages and inherently steeped in the cultures from which they come.

That’s why the Butter Lamp Group has dedicated itself not just to teaching Tibetan but to purchasing and distributing children’s books in Tibetan.

“It’s almost impossible to find books for Tibetan children. I wish our Tibetan children had as many books as Chinese children to choose from. The more books that are available in the market, the better it is for Tibetan children. That’s why I applied to Trace Foundation for support.”

In Yüshül, only in families with at least four children is one child sent to school. The first child is responsible for herding animals; the second is responsible for digging up caterpillar fungus; the third is sent to a monastery to become a monk.

Only the fourth child is sent to school.

Still, the challenges these rural children face transcend the families they come from. When Qiuyong Angdai began visiting school libraries in 2008, he was surprised to find most of them were physically locked to everyone but local officials who stopped by on monitoring visits. The books and the bookshelves were new and—if not for the dust that covered them—untouched. Qiuyong had

2010 to educate the educators; he had to demand they open the libraries to students—to touch them, feel them, read them, and use them.

As a whole, many Tibetans are more concerned with their religious lives than the small matter of childhood education.

I believe Tibetans as a group need to support the future of the young generation. I believe children’s education needs to come before everything else.

In 2010, the Butter Lamp Group’s priorities changed dramatically. In the wake of the devastating earthquake, it established a Home for Children in just twenty days, bringing in 436 children and 20 teachers. In the three years following the earthquake, Butter Lamp provided education to these kids free of charge.

“During the three years of rebuilding, not a single fee was charged,” Qiuyong Angdai tells us. “When we had to start charging fees to cover the basic operating costs of the kindergarten, I was concerned about losing many kids. To my surprise, the number of students was unaffected. The parents continue to send their kids.”

The Minority Language in Today’s Global Society lecture series concludes with an exploration of the role digital technologies play in the preservation of minority languages.

Two years after the conclusion of the lecture series, Trace Foundation published Dendzom, a two-volume collection of papers presented during the Minority Languages in Today’s Global Society lecture series 2008–2010.

These publications examine a wide range of issues concerning the status of minority languages around the world, with a special focus on the Tibetan language and its dialects. Copies of the hardcover are available for order on www. lulu.com. The PDFs will be available for free download from our website soon.

We are proud supporters of Butter Lamp’s work, from disaster relief, to preschool education and the expansion of Tibetan-language libraries. It’s not difficult to understand the meaning behind their name: “Tibetans love butter.” Qiuyong Angdai smiles.

“Butter lamps not only brighten things for other people but also help us to meditate on the spirit of perseverance. The butter lamp is not just a Tibetan tradition; it brightens the outlook for Tibetan nomadic education.”

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2011

More than sixty scholars and linguists gather from around the globe Trace Foundation co-hosts the Third International Conference on Tibetan Language.

Tibetan is an international language and a language that finds itself at a very difficult juncture in its history. More power and good fortune to it, and to you and to all scholars and students engaged in it.

Dr. Joshua A. Fishman

From the Introduction to The Third International Conference on Tibetan Language Though spoken by a tiny minority of the world’s people, the Tibetan language has an outsize influence, both geographically and historically.

Historically, the written Tibetan language dates back to the seventh century, and the classical Tibetan of that period is much more accessible to modern literate Tibetan readers than Old English written as late as the eleventh century, which is completely unintelligible to modern English readers. Geographically, the Tibetan language spread with the rise of the Tibetan Empire during

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the seventh to ninth centuries, reaching at that time as far west as Baltistan in Pakistan and as far north and east at the Ordos bend of the Yellow River (in today’s Shaanxi Province of China).

With the spread of Tibetan populations in our globalizing world, pockets of Tibetan are spoken throughout India, in the New York City borough of Queens, and dozens of other cities around the globe. This book grapples with both the history of the development of the Tibetan language and some of the richness and challenges that Tibetans face in the world today.

New York City’s then public advocate and current mayor Bill de Blasio opened the event with a letter from Mayor Bloomberg and his own wonderful remarks about the importance of maintaining one’s native language—in his case, Italian. His talk reminded us of why New York City, though far removed from the Tibetan Plateau, was such an appropriate location for this conference. After all, New York is marked by an incredible linguistic diversity, with over eight hundred languages spoken on its streets, as well as the largest population of Tibetans outside Asia.

The papers of this volume grew out a major conference, the Third International Conference on Tibetan Language, held in New York in December 2011. The lead in organizing this conference was taken by Trace Foundation with assistance from Columbia University, the Shang Shung Institute, and the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center. And the impetus for the conference grew out of an acute awareness of how much has changed since the two previous International Conferences on Tibetan Language convened in 1987 and 1992 in India and Italy respectively.

In terms of the diversity of participants of the conference, we were very pleased to host such a distinguished group from five countries and over thirty-four universities or institutes of higher studies, and especially, a very large number of Tibetans from all over the world. Aside from the 1998 International Association of Tibetan Studies (IATS) conference at Indiana University, this might have been the largest gathering of Tibetans from the People’s Republic of China to ever congregate outside China. In total, fifty-one

2011 Tibetans attended the conference, with twentyeight coming from the Tibetan regions of China.

To be part of such a focused gathering of talent was really exciting, as the synergy of the event was palpable. Unlike conferences where people sometimes drift away after the plenary sessions, distracted by the tourist offerings of a city like New York, attendance at all the panels was high and the audience attentive and engaged.

The panels discussed everything from domains of use, to historic linguistics, to Tibetanlanguage computing, grammar, dictionaries, and publishing. Specifically, although they did not lend themselves as well to written articles, critical issues were discussed at panels on composition, standardization of new terminology, the preservation of literary heritage, teaching Tibetan as a second language, teaching Tibetan as a first language, editing, new technology, dictionaries, and grammar.

The papers included in this volume focus on just two of the major topics of the conference: 1) Domains of Use, which was described this way at the conference:

In a rapidly globalizing world, the languages we use, and when and where we use them, take on ever-greater significance. The prescriptions on language use in our interactions with family, friends, religion, and the state define specific domains of use for a language or language variant. These domains of language use are crucial indicators of a language’s vitality. For minority languages in particular, firmly establishing domains of use will be critical to survival. Drawing from studies of Tibetan language use in the public sphere, this panel will explore the roles of demographics, public policy, culture, technology, and more in defining domains for Tibetan language use. The panel will further explore where and how domains for Tibetan use can be expanded in the future.

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2011 The papers from Naran Bilik, Huangxing, Shadrup, Trowu Gyamtsen, Xia, and Zhou address these issues in a variety of ways, including, for example, by examining the effects of state policies in China on the use of Tibetan and Uighur languages in schools and the hierarchy built into the language ideology that underlies majority linguistic nationalism.

2) The topic of linguistic interactions covered an especially wide range of material. As the description from the conference described the topic:

Across this wide geographical area, linguistic and cultural contact with other groups has greatly enriched this language family while prompting questions as to the origin and classification of its diverse dialects and subfamilies. This panel will address issues related to the history, evolution and origins of the Tibetan language from a historical and linguistic perspective. The panel will include papers on the geographical itinerary of the language, the relationship between Tibetan and other languages, language contacts, lexical exchange, lexical comparison, linguistic features, and linguistic classification, etc.

In their contributions, Atso, Caplow, Dwyer, Hyslop, and van Driem address these issues in a variety of ways, from fine-grained studies of local dialects to broad comparisons across space and diverse languages. For instance, in the case of Tibetan language influence on the neighboring language families in Amdo, Dwyer examines “the extent to which cultural convergence facilitated linguistic convergence, and illustrates the degree to which Tibetan linguistic and cultural practices are embedded in these non-Tibetan languages 98

and cultures.” Van Driem’s work is expansive in its effort to chart the (often tortured) history of placing the Tibeto-Burman languages in language families and his own “conjectural reconstruction of the ethnolinguistic prehistory of eastern Eurasia based on possible correlations between genes and language communities.”

In conclusion, the Third International Tibetan Language Conference was a great success, and these papers represent the work of two of the panels that lent themselves to scholarly articles. The long-term results of our conversations and debates about how the Tibetan language will fare in the challenging globalized world of the twenty-first century remain to be seen. But we hope that the stimulating events of the conference and the papers published in this volume will inspire another meeting, a Fourth International Tibetan Language Conference, in the near future.

Gray Tuttle Leila Hadley Luce Associate Professor of Modern Tibet Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures Columbia University

2011

In our ongoing commitment

to the budding visual art scene in Tibetan areas, we invite two members of the Gendun Choephel Artists’ Guild to discuss current developments in contemporary Tibetan art in an event called Art Lhasa Now. To read more about this event, check out the article “Drawing the Gods” on our website.

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Promoting the pursuits of young Tibetan Studies scholars from the Tibetan Plateau Trace supports three presentations at the International Seminar of Young Tibetologists (ISYT) in Kobe, Japan.

The organization was first seeded in 1977 when Martin Brauen and Per Kvaerne convened a group of young Tibetologists in Zurich. Two years later, Michael Aris (see 36) and his wife, Aung San Suu Kyi, convened another seminar, what would become known as the first IATS (International Association for Tibetan Studies) seminar.

As the IATS seminars grew exponentially, though, a desire for a new kind of organization formed, one dedicated to Tibetologists just starting out

in their careers. Their goal, to strike a balance between academic rigor and the pursuits and needs of youth, was realized in the form of the first International Seminar of Young Tibetologists (ISYT) in 2007 in London.

At a time when support for international travel was scarce, we were proud supporters of young Tibetans—nine in total—to attend this seminar, as well as the second in 2009 in Paris and the third in 2012 in Kobe.

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2012 To better understand what Trace’s support has meant to these young Tibetans in getting their foot in the door of the international academic community, we reached out to Emilia Sulek, an ISYT board member. This is what she had to say: The field of Tibetan Studies, especially at higher levels, is dominated by non-Tibetans and increasingly so by ethnic Chinese. Tibetan scholars living in Asia, while many of them have the knowledge and potential to become leaders in the field, do not have access to necessary resources and opportunities. Thanks to Trace Foundation’s financial support, ISYT has been able to provide them with such opportunities and resources, and thus allowed a growing number of Tibetans to take their rightful place in the ranks of those active in the field of Tibetan Studies, and participate in creating this academic field, in which they should have a privileged position.

By supporting these young Tibetan scholars, who are not well established in the academia, who sometimes work in adverse circumstances, face financial difficulties in fostering their careers, and are largely isolated from the international academic milieu, we increase the chances that

they continue their academic work.

Without this support, the work of our Tibetan colleagues would largely remain unknown and unacknowledged. For many of the Tibetan scholars whom Trace supported, visits to the ISYTs were their first or one of their first journeys abroad. These visits and the contacts made during these visits—as well as experiences and know-how gained—are a remedy against marginalization of Tibetans in the countries where they live and work.

Since the existence of intellectual elites is crucial for the functioning and survival of any society—and especially society living in such complex political, economic, and structural circumstances as the Tibetan one—the work of such organizations as Trace is of unprecedented value.

The fourth ISYT is scheduled for Leipzig 2015.

Learn more about ISYT at www.isyt.org.

Photo (opposite): “Untitled” 2008 © Laurent Zylberman

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2013

Celebrating Tibet’s rich tradition of ghost stories Trace invites writers around the globe to submit stories in Tibetan and English for a competition that culminates in A Scream at Midnight, a reading of the top five stories by Tibetan comedian Sonam Wangdue, novelist Simon Van Booy, and other members of the community.

Treated to Tibetan barley beer, chang, guests were invited to vote on their top picks.

It was a close call, but in the end, “The Old Human Demoness” by Chokey Dolma of Vancouver—a terrifying tale about a congregation of demons— came out on top. Read this story and the four other winning stories in Tibetan and English at www.trace.org/news.

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2013

Through Facebook, Google+, and Pinterest Trace Foundation begins celebrating Tibetan cuisine and food culture with “Tibetan Food Fridays.”

April 12, 2013 We are pleased to announce a new feature on our FB page: Tibetan Food Fridays, where we explore the world of Tibetan cuisine and food culture.

TODAY:

ཀ་ར་ཚོད་མ་ KARA TSOMA

You’ve heard of momo, the Tibetan dumpling typically filled with meat and/or vegetable.

But have you heard of kara tsoma—sugar momo? A delicacy of Amdo, these dumplings—with their distinctive plump, round shape—are filled with brown sugar and fat, and are served on the Tibetan New Year, though other areas also have them during festival times or certain ceremonies.

Find us online!

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Trace publishes the first volume of conference proceedings from The Third International Conference on Tibetan Language, with two additional volumes still to come.

2013

Trace Foundation supports the Thirteenth International Association for Tibetan Studies (IATS) Seminar in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

Since its creation in 1979, the International Association for Tibetan Studies has been the single most important forum for research on Tibet across all disciplines.

Although the Association’s three-yearly conferences bring together experienced scholars and newcomers from over thirty countries, the costs of international travel and accommodation are prohibitively high for many young scholars. It is largely thanks to funding from Trace Foundation that many young Tibetan scholars have been able to take part in these conferences.

The generous support provided by Trace Foundation is crucial to ensuring that promising Tibetan scholars remain at the center of international scholarly research on their unique civilization.

Charles Ramble President of the International Association for Tibetan Studies (IATS), 2006–2013

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over $70 million invested 2014 2015

Trace awards its 5,000th scholarship to support undergraduate and postgraduate training for young Tibetans, both in Tibetan areas and internationally.

A yearlong celebration of today’s finest Tibetan artists and filmmakers Trace hosts Gatön, a yearlong celebration of today’s finest Tibetan artists and filmmakers.

In Tibetan, gatön refers to a celebration. Whether it’s a wedding, a village festival, or a private party, a gatön is a happy occasion, a time to gather in your community.

To commemorate our twentieth anniversary, we invited the people in our community—both here in New York and around the world—to join us for a gatön celebrating today’s finest artists and filmmakers, celebrating our work with Tibetan communities, and most of all, celebrating the uniqueness and beauty of this part of the world.

res of the twentieth century, a man famous for his skills as a poet and for his controversial views. In addition to being a poet, he was a talented artist who developed a style previously unknown in the long and illustrious history of Tibetan painting.

Kicking off our anniversary celebrations, we invited leading Gendun Chopel scholar Donald Lopez to visit us from Michigan for a lively discussion on Gendun Chopel’s legacy, modernism in Tibet, and our publication Gendun Chopel: Tibet’s First Modern Artist.

Our twentieth anniversary in New York included Tibet’s First Modern Artist: A Conversation with Donald Lopez May 22, 2014 No discussion of contemporary Tibetan art is complete without first looking at the legacy of Gendun Chopel, one of the most important figu-

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2014 2015 Lens on Tibet: Celebrating Contemporary Tibetan Film August 21–August 31, 2014 Presented in collaboration with and at The Museum of Modern Art A young nomad must choose between his education and city life or his herds on the grasslands.

A man reaps both risks and rewards as a harvester of Yartsa Gonbu, the valuable caterpillar fungus that can make him rich. A lama returns to Golok and goes against tradition—and even the sentiments of local villagers—to offer nuns the same opportunities in practice as monks.

New York City audiences poured into the theaters at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) to view these and other stories explored in ContemporAsian: Lens on Tibet, a ten-day film series featuring twelve documentary and feature films from the Tibetan Plateau and the second event of our Gatön series.

This event was more than nine years in the making. In 2005, some eighty years after the first film projectors and cameras arrived on the

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Tibetan Plateau, a young man applied to us for support to go to film school. That young man, Pema Tseden, is now widely considered Tibet’s first filmmaker. Since then, we’ve been proud supporters of a new wave of Tibetan filmmakers, including Sonthar Gyal and Dukar Tserang, all of whom took part in the film series. Supporting the growth of an authentic Tibetan film culture has become a crucial part of our cultural work.

Tibetan film—both narrative and documentary— has evolved over the last decade, tied as much to the changes in Tibetan society and way of life as to the development of film culture not only about but by Tibetans. The exhibition traced the arc of this new film movement by highlighting some of the films and filmmakers who have been at its center in both documentary and dramatic forms from the beginning and those who are just emerging.

This exhibition, the first showcase of the films and the filmmakers we have supported, was a significant moment in the development of films about and by Tibetans coming out of Tibet. Lens on Tibet featured only works that were filmed on the Plateau within the last decade, presenting

2014 2015 audiences with a fresh, varied, and intimate look into the lives and experiences of Tibetans on the Plateau today.

I remember talking with Trace many years ago when Pema Tseden and Sonthar Gyal both got their funding to do film studies in Beijing. Now they are internationally recognized filmmakers and winning awards at international film festivals. Without that funding that enabled two ordinary Tibetans coming from very simple family backgrounds to go to a school and obtain the technical abilities to do that, they would have not become the great sort of filmmakers that they are becoming.

Tsering Shakya

Cinemagoers turned out in droves—in some cases selling out theaters—to engage in Q&A sessions with the filmmakers. Guest moderators included Robert Barnett of Columbia University, La Francis Hui of Asia Society, filmmaker Tenzin Tsetan, and Elizabeth Sheldon of Alive Mind Cinema. The partnership with MoMA enabled the films to reach a wide audience, including many Westerners who were learning about Tibet for the first time. For the filmmakers, many of whom hail from rural villages on the Tibetan Plateau, it was the opportunity of a lifetime—not only to show their work at a major international cultural institution but to network and engage with other filmmakers.

Audiences were full of questions about the images and themes explored on the big screen. The stories in the films thrilled, shocked, provoked, enraptured, enraged, engaged. Collectively, they offered audiences a closer, more nuanced look at Tibetan communities living on the Plateau.

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2014 2015 Transcending Tibet: Celebrating Contemporary Tibetan Art The Preview Exhibition November 6–December 4, 2014 At the end of 2014, we had the unique opportunity to open a pop-up gallery in the ground-floor space at Trace Foundation, a special first look at the work of eleven of the exhibition’s participating artists. Traveling from Nepal, Italy, Switzerland, Amsterdam, and Queens, seven of these artists joined us for an opening reception, with museum guests packed wall to wall.

A roundtable discussion with contemporary Tibetan art scholar Leigh Miller followed the opening. Seven participating artists discussed everything from their unconventional choices of materials (silkscreen appliqué collage, incenseburned rice paper, monastic robes, and much more) to negotiating Tibet’s rich legacy of traditional art and a fast-changing world.

The exhibition ended with a paperback book launch for The Museum on the Roof of the World by anthropologist Clare Harris and a discussion with contemporary artists Tenzing Rigdol and Gonkar Gyatso.

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The Full Transcending Tibet Exhibition March 14, 2015–April 12, 2015 Picking up where the successful preview exhibition left off, Transcending Tibet presented the new commissioned artwork by dozens of contemporary Tibetan artists and a handful of Western artists—all working with Tibetan themes, utilizing traditional and new media, and appropriating iconography to generate rich and original art. Participating artists represented a wide array of points in their careers, from emerging to established and, as with the Preview, included artists born in Tibetan regions as well as second- or third-generation immigrants raised elsewhere, who identified with their Tibetan heritage.

2014 2015

Thank you to all the artists who participated in our anniversary celebration, our generous board of advisors, our sponsors, and all the people who came out to see this work. We hope to invite you back soon to keep the conversation going.

As we look forward to our next decade of work— and as we wrap up this yearlong glimpse into Tibet through the eyes, instruments, and the hands of artists living through this critical time in history—we hope you will continue to help us raise awareness of Tibetan culture and ensure its future viability.

—Paola Vanzo Managing director

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We at the Foundation are deeply committed to the idea that international friendship and cooperation have an important role to play in alleviating suffering, in building peace and prosperity, and in making a better world for all of us.

Andrea E. Soros

trace.org

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