NPR - Hacking the Himalayas part 4: Leaving "Lhasa Vegas"

The final episode of "Hacking the Himalayas," my four-part series for NPR "Day to Day" about technology and the Tibetan diaspora, is now online. Link to archived audio and multimedia extras.

Many Tibetan refugees, including the Dalai Lama himself, settled in northern India after communist China invaded what it considered to be part of its territory beginning in 1950.

For years, Tibet has been a difficult place to get to for most Westerners, because of visa restrictions -- though these rules may soon be eased to facilitate tourism, according to a recent announcement by a communist party leader in Tibet. And tourists to Lhasa, the capital and ancient heart of Tibetan Buddhism, might find two very different cities.

Inside what's known as the Tibetan Quarter, the timeless rituals of faith unfold. At the ornate, massive Jokhang Temple in the heart of the quarter, visitors are greeted with the sights and sounds of prostrating pilgrims. They stretch flat on the ground, then rise up, palms clasped in prayer. The stone beneath is polished smooth from centuries of this devotional gesture. The towering Potala Palace, the Dalai Lama's former residence, dominates the horizon.

But just a short rickshaw drive away, a different world unfolds. Outside the Tibetan Quarter, Lhasa feels more like a modern Chinese city, full of blasting electronic music and looped recordings of shop-barkers, beckoning shoppers to come in and spend. The pace of change has never been faster than in the last decade.

Link to "Leaving Lhasa Vegas." Audio archive of today's episode, the last in this four-part series, will be available after 12PM PT.

Image: A young Tibetan woman outside the Jokhang temple on the eve of Saga Dawa, the annual religious festival honoring the birth of Buddha. 2006, Xeni Jardin.

Previously:

Part 1: The Gaddi People of Dharamsala

Part 2: Connecting Tibet's Exile Community Via the Web

Part 3: A Wireless Network for 'Little Lhasa'

(special thanks to Rob Sachs and Alicia Montgomery, my producer and editor at NPR "Day to Day;" to Hutch; but most of all -- to Dr. M.X. Quetzalkanbalam, who graciously allowed me to accompany him on his trek, who conceived of this project, directed it, and made it all possible.)

China may abolish travel permit requirement for Tibet

Snip from Times of India article:

With an eye to flooding the roof of the world with tourist dollars, China is moving to scrap a strict entry regime for Tibet and make it easier for visitors, including those from the Tibetan diaspora in India, to come in with a single Chinese visa, a top government official said on Thursday. But as far as the Dalai Lama was concerned, the 'no-entry' board would remain.

Link

NPR "Hacking the Himalayas" Part 3: A Wireless Network for 'Little Lhasa'

Part 3 of "Hacking the Himalayas," my four-part series for NPR "Day to Day" about technology and the Tibetan diaspora, is now online. Link to archived audio and multimedia extras.

Inside the Gyuto Ramoche temple in the northern Indian city of Dharamsala, the scene is timeless, seemingly centuries old: Rows of scarlet-robed young monks from Tibet, hunched over prayer scrolls in mediation.

But outside, an antenna sits on a rooftop not far away. It's one of 30 connection points in a wireless network that's bringing the Internet to this remote region where communication technology has been expensive, unreliable and hard to come by -- until now.

The monks in meditation over those scrolls are a key inspiration for creating the wireless network. They are refugees from Tibet and part of a community of hundreds of thousands of refugees. Web access promises better communication, a path to preserve Tibetan culture and a way to tell their stories to the outside world.

Link to A Wireless Network for 'Little Lhasa'.

Image: Inside a Gaddi family's barn on a hilltop, Phuntsok Dorjee (left) and another technician (whose name I don't have) set a solar-powered battery into place. 2006, Xeni Jardin.

Previously:

Part 1: The Gaddi People of Dharamsala

Part 2: Connecting Tibet's Exile Community Via the Web

China: Internet Companies Aid Censorship

Snip from a report by Human Rights Watch released today:

Legislation and a strong industry code of conduct are necessary to end the complicity of Western Internet companies in political censorship in China, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. China’s system of Internet censorship and surveillance, popularly known as the “Great Firewall,” is the most advanced in the world.

In the 149-page report, “Race to the Bottom: Corporate Complicity in Chinese Internet Censorship,” Human Rights Watch documents how extensive corporate and private sector cooperation – including by some of the world’s major Internet companies – enables this system of censorship.

“Western Internet companies are complicit in actively censoring political material without telling users what’s happening and why,” said Rebecca MacKinnon, a consultant to Human Rights Watch. “We believe that companies could act more ethically and still operate in China. It is time for Internet companies to decide whether they want to be part of the problem or part of the solution.”

Research was performed through interviews and extensive testing of search engines in China, and includes 18 screen shots to illustrate examples of censorship. The report vividly illustrates how various companies, including Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, and Skype block terms they believe the Chinese government will want them to censor.

Human Rights Watch strongly criticized the decision by Yahoo! to release the identity of private users to the Chinese authorities. This assisted in the imprisonment and heavy sentences of four Chinese government critics, Shi Tao, Li Zhi, Jiang Lijun, and Wang Xiaoning. In a letter to Human Rights Watch, published in the report, Yahoo! states that it was only following local laws.

Link to "Race to the Bottom: Corporate Complicity in Chinese Internet Censorship" (thanks, rebecca)

Technorati Tags: China, Tibet

Dharamshala: "holy place"

Theo Mondle is one of the talented broadcast sound engineers at NPR West who makes "Day to Day" sound so great. He is also an incredible musician, and is one of the geniuses behind the band The String Theory. He is of Bangladeshi heritage, and he schooled me in the studio yesterday about the etymological origin of the word "Dharamshala," the place where much of "Hacking the Himalayas" takes place. "Dharam" more or less means "holy," and the "shala" part indicates place. The word means "holy place," or place where there are temples, orphanages -- something like that. Theo explained that the word-parts are of Sanskrit origin, and "Dharam" is how folks in the northern part of India tend to say the word "dharma" that you'd hear more in the south.

Economic tensions in Dharamshala

One of the story threads I regret not being able to cover in the NPR series was the economic and cultural tension in Dharamshala -- "Little Lhasa" -- between Tibetan exiles and Hindu locals. In Dharamshala, the Tibetans enjoy a somewhat higher place on the economic scale than some of the Indian ethnic groups who were there first. Western aid has something do to with it, so does the tourist attraction to all things Tibetan. Journalist Scott Carney lives in india, and notes this in a blog post about the NPR series:

The disparity in wealth between Indians and Tibetans is something of a problem in Dharmsala. There were riots a few years ago where Indian shopkeepers and youths savaged Tibetan establishments and every year the celebration of Holi is unusually tense on McLeod Ganj.

The struggle of the Tibetans surely deserves worldwide attention, yet the disparities in Technological advancement and adaptability highlight inequalities between successful refugee movements, and movements that never quite got off the ground.

Link to "Nomadic Herds and Himalayan Nerds."

Technorati Tags: Dharamshala, India, radio, Tibet

NPR "Hacking the Himalayas," part 2: Connecting exiles online

Part two of my four-part NPR "Day to Day" series "Hacking The Himalayas" airs today.

When the Dalai Lama fled Chinese rule of Tibet in 1959, he found refuge just across the western border in India. Waves of refugees followed their spiritual leader out of the once-isolated kingdom when India provided them with land. Today, nearly 50 years after that first exodus, more than 100,000 people of Tibetan heritage live in the area. The Dalai Lama and leaders of the Tibetan government-in-exile now call the northern village of Dharamsala their home.

Even though two full generations of Tibetans have grown up outside their native land, the Tibetan community is still very close-knit, and many still harbor dreams of returning to a country free of Chinese domination -- something unlikely to happen any time soon.

But with the help of some technology experts from the West, the Tibetan community in India hopes to get the word out about their cause via the viral grapevine that is the Internet. It's an enormous challenge. Electricity, phones and Internet access are expensive and hard to come by. Phone lines can go down for days at a time, leaving the region cut off from the world. But there's an effort under way to change that, and to teach young Tibetan refugees about computers and the Web.

Link to archived audio, and multimedia extras. Here's the series home page.

Image: Both adults and children take computer classes at the technology center of the Tibetan Children's Village in Dharamshala. Web publishing is one of the favorite subjects. Left, Tashi Phuntsok, and right, Nyima Woeser -- two geeks I met who were studying javascript and PHP. Xeni Jardin © 2006

Corrected by a monkey: the meaning of "rinpoche."

An NPR staffer wrote promotional copy on npr.org for one of the "Hacking the Himalayas" segments that read,

Rinpoche is an honorary title that translates as "senior lama."

The most famous monkey on the internet wrote in to correct this. Monkey says,

xeni-la, dear,

in your report today on npr you say Rinpoche is an honorary title that translates as "senior lama." well... it's not exactly. it means "precious one" (actually precious-one-great) and is given to a tulku (a reincarnation of a lama), the title can be given to an accomplished teacher or monk that an oracle foresees their reincarnation, but that is rare. while many senior lamas are rinpoches, not all rinpoche's are senior or scholarly. stephen segal, for instance, is referred to as rinpoche since penor rinpoche revealed that he is a tulku. I've even dangled from the mouth of toddler tulku and heard the demand "rinpoche, take the monkey out of your mouth and say thank you." what a strange world we live in!

Monkey is small, terry cloth, and in addition to being something of an expert on Tibetan Buddhism -- has a nice personality: Link.

And I'm told by a knowledgeable but anonymous source that on a saucier side... colloquially, "rinpoche" is also a euphemism for male genitalia.

Gear notes: my sound recording equipment

I'll be posting a number of gear/HOWTO items on this blog, but I'll start with the hardware that makes these radio pieces possible. When I go out in the field to record sound for NPR "Day to Day," or for online audio features, I carry four things:

(1) Minidisc recorder SONY MZB100. I don't even know if they're still being made, but this is the model I've always used -- and Sony has others. Bought mine on eBay, and you shouldn't pay more than $250 for them. As Day to Day's Chip Grabow told me when I was first asking him for gear advice, if you're on a budget -- save your money for a good mic which would be from $150-250.

(2) and (3): I use two mics. Unidirectional: AT835b Line + Gradient Condenser Mic (audio-technica), Link, about $225-250 from various online stores. Ombidirectional: EV Model RE50/B Omnidirectional Dynamic mic. Link. About $150-175.

(4) Shure Model A96F Line Matching Transformer (PDF link).

I'm going to switch to an all-digital recording device soon. I've been reluctant to make the jump until now because (a) minidiscs have never failed me in the field, and (b) the digital devices small and affordable enough to be useful for freelancers who tool around in rough places are not always reliable. Your gear -- and your ability to use it properly -- should never get in the way of telling a story. But the reliability of digital devices is improving as the technology matures, and I'd love to ditch minidiscs. The rest of the staff on NPR "Day to Day" are migrating to digital devices in the near future. Maybe I'll wait to see how their choice works out for them, and follow.

Make sure to carry good wind protection thingies for your mics if you're recording sound out in the world. I brought some high-quality, high-wind protection "socks" for Tibet from an audiovisual pro gear shop in LA. They saved my sound in windy, mountaintop spots.

When I was traveling inside urban Tibet, and trying to maintain a low profile in the presence of authorities, I sometimes placed other things around my mic so they wouldn't look so -- well, journalist-y. The disguise that seemed to work best was a neon-lime-green iPod sock. Lime green never looks serious. I slipped it over the mic, then tucked it under my shawl when gathering sound in situations that required discretion (for instance: inside larger temples or historic sites where there are many guards). The sock was thin enough that it didn't muffle sound, and thick enough that it did protect from wind.

Some good audio gear links: Transom's page on minidiscs, minidisc.org, planetminidisc.com., minidisco.com.

Technorati Tags: radio

Biker gangs of the Tibetan plateau: nomads on motorcycles

Jim Yardley had a really interesting piece in the New York Times recently about rural nomads in Tibet using motorcycles as a replacement for traveling by yak-back. What's next, a roving band of bikers called the Naraka's Angels? Snip:

At the Doulong Store, the musty shelves are stocked with the necessities for Tibetan nomads. There are kettles for yak butter tea and bolts of colorful fabric for traditional robes and clothing. A nomad affluent enough to use a light bulb in his tent can buy an electric generator. But an unexpected necessity here in the immense grasslands of the Tibetan plateau are the six motorcycles on display, including the Asiahero Alt 150-7 bought by a nomad named Trashi Dorjay. He had traveled almost 320 kilometers, or 200 miles, to the store from his tent because he wanted a bike to herd his sheep and yaks. "I used to ride a horse," he explained. "A motorcycle is faster."

Link. Image: www.photoglobe.info, via Dvorak's blog.

Tibetan photojournalist Lobsang Wangyal

When Lobsang Wangyal walked into the guest house where I was to interview him for NPR, rain was coming down in unending sheets. Dirt paths around McLeod Ganj were flooded, and all was soggy.

But Lobsang arrived crisp, pressed, behind stylish white sunglasses -- looking like he'd be as much at home in Hollywood as in Himachal Pradesh. I joked that he looked like the playa of the Himalayas.

More importantly, however, he's a talented photojournalist and "cultural entrepreneur." He organizes events in the Tibetan refugee community there, including a Tibetan film festival and the Miss Tibet Pageant. "Why Miss Tibet?", I asked him -- "Miss Tibet? Because we miss Tibet," he replied.

Check out his work at lobsangwangyal.com, and you'll hear his voice in the NPR and Wired stories this week. Image: Lobsang Wangyal at Chonor House, McLeod Ganj, India. (c) 2006, Xeni Jardin.

Technorati Tags: Dharamshala, India, Tibet

NPR: The Gaddi People of Dharamsala

Part one of the four-part radio series on NPR Day to Day airs today: "The Gaddi People of Dharamsala." Archived audio, multimedia slideshow, and songs from Gaddi musicians are all here at npr.org: Link, and here's a direct link to the photos (Flash, includes music of Gaddi composer and musician Sunil Rana).

The nomadic Hindu tribe has dwelled in the shadows of the Himalayas in Northern India for countless generations. Before Tibetan refugees and Western tourists arrived, they were the dominant ethnic group -- but as development looms, their culture is changing.

Top image: (c) 2006, Xeni Jardin. En route to a ceremony honoring the local goddess of slate, a Gaddi woman in ceremonial dress paints holy symbols on rocks that line the path to Kanyara shrine.

Bottom: recording Gaddi musicians Sunil Rana (right, in blue shirt) and Hans Chohan (left, in white shirt), at Sunil's family home in the village of Satobri, near Dharamshala in Northern India.

Technorati Tags: Dharamshala, Gaddi, India, radio, television

NPR: "Hacking the Himalayas" radio series begins

The four-part NPR Day to Day series "Hacking the Himalayas" begins today, airing nationwide and online. Here's the online "hub," with photos, sound, and lots of multimedia extras: Link.

Image (c) Xeni Jardin / 2006: Gaddi women singing prayers as they climb a rocky path to the shrine in Kanyara village, Himachal Pradesh, India.

Technorati Tags: Dharamshala, Gaddi, India, television

Tigga, please: wannabe gangsta-ism among Tibetan refugee teens

One of the photographs I *wish* I'd shot in Dharamsala's "Little Lhasa" but didn't was a cafe popular with young Tibetan schoolkids, called "G-UNIT." Huh? Hip-hop in the Himalayas? When I saw that sign hanging on a windy, rocky, mountain road, I just about fell out of the rickshaw. I knew there had to be a story behind it.

Tenzin Wangyal, a contributor to the Tibetan community news site Phayul.net who grew up in Dharamsala, has posted a terrific essay on this odd culture clash.

It reads like something out of the Onion:

Why do young Tibetans dress up in hip-hop attire, and try to talk and act like gangsta rappers? Are these young Tibetans keepin’ it real or are they just wannabes? (...) Though I am not an expert and certainly don't have any insider information, let me throw in my “50 Cent”.

This seems to be the preferred dress code for most young Tibetans living in the US, Canada, even Europe and increasingly in India and Nepal: a loose baggy jeans hanging precariously below the waistline; an oversize t-shirt; a baseball cap worn backward or sideways; and, a pair of boots or sneakers at least 2 sizes bigger. Add the defiant swagger, some hand-signs and some expressions like Nawmsayin’? (Translation: you know what I'm saying?), and lo and behold, we have ourselves a Tibetan wannabe nigga, in short a tigga. No one should take offense at this epithet because I have seen the same young Tibetans refer to themselves by that name and regularly greet each other with a “Wassup, nigga?”

Before putting the fashion choice of our tigga brethren under the microscope, I will acknowledge that our youngsters are probably drawn to hip-hop fashion for the same reasons that millions of other young people throughout the world emulate this nonconformist, casual and rebellious counter-culture.

Link to the full text of Tenzin's essay.

Technorati Tags: Dharamshala, Tibet

Tibetan government in exile launches online TV site

On August 3, the Central Tibetan Administration -- that's the official name for the Tibetan government in exile -- launched a new internet video site called Tibet Online. They're offering several Tibetan-language streams, including TibetTV News (screengrab at left).

I'm pretty sure they're producing all of this in Dharamshala, India, known to many as "Little Tibet." This is the small town at the foot of the Himalayas where the Dalai Lama and the CTA are based.

Teachings and public announcements from the Dalai Lama will also be broadcast at Tibet Online. The site offers video in multiple, DRM-free, no-charge formats. Early reports indicate the streams are accessible from various points inside Tibet, but that seems likely short-lived due to internet censorship practices of Chinese authorities. Link to the internet TV site, and here is an announcement by the prime minister, or Kalon Tripa, of the CTA. (Thanks, oxblood ruffin, and Om, who blogged about it here.)

I recently spent a month in "Little Tibet" and Tibet, PRC, working on a series of stories about how the internet is changing life for Tibetans. Radio stories will air on the NPR News program "Day to Day" this week, related reports will be released at Wired News, and I'll be joining CNN International host Kristie LuStout to share video from the trip there.

Technorati Tags: Dharamshala, India, video, television, Tibet

About this blog

In 2006, I traveled to India, China, and Tibet to explore how technology is changing the lives of Tibetans -- both inside and outside of their homeland. I traveled with my father, Dr. M. Quetzalkanbalam, who is researching indigenous culture in different parts of the world. He'd been planning a trip to Tibet this year for some time, so when I heard about a group of hackers and engineers building a wireless mesh network in Dharamshala, India, the home-in-exile of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government -- everything clicked. We decided to go together. Along the way, both of us learned and witnessed more than we could ever have imagined before we left.

On this blog, I'll be posting links to each of the radio, print, video, and online reports I'm filing from the trip. I'll continue following these stories here after the reports from my trip have all aired. But I'll also post the scribbled footnotes that didn't make it in. You'll see video, snapshots, hear audio snippets, video, and branches of these stories you just can't cram into 7 on-air minutes. The little daily details that comprise life on the road -- including HOWTO production info, and reviews of the production hardware and software I tested out on the road from Apple, Canon, and other tech gear providers.

Image: (c) 2006, Xeni Jardin. Long Life Buddha, presented with a feast of peaches, inside Tsepak Lakhang temple in Lhasa, Tibet. This photo and all others along the trip were shot with a Canon 5D, and a 24-70 2.8L USM, and the 70-300 4.5-5.6 DO IS USM lenses. Images were later processed with Apple's terrific photo content management app, Aperture. More on that later!

Technorati Tags: India, Tibet

NPR radio series: Hacking the Himalayas

Here's a snip from the NPR press release going out today about the radio series that resulted from this trip:

"HACKING THE HIMALAYAS" - TECH CONTRIBUTOR XENI JARDIN'S 4-PART SERIES ON HOW THE INTERNET IS CHANGING TIBETAN LIFE

AIRS ON NPR'S DAY TO DAY TUESDAY AUGUST 8 - FRIDAY AUGUST 10

Washington, DC; August 7, 2006 - In Tibet and Northern India, the recent introduction of high technology and the Internet to the region has the Tibetan people struggling to reconcile their ancient traditions with rapid growth. Buddhist monks in Tibet are emailing each other from their temples, while young Tibetan refugees are learning computer code from high up in the Himalayas.

This integration of cutting edge technology in such an unexpected place is the work of international tech activists, including members of a hacker group called "Cult of the Dead Cow," who are working to install wireless broadband in these traditionally unconnected communities to help them become more self-sufficient. But how has this advancement changed things in the remote refugee community?

NPR's Day to Day technology contributor Xeni Jardin asked this question when she traveled to Tibet and Northern India to see first-hand how the implementation of wireless broadband is impacting Tibetan life. Her report airs as a four-part series - "Hacking the Himalayas" - on NPR's midday news magazine program Day to Day Tuesday, August 8 - Friday, August 11 (check local stations' air time of Day to Day at www.NPR.org/stations).

Link