Brooklyn-born Jewish-Tibetan "Scene King" & his posse of club kids dragging Lhasa "kicking & sceaming into the 21st centuy.
They know more about the Kardashians than Karma, and yellow robes are out while "Forever 21" and Ed Hardy are in. Yak milk? Most twentysomethings in Lhasa have never tried it, but they can ree off the popular items on the Starbucks menu by heart. Meet the new generation of Tibetans who are transforming Lhasa into Western China's fast-changing Capital of Cool.
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"Of course, the yungdrung is an ancient Tibetan symbol, predating the German Nazi swastika by millennia," says Norbu Greenberg as he balances himself precariously on a ladder in the hot morning sun, brushing over the crooked cross with white paint and pausing now and then to mop beads sweat from his forehead with a bandana. "Even so, some worry it might send the wrong message." The son of a Tibetan mother and a Jewish-American English teacher who met in Tibet during the 1990s, Norbu is one of Lhasa' most well-known "Gnubska," or "bamboo-seedlings," slang for a new breed of young grass-roots entrepreneurs who are changing the hidebound face of this most traditional of cities. His newest project: transforming what was formerly Jetsunna Monastery, a centuries-old Gelugpa institution, into "Club Elite Beats," which he hopes will become a successful hotspot in Lhasa's booming hip-hop scene.
Does Norbu worry that something of Tibet's irreplaceable culture might be lost in the headlong rush into the future? He laughs off my concerns. "A healthy culture is something that lives and changes, like a thriving human body. It is when a culture is little more than a dusty museum that's when its time to worry."
variety.com
