Feb. 23rd: Tibetan-Chinese Panel

Come join TANC’s second Tibetan-Chinese discussion panel on “Sharing Stories, Building Bridges: Fostering Mutual Understanding” between Tibetans and Chinese in the Bay Area.

SPEAKERS:

Ginger Chih, PhD - Documentary Photographer/Cultural Anthropologist

Genny Lim - Director, Writer, Artist/Actor

Tenzin Tethong - Former Prime Minister of Tibetan Government in Exile

Kangan Tashi - Chinese-speaking Tibetan former Buddhist monk from Amdo, Tibet

MODERATOR: Dechen Tsering – TANC, President

WHEN: February 23, 2010, Tuesday 6PM SHARP

WHERE: 1924 Cedar Street (at Bonita Avenue), Berkeley. For directions, click here.

SPEAKER BIOS:

GINGER CHIH, PhD.

Photographer Ginger Chih was born in China to a Chinese father and a mother who is half Japanese and half indigenous Chinese.  Her family became refugees from communism when she was only three years old.  Having lived in China, Japan, England and the United States, Ginger is very familiar with the physical, emotional and spiritual traumas that arise from migration. She studied history at Mills College in California, women’s history at Sarah Lawrence, business at New York University, and culture of the workplace at University of Cambridge in UK, where she obtained her doctoral. Through her extensive travels, Dr. Chih was drawn toward the Himalayas in recent years.  Peripatetic, multi-lingual, at heart an anthropologist and a practicing Buddhist, Dr. Chih brings an unusual sensitivity to the documentation of Diaspora communities. Dr. Chih has visited most of the Tibetan settlements in India and Nepal on a picture-book project for the Tibet Fund in New York. Dr. Chih seeks to document the Tibetan exile communities and record how this unique civilization that flourished in Tibet has been preserved and woven into the fabrics of the modern world over the past 50 years. Dr. Chih is conducting this project as a volunteer. She is currently visiting the Bay Area to photograph Tibetan way of life in the west and interview some Tibetans for the book project that will be used to raise funds for Tibet Fund’s projects to benefit Tibetans in India/Nepal and inside Tibet.

GENNY LIM

Genny Lim is a poet, playwright, performer and adjunct professor at California Institute of Integral Studies. She recently premiered her multimedia theater piece, Where is Tibet? A first time Bay Area theater collaboration between Chinese and Tibetan performers at CounterPULSE in San Francisco and co-hosted by TANC. Her poetry collaborations include some of the greatest jazz musicians in the world, including the late Max Roach, Billy Higgins, and Herbie Lewis. She’s performed at numerous jazz festivals throughout the U.S. from San Francisco, San Jose, and San Diego to Houston and Chicago and has been a featured poet, touring Venezuela in the World Poetry Festival in 2005, then Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2007 and Naples, Italy in 2009. Genny has recorded several CDs with her long time collaborators, Jon Jang, in Immigrant Suite and Francis Wong, in Devotee and Child of Peace.  Genny Lim’s award-winning play Paper Angels, was the first Asian American play featured on PBS’s American Playhouse in 1985, and was performed in China, Canada and throughout the U.S. She is the author of two poetry books, Child of War and Winter Place and the co-author of the American Book Award winning, Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island.

TENZIN N. TETHONG, KASUR

Kasur Tenzin Tethong is Chair of the Committee of 100 for Tibet, and President of the Dalai Lama Foundation. He is a Distinguished Fellow at Tibetan Studies Initiative, and a member of the Center for Compassion & Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University.  Kasur Tethong is a former Representative of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama in New York and Washington, D.C., and former Prime Minister of the Kashag, the Cabinet of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama that earns him the title of “Kasur”. A founding member of Sheja Magazine and the Tibetan Youth Congress, he has worked all his life with Tibetan exiles as a grassroots activist, teacher, adviser, and community leader. He is the founder of key Tibet initiatives in the U.S. such as the Tibet Fund, Tibet House – New York, the International Campaign for Tibet, the Committee of 100 for Tibet and the Dalai Lama Foundation.

KANGAN TASHI

Kangan Tashi was born in eastern Tibetan region of Amdo (Aba County). His educational background spans three very different academic cultures starting with a traditional Buddhist education at Segar Monastery in Amdo Ngawa, followed by a Chinese High School degree and finally a baccalaureate in computer science from New York University. A former TANC President (2000-2002), Mr. Tashi has been an active community member bringing his language skills (Tibetan, Chinese and English) as well as his life experiences in Chinese-occupied Tibet and exile life in the United States to reach out to Chinese brothers and sisters in the west. Many of Mr. Tashi’s family members have perished under the Chinese military forces with one relative executed by the Chinese government in 1960.

DECHEN TSERING

Dechen Tsering is currently the President of the Tibetan Association of Northern California (TANC). She earned a Masters degree in international public health from Tulane University in New Orleans and a Bachelor of Arts in environmental science from Antioch College in Ohio. Dechen worked with the Seva Foundation in Berkeley, which strives to improve health care in the Global south through a holistic approach. At the Seva Foundation, she focused her program work on India, Tibet, Nepal and Cambodia. In addition, Dechen has worked for the Trace Foundation in New York, which promotes the cultural continuity and sustainable development of Tibetan communities inside Tibet, and has a strong activist background. Dechen’s first trip to Lhasa, Tibet was in 1998 for four months as a research assistant after which she visited Eastern Tibet (Kham) on two occasions. Before being elected to be the President of TANC in 2008, Dechen was the Program Officer for Asia & Oceania at the Global Fund for Women, one of the largest foundations in the world making grants to women’s rights groups. Raised in Nepal, India and the United States, Dechen is fluent in Tibetan, Hindi, Nepali, Newari and English.