On a recent Sunday in Jackson Heights, Queens, Dorjee Gyaltsen stands in a pastel blue and yellow classroom in front of a large whiteboard at the Danang Cultural School. He’s using his modest artistic abilities to draw a rabbit, elephant, and monkey, among other animals, on the whiteboard for about a dozen middle school-age students writing in notebooks on grey desks lined in four neat rows.
As Gyaltsen looks across the classroom, he sees the future of Tibet in the eyes peering back at him.
“We are sowing a seed of Tibetaness even though it takes quite a long time to see the results,” Gyaltsen said.
Immigration News, Curated
Sign up to get our curation of news, insights on
big stories, job announcements, and events happening in immigration.
Over the past decade, New York City has seen a rise in the number of language schools dedicated to teaching the Tibetan language. When large-scale Tibetan immigration to the city began in 1990, there were none. Now, there are an estimated seven in the metro area. At a time when the Chinese Communist Party is aggressively clamping down on the use of the Tibetan language, attempts to preserve the culture and identity within the community in New York and New Jersey are growing. There are an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Tibetans in New York City, making it home to the largest population of Tibetans in the United States.
“In this country, it is not really possible to bring kids and teach them in an intensive course for two to three years. The situation is not really favorable,” Gyaltsen said. “So, what we believe is that at least we can inculcate the basic values of the culture, and hopefully it will bloom somehow or the other when they grow up and realize the importance of those values.”
The school is located in the main hall of the Himalayan Library in Jackson Heights, Queens, a place that serves as a center of Tibetan culture during the week and one that transforms into a learning space on the weekends. It was established by Lama Tsewang Rinpoche, a well-known Tibetan Buddhist teacher, in 2021. For Tibetans, passing down the language has become a form of resistance to Chinese rule, and a long-time priority of the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual and political leader, who turns 90 this July.
Gyaltsen has taught at the Danang Cultural School since it started as a Tibetan language and culture summer camp in July 2021. Today, there are about 125 students enrolled in weekend classes overseen by five teachers. The school is even waitlisting prospective students due to high demand.
Classes run for about four hours and are rigorous. Students must progress through five different levels using textbooks issued by the Central Tibetan Administration based in Dharamsala, India.
“When we are teaching the Tibetan language, it is very difficult,” said instructor Jigme Gyatso, who immigrated from Tibet to New York City in the late 1990s. “We are losing the culture,” Gyatso added, sipping butter tea.
Among the instructors’ concerns is the limited time students have to practice and study the language during the week. They said the students, who grew up speaking English in the city, have difficulty pronouncing and writing Tibetan words. But Dawa Dhondup, who previously taught Tibetan in India, is encouraged by the progress he sees in the youngest students.
“Especially class one, they developed so much and now, they are good at reading,” Dhondup said.
When Tibetan Sonam Palkyi, 32, moved from India to New York City as a child, there were no such schools. She remembers attending a makeshift Tibetan language school at an Armenian church that the community would rent on the weekends.
“There used to be a small little Sunday school that would be hosted on the second floor of some building, and it would be a bunch of Tibetan kids,” Palkyi recalls. “I was probably 10 or 11, learning the Tibetan alphabet. It was kind of embarrassing.”
Palkyi has witnessed the Tibetan community grow in the metro area over the years. She said a large draw was the Tibetan Community Center of NY & NJ in Woodside, Queens, an established community hub that created the first Tibetan language school in 1997.
When Chinese tanks rolled into Tibet’s capital city, Lhasa, in 1951, Tibetans expected to return. Decades later, more than 150,000 Tibetans were forced to find new homes around the globe: initially in India, home to the Dalai Lama and the government in exile, but increasingly in the West. When Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1990, 1,000 Tibetans were selected to be settled across the U.S., which planted the seeds for the present-day community.
“A big, big challenge now is how to maintain culture, language, and a certain level of cohesion and sense of community when you are spread, literally, across the world,” said Lauren Hartley, who directs the Modern Tibetan Studies Program at Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute.
Today, many Tibetans feel that the Chinese government’s oppression is greater than ever.
In an April report, the Tibet Policy Institute said Chinese authorities have forcibly closed numerous Tibetan-language schools, blocked websites, and mandated that students exclusively focus on learning Mandarin Chinese. In May, the Tibet Action Group reported that 800,000 Tibetan children are now enrolled in Chinese boarding schools where they are often separated from their parents, who are unable to pass down Tibetan family values.
While China insists Mandarin Chinese is necessary preparation for the modern economy, the Tibetan language has a deeper significance for the community than simply communication. It’s also the primary language used to study sacred Buddhist texts.
China’s language policies not only impact the Tibetan language, but also over 60 other languages spoken across the Tibetan Plateau, according to anthropologist Gerald Roche, who authored “The Politics of Language Oppression in Tibet.” As a result, linguistic diversity is “collapsing” in the region, with China refusing to recognize languages from minority groups and only acknowledging a single standard Tibetan language.
“Tibetan has always been supported far below the level Mandarin Chinese has been supported, so that inequality pushes more people toward Chinese. They take those signals, and if they use Mandarin Chinese, they’ll have better success at school, job opportunities, and broader cultural opportunities,” Roche said.
Meanwhile, back in New York City, the steady efforts to teach Tibetan children the language seem to be paying off, according to Sonam Tsering, who directs Columbia University’s Tibetan language program.
“Some parents are realizing that if you invest in helping kids learn the Tibetan way of life — including culture, tradition, and language — they see that as a plus in the upbringing of their kids.”
