“If You Don’t Wear Them, We Will”: Preservation, Appropriation, and the Importance of Role-models in Tibetan Cultural Life

tibetan chupa

I came across this Tibetan meme on Facebook a few months ago. In true meme style, pithy as it is, it manages to encapsulate and gesture towards a great deal. The image shows an assortment of beaming non-Tibetan foreigners wearing traditional Tibetan dress. The top speech bubble says:

“We will learn spoken and written Tibetan and then we will teach it to you” Continue reading

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