And so it begins. The battle lines are drawn. Advertising versus editorial, just like in newspaper offices all over the world. Maybe it was inevitable, or even healthy, a sign that the two departments are taking responsibility for their own patches. But I worry that Bhutan Observer is starting to look a lot more like other offices I have worked in than it did a week ago. Did I do that?
When editorial and advertising aren’t blaming each other, they come up with lots of good ideas: a children’s page in the Dzongkha edition; citizen journalism from Bhutanese students studying abroad; branded merchandise for potential advertisers; a media kit selling the newspaper’s strengths to advertisers; a business page; marketing the newspaper in cinemas; web classifieds; and so on. I type them up overnight, attaching questions to each about how to make them happen. Next morning we mix up the discussion groups – a couple of editorial with a couple from advertising and management – and this works well. They come at things differently and find opportunities for each other. It also seems to restore a sense of harmony.
The entrepreneurial zeal of the office spills over to home. Mal, Kathryn and I are enjoying yak burgers with chips at Thimphu’s hippest eatery, The Zone, when Mal announces an idea. In his daily online reading about Mac computers and software, he has discovered a new mosaic program. It can re-create a photograph using thousands of different images. Why not make a birthday poster of the Fifth King using photos of his subjects?
Kathryn and I stare at him in admiration. It is an inspired idea. The Fifth King has been dubbed ‘the people’s king’ because of his down-to-earth style. He did not invite any of the world’s royals to his coronation, nor any leaders he did not know personally. If he had, protocol would have meant spending time with them when he really wanted to celebrate the grand occasion with his people. Thus, the only international VVIPs invited were the Indian Prime Minister, along with Sonia Gandhi and her children, who are long-time family friends. The Fifth King spent much of the three-day celebration mingling with the crowd. As he said in his coronation speech, he wants his reign to be all about the people. A poster capturing that would be brilliant.
Mal buys the mosaic software over the internet and applies it to a formal photo of the Fifth King, using his own photo collection to supply the thousands of photos. Then he brings it in to present to Phuntsho and Tenzin, explaining that Bhutan Observer readers could be invited to send in their photos for him to perform this computer wizardry. It would be a way for them to wish their King a happy birthday.
Mal tapes the mock-up poster to a wall in Tenzin’s office, and the four of us walk towards the thousands of smiling faces, then backwards until it is the King’s regal personage once more. We do it again and again, hovering at that point where the image transitions from one image to many. Mal laughs at our obvious delight. Tenzin and Phuntsho speak to each other urgently in Sharchop, then Tenzin says, ‘Yes, yes, this is very good, let’s do it.’ But first he must seek permission from the palace. He makes an appointment and takes a printout of the mock poster with him.
Tenzin always looks dapper, but for a visit to the palace, he is resplendent in a multi-striped gho with his special-occasion kabney. My heart is in my mouth the whole time he is gone. Mal and I may have seriously misjudged this. It is not quite the royal visage on a tea-towel, but the Fifth King and his court may well see it that way.
Tenzin returns to the office very excited. He says the palace doesn’t just like it, they think it is the cleverest thing that has ever been proposed by any media company.
Mal makes a television advertisement for the project on his computer and goes around the office eavesdropping on staff to find the best voices. He chooses one of the girls in advertising to voice the English version and a Dzongkha translator, who is also a famous Bhutanese movie star, for the Dzongkha version. The local youth radio station lets them record the ad in a soundproof booth.
After the advertisement goes to air, the photos start to pour in by email, mobile phone and the post. Some are even hand-delivered. There are lots of dignified, non-smiling graduation and passport photos, as well as pictures showing happy moments on picnics by rivers. One rural schoolteacher sends in photos of all his students, dozens of them. Two members of staff send in so many of themselves that we have to cull them, for fear of ending up with one whole row of reporter Rabi and another of advertising head Gopal. Mal trims, crops and edits each photo individually, then loads them into the program. It takes three all-nighters, but finally one morning I wake up to find he has finished.
He hands it over to the newspaper’s graphic designer, Sushil. The car importer Zimdra agrees to sponsor the posters and he places their logo discreetly on the bottom along with the words, ‘Birthday Greetings from the People’.
The finished digital file is couriered to Delhi and printed into two different-sized posters made of thick, high-quality paper, then trucked back to Thimphu. They look spectacular. Before they go on sale, Tenzin has one framed for the Fifth King and presents it to the Prime Minister in a private appointment. He takes the office photographer to record the auspicious occasion. That photo takes pride of place in his office.
The mosaic posters are a marketing hit but it takes a while before they become a financial success. The problem, as always, is distribution. There just are not enough shops to sell them, and those that do sell them do not display them well. When we can’t see any posters in Thimphu’s largest bookshop (there are only three), we enquire at the front desk and are shown to an out-of-the-way corner. The posters are covered in opaque plastic to ‘protect’ the King. Selling out may take a while.
We trek up to the ridge behind Thimphu, past the BBS tower, to Yeshe’s lhakhang and hurl a poster over the high wall. Inside we have taped a note explaining where he can find his own face. It makes us feel good to imagine his delight.
12
The Myth of Shangri-La
One February morning we wake up to the news that Victoria, my home state, is on fire. We eat breakfast in shocked silence as we watch footage of houses exploding into flames live on BBC. Survivors and fighters tell stories of unimaginable heat. Raining fireballs. I don’t remember hearing such descriptions before and feel a heavy sense of impending doom. I stream the ABC news on my computer in the office, worrying about friends who have a raspberry farm at Kinglake, an hour north-east of Melbourne. Every now and then the radio host Richard Stubbs is interrupted by news of an imminent threat to a specific community. Names that are so familiar: Marysville, Yarra Glen, Christmas Hills, Beechworth, Healesville, Yea Road. I realise people in these places are listening to the same broadcast and making life-and-death decisions about whether to stay or go. It is an eerie feeling to be so connected and yet so disconnected.
I watch through my window as five men make their way up Norzin Lam. They look strange and foreign in their ghos with stiff back pleats and long white cuffs. I feel a wave of homesickness. I start emailing people in Australia for news of our friends. At 4 pm I get a reply: they got out safely, but lost the farm. I remember when they planted their first raspberry vines 25 years ago. Megan starts texting me, clearly desperate with worry. Her home is in Chiltern and she has a friend in Yackandandah who just sent a text saying she is watching from her verandah the fire coming towards her.
Victoria continues to burn, and on Monday morning I sit in the news conference feeling hollow. The staff have no idea of the bushfires that have been the headlines on CNN and BBC all weekend. Of more interest to them today are traditional Bhutanese sports that are disappearing. They keep weaving in and out of Dzongkha and Sharchop, and I struggle to keep up. Someone mentions cock-fighting. Is that with roosters, I ask. They fall about laughing at my ignorance. It is played between two men who each have one leg tied behind them and they hop at each other, banging bodies and heads until one falls over. That’s a sport? Yes, and so is another game where someone drops a hanky and competitors have to do something to pick it up. I have t
rouble understanding much of what is said, even the bits in English. My body is here but my mind is back in Australia.
A friend emails me photos of two people she loved who died, one in the fires and one from a heart attack. I print them out and climb the 108 steps to Changangkha Lhakhang to request prayers. The monk doesn’t speak English but I manage to convey fires. Australia. Now. He looks shocked, and accepts my offerings of beer and butter with such earnest concern that finally I start to feel better.
While few Bhutanese pay much attention to what is happening outside their borders, they do follow what is written about them in international media. Most Nepalese newspapers are critical and Western ones adoring, seeing Bhutan through a golden haze of the mythical Shangri-La, a fictional place in James Hilton’s 1933 novel Lost Horizon. Hilton’s Shangri-La is a seductive, hidden land in the Himalayas where people don’t age and the overall religion is to be kind. The Shangri-La myth now permeates much of what is written about Bhutan.
A small Nebraska newspaper, The Grand Island Independent, publishes a story that features comments from bank worker Ken Bruce, who has returned from a trekking holiday in Bhutan. He tells the paper, ‘Almost the entire country is extremely poor and cut off from surrounding society, but much of it is by choice … Many Bhutanese know about modern conveniences such as washing machines and television but choose not to use them.’
The idea that anybody would choose to be isolated and extremely poor is laughable. Everyone in Thimphu has the chance to cringe at such patronising ignorance when Bhutan Times analyses Ken’s comments in its editorial titled ‘Coffee table Bhutan’.
The tourist must have felt the urge to tell his readers that he has reached an unstained country and use his Bhutan narrative as a moral bed time story for those spoilt by consumerism. The attempt is to market and domesticate an exotic experience for Western consumption and present Bhutan as a unique and clean product; [or] a zealous tour guide, in his attempt to present the best of Bhutan, added a little spice. Not his mistake, because he just did his job of making his guest happy and gave him a feeling that he has reached the best place on earth.
I’m guessing both are true and I feel some sympathy for poor, well-meaning Ken. Bhutanese tour guides can spin some bizarre lines, sometimes to keep their visitors happy and at other times out of sheer mischief. Visitors to Bhutan can’t wander around on their own, catching local buses and booking into hotels as they feel like it. They must pre-book everything. Most visitors jet in on a two-week trek and are taken around the country by their guides, sleeping in tents and spending just one night at a hotel in Thimphu before they fly home. Or they travel in four-wheel drives between a series of new uber-luxury resorts dotted around the country. Often the guides are the only Bhutanese people tourists talk to.
The guides don’t always know the answers to all the tourists’ questions, and what they don’t know, sometimes they make up. Or when it comes to happiness, they stretch the truth, just a little, to make everyone feel good. They see it as their job. In many ways we are all complicit in this. The Bhutanese want Bhutan to be that Shangri-La as much for themselves as for tourists. And the tourists want it to be that way. That’s why they come.
Dr Nitasha Kaul, an academic from the University of Westminster in London, conducts an analysis of international stories about the country’s transition to democracy and writes about her findings in Kuensel. She concludes that Bhutanese coverage of the country’s elections was far superior to that of the international media, which was stuck on this clichéd image of Bhutan, not unlike what Ken described. She lists some typical elements that the stories would include: references to a hidden Shangri-La, the four Queen Mothers, an isolated kingdom, the late introduction of television and the internet, and, of course, Gross National Happiness.
I understand why all those international stories about Bhutan can’t get past these aspects of the country. They are newsworthy. No other country has them. No one is artificially imposing news value onto those aspects of Bhutanese life.
In Bhutan they call it Shangri-La journalism, and I’m guilty of it. Like Ken from Nebraska, I’ve done my bit to perpetuate the myth. In A Baby in a Backpack to Bhutan I managed to get most of Dr Kaul’s list into my first page. I had nothing negative to say about the country – not a word – and for good reason: I didn’t find anything negative.
My first visit was before the arrival of democracy and independent newspapers. The only newspaper was Kuensel and Phuntsho’s family didn’t get it at home. I used to watch the BBS news in English each night with them. Mostly it was about the Fourth King, government business, and education, with the odd banking fraud and a bit about traditional life in the villages. The two newsreaders looked elegant and polished in their kira and gho. BBS didn’t cover topics such as alcoholism, drugs or domestic violence. It wasn’t until years later, sitting in Bhutan Observer news conferences, that I learned about them. The topics are now openly reported and part of public discussion, but not then, just six years ago.
But most of all, my rose-coloured glasses came from living with Phuntsho’s family. It was through them that I learned about Gross National Happiness, the extraordinary qualities of the Fourth King and the esoteric nature of the country. They took me to meet the Oracle, a lynx-like woman of mystical powers. While Mal was off up a yak trail making the film, they cared for Kathryn and me with such kindness and generosity that I still feel humbled when I remember it years later. They showed me their Bhutan – deeply spiritual, highly ethical and undoubtedly exotic. Bhutan may not be Shangri-La, but four months in that household came pretty close.
As a journalist, Kinley Dorji recognises the news appeal of the Shangri-La myth and considers it mostly harmless, a junior version of GNH.
‘I don’t think Shangri-La is a big deal. I think as a concept it is a little outdated. It’s been the lead in a few thousand stories. It sounds good, makes people pick up the story. It’s sexy. It should not be romanticised to the extent that you forget it is a real country with real people. To an extent, that is happening. Some of it is just a sale to get the tourists. But the Bhutanese must not forget it. We should not fool ourselves.
‘GNH is much more sound. It actually has an academic construction. It’s all about responsibility and not letting materialism and desire take over.’
Kay Kirby Dorji, however, considers the Shangri-La myth to be unhelpful. She believes it is a sentimental delusion. ‘People come here and gush about how perfect it is. It’s a great place, but it is in no way perfect … I’ve been here too long. Bhutanese are just like everybody else. They are happy if they have money and can buy things for a comfortable life. I can’t say there is anything wrong with that … But I think we shouldn’t kid ourselves that we are Shangri-La. And I think that is a good thing about the growth of the media here because that has spurred coverage of the less Shangri-La parts of society. There is a lot more coverage of drug problems. There is still a lot of denial going on but there is a lot more openness than there used to be.’
One of the problems with the myth is that Bhutan doesn’t want to become a living museum, no matter how much tourists may like it. It’s a fine line between preserving culture and forcing it to stagnate. Finding that line is a constant topic of public discussion. Cultural preservation is one of the pillars of Gross National Happiness, so it crops up in every new policy.
An interesting moment of self-reflection comes when Kuensel publishes a story about the Monpa tribe, a small community living in remote mountains. They are considered the earliest inhabitants of the country with their own language, music, and clothing made from nettles. Kuensel laments that this small group of 261 Monpas, living in 41 households across three villages, ‘have lost their culture and tradition to the winds of modernisation’.
Nyontemo, 75, remembers wearing nettle clothes as a child, until her uncle brought her soft clothes made of cotton and wool. ‘Who would want to spend time weavin
g these rough clothes when there is so much choice in the market?’
But while the Kuensel journalist finds this sad, the Monpas themselves appear quite happy to lose their old ways. They would rather listen to rigsar, the modern Bhutanese music on the radio, than their old traditional songs. They prefer the money they earn working on farms to the poverty they endured from bamboo weaving. And who could blame them for liking soft clothes against their skin, instead of nettle fibre? I don’t suppose the Dutch want to go back to clogs either.
Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche stirs up the discussion in an opinion piece in Kuensel.
Of course, one of the core pillars of GNH is culture, which is obviously very important for the identity and sovereignty of a nation. But keeping a rich tradition and culture vibrant and alive does not mean pushing people to do exactly what their ancestors did 50 or 100 years ago. If we try to do that, we will not only ruin the creativity and critical intellect of the young by teaching them to mimic rather than create, but we won’t even keep our culture alive or survive as a nation in the modern world.
Resisting change might serve a supposed purpose of GNH by encouraging people to be happy with what they have. But unwisely insisting on the mimicking of old habits also stifles avant-garde activity and innovation, fails to value excellence, and ends up settling for mediocrity. And in the end, that approach undermines rather than enhances GNH by making our culture static rather than dynamic.
It is a provocative act for a spiritual leader to question GNH, and his piece prompts a wide-ranging discussion in the newspapers about the point of preserving culture.
In 1999, Bhutan became the last country to get television, and the world looked on with great interest. Many prophesied that it would destroy the culture – Bhutan would become homogenised or Americanised. Four years later, Britain’s respected Guardian newspaper published a story that upset many Bhutanese, portraying the country as suffering a crime wave brought on by the arrival of television. Journalists Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy wrote:
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