Republished with permission

Liam Bates, from Saint Prex, Vaud, who attends the University of British Columbia in Canada, contributes feature and travel articles to GenevaLunch. In mid-March 2009 he won a speech contest sponsored by the Chinese government, “Chinese Bridge,” to find the best Chinese speaker among Canadian university students. In August 2009 he competes in Beijing with some 100 students from around the world for the international title. Video of his winning speech in Canada.

Tsering Shakya, interviewed on the blog Motorbikes, Mao and a Yak, is the author of The Dragon in the Land of Snows, called by the New York Times likely to be the “definitive history of modern Tibet.” He is a professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

by Liam Bates

UBC Professor Tsering Shakya was kind enough to give us an interview on youth in Tibet today and the influence Chinese culture has had over the past 50 years or so. Professor Shakya left Lhasa in 1959 with his mother, moving to India. He attended university in the UK on scholarship and now resides in Vancouver. He is one of the world’s foremost authorities on contemporary Tibet.