You Are Not Like Them
“You are not like them.”
As a child, I often heard these words. They were spoken with certainty, yet I struggled to understand.
How was I different? I wondered. Weren’t we all just kids — two hands, two feet, climbing trees and playing? Yet, the adults at the orphanage told me otherwise with their knowing eyes. That phrase, repeated again and again, became an invisible line drawn between me and my friends. But we had no say in it.
This quiet separation, this invisible boundary, is something many Tibetans experience today. We are spoken about but rarely heard. Our identity is dissected, debated, and defined by outsiders — reduced to a political battleground between China and the West. But what about the Tibetans who remain in China? The rural farmers, the urban workers — those who do not fit the mainstream narrative and have no connection to geopolitical discourse?
Their struggles are not just about politics but about agency — about being seen and heard in conversations that shape their own lives.
I first felt this exclusion as a child at an orphanage in Tibet’s Duilong Deqin County. In 1993, a Swiss-Tibetan woman, Tendol Gyalzur, established Tibet’s first orphanage. What began with just seven children grew into homes that raised over 300 across China. I was one of them.
But I wasn’t an orphan — I was there to learn Tibetan because not everyone in my hometown spoke it. My parents, close friends of Tendol Gyalzur, believed that an immersive Tibetan-speaking environment was essential for my education, so I became part of the orphanage.
Of course, I made friends. Every night, my friends and I would line up to hug Grandma Tendol before bed. She would hand out small treats — candy, a piece of chocolate — her warmth lingering long after we went to sleep. It became our favorite moment of the day, an embrace that made every one of us feel safe.
Yet, no matter how much love we shared, that phrase hung between us. “You are not like them.” It separated me from my friends — not because of who I was, but because of what they assumed: that I had a different future waiting for me simply because I had a home to return to. My friends and I were placed into separate groups by the adults at the orphanage. This process of othering did not strengthen our relationships — it only pushed us further apart.
Looking back, I wish I had spoken up:
Stop.
Please listen.
Hear me.
Hear us.
Now, this same unspoken boundary still exists today. The world divides Tibetans into categories — the exiled, the politicized. But what about the Tibetans who remain in China? The ones whose struggles are not neatly categorized into political narratives?
The same question I asked as a child still remains unanswered today: How are we different? Why is our own voice not enough?
This realization struck me as I researched over the years. Again and again, I encountered the same issue — our lives staying in the past, our identity analyzed from a distance, debated by external forces. When the only “credible” voices on Tibetan issues belong to outsiders, where does that leave those of us who actually live these realities?
So now, I ask the world to listen.
But the question is: Will you?
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