COVID, the sequel
by Sabrina Liu, 2021
It was a year and a half of communication through text messages and video chats. A year and a half of painstakingly keeping in touch with a group of children on the other side of the globe, a globe wracked by a deadly virus. Sure, my brother and I raised enough funds to purchase them books and their requested toys during this period, but we felt like the bridge between our world and their world was starting to fade; afterall, maintaining a foundation through screens is not ideal.
A year ago, my brother and I downloaded WeChat, the Chinese multi-purpose social media app (imagine if Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram were thrown into a pot and stirred together — the mixture would be WeChat). Our only hopes of video chatting the Tibetan children lied in this app, as all other forms of videotelephony do not work in China. The plan had seemed very doable: gather the children together and video chat with them through the tulku’s phone (the children do not have phones as their parents fear the effects of modern technology on the former, rightfully so, I guess). But because the children were still in school, and because of the countless power outages (solar panels, as it turns out, are not reliable in the Tibetan mountains), we sometimes had to delay our planned, bimonthly video conferences. But let's focus on the positives: I want to talk about a recent call we had. On the special day of August 4th, the tulku and the children were united in the Buddhist temples at the apex of the mountains, and he video chatted us with his phone (which had surprisingly good signal that day).
My brother and I accepted the WeChat request, and the moment the call connected, we were met with a screen of smiling and giggling Tibetan children, emanating pure joy. As the phone passed from one kid to the other, each excitedly greeting us, I was struck by not only how well they spoke Mandarin, but also by how much they grew up. After the last time we visited them in 2019, the children journeyed below the mountains and into the city to attend an actual school. The exposure to the outside world altered their personalities — not for the worse, but for the better. It seemed like my brother and I remained stagnant in our aging process while they suddenly matured years above their actual ages in those mere two years.
We chatted for an indefinite amount of time. The thirty-one Tibetan children gave us a tour of the newly renovated temple. They expressed their love for their new school, its teachers, and its other urban students whom the former befriended (one girl in the call earned the top grades in the school!). They talked about their elation upon their return to the mountains, and how they helped their parents with daily chores of maintaining their homes and tending their cattle. One boy eagerly motioned his friends over, and the handful of them explained to us how they were constructing a house all by themselves. Through the conversation, my brother and I learned that the Tibetan children loved stuffed animals, toy cars, drawing supplies, and most of all, books — history books with illustrations, comic books, textbooks with Hanyu Pinyin (the romanization system helps them with their Mandarin), textbooks without Hanyu Pinyin, and on and on. Of course, my brother and I promised them that we would gather more funds to send them these items they dreamed so dearly of. At the end, we concluded by planning the date of our next video conference. The video chat was a success.
Seeing their faces, hearing their voices, and interacting with them did more than reunite the bridge between our worlds — it inspired my brother and me to work even harder to implement the Helping Tibet Foundation to the children’s benefit. Having realized how diligently the Tibetan children worked in school, away from their homes, my brother and I understood the infinite extent of their hunger for more knowledge and experiences. And yes, we were content that the Helping Tibet Foundation managed to greatly assist the children through the pandemic, but we wanted, and still want, to do more. Our aspirations and goals to aid the Tibetan children drive us tremendously, and the thought of having thirty-one bright-eyed friends across the globe comforts us every single day.
