Description

Journalist and Musician Kunga Tenzin Dorji, known as Supe, talks about his homeland Bhutan – the landlocked country located in the Eastern Himalayas. Until the 1960s, the kingdom of Bhutan was isolated from the rest of the world. When Bhutan started to open up, it did not modernize blindly, as Supe points out. The tiny nation wedged between India and China was able to preserve its national identity, which remains visible in the country’s cultural heritage, and in its political and socio-economic systems.

Your host: Denise Staubli, Program Manager, Asia Society Switzerland
Moderator: Simona Grano, Senior Lecturer and Director of the Taiwan Studies Project at the University of Zurich (UZH)
Speaker: Kunga Tenzin Dorji (Supe), freelance journalist and musician
Production: Denise Staubli

Show Notes

• Phobjikha Valley – a spectacular wide valley in Bhutan at an elevation of 3’000 meters, where you also find the very endangered black-necked cranes
• Ema Datshi – the national dish of Bhutan 
• Anthony Bourdains’ series Parts Unknown on Bhutan, who gives a good assessment of Bhutan
• The History of Bhutan, by Karma Phuntsho
• So Close to Heaven: The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas, by Barbara Crossette, for a better understanding of geopolitics of Bhutan
• The Circle of Karma, by Kunzang Choden, fiction and quite revealing about Bhutan’s society and culture
• Asia Society Switzerland webcast A Closer Look at Bhutan with Kunga Tenzin Dorji and Dr. Simona Grano, July 1, 2021