Cultural center stages holiday open house

Among intricately carved deity statues, handcrafted bags and ornate jewelry, customers milled about the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center.

The Happy Yak Gift Shop staged a holiday open house for customers to shop for the holiday season Thursday. 

The Happy Yak is part of the TMBCC that is completely volunteer-run and is open year-round.

“It’s really important in terms of the preservation of the culture and continued education about the Tibetan and Mongolian cultures, to do things like this,” Lisa Morrison, director of media and public relations for the TMBCC, said.

The funds from the shop will support the operation costs of the TMBCC as well as some of the special outreach and education programs.

The small shop sells mostly handmade items made by Tibetan refugees or artisans, Morrison said.

“Some of our merchandise I ordered from Fair Trade houses,” Gift Shop Supervisor Lynn Svensson said.

Some of the Fair Trade merchandise includes wallets made of recycled tires and pins made from soda cans.

“When people come in, they usually buy something,” Svensson said. “The challenge is getting people out here.”

A guitarist played in the background as customers enjoyed homemade appetizers and sipped complimentary wine. People slowly circled around the store, admiring the merchandise at each table.

“The center, to me, is a nice little refuge that is just far enough out of town that has so many great offerings and unique gifts,” customer Laura Patterson said.

The photography exhibit, which contained some of the works from photographer Sonam Zoksang’s “Visions of Tibet” collection, lined a wall of the main room.  

Zoksang, who has been the official photographer to the Dalai Lama for more than 20 years, donated his collection of photographs to the TMBCC.

“This color photography collection is images of Tibet, is images of the village, the people, the culture, and it’s a culture and a religion that’s dwindling,” Morrison said. “That’s literally becoming extinct.”

The revenue from his photographs will go directly back into the TMBCC as well as Director of the Center, Arija Rinpoche’s, Cancer Care Treatment Center for Mongolian Children in Ulanbaatar, Mongolia.

“As small as it may seem, anytime that we do events and outreach like this, it allows us to educate and to keep the culture arrive,” Morrison said.