The first day I met him was his last day in business.
“It’s all coming to end,” said Wongyal Norbu at the start of our conversation. The 54-year-old business man has owned his small Tibetan store, Lama Shop, on Newbury Street for 21 years. And today, he is carefully wrapping up old relics of a country he has never known.
Early Life
Norbu was born in Tibet—a country now under Chinese rule. But he has no recollection of his time there. As a toddler, he and his family moved to Nepal during Tibet’s transition into communism. Norbu said this experience influenced him greatly, especially witnessing his mother resilience. “She was a very strong woman,” Norbu added, “raising four children, fleeing to Nepal. She experienced a lot of suffering.”
Even though he left his motherland, Norbu said he enjoyed growing up in Nepal. “Life in Nepal is really good and cosmopolitan,” Norbu said. “There are so many different cultures to experience.”
In 1981, Norbu moved to California. There, he pursued his interest in languages. He is a linguist with five languages under his belt: English, Tibetan, Nepali, Newari and Hindi. After teaching and a brief career in landscaping, Norbu decided it was time for a change.
The Start of His Business
His close connection to his culture, appreciation for artisan work, and love of travel inspired Norbu to start his own business in 1989. His store sold original, hand-made items from craftsmen all over Asia.
“I knew so many people from Nepal who were crafts people,” said Norbu. “I have a close link to them.” While his daughters attended to customers, Norbu sat casually on a stool in the barren backroom that was divided by a Tibetan flag used as a makeshift door. One light hung overhead, providing a spotlight on the entrepreneur.
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| Here, a woman spins wool in a Tibetan carpet factory. |
The faint scent of incense and the distant hum of music enveloped the small shop. Norbu explained how he journeyed to remote places to find unique pieces, visiting small villages in India where there are stone cutters. The shop still had quite a few rare, valuable crafts on this last day of business, though now the items were discounted. There are hand-made, silver rings with real gems, rugs, and wooden stamps—all made from different families from different countries.
“Each time I go back to [the countries], I meet with the families,” said Norbu, who explained he paid the artisans upfront in full. “I’d visit and buy everything they had. It was a big deal for them because economically the countries were doing very badly.”
I asked him about the delicately crafted paper-lanterns piled in the corner. The lanterns are made with real pressed flower petals and ferns. He looked at them and immediately identified the family who made them.
“The father was struggling,” he said. “Now, he can send his four kids to college. These people work with their hands and keep their families together. They can be proud.”
Sometimes, he said, he collected items in an effort to save them. Norbu recalled discovering that 100-year-old homes were being demolished in the Himalayas. These homes had intricate stone work, and Norbu could not imagine them destroyed.
“The only part of the old history I felt I could salvage were these little things,” Norbu said. “These things meant something to a lot of people, and I got to share that with customers.”
The End, The Beginning
While he has enjoyed his business, Norbu is not too upset to close up shop. “It gives me the freedom to live a simple life,” Norbu said. “My two girls are not fully ready to take over the business, so it was an easy decision for me.”
Both his daughters Tenzin and Choesang, are teenagers born in America. But Norbu has made great strides to instill cultural values in his family. He wanted to make sure his children got to experience Nepali life, language and flavor.
“I took them back to live in Nepal for four years,” he said. “They went to British school because education is really important to me.” He hopes that one day his children will be able to travel and experience what he enjoyed.
The Tibetan collector follows two life mottos: “live life to the fullest,” and “try not to be attached.” “I try not to be attached to people, places and things,” Norbu explained. “A lot of suffering comes from attaching to those things.”
He said the American lifestyle is vastly different than the world he grew up in. “In America, we take things too seriously,” Norbu said. “I’ve seen people in the world who have so little material things, and yet have so little stress. They are content; they know how to live one day at a time.”
While he did not rule out restarting his business in the future, Norbu said for now he will continue his travels, collecting relics and stories that preserve his culture.
