Tibetan children with shawls and scarves of the yak wool produced by Norlha.Photo provided to China Daily |
"We want to make sure that people who collect fibers and turn them into luxury products are local Tibetans," Yeshi says, "and that the profit would go solely to the villagers — a big challenge for the workshop, but that's also what sets us apart from other producers."
Born to a Tibetan father and an American mother, Yeshi majored in Asian studies and film at Connecticut College. Upon graduation, she decided to make a documentary about the land her father came from, with a "very romantic idea" of filming Tibetan lifestyles against a scenic background and promoting Tibetan culture to the world.
Her mother, Kim Yeshi, bought her a camera and entrusted Dechen with a more practical mission — collecting khullu, the dense fibers that were naturally shed by two-year-old yaks and had never been used by nomads.
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