Traditional Bhutanese architecture to Preserve

At the deliberation on the survey on traditional rammed earth buildings yesterday in Thimphu, three traditional houses from western region of Bhutan were proposed for preservation.

These buildings are in Kabisa in Thimphu, Changjokha in Punakha, and in Talung Toed in Haa.

The survey began in 2012 and is ongoing.  The project is scheduled to be completed in 2019.

The project began following the September 2012 earthquake, which damaged most of the traditional buildings in the country.

Head of Division for Conservation of Heritage Sites (DCHS), Nagtsho Dorji, said that among the main objectives of the project were to study the structural characteristics of traditional buildings, methods to improve disaster resilience, and to study feasible and appropriate manner to preserve their heritage value.

She added that activities in the project concentrated on architectural study, which looked at typology of the traditional houses, chronological and regional features, construction methods and practice of traditional buildings, and to understand the views of Bhutanese on conservation of the traditional buildings.

“After the earthquake in 2012, everyone wanted to reconstruct the buildings in a very modern design, which would have sufficed to the immediate requirement but in the long run would have actually affected the cultural heritage of Bhutan,” Nagtsho Dorji said.

The survey also measured and analysed vibration characteristics of the traditional buildings. More than 100 buildings in Haa, Punakha, Thimphu, Paro, and Chukha were surveyed.

Along with officials from Department of Culture (DoC), experts and representatives from Japan, house owners of the proposed buildings for preservation attended the workshop.

Financial constraint for renovation and sustenance viability were among the concerns raised at the workshop.

Nagtsho Dorji said that the works and human settlement ministry had taken the concept of providing incentive in certain areas. She added that waiving off underdevelopment tax and timber subsidy were an option. “We want to look into providing financial support without interest. We also hope that the government will provide money, which will happen once we have legislative documents.”

Experts from Japan said that the scientific evidence from the survey on the importance of the traditional buildings and initiatives from the locals in conservation of the buildings would help gain financial support from government and donors for sustenance.

DCHS’s senior architect, Yeshi Samdrup, shared the benefit of enactment of the culture heritage bill.

He said that the bill’s registration and designation of the culture heritage aspect would foster people’s sense of ownership and help achieve good balance between culture heritage and other values, including economic development. “For the buildings to be recognised as a culture heritage, distinctive typology, specificity of style, historical value, aesthetic and artistic value, and social value are required of the vernacular houses.”

The bill, which was drafted in 2016, will be forwarded for enactment in the next Parliament.

Head of the conservation planning research section of Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Japan, Masahiko Tomoda, said that the most common typology of Bhutanese traditional houses are on the verge of disappearing.

He added that a legal framework for the protection of the traditional houses, which is important, is encouraged. “The old buildings are important as a testimony of the past. It is not only important to preserve these houses, but also to encourage the people to make similar houses in the future. So, we are looking forward to the outcomes from the survey’s structural strength of the buildings.”

Source: Kuenselonline

Appreciate traditional cultural aspects of Bhutan

By the last session, the audience had thinned significantly. Only a few seats remained occupied.

Despite the poor attendance, the last two speakers of the Mountain Echoes literary festival got their small audience singing and clapping along to some traditional Bhutanese songs.

Kencho Lham, a farmer from Paro, and Chang Dorji, a local author, ended their session on oral traditions, with a plea to the youth to appreciate traditional cultural aspects of Bhutan and continue its practices. They expressed the worry that Bhutanese youth are today more appreciative of foreign cultures. Perhaps, reflecting their concern, only a few young Bhutanese were seated in the audience, almost all of them media personnel.

The last day of the literary festival also saw a lively exchange of opinions between eminent Indian literalist Shobhaa De, Lily Wangchuk, the executive director of the Bhutan Media Foundation, and the Indian ambassador to Bhutan, Pavan Varma. They were speaking on empowerment and representation of women in decision-making positions.

Lily Wangchuk said that, while the position of women in Bhutan is better, when compared to other countries in the region, there are still wide gender gaps. “Till now we’ve never had a single woman minister, we’ve never had a single woman dzongda, we’ve never a single female ambassador, at the grassroots level, the representation of woman is 0.5 percent against 99.5 male.”

She attributed the wide gender gaps to social, cultural, and religious barriers. She said, as a GNH country, all policies should be looked at with a “gender lens” rather than a gender neutral approach. “It’s very crucial for us to have more women in governance.”

Shobhaa De said that, based on her experience, creating such filters or ‘gender lens’ instead created barriers. “Any kind of quota system eventually backfires, any policy based on a bias, in the case of women of course, the counter argument is we require that leg up, but at what cost?”

She said she preferred gender become a non-issue and that only merit is taken into account. “If we’re going to get women in parliament, who are actually going to be contributing, I’d rather have someone who’s in parliament representing not just women but men,” she said, “and doing so, because that person deserves to be there, not because that person happens to be born a woman.

Ambassador Pavan Varma disagreed with Shobhaa De. He said that saying that affirmative action or the quota system means an absence of merit is a “false assumption”. He added, “The fact that there was reservation and affirmative action for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, who for 2000 years had suffered kinds of oppression, which has not been seen by most societies in the world, has helped in their empowerment.” He pointed out that in the first constituent assembly the two groups had only 4 percent representation. As a result of affirmative action, he said the groups had more seats than they had reserved for them today.

“Affirmative action has given India Mayawati,” said Shobhaa De, referring to the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. She added, “That’s one of the offshoots of the reservation system we have.” Mayawati, a product of the Indian reservation system, faces allegations of using her status to amass personal wealth. Lily Wangchuk said that, in Bhutan, situations, where financially challenged families keep their daughters at home to work, rather than educating them still occurred.

The literary festival also presented the opportunity for book launches by local authors. Kunzang Choden, the author of Folk tales of Bhutan, launched two story books for children: Aunty Mouse and Room in your Heart. Gopilal Acharya launched a collection of poems, Dancing to Death.

Source: Kuenselonline

News: Bhutan tradition of oral story telling is dying

Not long ago, children would sit around their grandparents at night after dinner listening to stories of fairies, prince and princess, and distant lands. This tradition of oral story telling is dying. Many say it is already dead.

Now both children and adults while away their time in the living room watching TV. To help revive this tradition, the Center of Bhutan Studies (CBS) in association with the International Centre for Ethnographic studies in the US is organizing a story telling conference in the Capital. The three day conference began today. Her Royal Highness Ashi Sonam Dechan Wangchuck graced the opening.

The conference will try to write and capture the cadence of story telling, the musical quality of the language and the manner of the speaker. It also aims to capture the creative art of story telling in an electronic form and film that can become the part of mass media.

CBS says, traditions are fragile, and the safe deposit of the oral stories is not permanent. But it hopes that efforts like this can light up the drive to preserve the voices of the past.

Opening the first national conference on storytelling, Her Royal Highness Ashi Sonam Dechan Wangchuck said it is a pity that one of the oldest and most powerful expressions of individual and cultural creativity- traditional storytelling has been taken over by the other means of mass media such as TV and internet in today's society. Her Royal Highness said today, young children rarely sit around their grandparents and elders to listen to stories.

Her Royal Highness said in most urban areas, social relationships are often weakened by these new forms of media. With the rise of these new technological storytelling mediums, the cultural prominence of traditional storytelling as an art form is transforming.

Her Royal Highness said every one must make an effort to re-tell stories we heard in our childhood as a first step to revive our precious oral traditions.

Her Royal Highness said storytelling is a special bond between elders and children and a means of passing on our tradition, culture, and moral values to the next generation.

Her Royal Highness said community storytelling reinforces social bonds that connect individuals to their community, through shared experiences of traditional knowledge and heritage.

Nine foreign participants and ten Bhutanese folklorists are attending the three-day programme.
Source: BBS