A Tibetan in Berkeley
A Tibetan man in a Tibetan shop. Essence of Tibetan is a Tibetan shop located at College Avenue in Berkeley, California.

Essence of Tibet is a family owned business run by Sonam.
The Tibetan population in the U.S. is still a small community with 5,147 US residents who reported Tibetan ancestry according to 2000 United States Census. The history of Tibetans in the United States is relatively short, as the United States limited contact or involvement with Tibet before Word War Two expanded to the Pacific(Wikipedia). And Sonam immigrated to the U.S. in 1996.
“The reason why I chose to stay in the bay area is because there are a lot of people here who are aware of Tibetan issues and being Tibetan. So I feel more comfortable here because of the awareness of Tibetan issues in this area.” Sonam said.
The reason why he opens the shop “Essence of Tibet” is that he wanted to bring a part of his culture to America. He would love to back to Tibet where his parents still live but unfortunately that is not possible because it is close to impossible to get a Chinese visa.
The name of the shop was picked by his brother so people recognize that their store is a Tibetan store. We carry Tibetan items. That is the main reason for the name “Essence of Tibet”. For people to recognize that this is a different store than other stores. If we had chosen a western name, it might not be as catchy as this one.
Tibetan culture is influenced by Buddhism. So when you see the Tibetan view of life. Our culture is kind of like our religion perspective of Buddhism. Buddhism is kind of like a medicine. When you take the Buddhism is like taking a medicine to help you eliminate the suffering and pain.
The challenges that we have are like when we have a recession That was very hard. Because people are not buying that much. They prefer not spending money. You know that is the kind of challenges that we have And another is that we put in a lot of hours every day same time seven days you know there is kind of challenges we wish we have more sale. Marketing Advertisement we run a small business we do not have lots of budget to the advertisement.