I’ve started writing a column and blog (Beyond Borders) for AsianWeek so I’ll occasionally be linking back and forth between the NAM and AW. There are a lot of great bloggers on the site so check it out.

I’ll be honest. The first time I really heard about Tibet was when I watched the movie Seven Years in Tibet. I’m not proud to say that Brad Pitt had something to do with this brief history lesson but I was only 11-years-old.

I remember seeing snippets of the ‘Free Tibet’ concert on MTV. I understood the concept of free – freedom of oppression, freedom of speech, etc. But I never understood what they were trying to be free from.

At eleven years old, I didn’t really understand the idea of conflict outside the episode of whatever TV show I was tuned into for the week – much less a conflict between bordering lands all the way across the world.

A few weeks ago I was downtown in San Francisco. I walked through Union Square and met with what appeared to be a silent protest against China. Giant pictures of people with burnt and disfiguring wounds lined my path. The pictures were so graphic I forced myself to look away.

I asked a few of my Chinese American friends how much they knew about the history between China and Tibet.

“It was before my time,” one of them said.

I don’t think statements like these can be blamed for ignorance. I think if you’re going to tackle the issue of how uninformed students are about the history of Tibet, China and all the countries outside the U.S., chances are you should take a look at what is being taught at school.

Rationally speaking, if you’re talking about the average student, no one is going take time out of his or her day to read up on another country’s history for fun. When thinking back to world history events that I should have learned in high school (i.e. WWII and the Civil War) many things are left unnoticed. But for those of us who haven’t had the benefit of getting a large scholarship to college the chance to learn about any of these topics is significantly downgraded.

When I saw the photos in Union Square I realized just how big a part of history that I’m missing. I took Asian American history during my first two years of college but the whole course was really just a brief run through a bigger lesson plan. The original conflict between Tibet and China may have been long ago, but the Olympic Games are bringing forth a myriad of issues that are forcing many of us to finally take part in the history lesson we never got to learn.
—Eming Piansay