"Government's policy and kind-hearted people helped me settle down in Beijing"

"Honestly, I really appreciate our country's preferential policies to Tibetans, which have helped me settle down in Beijing since 2003," Drolma said.

During her first trip to Beijing in 1996, it was a Han Chinese woman working in the Beijing Hotel who helped Drolma to sell out all her Tibetan jewelry and ornaments in a wholesale market, and encouraged Drolma to come to Beijing to set up a business of her own.

Drolma opened her first restaurant in Tibet's Nagqu Prefecture in 1997 after giving birth to her daughter and making a good profit by a second business trip to Beijing.

According to her, selling jewelry and ornaments requires big cost to get goods in stock, while running a restaurant doesn't and helps to keep a stable income.

"Besides, my husband and I also have families to be taken care of. Running restaurant needs hands, so that many families and relatives could get together and take care of each other," explained Drolma.

From 1996 till 2003, Drolma had been darting between Lhasa and Beijing for dozens of times. Later on, the Qinghai-Tibet Railway was constructed, which made the traffic between the two cities much easier. Then she decided to open up a store in Beijing and leased her booth in the Barkor Street of Lhasa to others.

The Himalaya Drolma Tibetan Restaurant in Beijing run by Sonam Drolma, a 46-year-old Tibetan woman who have made a successful business of her own in Beijing since 1996. [Photo/China Tibet Online] 

"It was not easy for non-Beijing people to settle in Beijing from scratch. Without others' help, I wouldn't come and have my own business here," Drolma said.

She did vending sales over a dozen times. "My fellow vendors are mainly Han Chinese from all parts of China. Since I was the only Tibetan and a female Tibetan in particular, they all have offered me various help."

With her peer entrepreneurs' encouragement on how to start a permanent arts and crafts store, Drolma prepared her own documentary works to apply for business license and trading certificates.

"I got green lights all the way from the industrial and commercial office at the Wangfujing Business Street to the Beijing Industrial and Commercial Bureau. They seemed to be more supportive to me than I had expected," said Drolma with a smile of confidence and pride. "I guess they were really impressed by a young Tibetan woman who wants to run business in a big metropolitan."

In 2003, she opened the store selling Tibetan jewelry and artworks and brought her daughter from Lhasa to Beijing.

Drolma appreciated the government's preferential policy a lot in terms of her daughter's education in Beijing.

Generally, non-Beijing kids need to pay an extra fee, which was 40,000 yuan at that time, to go to a good school. "But, they exempted that for my daughter when she went to the Beichizi Primary School near my contemporary store. It's one of the best primary schools in Beijing, you know," Drolma said.

"The teachers and classmates of my daughter were also very kind," Drolma recalled her daughter's school years.

"Since my daughter's Mandarin was not very good, the teachers and her classmates often helped with her study after school. She was smart and learned quickly. We also invited the teachers and my daughter's classmates for our home made Tibetan sweet tea made of yak butter, milk, and brown tea."

Later on in 2011, Drolma leased her Beijing store to others due to the reduced market of Tibetan jewelry and ornaments as more Tibetan stores sprang up in Beijing, and only ran the Himalaya Drolma Tibetan Restaurant as a contractor for the Himalaya Hotel.

(To be continued...)