Nov.8,2017-- Take a look in any stationery store and you will find all sorts of notebooks for sale, but few that reflect the distinctive characteristics of the Tibet autonomous region. Entrepreneur Ngawang Don-drum aims to fill that gap in the market.

 

Born to an impoverished family in Nagchu prefecture, one of the first things the 24-year-old looked to do after being admitted to the Tibet Agriculture and Animal Husbandry College in 2013 was to achieve economic independence.

 

After class, he would work several part-time jobs as a hotel waiter, construction worker, sanitation worker and tutor. During his four years of study in Nyingchi city, he only once asked his family for money — about 2,000 yuan ($304) in his first year.

 

Inspired by Thubten Sherab, who won an innovation and entrepreneurship com-petition held in Lhasa last year with a pen he invented that can be used to write different types of Tibetan script with ease, Ngawang Dondrum began thinking about how he could help pass on Tibetan culture as well.

 

At first, he planned to also work on a pen — made out of wood, as is the Tibetan tradition — but found that he lacked the requisite wood-working skills and did not have enough money to cover the cost of the project.

 

So using the 30,000 yuan he had saved and the photo-editing skills he acquired by attending weekend workshops run by the Tibetan Literature Association, Ngawang Don-drum began designing his notebook.