California State Fair Madness

So last weekend, Thupten and I were minding our own business and eating corndogs at the Cal State Fair, when we stumbled accross this atrocity called "Folkways of Tibet," an exhibit celebrating "the 40th anniversary of the Tibet Autonomous Region" and depicting "China's Tibet." We agreed that it was pretty much the worst piece of propaganda we had seen in recent years, and decided to get a crew together to come up and do some educating.

This morning, members of TYC, TJC, TANC, SFT, and the Bay Area Tibetan soccer team (represent!) braved the 104 degree central valley heat with banners and t-shirts (from the Alma and Chris martini sweatshop). The target was Cal State University Sacramento, who evidently sponsored the exhbit at the suggestion of Chinese alum without doing any fact checking on the content (you can take action and tell them to cancel this thing immediately by clicking here.)

Once everyone had taken their positions, the girl managing the exhibit came up to Thupten looking pretty mortified (see right). Mortification quickly turned to tears when she saw how upset Tibetans were at the content of the exhibit. She said she had to call security, but promised to start an SFT chapter!!!

Check out the Sacramento Bee tomorrow for an article and some photos of the action. Here's Chris and Thup looking tough, followed by some fair cops in chino shorts throwing us out!

Feeling satisfied with our accomplishment, we spent the rest of the afternoon in the Bollywood tent eating fair food. Check out this photo of SFT love!

More soon from the Bay Area...