Pasang Tsering stand at his Accordion restaurant along the Lhasa river. [Photo/New China]

37-year-old man in Lhasa has found success by using Tibetan barley to produce a new and unique kind of bread. His story is an example of traditional culture being reshaped to survive in the modern world.

On a sunny afternoon, I enjoyed a piece of barley bread and a roomful of sunshine in a restaurant located along the emerald-green Lhasa River. The restaurant, which also functions as a boutique, is known for its food, as well as its collection of Tibetan artifacts.

Pasang Tsering, a Tibetan choreographer and owner of four such restaurants in Lhasa, was sitting upright beside a saffron-colored table. He looked rather tired, as he had spent most of the previous night applying for a trademark for his business.

Unlike other entrepreneurs I know, Pasang has little praise for the restaurant chain he runs. "Nothing good. I run them only for a living," he said.

Pasang looks tired as he spent the previous night applying for a trademark for his business. [Photo/New China]

Pasang's real passion lies in baking, specifically, baking bread using Tibetan barley. Nothing about this seemed particularly interesting at first, it's just bread, after all, but I recalled that locals often bake barley flour halfway before pinching it into "tsamba," a popular breakfast food in Tibet.

Highland barley is high in fiber and low in fat, making it difficult to turn into bread. It took Pasang a year and a half to learn how to do it properly. He experimented like a chemist, mixing the barley with wheat flour in different proportions. Finally, he was able to create bread that is chewy like French bread, but has the same flavor as tsamba.

Such bread was not known to Tibetans until Pasang made his breakthrough.

"My largest pleasure is that Lhasa's locals, not just tourists, say yes to my bread," said Pasang. He sees Tibetan barley not just as an ingredient for making bread, but a symbol of Tibetan's culture.

"I hope the bread helps young Tibetans in modern times remember out agricultural past," he said.

Pasang's Tibetan style bar also functions as a boutique, selling Tibetan artifacts. [Photo/New China]

Pasang didn't initially set out to preserve Tibetan culture. He and his wife opened their first bar in Lhasa just to make a living.

"In the first year, our profits per day were just 30 yuan (about 5 U.S. dollars)," Pasang recalled. Supporting a family on five dollars a day, especially in an expensive city like Lhasa, was incredibly difficult. But this encouraged Pasang to think outside the box and offer something new to outflank his competitors.

One thing I noticed is that Pasang shapes his bread loaves like dung. I thought this was some kind of joke, but Pasang explained it in a serious manner.

Pasang said that years ago, when he studied dance in Shanghai, his teacher would mock him by refusing to allow him to use cow dung in one of his dance performances.

Pasang added that smearing cow dung on the wall is an age-old custom in Tibet's rural areas, symbolizing happiness within the family.

The dung-shaped bread is priced at 10 yuan a piece. [Photo/New China]

Few homes in Lhasa are smeared with cow dung these days. But Pasang's customers recall its place in their culture when they see his bread.

Modernization has all but wiped out many old customs and ways of life. Lhasa is often choked with traffic jams and monks are just as likely to be carrying iPhones instead of prayer wheels.

But Pasang's story can give us a different and more positive perspective. If we confine Tibetan culture to a changeless way of life owned by monks and slave-owners, then we do a disservice to that kind of culture.

But perhaps ordinary Tibetans like Pasang, who has tried to reintroduce aspects of old culture into modern people's lives, are the true carriers of culture. They can keep Tibetan culture vital and strong even under the threat of modernization.

"I hope that in coming years, when it comes to Tibet, people will talk about more than gods and deities. Tibetan culture lies in how Tibetan people live in the real world," Pasang said.