A World of Sport in Your Hands: Tibetan Carom With Maima Dunzhu
Born on Lhasa’s Barkhor Street in 1974, Jie Zixia · Maima Dunzhu formed a bond with the sport in his early years, and his enthusiasm for it has remained unbroken for over fifty years. A personal interest has become a standardized undertaking through his work: he set up the “Jie Zixia” competitive space, improved equipment, wrote official rules, and, in 2023, successfully helped bring about the founding of the “Tibet Autonomous Region Tibetan Carom Association.”
I was born in 1974 on the third floor of Samdrup Podrang (བསམ་གྲུབ་ཕོ་བྲང་།) on Barkhor Street in Lhasa, and my childhood was spent in the Barkhor Alleys. In those days, Samdrup Podrang housed the Lhasa Agricultural Machinery Company, where my father not only worked but also kept his staff dormitory. My father's ancestral home was Gyalse Shar (རྒྱལ་རྩེ་ཤར།), a residence located in the northern part of Lhasa's old city. He is devoted to carrying this fingertip sport, enriched with Tibetan wisdom, from teahouses and taverns out to the wider world.
I was raised in the Barkhor Street area and later went to Barkhor Primary School. In my memory, the social atmosphere of my childhood was a splendid period (བསྐལ་པ་བཟང་པོ།). The economy advanced gradually, society grew increasingly stable, and the new spirit of reform and opening-up was just beginning to appear. At home, family gatherings were common; relatives and friends visited frequently, and guests arrived in an endless stream.
Children's games were largely unaffected during the late 1960s ban on card games. By my childhood, however, some families had already begun playing Tibetan cards at their gatherings. Ajug (ཨ་ཅུག), Boli Ball (འབོ་ལི།), and Shuttlecock Kicking (ཐེབས་པད།) continued to be well-liked, and kite flying (བྱ་འཕིར།) also grew into a regular seasonal activity for children. As for its connection to carom, Tibetan Carom traces its roots to the South Asian game of Carrom.
According to legend, the game was created by a South Asian maharaja to delight his consort, and the world's first Carom table was built from glass. To this day, an early Carom board with a glass surface is still kept in a palace in Patiala, South Asia. Kashmiri merchants introduced Carrom to Tibet, even as the game gradually spread to South Asia and other regions.
In Tibet, the game gradually evolved into "Tibetan Carom" through a lengthy process of local adaptation, which gave rise to its own distinct regulations and equipment specifications. Its discs, typically about 2.6 cm in diameter and no thicker than 4.5 cm, are made from high-density natural wood—a contrast to the plastic used in South Asian Carrom. The standard pocket opening measures 3 cm in diameter.
Eventually, this sport took shape in Tibet as an entirely new game category, called "Tibetan Carom," with its correct pronunciation being "Carrom" (Tibetan: ཀེ་རོམ།). The game's history began in the Victorian era, when Sikhs and British troops introduced Carom to Shanghai, which in turn led to the emergence of the cue-based game Kangle, a game quite distinct from Tibetan Carom. Its terminology is drawn from Tibetan, Chinese, English, and various South Asian languages.
A guest brought a Carom table to a gathering at my home, where I, being a child, was intensely curious about it. The table was too tall for me, so at that time I had to stand to strike the discs. That encounter was my first with Carom, and it quickly led to a deep interest. Later, when my father learned of my fondness for Carom, he specially hired a carpenter to make a small Carom table for me.
That Carom table meant an extraordinary amount to me. Its only flaw was that it did not come with the hanging pockets beneath the pockets or the discs that normally accompany them. To address this, we painted coins of various denominations in different colors and used them as the striker and the discs. After that, my friends and I played Carom whenever we had free time. We even brought it to school, keeping it hidden under the ping pong table so we could play during breaks and lunch, and then took it back home after the school day ended.
Carom was a great favorite among Lhasa's children back then. In those days, unlike today when everyone owns a mobile phone, people had far fewer entertainment choices. Television was even a rare pastime, enjoyed only by certain families and dependent on the electricity supply schedule. The passion it stirred in me as a young person can hardly be described in words, even though nowadays, with plenty of options, Carom still has a following among people.
At that time, we certainly weren't pondering grand narratives of cultural heritage or duty. What we experienced was primarily the excitement and accomplishment that competition brought. The game was intensely competitive; in today's terms, whenever we pocketed a disc, scored, and eventually won, it surely triggered a significant dopamine release in our brains.
After school in the mid-1980s, my friends and I would hurry to the Abla Teahouse—also known as the Tsangmu Sweet Teahouse, located in the Hêbalin area—to enjoy playing Carom as much as we wanted, particularly on those long summer days.
In 1986, I moved to Lintong, Shaanxi for junior high school, yet our Carom games carried on. Earlier, the teahouse had been nicknamed "Liangshan" by society: after the elder Abla passed away, people avoided uttering his name directly, and because Carom fans gathered there like "Liangshan's heroic assembly," the name stuck. Back then, however, frequenting a teahouse was commonly viewed as wasting time, so I always went secretly, keeping it from my family.
In 1989, I came back to Lhasa to attend Lhasa Middle School for my high school years. At school, we discovered a Kangle table, and we used polished Chinese chess pieces in place of Carom discs, so we could keep playing with just as much enthusiasm. I frequently played Carom at the "Friends and Relatives Teahouse" located in the Xue District. At first, we practiced on tables for beginners; as our abilities advanced, we slowly moved up to competing on professional tables, and we continued doing so until the teahouse shut down.
In the 1990s, the association was established. During that period, Lhasa city expanded and its population grew, giving the social landscape a renewed appearance. Yet Carom remained essentially a recreation found in teahouses and taverns, without any substantial progression or refinement. Later, after I had begun working at a real estate company, I still carved out time to play Carom with friends.
In 2018, I opened the Jie Zixia Café, where customers could buy coffee and other drinks, and which also served as a space for Carom competitions. That café was one outcome of the business I launched after resigning from the real estate company around that period, using my savings to fund Carom-related projects and cover the initial capital for such venues. I treated the whole enterprise as a commercial activity, and in addition, I established a workshop that sold premium Carom tables and hosted tournaments.
Driven by my passion for invention and my love of Carom, I started to improve the traditional equipment, including replacing the conventional pockets and hanging bags with pull-out metal boxes. By 2022, four or five large-scale events had been successfully organized. These events received widespread acclaim, gradually spread Carom from taverns and teahouses to all walks of life, and orders from various Carom manufacturers increased steadily.
Promoting the Carom initiative using only my own financial resources and personal efforts proved extremely difficult. The table designs commonly found in society cannot be claimed as ours, and they also fall short of professional standards. As a result, we developed new table designs and sought patent protection. Up to now, we have secured four or five intellectual property patents in this area. This greatly enhanced the competitive experience, since players no longer had to contend with retrieving discs from tight pockets.
Between 2020 and 2021, we recognized the need to establish official rules for Carom, so we invited forty-four Carom professionals to discuss and vote together. With support from various departments, our plan to create a professional Carom association then came to fruition: the "Tibet Autonomous Region Tibetan Carom Association" was officially founded on May 27, 2023, and formal national qualification was obtained on June 14 of the same year.
Beginning with an empty table that had no pattern, we examined its structure, decorative style, and point system in sequence, and through a vote, we finalized the complete set of official regulations. Crafts from the south, steeped in ancient heritage, traversed vast distances to reach lands of snow, where they took on new forms. The refined sport of Carom carries forward the essence of Tibet, and its enduring character radiates a brightness suited to our era.
Carom’s history, as the distinguished scholar Dogon·Sandadoje has documented, extends back one hundred and fifty years. Originating in South Asia, it arrived in Tibet through varied circumstances, where cross-ethnic interactions spawned new competitive rules and refinements to the playing table’s design. I hold that a set of standardized rules is essential for the development and inheritance of traditional ethnic sports. —Composed by Jie Zixia · Maima Dunzhu
The term "Tibetan-style" indicates that Carom is a product of the diverse cultural exchanges in Tibet. Thus, even while acknowledging South Asia as the place of origin, if competitors from that region were to assert that our game originated from them and that our rules are incorrect, we would still need a standard official document to confirm that our Carom possesses distinct Tibetan characteristics. Recording this historical fact holds deep significance.
At this year's Sacred Mountain Summer Lingka event, for instance, we introduced this traditional sport to a wide youth audience. In my role as president, the association’s current efforts are focused on running weekly Carom competitions, staging officially designated events and tournaments, and taking part in various informal activities.
The association’s importance stems not only from setting official regulations and advancing the sport of Carom, but also from valuing the work of other skilled Carom manufacturers in the Lhasa area, upholding Carom’s traditions, and keeping design coherence with them. In the future, I see Carom as a pastime filled with Tibetan grace and cultural depth, in which the finger skills and social engagement during matches carry deep cultural meaning.
Because of the stereotypes linked to teahouses and taverns, where Carom had long been popular, some families once prohibited their children from playing it in such establishments. In earlier times, society also saw Carom as a pastime reserved for the upper class. Those with wealth could naturally obtain Carom tables more easily, but this gradually gave rise to the unjust belief that ordinary people were not permitted to take part.
My parents always supported my participation in this sport, and for that I am deeply grateful. Even at fifty, I seldom need glasses, which I attribute to a childhood without video games, where much of my free time was devoted to Carom and other outdoor activities. In today's broader environment, however, children are more likely to become addicted to mobile phones and social media while getting insufficient outdoor exercise, and this has led to a sharp rise in student myopia rates.
Recently, a growing number of parents have been buying Carom tables for their children's recreation. Against this backdrop, if the sport of Carom can attract young people's attention and spark their curiosity, it can first help improve hand-eye coordination. Additionally, Carom is not just about pocketing discs; the strategic planning, situational forecasting, and problem-solving methods it involves contain profound knowledge, which greatly benefits adolescents' mental development.
Our association has, to date, organized multiple Carom promotional activities for young people, including the creation of instructional videos posted on Douyin and video channels. I have also volunteered to run Carom interest classes for young children. Moreover, while preserving the traditional design, beginner experience must be a key focus, especially given the current competitive landscape of numerous entertainment options.
In parts of Tibet, there were once claims that women were barred from certain games—like “Shog” dice—and others even held that they were unable to play Carom. Establishments such as teahouses and taverns were likewise deemed off-limits for women. In my view, these assertions are wholly without foundation and completely senseless. I later refuted them through expert research. Additionally, by applying suitable modifications, such as fine-tuning pocket dimensions, women can be encouraged to take up the activity and devote time to it.
Carom and similar games have reached more than forty countries around the world. Tibetan Carom, as a sport, embodies the wisdom of Tibet's various ethnic groups and carries considerable value. After consulting an extensive range of classical documents, no such restrictions were found. Society and the times are moving forward: with a growing number of participants, places like teahouses—where women were once frowned upon—are now open to anyone for recreation. The same holds for Carom. In light of this, adapting and evolving is essential.
Looking ahead, our focus will be on the continued advancement and enhancement of Carom, encompassing the refinement of its competition rules and the reinforcement of the association. In the digital era, we will adopt high-quality promotional strategies to launch the sport and organize competitions first in Tibet, subsequently extending to other areas of the country and eventually reaching an international level. Through the combined dedication of enthusiasts across many generations, we aim to promote international dialogue and friendly rivalry, including the possibility of harmonized competitive standards, with the ultimate objective of establishing Carom as a worldwide sport.
Half-Life Bond at the Fingertips—that is my greatest vision.