This book is the first long-term study of the cultural politics of the Sino-Tibetan frontier. Combining historical research and fieldwork, Xiaofei Kang and Donald Sutton examine northern Sichuan from early Ming through Communist revolution to the age of global tourism, tracing relationships and mutual influence among Tibetans, Chinese, Hui Muslims, Qiang and others over some 600 years. Their focus is on the old Chinese garrison city of Songpan and the nearby pilgrimage center of Huanglong, or Yellow Dragon. Declining to isolate religious from other social and political expressions, they demonstrate that in its many forms—popular and official, scriptural and unwritten, monastic, priestly and shamanic, personal and informal—religion has long been crucial in imagining, constructing and manipulating local social relations on this frontier. Bon and Buddhist sects sustained communities among Tibetan or proto-Tibetan populations; and Daoism and Chinese Buddhism (and for some, Islam) helped to establish frontier identities in a diverse population of migrants and soldiers. The Chinese state has contended with, exploited and at times tried to extinguish the soft power of religion in its long effort to dominate this region and (more recently) push it towards modernity.

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title Winner for 2016 in the anthropology category