Han Chinese “drifters” in Lhasa: the ambivalent cultural politics of Tibetanness amidst China’s geographies of modernity

Abstract

As rampant modernization profoundly reshapes the economy, culture and ideologies of post-reform China, Han Chinese have encountered directly the malaises of modernity, and are gradually losing faith in modernity’s promises of reason and progress. Numerous small towns and cities, consequently, have become anchors of alternative identities and lifestyles. This article examines the group of ‘drifters in Lhasa’, namely Han Chinese who have migrated to and settled in Lhasa, Tibet, in pursuit of slow-paced lifestyles, communal belonging and assumedly more authentic social relations. Drawing literature on the critiques of modernity and modern subject’s invocation of othered places and peoples as a means of self-criticism, this article argues that the constructed Tibetanness offers the drifters critical cultural resources to counteract ordering endeavours of Chinese modernity. At the same time, however, the modern subject in search of otherness tends to reproduce the modern modality of cognition which results in the objectivation of the other. The article investigates the effects of objectivation from two perspectives, namely the rendering-silent of the others’ voices and interests; and re-inscription of boundaries of difference between the self and the other, against broader contexts of socio-economic transformations in Tibet.