Landscapes of Little Lhasa: Materialities of the Vernacular, Political and Commercial in Urban China

Abstract

This article problematizes the juxtaposition of place and identity. By analyzing different dimensions of landscape, it asks how an ethnically diverse neighborhood in Chengdu, China, has become considered a Tibetan place. The article engages with and pushes John Brinckerhoff Jackson's distinction between political and vernacular landscapes, introducing a third category: the commercial landscape. Each of these three dimensions of the landscape, which are deeply entangled but conceptually distinct, transforms multi-ethnic space into a Tibetan place. The vernacular emerges from the traces of quotidian life in the form of languages, bodily practices, sights, scents, and colors: it ‘feels’ Tibetan. The political relates to the securitization of Tibetan spaces and how people re-imagine the traces of state-led spatial management and organization. Finally, the commercial has to do with the appropriation of Tibetan aesthetics in the pursuit of profiting from a Tibetan Buddhist identity. I argue that these three different landscapes are what enable us to recognize a multi-ethnic space as a Tibetan place.