Southwest Frontier Research Articles

经济开发和民族交融：西南边疆土司与茶马古道研究——以木氏土司、明正土司为例

The Ancient Tea-Horse Road, with its core spanning Yunnan, Sichuan, and Tibet, encompassed numerous trade routes across the southwest frontier, extending its influence into South Asia and Southeast Asia. Within this intricate trade network, the chieftain system served as a localized political structure “governed by custom”, strategically employed by the central dynasty to maintain national unity in ethnically diverse regions. As regional rulers, the chieftains of Southwest China played pivotal roles in facilitating the emergence and expansion of the Ancient Tea-Horse Road. This study focuses on the distinctive characteristics of Yunnan Mushi chieftains and Sichuan Mingzheng chieftains, both situated along the Ancient Tea-Horse Road. These chieftains exemplify the broader chieftain landscape in the southwest frontier. Operating along the Yunnan-Tibet Tea and Horse Ancient Road, the Mushi Chieftains significantly contributed to the economic development of Lijiang and fostered cross-cultural exchanges between two ethnic groups. Conversely, the Mingzheng Chieftains established Guozhuang along the ancient Sichuan-Tibetan Tea and Horse Ancient Road, fostering the prosperity of the Dajianlu trade and laying the groundwork for Han-Tibetan integration. This study underscores the paramount importance of southwest frontier chieftains in managing the Ancient Tea-Horse Road, a role critical to the economic advancement of border regions and the historical process of integrating the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the southwest ethnic communities into the Chinese national fabric.

Based on the Development Countermeasures of Yunnan Garden in the Southwest Frontier of Honghe Prefecture

Located in the Himalayan south extension of Yunnan garden has its specificity, because the element is very rich, tiancheng natural endowment objectively has "cast" the vivid "Chinese ink painting", "move for the scene, turned into", in the carved, in "painting" in "Yunnan garden", perfecting the connotation and extension creation process, is an economic phenomenon, also belongs to the cultural category, is the crystallization of Yunnan collective wisdom, is constructing "Yunnan garden" system. Since the 1990s, relying on its own resource endowment, making use of the market and combining with the growing needs of Yunnan people for a "better life", Yunnan has created a unique "Yunnan School Garden". The 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 15) was held in Kunming, China on October 11-24, 2021. The conference is in line with the concept of "clear waters and green mountains are mountains of gold and silver" under construction in China. Dian-style gardens practice biodiversity. On the basis of analyzing the resource endowment of Yunnan, this paper traces the growth process of "Yunnan Garden" and puts forward the countermeasures and measures for development.

A Metal Production Center on the Southwest Frontier of the Han Empire: An Archaeometallurgical Study of the Heimajing Cemetery Site in Gejiu, Yunnan Province, China

The Gejiu region in southeast Yunnan Province was an important metal and ore production area in China as early as the Han Dynasty (202 b.c.–a.d. 220). Past archaeological investigations in this region discovered an ancient smelting site. Large numbers of smelting-related relics including lead discs, copper ingots, and smelting wastes were also excavated from the Heimajing cemetery site nearby. These discoveries suggest that the burial occupants were probably involved in ancient mining, metal smelting, and the metal production industry. An archaeometallurgical analysis of smelting-related relics was conducted. The results demonstrated that lead, copper, and different copper-base alloys were produced in the region. The chemical compositional analysis and lead isotope studies of the samples collected from the Heimajing cemetery site suggest that there was probably a production and supply system and a demand for copper-base products in the Dian Kingdom (now central Yunnan) and Jiaozhi Commandery (now northern Vietnam) through cross-regional resource allocation. The Gejiu region therefore might have had a complete industry chain on the southwest frontier of the Han Empire.

History or legend: An Analysis of the Historical Sources of the Refusal of Tang Taizong’s Arranged Marriage by Lu Dongzan and Other Events Recorded in Li Deyu’s Postscript of Emperor Taizong Receiving the Tibetan Envoy

A post script written by Li Deyu on the “Emperor Taizong Receiving the Tibetan Envoy” (步辇图) records events such as Tang Taizong’s appointment of an official position and arrangement of marriage to Lu Dongzan, as well as Lu Dongzan’s refusal to accept Tang Taizong’s arrangement. The historical source of these events is not the Annals of Emperor Taizong verified by Fu Xuancong and Zhou Jianguo but rather the “Legend of Tang Taizong’s Nine Tests of Tibetan Welcoming Envoys,” which Li sent people to collect during his tenure as the Jiedushi of Xichuan in Jiannan. Later, it was included in his book Record of Defending the Southwest Frontier. This legend became popular because of the deification and reshaping activities of Lu Dongzan and his sons during their period of monopolizing power. As a result, the series of events recorded by Li Deyu in his postscript were able to enter the “Tibetan Biography” of orthodox historical books such as Old Book of Tang, Tang Huiyao, New Book of Tang, Zizhi Tongjian, Zizhi Tongjian Kaoyi, and Cefu Yuangui, becoming the so-called “true and credible history.”

Visual evidence? Rethinking anthropological photography in republican China (1912–1949)

ABSTRACT Focusing on ethnographic photography representing ethnic minorities on China’s southwest frontier during the Republican era (1912–1949), this paper reconsiders the role of photography as a source of evidence. The cross-cultural case in China extends studies of anthropology and photography beyond a European context and complicates our understanding of ‘photographic evidence’ by probing how such evidence was collected, produced, circulated and perceived in Han Chinese society. While photography played a significant role as an evidential force for anthropological and ethnographic endeavors, photography as ‘evidence’ was negotiated within the Chinese social, political, and cultural context of ethnicity. In spite of anthropological photography’s western origins, it is impossible to fully understand work representing the non-Han subject in Republican China without analyzing its relationship with the visual tradition of the Miao album, a late imperial Chinese genre of ethnographic illustration. Through a critical reading of ‘photographic evidence’ pertaining to non-Han women’s work, marriage and dance, this paper reveals the paradox of anthropological photography as visual evidence and highlights the social constitution of such work.

The Myth of Shangri-La and Its Counter-discourses: (Anti-)Utopian Representations of China’s Southwest Frontier in the Twenty-First Century

In the early twenty-first century, the southwest frontier, especially the Sino-Tibetan borderlands, has been imagined as a particular utopian space, or “Shangri-La,” in China’s popular culture, but there are also literary works and films that debunk this conception. This paper is a study of these different discourses. I argue that the utopian and anti-utopian representations of China’s Southwest in these works are socially and intellectually significant. The myth of Shangri-La promises a fantasized utopian solution to social problems and a miraculous cure for personal afflictions. In contrast, Ge Fei’s End of Spring in Jiangnan ( Chun jin Jiangnan, 2011) and Ning Ken’s Sky·Tibet ( Tian·Zang, 2010) debunk the myth of Shangri-La as a utopian solution and cure. In this way, these two novels retain their critical stance toward China’s history and reality. Meanwhile, some anti-Shangri-La works can be more ambivalent: Zhu Wen’s South of the Clouds ( Yun de nanfang, 2004) and Han Han’s The Continent ( Houhui wuqi, 2014) appear to challenge the utopian construction to form their social criticism in the beginning, only to compromise this criticism in the end as they affirm the existence of utopia either in the rural Southwest or in urban China. All these utopian and anti-utopian elements make the southwest frontier a site of contestation and contradiction.

A Metal Production Center on the Southwest Frontier of the Han Empire: An Archaeometallurgical Study of the Heimajing Cemetery Site in Gejiu, Yunnan Province, China

The Gejiu region in southeast Yunnan Province was an important metal and ore production area in China as early as the Han Dynasty (202 B.C. – A.D. 220). Past archaeological investigations in this region discovered an ancient smelting site. Large numbers of smelting-related relics including lead discs, copper ingots, and smelting wastes were also excavated from the Heimajing cemetery site nearby. These discoveries suggest that the burial occupants were probably involved in ancient mining, metal smelting, and the metal production industry. An archaeometallurgical analysis of smelting-related relics was conducted. The results demonstrated that lead, copper, and different copper-base alloys were produced in the region. The chemical compositional analysis and lead isotope studies of the samples collected from the Heimajing cemetery site suggest that there was probably a production and supply system and a demand for copper-base products in the Dian Kingdom (now central Yunnan) and Jiaozhi commandery (now northern Vietnam) through cross-regional resource allocation. The Gejiu region therefore might have had a complete industry chain on the southwest frontier of the Han Empire.

Funerary expressions on imperial frontiers: Burial caves south of the Yangzi River (2nd to 3rd century CE)

This paper documents a previously uncharted area of the Han Empire Southwest frontier, where it identifies an overlooked type of burials in artificial caves dating to the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. Until now, this specific funerary tradition located south of the Yangzi river (Changjiang 長江) has been presented as a local effect of the centralized phenomenon of “Han tombs”. As a result, its peculiarities were ascribed to logistical constraints in technology, material and terrain. This research, instead, argues that the man-made caves south of the Yangzi correspond to a distinctive tradition of placing the dead emerging in the last decades of the Eastern Han dynasty.The crucial point made by this research concerns the location of the burial type, which appears to systematically be distribution along secondary fluvial routes. Despite their absence in written history, minor tributaries of the Yangzi river potentially played an important role in interregional communication and trade, in a context of weakened imperial rule. Resting on a field report of two major southern tributaries of the Yangzi – the Chishui and Wu rivers, and a case study of the Qi river, a minor tributary of the Yangzi and an area of concentration of the atypical rock-cut cemeteries, a situational definition for the identity of the cave builders is proposed, in the backstage of imperial presence.Direct field survey conducted by the author in the years 2013–2016 in 63 clusters of burial caves and the compilation of data gathered by other researchers for 562 groups of burial caves and 579 individual burial caves within these groups, shows that, far from being peripheral, the alternative burial type was practiced along a 500 km long section of the upper Yangzi river. This paper highlights the typological and iconographical consistency of the alternative funerary tradition south of the Yangzi river, blooming at the end of the Han dynasty, as compared to cemeteries in the Sichuan basin and the Yangzi gorges.

Study on Eco-environmental Evaluation of Southwest Frontier Ethnic Areas Based on SWOT-AHP

The article uses the SWOT analysis framework to analyze the advantages, disadvantages, opportunities, and threats of the environment in the ethnic minority areas of the Southwest Frontier, then judges the importance of each dimension of influence in the SWOT. In order, the environmental governance model of the southwest ethnic region was put forward, and strategic choices were made for the environmental governance of the southwest ethnic region.

Cultivating China's Cinchona: The Local Developmental State, Global Botanic Networks and Cinchona Cultivation in Yunnan, 1930s-1940s.

SummaryThis article reconstructs the history of China’s first successful cinchona cultivation programme in Hekou, Yunnan province from the 1930s to 1940s during the Nationalist era (1928–49). I argue that the Hekou programme was initiated by the Yunnan ‘local developmental state’ to control endemic malaria and achieve quinine self-sufficiency. It was expanded during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) as part of the national defence project in order to develop Yunnan’s malaria-ridden southwest frontier to provide more resources for the war, as well as to solve broader wartime epidemic crises in southwest China. A closer examination also indicates that the development of the Hekou programme was closely intertwined with global networks of cinchona cultivation and international politics.

Theorising small city as ordinary city: Rethinking development and urbanism from China’s south-west frontier

A recurrent critical argument in urban studies holds that theories about relationships between cities and globalisation need to account for a broader diversity of urban experiences and contexts. Scholarship needs to move beyond the narrow focus on a limited number of prototypical cities exerting high degrees of command and control in the global system through networks of specific corporations and sectors, and account for the diverse, inventive ways of being urban. This article contributes to the agendas of ordinary city and comparative urbanism by applying this epistemology to analyses of the recent urban development and urban strategies in Ruili, Yunnan, a small border city at China’s south-west frontier. It argues that, although not qualified as a global or world city, Ruili is a hub of busy connections and flows, drawing opportunities from a vast territorial frame and navigating multiple layers of social, economic, cultural and institutional embeddedness. Engaging with scale thinking to operationalise theoretical ideas in the ordinary city treatise, this study pays specific attention to two scenarios in the recent urbanisation of Ruili: (1) cross-border trade and the blueprint of local industrial upgrading; and (2) the rapid expansion of the jadeite and red timber economy.

Corrigendum

Creighton Connolly (2017) Landscape political ecologies of urban ‘swiftlet farming’ in George Town, Malaysia. cultural geographies 24(3): 421–439. DOI: 10.1177/1474474016684128. The journal would like to make the following correction: Endnotes 45-69 should be revised as follows: 45. Geografia, George Town Land Use and Population Survey. 46. Following Malaysian independence in 1957, the new Malay government renamed all streets in Malaysia’s colonial enclaves such as George Town. However, many of the old names are still commonly used by residents, hence my reference to both. 47. This attitude on behalf of government officials in Malaysia has also been documented by other scholars, see K.Mulligan, S.J.Elliott and C.Shuster-Wallace, ‘The Place of Health and the Health of Place: Dengue Fever and Urban Governance in Putrajaya, Malaysia’, Health & Place, 18, 2012, pp. 613–20. 48. On a more recent visit to George Town in August, 2016, EYS still had hundreds of swiftlets flying in and out, nearly 3 years after the deadline for closure of swiftlet farms inside the WHS. Given the political and economic influence of the EYS company, it is conceivable that they will be able to continue operating the swiftlet farm for the foreseeable future. 49. According to George Town’s Special Area Plan (2011), category II buildings are those ‘of special interest that warrants every effort being made to preserve them’. See State Government of Penang (SGP), Draft Special Area Plan, George Town: Historic Cities of the Straits of Malacca (Penang: SGP, 2010). 50. This incident was (allegedly) triggered by the export of fake birds’ nests with dangerous nitrite levels to China from Malaysia, and resulted in the near collapse of the swiftlet farming industry, given that China has always been the primary market for EBNs. This episode demonstrated how the physical landscape in one place can be dramatically influenced by political-economic changes elsewhere. See Connolly, ‘A Landscape Political Ecology of ‘Swiftlet Farming’ in Malaysian Cities’, chapter 4; C.Thorburn, ‘The Edible Birds’ Nest Boom in Indonesia and South-East Asia’, Food, Culture and Society, 17, 2014, 535–53. 51. MBPP (Majlis Bandaraya Pulau Pinang), ‘Laporan Industri Dan Premis Burung Walit Di Dalam Tapak Warisan Dunia George Town’ (George Town, Penang, Jabatan Warisan, 2013), np. 52. George Town World Heritage Incorporated (GTWHI), Draft Guidelines for Heritage Impact Assessment (HIA) World Heritage Cities of Melaka and George Town (Penang, 2010), pp. 76–7, < www.gtwhi.com.my/index.php/regulate/2015-01-21-04-01-01/2015-01-21-04-18-59 > 53. Note, this excludes Penang and Malacca, where heritage was the largest concern, due to the UNESCO World Heritage listing in both cities. 54. On an earlier visit to Taiping, I came across a hotel which operated a swiftlet house on the top story, while the bottom three stories were rented out to human occupants (!) 55. J.Lepawsky and R.C.Jubilado, ‘Globalizing Kuala Lumpur and Rationalizing the Street’, In S.G.Yeoh (ed.), The Other Kuala Lumpur (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 22–37. 56. T.K.Ho, ‘Swiftlet Rearing in Town a Health Threat’, The Star, 6 February 2009, p. N49. 57. Quoted in anonymous, ‘Chow: Swiftlet farms being phased out’, The Star, 14 April 2013, n.p. 58. Mulligan et al., ‘The Place of Health and the Health of Place’. 59. Duckett-Wilkinson, correspondence, 15 December 2010. 60. Duckett-Wilkinson, correspondence, 5 May 2011. 61. Indeed, Duckett-Wilkinson has spoken to several local doctors in George Town about this issue, who have verbally confirmed that cases of lung disease are ‘disproportionate’ in Georgetown (Duckett-Wilkinson, interview, 22 October 2013). 62. Duckett-Wilkinson, Open Letter, 20 June 2010; citing M.L.DeWitt, ‘cryptococcus’, < http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/215354-overview > 63. Anonymous, ‘A health hazard not many are aware of’, New Straits Times, 9 September 2009, n.p., print. 64. In: R.Nathan, ‘“More Seminars” Plan for Bird’s Nest Farmers’ The Star, 6 June 2003, p. 13. 65. See Mulligan et al., ‘The Place of Health and the Health of Place’; T.Bunnell, ‘Re-Viewing the Entrapment Controversy: Megaprojection, (Mis)Representation and Postcolonial Performance’, GeoJournal, 59, 2004, pp. 297–305. 66. Carpiano, ‘Come Take a Walk with Me’. 67. M.Gandy, ‘Marginalia: Aesthetics, Ecology and Urban Wastelands’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103(6), 2013, pp. 1301–16; A.Loftus, ‘Working the Socio-Natural Relations of the Urban Waterscape in South Africa’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 31(1), 2007, pp. 41–59; E.Swyngedouw, ‘The City as a Hybrid – On Nature, Society and Cyborg Urbanization’, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, 7(2), 1996, pp. 65–80. 68. See, for example, Mitchell, The Lie of the Land; D.Matless, Landscape and Englishness (London: Reaktion Books, 1998). 69. See, for example, P.Y.Hung, Tea Production, Land Use Politics, and Ethnic Minorities: Struggling over Dilemmas on China’s Southwest Frontier (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Neumann, ‘Political Ecology III’; Walker and Fortmann, ‘Whose Landscape?’.

A Study on the Path of Transformation and Development of Colleges and Universities in China’s Frontier Minority Area —Exploration of Colleges and Universities in Northwest Yunnan

Based on the case study and spatial comparison, the analysis of the present situation of the survival and development of colleges and universities in the southwest frontier of China shows that the backward economic development has led to the weakening of higher education. The incompatibility of personnel training and regional development, backward development concept and poor service capacity and other issues are highlighted. Start with the colleges and universities in northwest of Yunnan Province, promote the comprehensive docking of university personnel training and local economy to implement higher education supply-side structural reform, construct school-running mechanism with border characteristics, set up government and enterprise cooperation platform and mechanism, finally realizing transformation and development of border nations regional colleges and universities.

Tea Production, Land Use Politics, and Ethnic Minorities: Struggling Over Dilemmas in China’s Southwest Frontier

Tea Production, Land Use Politics, and Ethnic Minorities: Struggling Over Dilemmas in China’s Southwest Frontier

Politics of Time on the Southwest Frontier of China's Han Empire

ABSTRACTIn this study of the Han imperial conquest of southwest China, I argue that time is a technique of political control in precapitalist empires and a source of power asymmetry that local subjects understood and actively sought to curtail. From the expansion of political economy to the invention of universal histories, imperial policies incorporate heterogeneous geographies and subjects into unified temporal frames, thus obscuring differences in social experience. Drawing from subaltern and colonial anthropologies, I argue that resistance to state time is neither restricted to modern colonialism nor realized only in moments of organized rebellions. Archaeological research from the southwest frontier of Han China highlights how native subjects, referred to as the Dian culture, enlisted the dead to detach ideas of personhood and political agency from imperial temporalities. A focus on the resurgence of former funerary practices not only provides an overlooked point of entry to local interventions in the temporality of social reproduction but also reveals how the making of biosocial contemporaneity entangled both imperial agents and frontier subjects. This study demonstrates archaeology's contribution to a wider disciplinary engagement with the intersubjective or shared time of our subjects. [imperialism, time, China]

Typologies and Spatialization of Agricultural Production Systems in Rondônia, Brazil: Linking Land Use, Socioeconomics and Territorial Configuration

The current Amazon landscape consists of heterogeneous mosaics formed by interactions between the original forest and productive activities. Recognizing and quantifying the characteristics of these landscapes is essential for understanding agricultural production chains, assessing the impact of policies, and in planning future actions. Our main objective was to construct the regionalization of agricultural production for Rondônia State (Brazilian Amazon) at the municipal level. We adopted a decision tree approach, using land use maps derived from remote sensing data (PRODES and TerraClass) combined with socioeconomic data. The decision trees allowed us to allocate municipalities to one of five agricultural production systems: (i) coexistence of livestock production and intensive agriculture; (ii) semi-intensive beef and milk production; (iii) semi-intensive beef production; (iv) intensive beef and milk production, and; (v) intensive beef production. These production systems are, respectively, linked to mechanized agriculture (i), traditional cattle farming with low management, with (ii) or without (iii) a significant presence of dairy farming, and to more intensive livestock farming with (iv) or without (v) a significant presence of dairy farming. The municipalities and associated production systems were then characterized using a wide variety of quantitative metrics grouped into four dimensions: (i) agricultural production; (ii) economics; (iii) territorial configuration, and; (iv) social characteristics. We found that production systems linked to mechanized agriculture predominate in the south of the state, while intensive farming is mainly found in the center of the state. Semi-intensive livestock farming is mainly located close to the southwest frontier and in the north of the state, where human occupation of the territory is not fully consolidated. This distributional pattern reflects the origins of the agricultural production system of Rondônia. Moreover, the characterization of the production systems provides insights into the pattern of occupation of the Amazon and the socioeconomic consequences of continuing agricultural expansion.

Dilemma of modernity: interrogating cross‐border ethnic identities at China's southwest frontier

Recent theoretical advancement in human geography has reconceptualised the border as a process and becoming, which is appropriated and constructed by myriad actors to yield diverse and changing meanings, and accommodate various needs and interests. This enables us to appreciate the dual qualities of the border, both as a barrier to be overcome and an enabling factor for practices and meanings. In particular, cross‐border mobility plays an essential role in mediating meanings of the border and identities of those whose lifeworlds are affected by the very existence of the border. On the one hand, mobilities transgress territorial orders imposed by official conceptions of the border. But, on the other hand, the distinctions between economic, social and political milieus at the two sides of the border may give rise to heightened senses of difference and lead to diverging identities. Building on these insights, this article argues for a more nuanced, dynamic understanding of the relationship between border crossing and belonging. It examines two empirical cases: the cross‐border attendance of Huashan Festival celebration for Miao people at the Sino‐Vietnamese borderland, and the trans‐border mobility of Buddhist monks from the Myanmar city Muse to the Chinese border city Ruili. Overall, this paper argues that the potentials of the border to both connect and differentiate are inscribed in the lifeworlds in the borderlands in equally visible ways. Also, this paper adds some twists to Scott's thesis on Zomia, and argues that we must not downplay the importance of the frame of nation‐states in shaping the lifeworlds of border inhabitants.

Hung, Po-Yi. 2015. Tea production, land use politics and ethnic minorities struggling over dilemmas in China's southwest frontier. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Reviewed by Kathryn Gomersall

Hung, Po-Yi. 2015. Tea production, land use politics and ethnic minorities struggling over dilemmas in China's southwest frontier. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Reviewed by Kathryn Gomersall

Research on the Leap Forward Development of Nujiang Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan Province China—— Also on the Development of Minorities Regions in Southwest China

Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture Yunnan Province, China (hereinafter the Nujiang Autonomous Prefecture for short) set of frontier, ethnic religion, poverty, ecological and natural disasters in one, is a typical representative of the southwest frontier ethnic regions. Harsh geological and ecological environment and frequent natural disasters make the frontier ethnic masses in poverty and backwardness, backward and poverty and aggravate the ecological environment deterioration, this vicious cycle of long-term role, the formation of “Nujiang problem”, has become a long-term control of the development bottleneck of Nujiang Autonomous Prefecture. In mountainous and towns from the perspective of the development of ecological migration, transforming the mode of production of the steep slope land reclamation, the elimination of bottlenecks in the development, "break a leap forward development path". The southwest frontier ethnic regions achieve 2020 completely solve poverty mission objectives, built southwest borderland “the construction of ecological civilization pacesetter, ethnic unity and progress of the demonstration zone” has practical significance.

Frontiers as dilemma: the incompatible desires for tea production in southwest China

In this paper, I argue that frontiers are dilemmas composed of multiple dualities, be they exclusive and inclusive powers, connected space and national periphery, or modernity and primitiveness. These dilemmas, in consequence, become the mechanism to create a leeway for the state to ‘tailor’ different meanings of frontier to meet the contingent market demands. I use tea production on China's southwest frontier as an example to demonstrate that dilemma is not an end result, but a mechanism to rearticulate the relationship among frontier, the state and the market economy. Specifically, I argue that dilemmas on China's southwest frontier have been forged by the Chinese state with its incompatible desires between ‘modernisation’ and ‘primitiveness’ of the tea landscapes in Yunnan, a province on China's southwest frontier. Meanwhile, the incompatible desires and the resulting dilemmas on China's southwest frontier have further mobilised the state to flexibly rework its power to reconstruct the frontier to meet contingent market demand. Based on the shifting meanings of tea landscapes, the state has flexibly ‘shuttled through’ the dilemmas between development of modernisation and preservation of primitiveness on the frontier.