Based on the author's cross-regional fieldwork archival findings and critical reading of
memoirs and creative works of Tibetans and Chinese this book recounts how the potency of Tibet
manifests itself in modern material culture concerning Tibet which is interwoven with state
ideology politics of identity imagination nostalgia forgetting remembering and
earth-inspired transcendence. The physical place of Tibet is the antecedent point of contact
for subsequent spiritual imaginations acts of destruction and reconstruction collective
nostalgia and delayed aesthetic and environmental awareness shown in the eco-religious acts of
native Tibetans Communist radical utopianism former military officers' recollections Tibetan
and Chinese artwork and touristic consumption of the Tibetan landscape. By drawing connections
between differences dichotomies and oppositions this book explores the interiors of the
diverse agentive modes of imaginations from which Tibet is imagined in China. On the
theoretical front this book attempts to bring forth a set of fresh perspectives on how a
culturally and religiously specific landscape is antecedent to simultaneous processes of
place-making identity-making and the bonding between place and people.
