Journey to the High West: The Politics of Trekking to Tibet in Contemporary Chinese Society

2022年，西藏自治区（TAR）几乎所有的流动性都被迫暂停。与此同时，尽管在中国近三年的严格封锁期间，中国对西藏的COVID-19严格限制以及人口流动进行了格外严格的媒体审查，但游客（包括从中国内地前往西藏的徒步旅行者）的流量仍然与传统媒体和社交媒体的高流量保持一致。这一背景构成了本博士研究项目的关注点。在中国，这种徒步旅行是一种长期存在且越来越为人所知的旅游形式，但却很少受到学术界的关注。几十年来，成千上万的旅行者花了几个月的时间从中国内陆（通常从四川出发）徒步前往西藏，不顾近1,500英里的旅程，穿越中国学术界所知的“藏彝走廊”（藏彝走廊）的复杂地形，更不用说可观的经济成本了。那么，这里就可以提出这样的问题：在当代中国社会中，西藏的意义是什么，激励着徒步旅行者？中国国家权力在民族和周边地区形成这种动机中扮演了什么样的角色？在中国民族“多元统一”的主张与偶尔的民族间和国际摩擦和紧张局势之间的对抗中，跋涉流动将如何影响国家建设？尽管中国政府对所有形式的中国媒体中有关西藏的宗教和神话描述进行了严格的审查，但徒步旅行者在分享他们遇到金刚乘佛教和西藏神话的经历时，不知何故享有特殊的自由。看到当局忽视徒步旅行的媒体存在是很奇怪的，特别是在新冠肺炎大流行期间，当时它显然违背了中国倡导不动的零新冠肺炎政策。这种说法如何解释西藏在中国一直是一个政治敏感话题？在所有这些形象中，当地藏人应该如何定位于争取西藏真正自治的跨国政治运动的更广泛背景下？这个案例揭示了中国与整个世界（包括将西藏视为全球关注的人和团体）互动的模式？该提案将这些徒步旅行实践问题与先前的旅游研究、边境穿越、媒体研究以及中国和西藏研究联系起来，其方法和理论框架主要植根于中国人类学，设想对中国和西藏进行全面调查。

In 2022, almost all mobility was forced to be suspended all over Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). At the same time, flows of tourists, including trekkers from inland China to Tibet, remained consistent with a high presence in both traditional and social media despite exceptionally heavy media censorship on China's strict COVID-19 restrictions in Tibet and population movement during China's almost three-year strict lockdown period. This context frames the concerns of the proposed PhD research project.Such trekking flows are a long-lasting and increasingly known tourism form in China, which has received little scholarly attention. For decades, thousands of travellers have spent months trekking to Tibet from inland China (usually departing from Sichuan) regardless of the nearly 1,500-mile journey with complex terrain crossing the 'Tibetan-Yi Corridor' (Zang-Yi Zoulang) known in Chinese academia, let alone the considerable financial cost. Questions could then be raised here: what are the meanings of Tibet that motivate trekkers in contemporary Chinese society? What role does China's state power play in forming such motivation at the ethnic and peripheral territory? How will trek flows impact state building in the confrontation between China's assertion of ethnically 'pluralistic unity' and occasionally interethnic and international frictions and tension?Despite the government's heavy censorship of religious and mythological representation of Tibet in all forms of Chinese media, trekkers somehow enjoy exceptional freedom in sharing their experience encountering Vajrayana Buddhist and Tibet myths. It is strange to see the media presence of trekking overlooked by the authority, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, when it obviously went against China's zero-Covid policy advocating immobility. How could such representation be explained with the fact that Tibet is always a politically sensitive topic in China? How should the local Tibetans be positioned in all such images against a broader context of the transnational political movement which campaigns for Tibet's true autonomy? What does this case reveal about the pattern of China's interactions with the world at large (including people and groups who see Tibet as a global concern)?This proposal connects these issues of trekking practices to previous research on tourism, border crossing, media study, and Chinese and Tibetan studies, with methods and theoretical frameworks primarily rooted in the anthropology of China, envisioning a holistic investigation into China and Tibet.