In the Land of the Eastern Queendom: The Politics of Gender and Ethnicity on the Sino-Tibetan Border

The story underlying this ethnography began with the recent discovery and commercialization of the remnant of an ancient queendom on the Sichuan-Tibet border. Recorded in classical Chinese texts, this legendary matriarchal domain has attracted not only tourists but the vigilance of the Chinese state. Tenzin Jinba s research examines the consequences of development of the queendom label for local ethnic, gender, and political identities and for state-society relations.