Visualising the post-2000s Inland Tibet Class generation: female authorship and renegotiation of ethnicity

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the first films made by a female director, Kangdrun (T: Gangs sgron, གངས་ྒྲསྒྲོན་, Gangzhen, 岗珍, b. 1995) belonging to the Post-2000s Inland Tibet Class (ITC) generation. Following the experience of the Sinophone-Tibetan filmmaker Kangdrun in a Chinese language education environment, her films, and Tibetan cultural communities, this study discusses Kangdrun’s visual strategies for telling stories from the perspectives of children and youth through a feminine camera eye. The Chinese language education and Tibetan cultural community relations have reshaped the ethnic awareness of the post-2000s ITC generation regarding what can be called ‘a safe Chinese Tibetan citizenship’. This study contributes to a new understanding of modern Tibetan authors’ generational relationships, the expressive styles of the female Sinophone-Tibetan filmmaker, and how affective visuality mediates the cultural, political, and gender identity formation of female artists of the post-2000s ITC generation.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizenship
• Chinese education
• ethnicity
• female
• film
• Inland Tibet class (ITC)
• visuality
• youth

Introduction

This study examines Tibetan ethnicity at the intersection of Chinese language education, Tibetan cultural community relations, and the visual conceptualisation of identity. It contributes to 1) a fresh understanding of modern Tibetan authors’ generational relationships; 2) the expressive styles of female Sinophone-Tibetan authors – artists, filmmakers and writers born in the 1990s and early 2000s; and 3) how affective visuality mediates the cultural, political and gender identity formation of female artists of the post-2000s Inland Tibet Class (ITC, Xizang neidiban, 西藏内地班, 1985-present) generation. More specifically, this study evaluates the first cinematic representation of the post-2000s ITC generation by a female Sinophone-Tibetan filmmaker, Kangdrun (T: Gangs sgron, གངས་སྒྲོན་, Gangzhen, 岗珍, b. 1995).¹ Her MA degree project, Short Summer in Lhasa (དབྱར་སྐྱིད་ཁྲ་མོ།, Yajichamu, 亚吉查姆, 28 minutes, 2021), was awarded the Annual Short Fiction Film of New Directors at the 16th Chinese Youth Film Week in 2022, organised by the China Film Association.²

The Chinese word for Tibet in ‘Inland Tibet Class’ refers to the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR); the English word for Tibet in this study, unless specified, refers to the Tibetan cultural sphere in China, comprising TAR and Tibetan areas in four adjacent provinces: Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu, and Yunnan. The ITC was established in 1985 to educate talented Tibetan pupils from elite families. Later, it incorporated the children of non-Tibetan cadres and other ethnic groups in the TAR.³ Parents generally regard the ITC’s boarding school education outside Tibet as beneficial. According to official narratives, the ITC policy strengthens ethnic solidarity and national unity and cultivates future Tibetan leaders.⁴ The number of ITC students has steadily increased. The 2012 estimate suggests that the middle and high school recruits were 1,800 and 3,108, respectively.⁵ Scholars have reported that more than 200,000 ethnic minority students – mainly Tibetans and Uyghurs – have been educated in the inland school system since 1985.⁶

For ITCs, Chinese is the main language of instruction throughout secondary education, with Tibetan as a supplementary language. One study suggests that Tibetan language education was abolished in high school ITCs,⁷ and many others from this post-2000s ITC generation share the same experiences. YiXi LaMucuo (2019) reported that the Chinese track hanweizhu 汉为主 is offered within the Lhasa primary school, according to the interview of Chamba (b. 2000) and ethnographic observation of his school.⁸ Chamba’s case is emblematic of a broader trend wherein bilingual education in Tibet has shifted towards the Chinese track.⁹ Meanwhile, the gateway of ITC named ‘jiamenkou de xizangban 家门口的西藏班’ has been established in the TAR since 2014, further advancing the decline of Tibetan language education.¹⁰ Moreover, following the nationwide launch of The Rural Boarding School Construction Project in 2004, a Tibetan advocacy group estimated that approximately 800,000 pupils have been residing in Sinicised, military-style, and panopticon-monitored boarding schools in Tibet.¹¹

Some studies suggest that bilingual education and ITC have resulted in ethnic segregation and assimilation.¹² However, others argue that bilingual education and ITC have advanced the ethnicisation of minority groups rather than assimilation.¹³ The latter can be interpreted that the dislocation and isolation have created an enclave of Tibetan culture within the ITC. It helps awaken the consciousness of Sinophone-Tibetan students as Tibetans, enhancing their intra-community connections. Miaoyan Yang asserts that the ITC has reinforced Tibetan identity while ‘cultivating an awareness of being Chinese, and the latter was often strategically mobilised when students sought for the betterment of Tibet and Tibetans¹⁴ Gerard A. Postiglione’s oral history study of ITC students since 1985 shows that students ‘may have acculturated [with the paucity of Tibetan knowledge due to the ITC setting] but remain determined to rediscover their ethnic heritage and reconstruct their historical experiences on their own terms’.¹⁵ These arguments are evident in the experiences of the post-2000s ITC generation.

What identity does the post-2000s ITC generation articulate? How do films mediate the expression of such identity? This study begins with a theoretical framework for integrating generational and female authorship studies, followed by a brief explanation of the data, methods, and ethics. It reviews existing research on modern Tibetan authors and explains how the Chinese state, exiled Tibetans, and Western-influenced modernity have reshaped modern Tibetan authors’ generational relationships, identity representations, and intra-community dynamics. This study discusses Kangdrun’s films depicting the experiences of post-2000s ITC generation, analysing her visual strategies for telling stories from the perspectives of children and the youth through a feminine camera eye. Chinese language education and Tibetan cultural community relations have reshaped the ethnic awareness of the post-2000s ITC generation regarding what can be called ‘a safe Chinese Tibetan citizenship’. Compared to the previous generation of male-dominated filmmakers, Kangdrun articulates affective femininity in her visual representation of the struggle of the post-2000s ITC generation for a Tibetan identity.

Theoretical framework

This study is situated in scholarship on generational and female authorship. Generation studies conceptualise collective identifications such as the Red Guard Generation,¹⁶ the urban generation of filmmakers,¹⁷ the old and new generations of Sinophone Tibetan writers,¹⁸ and the artistic and cultural generations of North-eastern Tibet (Amdo).¹⁹ This study proposes the term ‘post-2000s ITC generation’ to emphasise ‘the crucial role of shared experience of traumatic events, of narration and storytelling, as well as relations and gendered experiences in generational identities’.²⁰ The ban on religious teaching and practice in Chinese schools, the domination of patriotic education for Tibetans in the ITC,²¹ and the embrace or critique of Han-influenced modernisation by the ITC generations²² have reshaped young adulthood and collective consciousness. It resembles the struggle for identity among the 1980s Sinophone-Tibetan authors while reflecting new developments in visualised and digitalised social changes in Tibet. As a cohort, this post-2000s generation of the ITC is defined by their age and place of origin in the TAR, their experiences in the ITC institution, and their childhood and youth within a broader sociopolitical context. From the 2000s to the early 2010s, the era was arguably the most active period for transnationalism, civil society, pluralism, and feminism in modern China.

While previous ITC identity studies have discussed different age cohorts,²³ gender analysis remains missing. Tibetan society is traditionally patriarchal, and women are often subjugated in daily life and religious and medical practices.²⁴ Female authorship does not always translate into feminist authorship, and many continue to internalise misogyny and produce misogynous works. Influential feminists, thoughts, and documents are rare but significant in Tibet.²⁵ For example, despite the disapproval of her master and the removal of the editor, hermitess Orgyan Chokyi (1675–1729) wrote an autobiography detailing gendered suffering and spirituality.²⁶ Another example is the biography of the princess turned nun and Buddhist spiritual master Chokyi Dronma (1422–1455), the ‘founding figure of Tibet’s most famous female reincarnation line’.²⁷ Today, these texts are considered pioneering pieces of Buddhist literature. Contemporary Tibetan singer and former TV host Jamyang Kyi²⁸ published a feminist book in 2008 entitled ཟ་མོའི་སྐྱིད་སྡུག་གངས་མ་ཆར། Mixture of Snow and Rain: Joys and Sorrows of Women and regularly criticised women’s problems in Tibet online.²⁹ Recent examples are examined in the section that addresses inter-generational and intra-community dynamics. Isabelle Henrion-Dourcy’s research on women in Tibetan performing arts presents critical approaches to explore women’s way of artistic expression; gendered themes such as labour and suffering; and performing arts as an affective agent in mediating gendered relations, identity, and culture.³⁰ This study employs feminist epistemology to study the work and community of the first ITC female filmmaker among the few Tibetan female pioneers in filmmaking, such as director Rinchen Drolma and writer Khamo Gya.³¹ This study focuses on the feminine expressions in the context of Tibetan women artists and masculine Tibetan filmmaking.³²

Data, methods, and ethics

The data was collected from publicly available sources between 2019 and 2024. Additionally, insights have been drawn from two decades of ethnographic observations within the independent cinema scene and cross-border grassroots intellectual communities in China. It offers a visual and content analysis of 1) four of Kangdrun’s autobiographical fictional films, 2) video recordings of public events and vlogs of young Sinophone-Tibetans, 3) autobiographical texts, podcasts, media interviews, and self-made media zimeiti 自媒体 publications about Kangdrun and members from the Sinophone-Tibetan community,³³ and 4) the communications between the author and Kangdrun during a public event Contemporary Murmurings of China’s New Ethnic Minorities on 11 December 2021 and follow-up about her biography.

In contrast to Tricia Kehoe’s all-male study of Tibetan netizens’ ‘depoliticized identity’,³⁴ the materials of this study are mostly drawn from female contributors. However, Kehoe and the author did not use gendered terms for online searches. This study used snowballing of names for online searching: for example, first, Kangdrun, and then other personal, event, and platform names appeared in the findings. While the author gave a ‘thumbs-up’ to a video on a Chinese social media platform, similar content would be automatically recommended by the platform’s algorithm, some with subtitles in Chinese, Tibetan, and English. Kehoe’s research process reflects the gendered reality online and the ‘masculine technological mystique’.³⁵ However, Kehoe’s search keywords expressed their masculine linguistic nature. The absence of results from women netizens indicates different written expressions of identity for women. Unless women are consciously placed at the centre of a study, materials about them are ignored, suppressed, or erased. The masculine algorithm and censorship on Chinese social media platforms warrant further studies. By focusing on visuality and female authorship, this study inspires a more nuanced understanding of contemporary Tibet, which many international Tibetan scholars cannot access for fieldwork due to political restrictions.

Following established research ethics, all social media texts from China are anonymised. Importantly, interpreting Kangdrun’s work is the author’s own and does not reflect Kangdrun’s views. This research also helps to ‘question the production of a discursive repertoire’³⁶ and reflects on how the repertoires of researchers and informants facilitate different reproductions of power and discourse. This study is written by a feminist scholar born and raised as an ethnic Hakka Chinese in China and is currently working in Europe. Considering gender and political contestations in Tibet and research informants living in high sensitivity and risks in Tibet,³⁷ some data have been presented more descriptively.

Representing Tibetan identity: inter-generational and intra-community dynamics

This section reviews how different Tibetan authors represent Tibetan identity in Chinese and Tibetan. It highlights the need for modern Tibetan authors to compete within their groups and among the Chinese state ideologies, exiled Tibetans, and Western-influenced modernity.³⁸ Although some of these studies do not emphasise the term ‘generation’, they focus on the collective identification of various Sinophone and Tibetophone Tibetan authors.

Writers

Kamila Hladíková’s study of Sinophone and Tibetophone literature in the 1980s summarises the characteristics of two groups of Tibetan authors negotiating the Tibetan self.³⁹ The older generation of Sinophone-Tibetan authors, born in the 1940s or earlier outside the TAR, were fluent in Tibetan and Chinese. They primarily published in Chinese with pro-Chinese and leftist ideologies. Their significant influence on Tibetophone literature in the 1980s pertained to ‘literature style, plot and themes’, particularly at the ideological level, encompassing Marxist rhetoric and Chinese official ideology.⁴⁰

Authors born around the 1960s displayed two pathways: Tibetans educated in the Tibetan language in rural areas due to unavailability of Chinese education, and urban Tibetans educated in Chinese due to Cultural Revolution restrictions. The emerging Tibetophone authors in the 1980s utilised traditional narrative literature and the new tradition of vernacular texts used by the Chinese authorities for propaganda as resources for creating a new written language⁴¹ sponsored by the Writers’ Associations. Thus, the modern Tibetan Literature collectives attempted to create a ‘modern’ and ‘secular counter-discourse to the traditional culture and its values’,⁴² challenging religious dominance. Döndrup Gyel (1953–1985), a critical figure of this generation, departed from the state orientation and synthesised influences from Tibetan non-Buddhist traditions, Western rational pragmatism, and Chinese dialectical materialism.⁴³ Tsering Shakya highlighted that the realistic trend of representing Tibet was impacted by print media,⁴⁴ such as the Journal of the Grassland written in diary form by Yangtso Kyi (b. 1963).⁴⁵ The younger Sinophone-Tibetan authors publishing in the 1980s initiated a ‘new fiction from Tibet’ movement, creating new hybrid images of Tibet from the ‘Tibetan perspectives’ but written in Chinese.⁴⁶ Their major theme explored the constant search for a ‘lost’ Tibetan identity, ‘which had been permanently endangered by the Chinese surroundings they were living in’.⁴⁷

Two female Sinophone-Tibetan writers, Meizhuo (Me sgron, 梅卓, Chinese name 宦晓梅) and Tsering Woeser (ཚེ་རིང་འོད་ཟེར་, Woeser, 茨仁唯色/唯色, former name 维色, Chinese name 程文萨/雯莎), born in 1966 in high-ranking government official families, emerging in the 1990s to exemplify the impact of political power on self-identification and writing strategies. Meizhuo’s representative fictions, The Clan of Sun (太阳部落, 2023 E-book (1995)) and The Camp of Moon (月亮营地, 2023 E-book (2001)) narrate Tibetan tribes facing Chinese military invasion.⁴⁸ They focus on love stories, generational transitions, and the younger generation’s loss of and search for identities during tribal crises. These texts celebrate sexual pleasure, female autonomy, and freedom in Tibetan lifestyle choices while addressing issues of failed masculinity, arranged marriages, reckless romances, and patriarchal structures that cause women to suffer. They also highlight misogynistic religious practices, such as not allowing women to participate in celebrations of holy mountains. In both works, education has emerged as a critical concern and cause of anxiety for the Tibetan tribes. In The Clan of Sun, despite objections from all local stakeholders, the tribe leader establishes a modern school that teaches traditional Tibetan subjects, Chinese language, and modern science. His motivation results from the impact of the lack of Tibetan representatives in the government. In The Camp of Moon, the brother of the deceased leader from the Zhangdai tribe, who leads the resistance, explains (704/827):

Recently, I heard that the Corps is kidnapping young male masters xiaogongzi 小公子 from neighbouring tribes and holding them as hostages. The Corps reforms young masters, makes them study their [Chinese] language and literature, and sends them back when they grow up, making them puppets for their [Corps’] easy manipulation.

This speech echoes criticism and anxiety regarding the ITC. Meizhuo’s publications resulted in ‘great pressure from many quarters’.⁴⁹ She eventually navigated the state and became the chairwoman of the Qinghai Writer’s Association. She receives less attention from the overseas Tibetan community. Tibetans in China feel alienated because of her writing in Chinese, her feminist stance, and her official status. However, these two texts differ from Chinese literary styles, aligning more with oral folklore and poetic expressions in Tibetan than in Chinese. As Tsering Shakya’s review of Tibetan literature in 1980s China noted,⁵⁰ the Chinese state favoured this reinvention of folk tradition.

Conversely, those who are overly politicised and critical of state ideology face punishment and censorship in China. Woeser, a former editor of Tibetan Literature, was dismissed in 2003, and her writings were banned. Since then, she has worked as a freelance writer in Beijing and Lhasa, publishing on personal blogs, Radio Free Asia, and overseas platforms. Her work gradually gain acceptance and respect from the diaspora and exiled Tibetan communities, affecting her development of frameworks representing Tibet. While in an ‘inverted’ exile in Beijing, she enjoys more freedom than in Tibet.⁵¹ Woeser adopts a postcolonial framework to address issues of Tubote (图伯特, a Chinese rendering of Tibet that counters the Chinese state’s naming of Xizang 西藏), and a ‘pure’ Tibetan identity.⁵² Besides her significant reportage on rights violations in Tibet, she uses the postcolonial strategy of ‘unlearning’ to deconstruct the Chinese naming and dominating narrative of historical sites in Tibet.⁵³ This strategy is further demonstrated in the biographical documentary film The Dossier (Dang’an 档案),⁵⁴ where Woeser stages herself to present and critique her dossier records, ‘unlearning’ her identity as a Chinese-defined Tibetan and a former communist party member educated in Chinese. Nonetheless, her representation of the self and Tibet is feminine with a humanities approach while openly rejecting social science-defined gender as an analytical framework. How do her Buddhist practices, characterised by high moral standards, an attitude of distancing herself from the material world, and her interactions with the activist and grassroots intellectual communities which are paradoxically misogynistic, impact her representation and political imagination of Tibet? This question deserves further research.

The studies of Tibetan authors are critical to understanding the inter-generational influences on the authorship of the ITC generation, the intra-community dynamics of Tibetan authors, the political reshaping, and their strategic choices to reimagine Tibet.

Artists and filmmakers

Timothy Thurston has studied narratives, memories, and autobiographies of the ‘artistic and cultural generations in North-eastern Tibet’.⁵⁵ They were born between 1959 and 1967, educated in Tibet, and became influential as Tibetan cultural producers, mainly in the Amdo dialect. Thurston describes the sociological configurations of the male-dominated artistic and cultural generations in North-eastern Tibet, including 1) economic improvements and open political atmosphere in the reform era, 2) state sponsorship in education and cultural development in Tibet, 3) institutional changes regarding the banishment of monastery education, 4) the role of charismatic figures (banished monk educators) in Tibetan language education, Tibetan language journals, and experiments, and 5) the impact of the Cultural Revolution on education, experience, and creative works of Tibetan authors.⁵⁶ Thurston’s research illustrates the sociopolitical conditions for artists in North-eastern Tibet during China’s transition from Mao to the reform era. The ITC policy was introduced in 1985, following this transition trend and with reform and opening up since the late 1970s.

Recent research has focused on Pema Tseden (པད་མ་ཚེ་བརྟན།, 万玛才旦, 1969–2023) from the North-eastern Tibetan cultural generation, a productive writer in Tibetan and Chinese and a key figure in forging a new generation of Tibetan filmmakers.⁵⁷ He was the first Tibetan filmmaker to graduate from the Beijing Film Academy and made films on contemporary Tibetan life in the Amdo dialect with a Tibetan crew. These films are well-received domestically and internationally, nurturing Tibetan filmmakers and encouraging more Tibetans to enrol in film schools. Scholars have detailed Tibetan cinema in China, including the use of DV cameras to document critical sociopolitical issues in Tibet⁵⁸ and the production and distribution of Tibetan cinema.⁵⁹ A recent development is the close interaction among Tibetan filmmakers, independent Chinese filmmakers, and young directors from other ethnic groups.⁶⁰

Above-mentioned studies report that Tibetan filmmakers are male-dominated. Pema Tseden’s films depict the disappearance of traditional Tibet and critique the masculinity of Tibetan men while rejecting the cinematic spectacularisation of Tibetan women.⁶¹ In his 2009 film The Search འཚོལ།, the only woman character is a veiled young girl. Her face and her story are not visible to the audience. Hladíková discussed this cinematic strategy to represent Tibet in contrast to the dominating portrayal of 1) women as ‘beautiful and sexually attractive, sometimes even frivolous’,⁶² 2) ‘singing’ and ‘dancing’ ethnic minorities under the rule of Han supremacy in a homogeneous Chinese nation,⁶³ and 3) women in dramatic love stories. These choices are rooted in Pema Tseden’s aesthetic preferences against grand narratives, commercialised filmmaking, and mainstream socialist realism. It also reflects Buddhist values in Tibetan life, such as avoiding individualism. The long-shot style of cinematography, in contrast to the frequent close-up shots of face, also corresponds to perceptions of Buddhist values. Furthermore, as one anonymous reviewer noted, the veiled woman suggests a self-understanding with a clear search goal – in this case, Tibetan culture. It is not visible, but the veiled woman possesses it. Meanwhile, the talkative male protagonists in the film are lost and incapable.

Tibetan films have room for more explicit analyses of the impact of masculine and gendered cinematic expressions. For example, in Pema Tseden’s 2015 film Tharlo ཐར་ལོ།, cinematographer Lü Songye captures the female protagonist on camera in a typical ‘male gaze’ that facilitates a male narrative.⁶⁴ However, the film also critiques the male gaze by frequently filming it in mirror reflection. The female Tibetan protagonist is a seducer, cheater, and thief, referring to modernisation and materialism. She manipulates the traditional, hardworking male protagonist, the herder, and eventually causes confusion, failure, and tragedy. Pema Tseden’s 2019 film Balloon དབུགས་ལྒང་། focuses on the state-led birth control (abortion) and Tibetan traditional family and religious values concerning the reincarnation of the deceased older people to the (incoming) new-born. The film sympathises with the overwhelming labour in Tibetan women’s everyday life, the struggle between the autonomy of Tibetan women and the solid family structure at the core of Buddhist and patriarchal practices. The film gives agency to the woman protagonist wishing for an abortion; it centres on the narratives and wills of the father-in-law, husband, and teenage son. Ultimately, the woman protagonist’s choice to temporally join the monastery hints that Tibetan women have no social space to resist such gendered structures. Escaping to the (also gendered) spiritual space is the only realistic and temporal solution to their problems in secular life. However, many Tibetan audiences criticised Balloon for sympathising with the woman protagonist’s will to not give birth to the reincarnation of her father-in-law, the theme of state-led birth control, and the explicit storyline around the condom which openly highlights an attitude toward sex for pleasure but not for birth.⁶⁵

Pema Tseden’s filmmaking reveals various visual approaches to representing Tibetan identity and changing gender consciousness. In this context, Kangdrun, the first female Tibetan director, produce films about the post-2000s ITC generation.

Kangdrun’s education, filmmaking, and community relations

Kangdrun was born in Lhokha ལྷོ་ཁ་, Shannan, 山南) into a Tibetan family. Her father, a former TV host and reporter, works in the advertisement sector. Her mother works as a physician in Lhasa. Kangdrun speaks Tibetan, but her written Tibetan is middle school level. From 2000 to 2006, she studied at the Lhasa Experimental Primary School, where Tibetan was the language of instruction. She relocated to ITCs at the No.1 Middle School of Foshan City, Guangdong Province (2006–2010) and then to Beijing Tibetan Middle School (2010–2013) for secondary education. During this time, Chinese was the main language of instruction, and Tibetan was only a supplementary subject. Kangdrun received a BA in Public Relations in 2017 and an MA in Filmmaking in 2021 from the School of Drama, Film, and Television at the Communication University of China in Beijing.

During her education and early filmmaking years, she collaborated with Tenzin Drölkar (བསྟན་འཛིན་དཀར། 丹增卓嘎) and directed the documentary film Vajara (གནམ་ལྕགས།, 天杵, 50 minutes, 2017), portraying Tibet’s first rock band. Besides the Short Summer in Lhasa, Kangdrun has directed five short fiction films (see Figure 1)⁶⁶ – Pema (པདྨ་, 白玛, 4 minutes 28 seconds, 2019); The Shore (彼岸, 4 minutes 30 seconds, 2019); Pema and Drolma (པདྨ་དང་སྒྲོལ་མ་, 白与卓, 4 minutes 30 seconds, 2019); Red Bucket and Key (ཆུ་ཟོམ་དམར་པོ་དང་ལྡེ་མིག, 红水桶与钥匙, 9 minutes 38 seconds, 2019); Sophia and Chödrön’s TV Show (སོ་ཧྥི་ཡ་དང་ཆོས་སྒྲོན་གྱི་བརྙན་འཕྲིན་ལེ་ཚན།, 索菲与曲珍的电视节目, 8 minutes 57 seconds, 2020). These films were shot from the perspectives of Tibetan children and youth, mostly girls, with traces of autobiographical elements regarding emotions, experiences, projections, and self-statements. They were made either in Lhasa or with protagonists from Lhasa who now study in inland cities in China. The dialogues are in Tibetan, with occasional Chinese supplemented with English and Chinese subtitles. The English translation does not follow Tibetan conventions; for example, names such as Lhamo ལྷ་མོ་ was spelled as Lamu, following the pinyin system. Kangdrun’s production team consists mainly of Tibetans but includes a few Han Chinese, mostly her classmates and teachers. Kangdrun’s boyfriend Tashi Namgyal (བཀྲ་ཤིས་རྣམ་རྒྱལ་, 扎西南加) is the cinematographer for most of her films. She wishes to establish roots for her filmmaking in Tibetan culture, based in Lhasa, following Pema Tseden, whose works are significant in representing Tibet, but mostly in rural Tibet and outside TAR.

Figure 1. Posters of Kangdrun’s three short films Red Bucket and Key, Sophia and Chodron’s TV Show, and Short Summer in Lhasa. Posters are downloaded from the internet.

Kangdrun participate in various Tibetan cultural initiatives and collaborations in Lhasa and Beijing. She and Tenzin Drölkar were invited to introduce the documentary film Vajara at an event organised by the student journal Offspring of the Snow Land 雪子 in Beijing.⁶⁷ The journal is dedicated to investigating the socioeconomic challenges faced by contemporary Tibetans and promoting Tibetan cultural identity, such as sharing the confusion and regret of ITC members to emphasise learning Tibetan. Kangdrun is the initiator of Start Unit Youth Video Week (མགོ་རྩོམ་ཞེས་པའི་ན་གཞོན་གློག་བརྙན་འགྲེམས་སྟོན།, 开始单元青年影像周) in Lhasa (2018–). In 2021, the film week collaborated with the Sweet Tea Festival (ཇ་ཁང་མངར་མོའི་སྒྱུ་རྩལ་དུས་ཆེན།, 甜茶馆艺术节), another cultural initiative by a young female Tibetan curator Gesang Yangla 格桑央拉, who studied at Columbia University and currently a PhD candidate in Tibetan Art History at Tibet University.

The report on the young Sinophone-Tibetan cultural community analyses publicly available materials collected from various self-made media platforms of 200 Tibetan interviews, life story narratives, and self-presentations in videos, podcasts, photo essays, and texts. A study of a self-claiming ‘Tibetan feminist’ will be reported by the author in another study tentatively titled Voicing Tibetan Feminism in the Post-2020s Qinghai: Sinophone-Tibetan Youth on New Media. These Tibetans include people with whom Kangdrun interacted, those who invited her to speak, those who participated in events organised by related groups, and those related to the communities. The data show a strong awareness of and pride in the self-identification as a Tibetan in an apolitical and cultural sense, ‘showcasing itself as a colourful spectacle to be enjoyed and even consumed’.⁶⁸ A female Tibetan graduate who studied in Shanghai initiated a key, self-made media platform. To understand her confusion and lost Tibetan identity, she interviewed and invited autobiographies to present shining Tibetan figures and published 77 stories by April 2022. Other Sinophone Tibetans have adopted a similar approach on various social media platforms. Several key cultural initiatives and self-made media platforms were funded by Tibetan females pursuing postgraduate studies in Tibetan arts and culture or had returned from overseas graduate schools.

These platforms demonstrate the intention of telling the ‘original’ and ‘authentic’ Tibetan stories in establishing a collective Tibetan identity. Although sometimes hinting at a close alignment with state ideology, these stories differ from those suggested by the Chinese state and exiled Tibetans. These self-representations focus on the modern Tibetan lifestyle, talents creating a new culture or maintaining Tibetan traditions, and the young generation’s cultural entrepreneurship. These platforms provide transnational Tibetan perspectives, including stories inexplicitly about exiled and diaspora communities. Over 50% of the protagonists are Tibetans studying in Chinese cities such as Beijing and Shanghai or overseas such as Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, and India. The stories range from reviving Tibetan traditions and socioeconomic challenges to popular culture, such as rap, parkour, boxing, stand-up comedy, and rock music. This study finds gender awareness, queering, and women protagonists such as teachers, curators, social entrepreneurs, NGO workers, professionals, painters, and artists in these stories. The Tibetan feminist podcast focuses on womanhood, empowerment, intimate relationship, and feminism in Tibet. Collectively, they represent a modern Tibetan lifestyle in China and pride in being Tibetan. The frustrations of being unable to fulfil their search for Tibetan roots or revival and the shift toward commercialised entrepreneurship are also discussed, though not presented as the primary theme in the data.

Kangdrun is different from her fellow Tibetan filmmakers in her alignment with femininity in film storytelling, as manifested in 1) the centrality of narratives by girls, 2) more frequent visualisation of female faces than that her male counterparts, such as Jigme Trinley (འཇིགས་མེད་འཕྲིན་ལས།, 久美成列), Pema Tseden’ son⁶⁹; 3) generating feminine affect and visuality through colour, space, and the bodily movements of characters and 4) her engagement with female peers, such as production crew, curators, and journalists in producing, screening, and discussing her films. Her films do not highlight gender inequality or other gender issues. The reason could be that she has not experienced gender discrimination in her life, as it is often less visible among girls from a middle-class background, especially from Lhasa, where females are relatively outspoken and powerful, even before the 1950s. Kangdrun’s visuality delivers a feminine sensibility, although not done under a formal gender analysis framework. Her work’s affective feminity mediates the formation of her cultural, political, and gender identities.

Returning to a hybrid Lhasa

Lhasa is a spatial and cultural symbol of Tibet for the ITC generation, who wish to reconnect with their Tibetan identity. It was publicly spelt out in the song Himalaya (lyrics and music by Sinophone military singer Han Hong (韩红, T: Yangchen Drolma, b. 1971), 1998): ‘They reminded me not to forget to return to our Lhasa’.⁷⁰ According to a recent study, for many ITC graduates, returning to Tibet includes fulfilling filial piety, a familiar religious and cultural atmosphere, more availability of ‘iron rice-bowl’ jobs and serving Tibet, emphasised by the ITC education.⁷¹ Kangdrun returned to Lhasa upon graduation and saw it as the foundation for filmmaking. She reflects on the collective consciousness of ITC graduates:

Our relationship with Lhasa is in a mode of youli (游离 straying, unbound, drifting). Since our teenage years, many of us went to study in ITCs. Growing up in the mode of youli shapes the shared life experiences of our generation… For example, the identity issue arises from growing up in two cultural environments and the question of belonging to one’s hometown. Lhasa is the most important space that lays out the fundamental colour of our consciousness.⁷²

(Self-made media K, 2021)

Three of Kangdrun’s films focus on Lhasa and reflect on ITC students’ pre-ITC experience and memories about being a Tibetan in Lhasa: Short Summer in Lhasa, Red Bucket and Key, and Sophia and Chödrön’s TV Show.

The competition of language for representing Tibet

Sophia and Chödrön’s TV Show presents two girls, cousins aged eight and ten. The younger Sophia and elder Chödrön are dressed in Tibetan clothes during Tibetan New Year Losar, in a game of TV show competing with language and presentation skills. They sit in the back-seat of a car driven by Chödrön’s father (Sophia’s uncle) in Lhasa. The contrast between the traditional and the modern can be found in the names of the two protagonists: Sophia, modern and westernised, and Chödrön, a traditional Tibetan name for girls. The rolling up and down of the car’s back-seat window resembles the audience’s experience of seeing the rolling of stage curtains in the theatre. The stage is the TV show. The rolling up and down of the car window also facilitate the transition of cousins’ emotions, the change of places during a driving trip in Lhasa, and the switch between these locations, which have symbolic meanings in Tibetan history and reality. The Potala Palace in the film can be seen as a symbol of Tibetan identity. The Competition between Tibetan and Chinese languages, the contrast of Tibetan dresses to Sophia’s KFC drink, and the game explaining each location’s past and present during the TV show create cinematic tensions between tradition and modernity in present-day Tibet.

When Chödrön asks the audience in the TV show whether there are ghosts in the snow mountain where the car was passing, Sophia immediately responds that her teacher says there are no ghosts in the world. Gods, deities, and ghosts are essential in traditional Tibetan beliefs. Mountains, rivers, and animals are spiritual. When it is Sophia’s turn, she switches to Mandarin, Chödrön argues that the program was in Tibetan and should be in Tibetan. Sophia replies that the TV hosts speak Chinese in real life. Chödrön insists that Sophia speak Tibetan, but neither the cousins nor the father or uncle know how to say TV ‘host’ in Tibetan, so they say zhuchiren in Chinese until the end of the trip when the uncle recalls how to say ‘host’ in Tibetan. To continue the game, Sophia agrees to accept the role of the host and speak Tibetan mixed with Chinese. Chödrön insists that she is the better host because she speaks better Tibetan. Sophia asks why Chinese speakers were selected as hosts at her school. The cousins then reveal that during the summer, their brother (another cousin) would return to Lhasa from his inland school, and Chödrön would go to an inland school after the summer. While Sophia is curious whether her cousin would study in Shanghai, go to Disneyland, and speak Chinese, Chödrön reflects in Tibetan how their brother told her about his homesickness in the inland school. Chödrön becomes melancholic while Sophia drinks from a KFC cup. Along the driving route, we see snowy mountains, Lhasa’s wetlands, Jinxing Amusing Park, Tengyeling, and the Potala Palace with a huge billboard. The billboard reads ‘2020 The Year of Rats Good Luck’ in Chinese, and on both sides are large Chinese characters and small Tibetan characters for ‘Determined to Win the Battle of Poverty Alleviation’ and ‘Build a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects’. Thus, Lhasa is portrayed as a poor and less-developed city, and the Chinese authorities eradicate poverty in Tibet.

All places on the driving route show present-day Tibet influenced by traditional Tibetan culture, Westernised modernity (an amusement park and Sophia’s longing for Disneyland), and China’s ethnic governance. Finally, Chödrön insists that Sophia must host TV shows in Tibetan when they pass by the Potala Palace. While Sophia is younger and less insistent, she represents the reality and future trend of representing Tibet using Chinese, with her innocent excitement for Disneyland in Shanghai, a symbol of modern Western entertainment. Chödrön’s melancholy imagining her ITC education and inability to host the entire TV show in Tibetan hint at the longing for and the difficulties in actualising traditional or pure Tibetanness.

Kangdrun explains that making films in Tibetan is increasingly difficult because children could no longer speak Tibetan without Chinese words. Kangdrun interpreted it as due to the popularisation of smartphones and the popular culture delivered on smartphones. The short film depicts the complex reality and hybrid culture of the post-2000s Tibetan generation, emphasising ITC schooling, the disadvantages of the Tibetan language in the education system, and the persistence and need to preserve and prioritise the Tibetan language in representing Tibet in the TV show and Kangdrun’s filmmaking. Before students start their ITC journey, it has showed the potential of Chinese language winning over Tibetan in Tibetan school education and probably in everyday life in Lhasa.

Becoming a lost girl

Short Summer in Lhasa narrates the story of a Tibetan schoolgirl, Sangkyi, who steals her good friend Sonlha’s wallet and lies to her father that she picked up the wallet. Her journalist father features the incident in a TV report that highlights Sangkyi’s return of the wallet, causing Sangkyi’s lifelong regret. ITC students must stay in boarding schools with only two to three home visits per year at their own expense. Some also report that summer is the only chance for home visits. Kangdrun states that she spent the summer holidays mostly in Lhasa, and the film portrays her feelings about Lhasa and its summer. The film conveys nostalgia for Lhasa through middle-class Tibetans’ summer picnics: spending holidays with family, friends, and relatives in a picnic tent, singing, dancing, drinking, and playing. Picnics are Tibet’s national sport, and singing and dancing are embedded in Tibet’s daily life.⁷³ They wear Tibetan-style costumes, while Sangkyi always wears modern clothes – in elite school uniforms or modern urban clothes – even when some other pupils wear Tibetan-style clothes during the summer holidays. Students, teachers, and TV reporters wear modern clothes in everyday life scenes. Sangkyi is the product of modern Han-influenced education, even though she speaks Tibetan, and her generation is disconnected from her parents’ culture.

Sangkyi deceives adults, for they believe she returns the lost wallet and takes her ‘stealing’ as a virtue. Meanwhile, Sangkyi is deferential and isolated from her peers because they know she is ‘stealing’. The award-winning film delivers sadness by representing the regrets of a girl ‘thief’ in Lhasa and through colouring techniques which give the film a sense of sorrow: The thief is a ‘stolen’ girl who at the time is stealing, an outsider of the Tibetan culture, and she is lost. Nostalgia in Lhasa and Tibetan traditions is represented by adult activities during picnics. This scene visually wears a dream veil that seems surreal and irrelevant to the girl’s concern, seeing from the eyes of the anxious girl protagonist.

The key to return home is possessed by a thief

‘Stealing’ re-appeared as a metaphor in Short Summer in Lhasa after the theme was featured in Kangdrun’s previous critical film Red Bucket and Key. This story is from the perspective of a boy in a Tibetan primary school who experiences deception. It was shot with nonprofessional Tibetan actors in Lhasa’s community spaces. The director states that the film represents her childhood memory in Lhasa and is inspired by the community space and life with which she is familiar. In a long shot of the community’s three-story building from the sky to the ground and several medium shots, the audience sees the hybrid Tibetan wood frames and modern iron grids, colourful paintings on raised wood eaves, fading paintings on corridor pillars, Tibetan-style door curtains, clothes in Tibetan and contemporary styles, a brick and mud simmering juniper stove on the ground for Buddhist practice of burning juniper, and, next to the stove, the community’s tap water assembly and wash basins. A woman wearing modern-style clothes washes something. All children in the film wear modern clothes, except for one passing on the street. Adults wear mixed styles, and senior women mostly wear Tibetan-style clothes.

The protagonist boy in the school uniform is naïve. Through his naïve eyes, the audience sees how he is repeatedly deceived by the thief, played by a Tibetan dressed in a modern worker’s uniform and wearing an expensive watch. The boy’s naïve eyes also reveal the thief’s stealing and deceiving without knowing it is stealing. The film poster asks, ‘How to match a key without a key’? Metaphorically, the key to accessing his home was now with the thief. The boy is deceived in trying to match a key with empty hands, unaware of his futile attempts. When the film poster asks such a question, does it imply that the director senses that the naïve child in her childhood memory cannot return to the Tibetan home because the key has been kept by the thief? In this film, the thief is portrayed as a modern, deviant Tibetan driven by material desires, evident in wearing an expensive watch and stealing money.

Kangdrun returns to and represents Lhasa as the hybrid reality of mixed Chinese, Western, and Tibetan cultures, thinking in her gentle and feminine cinematic gaze. It does not fit the traditional utopian spiritual Tibetan stereotype in Western films (such as Seven Years in Tibet) or the ruins of past Tibet in Woeser’s writings.⁷⁴ Traditional Tibetanness disappears in all three films. Searching for Tibetanness in Lhasa echoes the literary work of earlier Tibetan authors under Han and modernity influences, those who feel their Tibetan identity is lost. However, it addresses the experiences of the ITC generation in cinematic work with a visual and narrative focus on Tibetan girls and children.

Representing the pain of ITC students

Kangdrun’s student film The Shore, filmed and edited by herself, addresses the frustration of ITC students and, thus, the disconnection in the film narrative and in metaphors. The female protagonist, Tenzin Drölkar, played in modern-style clothes, is frustrated when filming a scene of the Tibetan folk theatre dance performance Shölpa Lhamo in a university studio room. Neither the actor in the Tibetan theatre dance costume nor the cinematographer Tenzin Drölkar feels their performance in the Tibetan dance is appropriate. During filming, Tenzin Drölkar does not answer her father’s phone calls, and the mobile phone connection is interrupted because of poor signals. Her father briefly passes through the city where she is studying. Thus, finally, Tenzin Drölkar neither sees her father even though they are in the same building nor makes the film the right way. Tenzin Drölkar is exasperated because, as the actor says in Tibetan, no one understands the performance. Tenzin Drölkar is anxious and feels that she must record the disappearing folk culture. Hearing her father’s voice message that the family wishes to see her in summer and her grandmother does not want her to leave Lhasa again, Tenzin Drölkar runs on campus toward the Tibetan snack left by her father, with a loud footstep soundtrack. The eruption of suppressed emotions in the cinematic viewing experience, enhanced by the beats in the footstep soundtrack, immediately introduces the audience to a line centred on the screen: ‘To my family members who have parted from me so many times’, with ‘Kangdrun Production’ appearing under the text. This film depicts the anxiety of ITC students disconnected from their native culture and their eagerness to preserve and reconnect. The issue of returning to Lhasa during summer also appears in the movie. It addresses the bitter feelings of being apart from Tibet during their ITC studies, specifically for Kangdrun – Lhasa. Kangdrun and her peers passionately revive and recreate Tibet for their generation, and her autobiographical fiction filmmaking alleviates her pain as an ITC student. Kangdrun cautiously accepts Tibet’s reality as part of China and navigates a safe Chinese Tibetan citizenship in filmmaking.

The innocent and feminine camera eye: securing a safe Chinese Tibetan citizenship

How should we understand Kangdrun’s choice to tell stories through the relatively innocent eyes of children and youth? What does the feminine aspect of Kangdrun’s experience mean in the struggle for a Tibetan identity? Fictional works can be interpreted as reflections of the outside world or inner thoughts.⁷⁵ In Kangdrun’s case, in the early stages of filmmaking, she was mostly interested in mirroring and reflecting on her childhood and teenage experiences. These experiences are personal and greatly shaped by her vague memory of Tibetan traditions and the socio-political factors of ITC education. The choice of an innocent camera eye also embeds careful political considerations in negotiating hybrid and modern Tibetan identities. Kangdrun, her ITC peers, and Tibetan authors seek opportunities to mainstream their creative work and entrepreneurship in Tibet and China. They must carefully avoid confrontations or controversies with the authorities. They depend on the vulnerable autonomy in the market economy, which is also under state control. Sinophone Tibetan media platforms interacting with Kangdrun also wish to establish Tibetan cultural entrepreneurship in China. ITC graduates are educated to be loyal to the Chinese state, serve Tibet, and develop dual-safe Chinese-Tibetan citizenship from the beginning of their ITC schooling.⁷⁶

In Kangdrun’s filmmaking career, she explores her Tibetan roots as a creative source while establishing her professional position as a filmmaker, which requires Chinese state endorsement. Tibetan stories are inevitably politically sensitive, regardless of how the authors position themselves or their career choices. Therefore, Kangdrun’s storytelling from the perspectives of children and youth who witness social changes and the feminine textuality of her experiences give her some sense of safety. When the protagonists describe a hybrid Tibet with regrets and pain, it might be considered offensive from the perspectives of the Chinese state, conservative Tibetans, exiled Tibetans, and Tibetans who want further modernisation of Tibet. Since innocent children and youths narrate the stories, perceived offensiveness is perhaps easier to swallow. Femininity highlights the affective aspect of visuality while being perceived as nonaggressive, with no strong threats or antagonism to Tibetan tradition or Chinese politics. The innocent and feminine camera eye in securing a safe Chinese Tibetan citizenship is crucial for young filmmakers such as Kangdrun, without established international reputations protecting them. Their creativity are navigating state endorsement and censorship. Meanwhile, artistic work in China – an authoritarian context – expresses itself and engages with society through personal, embodied, and anti-grand narrative approaches.⁷⁷ This approach facilitates engagement with the transnational film industry and responds to the political conceptualisation of Tibetans by the Chinese state, exiled Tibet, and Western discourse.

Conclusion

This study examines filmmaker Kangdrun’s way of rediscovering, renegotiating, and visualising the Tibetan identity of the post-2000s ITC generation. Kangdrun was born into a Tibetan family and was educated in ITCs. Her creative approach was influenced by mixed cultural influences and censorship. By employing feminist epistemology, this research highlights the femininity and affective nature of Kangdrun’s visuality, consisting of a woman’s expression and representation while actively mediating the filmmaker’s cultural, political, and gender identity formations. Kangdrun and her peers’ experiences reflect the continual identity struggle observed in the earlier generations of Sinophone-Tibetan authors. Central to this struggle is returning to the lost Tibetanness, now expressed through self-made media platforms and new media forms such as films and videos. Through a feminine camera lens, Kangdrun’s films mirror and represent a journey of the post-2000s ITC generation, encompassing separation from Tibet, returning to Tibet, and searching for Tibetanness while establishing a safe Chinese citizenship within the context of Han and Western-influenced modernity in Tibet.

Acknowledgments

Early drafts of this article were presented at a closed-door workshop, Chinese Youth: Experience, Values, and Challenges, on 26–27 September 2022, and an internal seminar on 25 April 2023 at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University, Sweden. I thank all the workshop participants, my colleagues during the internal seminar, Dr. Nimrod Baranovitch, and two anonymous reviewers. Their feedback has enhanced the quality of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jinyan Zeng

Jinyan Zeng 曾金燕 is a substitute senior lecturer at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University, Sweden. She is a scholar and documentary filmmaker. Her research focuses on gender and sexuality, culture and politics, intellectual identity and activism, and ethnicity, with a particular emphasis on the Chinese speaking world. Among various publications, she has authored Feminism and Genesis of Citizen Intelligentsia in China (in Chinese, 2016, City University of Hong Kong Press), co-edited Feminist Activism in the Post-2010s Sinosphere (with Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen, Forthcoming 2024, Bloomsbury), and co-directed awarded documentary film Outcry and Whisper (2020, with Wen Hai and Trish McAdam).

Notes

1. Names are written, spelled and listed according to Tibetan authors’ own preferred usage, including the choice of anglicised spelling. Most Tibetans do not have family names. Note that Kangdrun uses the anglicised spelling while some Tibetans use pinyin spelling such as the book author Yixi LaMucuo (2019) and Gesang Yangla, a curator of the post-2000s ITC generation.

2. “Amazing! #Tibetan Director Kungdrun’s Short Summer in Lhasa is Awarded Annual Short Fiction Film of New Directors at the 16th Chinese Youth Film Week”; and “The 16th Chinese Youth Film Week Announces Its Winners.”

3. Postiglione, Zhiyong, and Jiao, “From Ethnic Segregation to Impact Integration”; Postiglione, “Dislocated Education”; Yang, Learning to Be Tibetan; Yang, “Learning to be Safe Citizens”; Yang, “Discourses on ‘Authenticity’”; Yang and Leibold, “Building a ‘Double First-Class University’ on China’s Qing-Zang Plateau”; Yi and Wang, “Cultivating Self-Worth among Dislocated Tibetan Undergraduate Students in a Chinese Han-Dominated National Key University”; YiXi LaMuCuo, Becoming Bilingual in School and Home in Tibetan Areas of China.

4. With similar agenda, Xinjiang Inland Class was launched for Uyghurs in 2000. See discussions on ITC and Inland Xinjiang Class: Grose, “The Xinjiang Class”; Leibold, “Interior Ethnic Minority Boarding Schools”; Postiglione, “Dislocated Education”; Postiglione and Li, “Exceptions to the Rule”; Yang and Nima Dunzhu, “Assimilation or Ethnicization”; Yuan, Qian, and Zhu, “The Xinjiang Class”. Also see studies of ethnic bilingual education in China: Baranovitch, “The Bilingual Education Policy in Xinjiang Revisited”; Castle, “The Sociopolitics of Language”; Tournadre, “The Dynamics of Tibetan-Chinese Bilingualism”; and YiXi LaMuCuo, Becoming Bilingual in School and Home in Tibetan Areas of China.

5. Yang, “Learning to be Safe Citizens”, 839.

6. Leibold, “Interior Ethnic Minority Boarding Schools”; Leibold and Grose, “Cultural and Political Disciplining inside China’s Dislocated Minority Schooling System”.

7. Yang, “Learning to be Safe Citizens”.

8. YiXi LaMuCuo, Becoming Bilingual in School and Home in Tibetan Areas of China, 136–42.

9. Leibold and Dorjee, “Learning to Be Chinese”.

10. Yang, “From Dislocated to Local”.

11. Cited from the advocacy group without other verifiable data for discussing the number in: Leibold and Dorjee, “Learning to Be Chinese”.

12. See notes 3 and 4.

13. Postiglione, Zhiyong, and Jiao, “From Ethnic Segregation to Impact Integration”; and Yang and Nima Dunzhu, “Assimilation or Ethnicization”.

14. “Learning to be Safe Citizens”, 835.

15. “Dislocated Education”, 484.

16. Yang, The Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China.

17. Zhang, The Urban Generation.

18. Hladíková, The Exotic Other and Negotiation of Tibetan Self.

19. Kertzer, “Generation as a Sociological Problem”; Rochot, “Our Generation”; and Thurston, “On Artistic and Cultural Generations in Northeastern Tibet”.

20. Rochot, “Our Generation”, 4.

21. Yang, “Learning to be Safe Citizens”.

22. Yang and Nima Dunzhu, “Assimilation or Ethnicization”; and Yang, Learning to Be Tibetan.

23. See References for various studies conducted by Gerard A. Postiglione, Miaoyan Yang, and their collaborators.

24. Gyatso and Havnevik, Women in Tibet.

25. See the editors’ Introduction chapter in Gyatso and Havnevik.

26. Schaeffer, “The Autobiography of a Medieval Hermitess”.

27. Diemberger, “Gender, Kinship and Relatedness in Fifteenth-Century Tibet”, 211. Hildegard Diemberger has produced various scholarships on Tibetan women’s significant roles such as ruler, princess, oracle, nun, and patron of printing and innovation.

28. Jamyang Kyi, A Diary of Interrogations.

29. Another example is that artist Pekar Monsal wrote “Women’s Status in Tibetan Society: Don’t Laugh at Women’s Hardship” in 2004.

30. Ellen Koskoff, cited in Henrion-Dourcy, “Women in Performing Arts”, 196–97; and Henrion-Doucy’s research focuses on Tibetan women singers.

31. Barnett, “DV-Made Tibet”.

32. Baranovitch, “Representing Tibet in the Global Cultural Market”; Barnett, “DV-Made Tibet”; Frangville, “‘Minority Film’ and Tibet in the PRC”; Frangville, “The Non‑Han in Socialist Cinema and Contemporary Films in the People’s Republic of China”; Henrion-Dourcy, “Women in Performing Arts”; Hladíková, “Shangri-La Deconstructed”; and Pema Tseden, Tharlo.

33. See Fang, “What Is Zimeiti ?” for discussions of self-publishing on China’s social media platforms.

34. Kehoe, “I Am Tibetan? An Exploration of Online Identity Constructions among Tibetans in China”.

35. Kehoe, 317.

36. (Vanthuyne 2011, 461), cited in Frangville, “Testimonies and the Uyghur Genocide Metanarrative”, 419.

37. Gyatso and Havnevik, Women in Tibet; and Barnett, “The Tibet Protests of Spring, 2008”.

38. Baranovitch, “Representing Tibet in the Global Cultural Market”; Barnett, “DV-Made Tibet”; Frangville, “Minority Film” and Tibet in the PRC; Hladíková, The Exotic Other and Negotiation of Tibetan Self; Hladíková, “Shangri-La Deconstructed”; and Thurston, “On Artistic and Cultural Generations in Northeastern Tibet”.

39. Hladíková, The Exotic Other and Negotiation of Tibetan Self.

40. Hladíková, 87.

41. Especially, folk traditions have inspired earliest writing of modern literature, see Tsering Shakya, “The Development of Modern Tibetan Literature in the People”s Republic of China in the 1980s’.

42. Hladíková, The Exotic Other and Negotiation of Tibetan Self, 92.

43. Tsering Shakya, “The Development of Modern Tibetan Literature in the People’s Republic of China in the 1980s”.

44. Tsering Shakya.

45. Yangtso Kyi, “Journal of the Grassland”.

46. Hladíková, The Exotic Other and Negotiation of Tibetan Self, 132.

47. Hladíková, 133.

48. Meizhuo claimed that the story of The Clan of Sun is set in the warlord period (1911–1949), during which (1938–1949) Amdo is controlled by the Chinese Muslim (Hui) general Ma Bufang. However, Meizhuo was not comfortable to talk about this point during an interview: Meizhuo and Y. D., “Translator’s Note: Meizhuo•Three Poems”. In her fiction texts, no hints on any reference to ethnic Hui.

49. Meizhuo and Y. D, 144.

50. Tsering Shakya, “The Development of Modern Tibetan Literature in the People’s Republic of China in the 1980s”.

51. Baranovitch, “Inverted Exile”. I argue that Meizhuo also enjoys relatively greater freedom in Qinghai than those in TAR.

52. Meizhuo published a collection named Tibetan Herbs (Tubote xiangcao 土伯特香草, using variation of Chinese characters of Tubote). Detail information of the collection is not available anymore.

53. On Woeser’s work, see Boyden and Tsering Woeser, “The Presence of the Dalai Lama’s Absencer”; Hladíková, “Purple Ruins”. On “unlearn”, see Ueno, Women’s Thoughts, 292–93.

54. The Dossier, 128 minutes, directed by Zhu Rikun, 2014, is freely available on YouTube, see https://youtu.be/-EPSPZGegQs.

55. Thurston, “On Artistic and Cultural Generations in Northeastern Tibet.”

56. Thurston.

57. On studies of Pema Tseden’s work: Barnett, “DV-Made Tibet”; Berry, “Pema Tseden and the Tibetan Road Movie”; Hladíková, “Shangri-La Deconstructed”; and Pema Tseden Tharlo. And see the special issue of the Latse Journal (No. 7, 2011–12) on Tibetan film.

58. Barnett, “DV-Made Tibet”.

59. On a comprehensive review on the evolving modes of filmmaking: Frangville, “‘Minority Film’ and Tibet in the PRC”; Hladíková, “Shangri-La Deconstructed”.

60. For example, in the 2000s, Pema Tseden’s films were screened and discussed on Beijing Independent Film Festival and were circulated among Chinese independent cinema community. Young ethnic minority filmmakers in China including Manchurian, Tibetan, Uyghur, Ewenki, and Mongolian have interacted with each other, connected through local and independent film festivals. A show case of such dynamics is the Contemporary Murmurings of China’s New Ethnic Minorities, organised by Chinese Independent Film Archive, 11 December 2021.

61. Hladíková, “Shangri-La Deconstructed”.

62. Hladíková, 369.

63. Frangville, “The Non‑Han in Socialist Cinema and Contemporary Films in the People’s Republic of China”.

64. The ethnic Han director Lu Chuan 陆川’s film Kekexili: Mountain Patrol (可可西里, 2004) has similar cinematography issue to address: a Han male journalist’s gaze on his Tibetan environmental protection ‘brothers’ and an exotic Tibetan woman.

65. I thank Dr. Zimu Zhang for pointing out the reception of Balloon in Tibetan community.

66. Film titles are usually in Tibetan and Chinese characters, while English subtitles are translated in pinyin system. However, Pema, Pema and Drolma, and Sophia and Children's TV Show do not have English film titles. The author provides English translations. The author is not able to provide the Tibetan name for The Shore.

67. Though the name was translated in M. Yang’s study as “Son of the Snowland,” and the author provides feminist intervention in this translation for ‘zi’ could be son or child in literary meaning.

68. Kehoe, “I Am Tibetan? An Exploration of Online Identity Constructions among Tibetans in China”, 316.

69. Documentary and interview footage about Jigme Trinley and his filmmaking community are visually dominated by male faces and activities, celebrating the characteristics of normative masculinity in Amdo.

70. Baranovitch, “Representing Tibet in the Global Cultural Market”, 192.

71. Yang, “Learning to be Safe Citizens”, 836.

72. All translation in this study is the author’s unless specified.

73. Henrion-Dourcy, “Women in Performing Arts”.

74. Hladíková, “Purple Ruins”.

75. Hartley and Schiaffini-Vedani, Modern Tibetan Literature and Social Change.

76. Yang, “Learning to be Safe Citizens”.

77. Lubow, “In Chinese Photography, Political Anguish Made Physical”.