In downtown Chengdu a pocket of Tibetan culture has sprung up: a Tibetan market where Tibetans and Han Chinese meet to buy and sell ethnic minority products. Pointing to how Tibetan migration to Chengdu has contributed to the growth of a vibrant 'minzu market' attracting Tibetan and Han Chinese merchants, customers, Buddhist devotees, and voyeurs, this article presents novel understandings of the ethnic goods market in urban Chengdu. The article first explores the growth of the market, which is the result of a history of political and economic reforms, increased mobility, and religious revival. Second, it maps the market infrastructure according to the ethnicity of the shopkeepers and the commodities that are traded. Although there is still a clear ethnic division in the market, this article also documents the emergence of Han Chinese market participation in forms of trade that have historically been dominated by Tibetans.

This article investigates how the cultural politics of ethnoreligious belonging play out through everyday aesthetic practices at a market for Tibetan Buddhist objects in Chengdu, China – a multiethnic place that is perceived and experienced as “Tibetan” by the Tibetans and Chinese who work, live, and shop there. Based upon ethnographic research in Chengdu, I explore how Tibetan urbanites navigate the sensorially intense market, sorting its sights, sounds, and smells to determine who and what belongs as authentically Tibetan Buddhist. In the process, I argue, they are laying claim to an ability to feel the in/authentic acquired through being born and raised as a Tibetan. This practical ability is what I call an aesthetic habitus. Yet, many Tibetans fear this ability is being eroded; it is no longer clear who and what belongs, contributing to anxieties that Tibetans as a distinct ethnoreligious community will be extinguished.

This article problematizes the juxtaposition of place and identity. By analyzing different dimensions of landscape, it asks how an ethnically diverse neighborhood in Chengdu, China, has become considered a Tibetan place. The article engages with and pushes John Brinckerhoff Jackson's distinction between political and vernacular landscapes, introducing a third category: the commercial landscape. Each of these three dimensions of the landscape, which are deeply entangled but conceptually distinct, transforms multi-ethnic space into a Tibetan place. The vernacular emerges from the traces of quotidian life in the form of languages, bodily practices, sights, scents, and colors: it 'feels' Tibetan. The political relates to the securitization of Tibetan spaces and how people re-imagine the traces of state-led spatial management and organization. Finally, the commercial has to do with the appropriation of Tibetan aesthetics in the pursuit of profiting from a Tibetan Buddhist identity. I argue that these three different landscapes are what enable us to recognize a multi-ethnic space as a Tibetan place.

Taking a historical context as a starting point, this chapter illuminates the historical relationship between Buddhism and economic engagements and shows how this relationship has played out in contemporary Asian and non-Asian contexts. With a focus on local practices and understandings of economic exchanges related to “Buddhism”—e.g. lay-monk exchange relations, monastic businesses, spiritual consumerism, and Buddhist branding—it illuminates the economic life of Buddhism and the diverse modalities of Buddhism and economic relations. Moreover, how Buddhists have positioned themselves in relation to a capitalistic market economy, both as a critique and as an engagement, is examined, as well as how marketing strategies have been utilized to secure the position of Buddhists in regional and global contexts. The intersection between Buddhism and the global market economy, the authors argue, reveals an important flashpoint through which one can gain a more complex understanding about contemporary formations of Buddhism, modernity, and globality.

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