Tibet or china?
Let's talk a bit about where we are and how one can be in Tibet without Tibet and in china without chinese!
Quickly said, china is composed of big provinces, Yunnan province being larger than France. When people think about chinese culture, actually it is about the Han people, making about 90% of the chinese population.
Following the normal process of a colonial empire, han people are now also a big percentage in the provinces where ethnic minorities are the main peoples.
Most of these province have a long story with the chinese empire and if han people are not considered there as ''locals'', there are not anymore ''invaders''. But the government transformed them into ''humans zoo'' and of course the main tourists are Hans.
Yunnan is a particular province because there is 25 of the 50 (or more) ethnies that compose China!
And considering its geographic position and diversity (see map below) these people can be aborigenous (in the burma border), thai, naxis or tibetans...
Our artist residency is is the Naxi area, the main town is Lijiang, an ultra touristic place, where the old town is litterally invaded the all year, and the mass tourism here is as bad as everywhere in the world, not to say worst!
(thanx also to unesco who by classing Lijiang as a ''historical heritage'' is one of the responsible for this nightmare!!)
But, the residency being in the countryside, we are inside the traditional Naxi cultural area, the Naxi are of Tibetan origins and their mother language is not mandarin (chinese so to say).
That's how the feeling of not being in China can come from sometimes.
Some areas inside provinces can be also ''autonomous areas'' and that's the case of the Zhongdian(shangrila or xianggelila) county as a ''Tibetan autonomous area'', this place being part of the historical Tibet, most of its inhabitants are tibetans, but it's in Yunnan and not the ''official Tibet''.
And talking about Tibet, it's invasion is recent, that explains the special political context and the anti colonialist resistance.