Introduction

It was a midday in June 2018. I was in an Amdo Tibetan village, in a small valley nestled beside the Yellow River in Qinghai, China. Three children sat atop a stationary bicycle in an exercise plot gifted by the county government. Six-year-old Dolma was first, trailed by her six-year-old cousin Dawa and four-year-old sister Lhamo. Suddenly, Dolma braked the pedals, pointing. Two new children stood at the gate to the exercise plot. Hesitating, they opened the gate and entered. Dolma dismounted the bike and called to Lhamo and Dawa in Amdo Tibetan “ŋa-zo dewa-kə ma-re-pa” (I guess they’re not from our village). Dawa and Lhamo ran to catch up with Dolma, while Dolma greeted the newcomers in hesitating Mandarin, saying, “xiao3 peng2you!” (little friend!).

With her decision to switch from spoken Amdo to Mandarin, Dolma marked this arrival as a cross-linguistic encounter. The other children followed suit. They stood in two separate groups. In Mandarin, they discussed the locations of their schools. Dolma, Dawa, and Lhamo attend the local village preschool. The other two children attend a preschool in Xining city, the provincial capital located about 250 kilometres north-east. After several moments, the children departed from their meeting point. Dolma, Dawa, and Lhamo returned to the bicycle, while the newcomers skipped towards a small plot of grass.