¹ In this article, I use ‘Tibet’ to refer to the greater cultural Tibetan area, including Kham, Amdo, and Ü-Tsang. I use specific region or place names only when I am referring to part of this area.

² Gar (sgar) in Tibetan is translated as ‘encampment’ in English. In this article, the Tibetan Wylie spelling is given in parentheses when necessary. Hereafter I refer to ‘Yachen Gar’ as ‘Yachen’. Yachen Gar is officially named Yachen Ogyen Sam Dün Ling (ya chen o rgyan bsam gdan gling); in Chinese, its name is Yaqing si.

³ Surveying Yachen's population is a challenging task. Until recently, the population was continually increasing because of ongoing inflows of Tibetan girls into the community. However, when a government demolition order was implemented in Larung Gar, another large encampment in Sichuan, in 2016, it was reported that in Yachen more than 1,000 nuns were forced to leave their community as well. But, based on my own research in 2016 in Yachen, some managed to return later. All these factors reflect the unstable population movement in Yachen. However, the large number of nuns in Yachen is still relatively intact as of summer 2017. See ‘China: 1,000 evictions from Tibetan Buddhist centers: end threats to families, demolitions of dwellings’, Human Rights Watch, published online on 14 September 2016, available at https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/09/14/china-1000-evictions-tibetan-buddhist-centers, [accessed 20 November 2018].

⁴ I do not use the term ‘loosened’ in an absolute sense to mean that Tibetans now enjoy complete religious freedom. In the revised constitution that appeared in 1982, the Chinese government took measures to formalize religion by legalizing five official religions, including Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Islam. This new legalization has produced a certain softening with respect to permitted religious practices, but the rationale for this legalization is to control religion more effectively. See ChinaAid: Chinese Law and Religion Monitor, vol. 1, no. 2, 2005, and vol. 10, no. 1, 2018; MacInnis, D. E., Religion in China today: policy and practice (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1989)Google Scholar; Leung, B., ‘China's religious freedom policy: the art of managing religious activity’, The China Quarterly, vol. 184 , 2005, pp. 894–913CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Potter, P. B., ‘Belief in control: regulation of religion in China’, The China Quarterly, vol. 174 , 2003, pp. 11–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a general discussion about the Tibetan Buddhist revival in contemporary China, see Goldstein, M. and Kapstein, M. (eds), Buddhism in contemporary Tibet: religious revival and cultural identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ D. Germano, ‘Re-membering the dismembered body of Tibet: contemporary Tibetan visionary movements in the People's Republic of China’, in Buddhism in contemporary Tibet, (eds) Goldstein and Kapstein, pp. 53–94; Yü, D. S., The spread of Tibetan Buddhism in China: charisma, money, enlightenment (London and New York: Routledge, 2012)Google Scholar; M. Turek, ‘In this body and life: the religious and social significance of hermits and hermitages in eastern Tibet today and during recent history’, PhD thesis, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, 2013; and A. Terrone, ‘Bya Rog Prog Zhu, The raven crest: the life and teachings of BDe Chen’ Od Gsal Rdo Rje, treasure revealer of contemporary Tibet’, PhD thesis, University of Leiden, 2010. During my stay in Yachen, I often observed large quantities of alms, transported from cities, that had been donated by Chinese disciples who were based outside of China.

⁶ Yachen Gar has not been the subject of extended scholarly discussion. One exception is Kawata, Susumu, Higashi Chibetto no shūkyō kūkan: Chūgoku kyōsantō no shūkyō seisaku to shakai hen'yō (The religious space of eastern Tibet: religious policies and social transformation of the Chinese Communist Party) (Sapporo-shi: Hokkaidō Daigaku Shuppankai, 2015)Google Scholar which has a chapter dedicated to Yachen. In this book, Kawata provides a basic survey of Yachen based on his first-hand observations for several years through to 2012. Padma'tsho has also written a brief description about the education of the nuns in Yachen. See Padma'tsho, ‘Courage as eminence: Tibetan nuns at Yarchen monastery in Kham’, in Eminent Buddhist women, (ed.) Karma Lekshe Tsomo (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2014), pp. 185–94. See also a brief discussion of Yachen's previous lama in Terrone, Antonio, ‘Tibetan Buddhism beyond the monastery: revelation and identity in rNying ma communities of present-day Kham’, in Images of Tibet in the 19th and 20th centuries, (ed.) Esposito, Monica (Paris, France: École française d'Extrême-Orient, 2008), pp. 747–79Google Scholar.

⁷ See Terrone, ‘Tibetan Buddhism beyond the monastery’. It should be noted that the so-called Tibetan Buddhist revival in post-Mao China is not limited to Kham (or Sichuan province); scholars have reported the resurgence of monastic communities in Amdo (roughly Qinghai province) and, more limitedly, in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) as well. See, for example, Jane Caple, ‘Monastic economic reform at Rong-bo monastery: towards an understanding of contemporary Tibetan monastic revival and development in A-mdo’, Buddhist Studies Review, vol. 27, no. 2, 2010, pp. 197–219; Makley, C., The violence of liberation: gender and Tibetan Buddhist revival in post-Mao China (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and M. Goldstein, ‘The revival of monastic life in Drepung monastery’, in Buddhism in contemporary Tibet, (eds) Goldstein and Kapstein, pp. 15–52. Both Yachen Gar (ya chen sgar) and Larung Gar (bla rung sgar) emerged during the mid-1980s, led by the charismatic Tibetan masters known as Achuk lama and Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok respectively. Both communities are characterized as hermitage-type Buddhist retreat centres, but Yachen has emphasized solitary meditation practices centred on Dzogchen (Great Perfection), while Larung has placed more focus on formalized education in the form of a Buddhist academy. Larung embraced non-Tibetan practitioners early on and its Tibetan teachers have travelled more actively to Han Chinese-populated regions. In so doing, Larung quickly became the largest Tibetan Buddhist community in existence (with tens of thousands of practitioners, including a large number of Chinese disciples, living there) until 2016, when the Chinese government embarked upon reducing its size through demolitions and expulsions. See E. Wong, ‘China takes a chain saw to a center of Tibetan Buddhism’, The New York Times, published online on 28 November 2016, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/28/world/asia/china-takes-a-chain-saw-to-a-center-of-tibetan-buddhism.html?_r=0), [accessed 20 November 2018]. Yachen is not exempt from this political situation, but it does not seem to be subject to the same relentless demolition policy (at least, this was the case in summer 2017 when this article was drafted). Larung and Yachen share many similarities, but also exhibit various differences in terms of their landscapes, populations, types of practices, activities of resident lamas, and political situations; further in-depth comparative studies are required in the future. The main argument of this article is based on Yachen's particularities and is not fully applicable to Larung.

⁸ One very small nomadic town called Changtai is less than 30 minutes from Yachen by car across the grassland, but it is far from all other cities and towns. This is especially revealing when compared to Larung, which has developed along with the annexed Sertar (gser thar) town, is more accessible to outsiders, and has better infrastructural facilities.

⁹ Gelugpa, which is mostly dominant in Ü-Tsang and some areas of Amdo, is a Tibetan Buddhist school and is associated with the institution of the Dalai Lama. Geoffrey Samuel states that Tibetan Buddhism can largely be understood through two approaches: the clerical (Gelug) and the shamanic (mainly Nyingma). It might be somewhat reductive to see the monasteries and practices in Tibet only through these two perspectives, especially when Yachen officially follows the Rimed (ris med) tradition, a movement emphasizing non-sectarian and inclusive perspectives on practices and teachings. Nonetheless, I find Samuel's division quite useful in the case of Yachen. Dzogchen practices that Yachen promotes are from the Nyingma tradition, and other monastic operations in Yachen generally tend towards the shamanic rather than the clerical. See Samuel, G., Civilized shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan societies (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993)Google Scholar. Also, for further discussion about the Rimed movement, see Smith, G., Among Tibetan texts: history and literature of the Himalayan plateau (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2001), pp. 227–72Google Scholar, and Samuel, Civilized shamans, pp. 270–97.

¹⁰ The liminality of Kham's position has been discussed widely among historians. See, for example, Dai, Y., The Sichuan frontier and Tibet: imperial strategy in the early Qing (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Epstein, L., Khams pa histories: visions of people, place and authority (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2002)Google Scholar; Ho, D. D., ‘The men who would not be amban and the one who would: four frontline officials and Qing Tibet policy, 1905–1911’, Modern China, vol. 34, no. 2, 2008, pp. 210–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lawson, J. D., ‘Warlord colonialism: state fragmentation and Chinese rule in Kham, 1911–1949’, The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 72, no. 2, 2013, pp. 299–318CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lin, H., Tibet and nationalist China's frontier: intrigues and ethnopolitics, 1928–49 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Relyea, S., ‘Yokes of gold and threads of silk: Sino-Tibetan competition for authority in early twentieth century Kham’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 49, no. 4, 2015, pp. 963–1009CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spengen, W. V. and Jabb, L., Studies in the history of eastern Tibet: PIATS 2006, Tibetan studies. Proceedings of the eleventh seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Königswinter 2006 (Halle: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, 2009)Google Scholar; Tsomu, Y., The rise of Gönpo Namgyel in Kham (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2014)Google Scholar; Wang, Xiuyu, China's last imperial frontier: late Qing expansion in Sichuan's Tibetan borderlands (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2011)Google Scholar. Also see Gros, Stéphane (ed.), ‘Frontier Tibet: trade and boundaries of authority in Kham’, Special issue, Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, vol. 19, June 2016Google Scholar, available at: http://cross-currents.berkeley.edu/e-journal/issue-19, [accessed 20 November 2018].

¹¹ See Yeh, E. T., Taming Tibet: landscape transformation and the gift of Chinese development (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹² This, of course, depends on the constantly changing context. Places like Larung Gar in Kham and other politically active monastic communities in Amdo are also under heavy government control and surveillance.

¹³ In most biographies of Tibetan masters, narratives about the extreme hardships of their training are an indispensable feature that attests to their spiritual exceptionality and extraordinariness. One of the most widely circulated and beloved exemplary works among Tibetans is the biography of Milarepa. See Heruka, T., The life of Milarepa (New York: Penguin Classics, 2010)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ I am using the term ‘nun’ broadly here to mean female monastics. In this context, the term does not indicate a fully ordained status for nuns, like the terms ‘gelongma’ (dge slong ma) and bhikṣuṇī (Sanskrit) do. In Yachen, nuns are generally called ‘jomo’ (jo mo) or ‘ani’ (a ni). (In other contexts, ani can also mean a noble woman or a female relative.) Tibetan nuns are not fully ordained. A few exceptions exist (usually non-Tibetan nuns who have taken their vows in Tibetan Buddhism), but as a general practice, full ordination for nuns has been discontinued in Tibet. On the issue of full ordination for Tibetan nuns, see Hannah, M., ‘Colliding gender imaginaries: transnational debates about full ordination for Tibetan Buddhist nuns’, Asian Journal of Women's Studies, vol. 18, no. 4, 2012, pp. 7–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵ Grimshaw, A., Servants of the Buddha: winter in a Himalayan convent (Cleveland, Ohio: The Pilgrim Press, 1994)Google Scholar. See also Rita Gross, who has written extensively about feminist perspectives in Buddhism, largely by rediscovering and reinterpreting Buddhist theologies, texts, and doctrines from a feminist point of view: Gross, R. M., Buddhism after patriarchy: a feminist history, analysis, and reconstruction of Buddhism (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1993)Google Scholar; and Gross, R. M., A garland of feminist reflections: forty years of religious exploration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009)Google Scholar. See also Tsomo, K. L., ‘Tibetan nuns: new roles and possibilities’, in Exile as challenge: the Tibetan diaspora, (eds) von Welck, H. and Bernstorff, D. (Hyderabad, India: Orient Longman, 2003), pp. 342–66Google Scholar. There are several historical works about seminal Tibetan female religious figures who showed extraordinary capacity in their spiritual lives; these works emphasize the provocative breakthroughs these women made with respect to sociocultural gender barriers. See Allione, T., Women of wisdom (Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications, 2000)Google Scholar; Bessenger, S. M., Echoes of enlightenment: the life and legacy of the Tibetan saint Sèonam Peldren (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Diemberger, H., When a woman becomes a religious dynasty: the Samding Dorje Phagmo of Tibet (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schaeffer, K. R., Himalayan hermitess: the life of a Tibetan Buddhist nun (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Jacoby, S., Love and liberation: autobiographical writings of the Tibetan Buddhist visionary Sera Khandro (New York: Columbia University Press 2014)Google Scholar. Despite the scholarly value of these works to the study of Tibetan Buddhism, the real-life experiences of the majority of ordinary female practitioners in Tibet are largely missing in these text- and figure-focused approaches.

¹⁶ For book-length anthropological accounts about the lives of Tibetan female monastics, see Grimshaw, Servants of the Buddha; Gutschow, K., Being a Buddhist nun: the struggle for enlightenment in the Himalayas (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Havnevik, H., Tibetan Buddhist nuns: history, cultural norms, and social reality (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; and Shneiderman, S., ‘Living practical Dharma: a tribute to Chomo Khandru and the Bonpo women of Lubra village, Mustang, Nepal’, in Women's renunciation in South Asia: nuns, yoginis, saints, and singers, (eds) Khandelwal, M., Hausner, S. L. and Grodzins Gold, A. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 69–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar. These works focus exclusively on the Himalayan region; there are few studies in the English language on Tibetan nuns in contemporary Tibet.

¹⁷ Gutschow, Being a Buddhist nun.

¹⁸ Ibid.

¹⁹ Matthew Kapstein also notes that the women continue to help in the household after becoming nuns. See Kapstein, M. T., ‘A thorn in the dragon's side: Tibetan Buddhist culture in China’, in Governing China's multiethnic frontiers, (ed.) Rossabi, M. (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press 2004), pp. 230–69Google Scholar.

²⁰ Tibetan nuns who end up staying in relatively larger or more systematic monastic communities tend to travel far from their natal homes. Charlene Makley observed that nuns in Labrang in Amdo are mostly not from nearby towns. Makley, C., ‘The body of a nun: nunhood and gender in contemporary Amdo’, in Women in Tibet, (eds) Gyatso, J. and Havnevik, H. (New York: Columbia University Press 2005), pp. 259–84Google Scholar.

²¹ With the exception of lamas’ names, Wangmo's name, as well as all other personal names in this article, are pseudonyms.

²² The nuns in Yachen are from every region in the Tibetan plateau, but the majority come from Kham and the TAR.

²³ Most Tibetans with whom I have spoken, said that having a person in robes in the family is generally considered a blessing and an honour. It was thus bewildering to me, at first, that many Tibetan girls seem to face a negative response—either strong disagreement or moderate reluctance—from their families regarding their desire to be nuns. The major reason behind this initial familial rejection seems to be that many parents believe that their daughter is guilty of making a snap decision about becoming a nun, and they want to avoid a bad karmic consequence should she decide to quit her nunship soon afterwards. This stricter demand for the certainty of a decision to join a monastery is mostly required of daughters rather than sons. Sons usually receive stronger support, both financially and psychologically, and little suspicion or distrust is directed at them for choosing to become monks.

²⁴ Powers, J., The Buddha party: how the People's Republic of China works to define and control Tibetan Buddhism (London: Oxford University Press, 2017)Google Scholar.

²⁵ The term ‘xizang’ in Chinese strictly indicates central Tibet, or the TAR, but the term zangdi or zangqu (translated as ‘Tibetan regions’) includes the broader regions outside of xizang populated by ethnic Tibetans. These include the Tibetan autonomous prefectures in Sichuan, Qinghai, Gansu, and Yunnan provinces.

²⁶ Schein, L., ‘Gender and internal orientalism in China’, Modern China, vol. 23, no. 1, 1997, pp. 69–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Makley, The violence of liberation; and Tenzin, J., In the land of the eastern queendom: the politics of gender and ethnicity on the Sino-Tibetan border (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

²⁷ The ‘bad karma’ from these incidents, as interpreted by the Chinese disciples, was that the disciples might be involved in a business related to killing animals or perhaps they themselves were meat gluttons. However, it is difficult to justify the claim that anyone who likes to eat meat cannot reach Yachen. Regardless of the logic of such interpretations, the Chinese devotees desired to see Yachen as the purest of Buddhist fortresses because of its spiritually selective granting of successful visits.

²⁸ Cronon, W. (ed.), Uncommon ground: rethinking the human place in nature (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1996)Google Scholar, p. 70. Cronon argues that the non-human ‘otherness’ that wilderness conveys is, in fact, a cultural invention.

²⁹ Bennett, J., Thoreau's nature: ethics, politics, and the wild (Lanham: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, 2002 [1994]), p. xxiiGoogle Scholar.

³⁰ Another version of this rumour, which was circulating to a lesser degree, was that the Chinese government had delayed the process in order to make Yachen a more inhospitable place to stay.

³¹ Not surprisingly, the head lama assumes that for those monks whose lives have already long been enhanced by electricity, there is little issue with their being disturbed by its existence in Yachen. It should be noted that many monks in Yachen are more like long-term visitors rather than permanent residents; they belong to the monasteries back home where they were initially sent and trained. These monks, through the support of their home monasteries and families, visit Yachen for further training and learning. Their mobility and frequent communications with their home monasteries are expected in this regard. From the beginning, therefore, monks in Yachen are allowed to have mobile phones while nuns are strictly prohibited from having them. This could be one reason why monks enjoy electricity and are not questioned about whether they are disturbed by it. But this does not entirely justify treating nuns differently from monks. It is a popularly held opinion among Tibetans that women by nature are less qualified to perform religious obligations and are easily distracted by worldly temptations. Gender bias is ubiquitous in Tibet, and Yachen is not excluded from this attitude, despite its provocative contributions to the education of nuns.

³² Yachen's head office set up a satellite office a few years ago that manages public relations by producing introductory print materials and visual images of Yachen for visitors. These materials focus on emphasizing the purity of Yachen by projecting images of its solitude, its seclusion, its snow-capped mountains, and so on.

³³ Lefebvre, H., The production of space (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing 1991)Google Scholar.

³⁴ Due to the limit of space, I do not include in detail what these changes are, but I list some of them briefly here: for example, equal accessibility to the highest level of teachings; taking leading roles in major rituals and ceremonies; and extended educational opportunities such as training in medical knowledge, Tibetan grammar, foreign languages, musical instruments, and so on.

³⁵ E. Wong, ‘In remote settlement high on Tibetan plateau, Buddhist spirituality soars’, The New York Times, published online on 8 November 2016, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/world/asia/tibetan-plateau-buddhism.html?_r=0, [accessed 20 November 2018].

³⁶ Buber, Martin, ‘Distance and relation’, Psychiatry, vol. 20, no. 2, 1957, pp. 97–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar.