On the Edge of Respectability: Sexual Politics in China’s Tibet Charlene E. Makley A Picnic On a rainy July day in 1995, my husband and I joined a Tibetan village family we knew in the famous Buddhist monastery town of Labrang (now southwest Gansu Province, China) for a picnic in their tent pitched high on a peak above the Sang (ch. Daxia) River valley. 1 The white tents dotting the hillsides in the summer were an important index of Tibetanness in this mul- tiethnic and rapidly urbanizing frontier town. Tibetans were increasingly outnumbered by Han and Muslim Chinese (ch. Hui) residents who served as local cadres or engaged in commerce generated in part by the burgeoning tourism industry centered on the revitalizing monastery. 2 This was the time of year, the much-awaited shinglong season, when the Tibetan villages sur- rounding the monastery celebrated household and community harmony and prosperity in communal offering rites to village deities at their abodes in the mountains, followed by all-day picnicking, songfests, and games. But during positions 10:3 © 2002 by Duke University Press