Yang’s book is...a welcome contribution to the study of the role that education plays in constructing ethnic identities in China. It will hopefully provoke further discussion amongst both Sinologists and Tibetologists, and will also make a useful contribution to undergraduate and graduate reading lists on education and ethnicity in China.

Frontiers of Education in China

Miaoyan Yang’s Learning to Be Tibetan: The Construction of Ethnic Identity at Minzu University of China is a valuable addition to the growing literature on ethnic minority education in China, providing nuanced accounts and thick descriptions of the fluid, ongoing construction of Tibetan students’ ethnic identities in a university context heavily scripted by Han culturalism and the state mandate of ethnic harmony and national unity.

American Journal of Sociology

Learning to be Tibetan is a richly-nuanced ethnographic account of the politics of education and ethnicity among Tibetan students at the Minzu University of China in Beijing. Miaoyan Yang adroitly works through the everyday reflections and struggles of the Tibetan students she came to know in the course of her fieldwork, bringing alive their hopes, frustrations, and at times critical reflections on the meaning of Tibetan identity in China, which is at once globalizing and still deeply suspicious of its internal ethnic others. Engaging Chinese language scholarship in China and the history of western, English-language scholarship on ethnicity in China, she opens up space for new theoretical debates about the politics of inclusion, exclusion, belonging, and autonomy. This is a groundbreaking work that will surely generate heated discussion and debate.

Ralph A. Litzinger, Duke University

This book is a timely examination of the cultural politics of Tibetan ethnic identity development within the national higher education system in China. Miaoyan Yang’s work provides a fresh look at minority–majority power dynamics in the world’s most populous country and introduces the complexity of those dynamics in an approachable way to readers who may not be familiar with China’s multiculturalism. The study not only makes a significant contribution to understanding China’s diversity, but also provides a framework within which to consider the complex geopolitical landscape of today’s world.

Rebecca Clothey, Drexel University

Miaoyan Yang provides readers with a rare glimpse into daily life at the Minzu University of China (MUC)—the premier tertiary institution for ethnic minorities in the People’s Republic of China. Thorough and compelling, yet sensitive, Learning to be Tibetan methodically untangles the wadded threads of influence that bind the ethno-national identities of MUC’s Tibetan students. This book is an impressive contribution to the field of ethnic minority education in China.

Timothy A. Grose, Rose–Hulman Institute of Technology

Following the model of the USSR, in the 1950s the Chinese government established a school system for ethnic minorities, parallel to the standard school system for the Han and other groups for whom Mandarin was their mother tongue. Minority universities are important parts of this system. What role do these minority universities play in building of group identity? Learning to Be Tibetan: The Construction of Ethnic Identity at Minzu University of China tries to answer this question based on ethnographic research among Tibetan students at Minzu University of China and will provide a better understanding of ethnic policies and their impact on nation-building processes in contemporary China.

Ma Rong, Peking University