In this outstanding collection of essays, eleven authors explore in fascinating detail the 1,300-year history of Sino-Tibetan relations and, in so doing, not only upend the conventional narrative about this encounter, but also provide a model for future research on the role that Buddhism played in shaping historical interactions across Eurasia. Indeed, on account of this larger theoretical concern and its important implications for our understanding of Asian history, let us hope that this volume receives the wide readership it so rightfully deserves.

Of course, in order to appreciate the broader applications of the scholarship presented in this work, it is important to begin by recognizing its specific value. And in this regard, none of the essays disappoints; each not only presents new material, but also uses it to reframe many common misconceptions about the Sino-Tibetan encounter. In particular, all of the authors problematize this meeting by moving beyond the common and simplistic model of two groups interacting only for political advantage through the cynical manipulation of religion. In so doing, the authors allow religion to be taken seriously, as well as challenge the essentialist paradigm that is so vital to the politically driven discourse.

This general approach and its implications are well captured in the first three essays by Kapstein, Rob Linrothe, and Karl Debreczeny, all of whom investigate the art created in three distinct yet highly political contexts (the ninth-century Temple of the Turquoise Grove, the Yuan-era Feilaifeng temple in Hangzhou, and the Ming-era Dabaojijiang in Yunnan) and reveal that rather than representing binary orthodoxies, all of these complexes convey a sophisticated and cosmopolitan fusion of both Chinese and Tibetan artistic styles. Indeed, these initial articles provide a solid platform for the subsequent essays, all of which in one way or another explore Buddhism as the medium through which Tibetans and Chinese are not only able to interact, but also forge something new.

One sees this dynamic, for example, in Elliot Sperling's study of the Ming court's engagement with three distinct religious traditions on the Sino-Tibetan frontier, as well as in Paul Nietupski's history of the institution of the “Chinese Lamas” of Labrang, who acted as “inter-ethnic” mediators between various groups connected to the monastery. Such mediation and the creation of new religious cultures are perhaps best evidenced in several articles exploring Sino-Tibetan relations during the Republican period. Carmen Meinert's piece on Gangkar Rinpoché, who was a Tibetan missionary among Han Chinese from the 1930s to the 1950s; Ester Bianchi's study of the “Chinese Lama” Nenghai and his devotion to Tantric Buddhism; and Gray Tuttle's fascinating study of the unsung Chinese translators of Tibetan texts are especially interesting, as they all reveal that, as was the case in the earlier periods, the meeting between Chinese and Tibetans in the Republican period was not simply one of confrontation, but rather of appreciation. The same phenomenon is also seen in the contemporary interest of Chinese Yogacara philosophers in Tibet as explored by Zhihua Yao, and in the booming interest in Lamaism on Taiwan as evocatively captured by Abraham Zablocki.

Yet what is perhaps most interesting about all of these case studies is not that Sino-Tibetan exchange has often been so rich and mutually beneficial, but precisely that such exchange has been overlooked for so long. On one level, of course, it is precisely this gap that the volume is trying to address; however, a further question, which is not really taken up at length in the book, is, why has it been ignored? To be sure, promoting such rich cultural exchange flies in the face of the “free Tibet” paradigm that drives much Tibetological scholarship (and one can wonder what such work as found in this volume portends for the future in that regard). However, another issue that certainly needs to be taken into consideration—and it is not mentioned in this work—is the obvious fact that all of the rich cross-cultural exchange explored in this book takes place in the borderlands, far from the metropoles of Beijing and Lhasa (in Gansu, Hangzhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, Kham, Amdo, Xikang, and even Taiwan). Indeed, from the one essay that looks specifically at a moment when representatives of the two metropoles met—Fabienne Jagou's study of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama's visit to Beijing in 1908—it is evident that no great cultural exchange or cosmopolitan fusion occurred. In fact, it was rather unsuccessful for both sides, as they were driving opposing political agendas.

The lesson to be gained from this particular historical episode can well be debated; however, let us hope that this wonderful book spurs more scholars to study the rich cultural exchanges that occurred in the Sino-Tibetan borderlands, as it is perhaps there that the solution to the Tibet–China conundrum may lie.