The last two decades have seen Tibetan Buddhism establish an increasingly mainstream presence in the religious landscape of the Han Chinese middle class. If it is the nature of religious traditions to adapt as they travel to new places, how, we might ask, is Tibetan Buddhism adapting to the sociocultural conditions of contemporary Han Chinese society? This is the driving question of Joshua Esler's Tibetan Buddhism among Han Chinese, which draws on ethnographic research conducted in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan in the early 2010s. Esler explores the acculturation of Tibetan Buddhism in the Chinese context through the lived experiences of Chinese practitioners who converted to Tibetan Buddhism. On the one hand, Esler argues that Tibetan Buddhism has offered such practitioners a powerful medium, or lens, for reorienting the way they view the world. On the other hand, he contends that Tibetan Buddhism has also been “layered” or “superscribed” with new meanings drawn from the preexisting worldviews of these practitioners (p. xvi). Far from entering into a cultural and discursive tabula rasa, as Tibetan Buddhism spreads among contemporary Han Chinese audiences, it is being shaped by a confluence of modern and traditional elements in the receiving context. In Esler's analysis, the three dominant forces shaping present-day engagements with Tibetan Buddhism in contemporary China are the rationalist discourses of the Chinese state, the spiritualized imaginary of Tibet mediated by twenty-first-century Chinese popular culture, and traditional Chinese religious beliefs and practices, particularly those revolving around “gods, ghosts and ancestors” (p. xxi).

Esler centers his investigation of Tibetan Buddhism's adaptation to contemporary Chinese society around five topics, each of which is allocated a separate chapter. These are the reincorporation of the traditional Chinese warrior deity Guan Gong into the Tibetan Karma Kagyu school; the compatibility of (Tibetan) Buddhism and Confucianism within the context of the People's Republic of China (PRC) government's emphasis on “harmonious society”; pragmatic religion; Tibetan mountain deities and their role in protecting the natural environment; and Chinese ghosts. Each of these topics provides a context for exploring multiple issues of interest, foremost of which are questions related to the extent to which Tibetan Buddhism is becoming hybridized with Chinese traditions, and how it is being adapted along modernist lines in the context of the contemporary Sino-Tibetan religious encounter. Another prominent line of inquiry is the extent to which contemporary Chinese practitioners seek to “escape modernity through Tibetan Buddhism or change modern Chinese society by imposing a layer of Tibetan spirituality on it” (p. xxi). In sum, Esler proposes “to explore encounters of Chinese practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism with both traditional Chinese understandings of the world . . . and concerns of modern Chinese society” (p. xxxii).

Each chapter traverses multiple locations and makes use of ethnographic vignettes that vividly situate Esler—as a Mandarin- and Cantonese-speaking, non-Buddhist, foreign participant-observer—in places ranging from a bohemian artist village on the outskirts of Beijing, to the Sino-Tibetan borderland town of Gyalthang in Yunnan Province, to the concrete jungle of downtown Hong Kong. Each of these locations introduces us to “different set[s] of interlocutors with different ways of approaching Tibetan Buddhism” (p. xxxiv). What this multisited approach might lack in terms of depth of engagement in any single location is offset by the picture of diversity and variety that it furnishes concerning the interpretations of Tibetan Buddhism among Chinese practitioners (and some Tibetan Buddhist teachers and lay Tibetans).

In each chapter, Esler zeros in on specific issues, teasing out a spectrum of attitudes and positions within this diversity. In chapter 2, for example, we discover divergent interpretations with respect to the Seventeenth Karmapa's reincorporation of Guan Gong into the Tibetan tradition. Whereas some Chinese practitioners, such as An and Lin, self-employed artists living in Beijing, embrace Guan Gong or conflate him with the Tibetan protector Gesar, other practitioners, such as Agatha, a young Hong Kong university lecturer, see Guan Gong's incorporation as an act of “skillful means” aimed at accommodating certain Chinese audiences, but of peripheral importance to the essence of Tibetan Buddhism—namely, its meditative and philosophical aspects. Meanwhile, several Tibetan Buddhist lamas evince a preference for a more “pure form of Tibetan Buddhism free from Chinese acculturations” (p. 61). For example, Tsewang, a Karma Kagyu tulku in Lijiang, opines that Guan Gong is a worldly deity only and therefore fundamentally distinct from Gesar, a bodhisattva who “helped the Tibetan empire expand greatly” (p. 60).

Through this and other nuanced case studies, Esler shows how Tibetan Buddhism among the Han Chinese is a lively globalized arena in which multiple and opposing interpretations abound, new meanings are layered upon the old, and the authenticity of religious adaption is negotiated and contested. As Esler puts it, in a milieu of “increasingly creative” religious adaption, “how these adaptations play out, and what constitutes an authentic adaptation that does not alter the ‘core’ message of Tibetan Buddhism” (p. 234) have become pressing issues for lay practitioners and religious elites alike.

Coming eight years after Dan Smyer Yü's The Spread of Tibetan Buddhism in China,Footnote ¹ Esler's Tibetan Buddhism among Han Chinese is only the second book-length ethnography of Han Chinese involvement in Tibetan Buddhism to be published in English. It casts a wider ethnographic net than Smyer Yü's study by including Hong Kong and Taiwan. While Esler makes clear that his primary focus is on understanding the perspectives of Chinese practitioners in these three interconnected but contextually distinct locations, his study gains additional breadth through his engagement with the voices of Tibetan Buddhist religious specialists and, in places, with those of lay Tibetans. Chapter 5, which plays out in the Sino-Tibetan “meeting place” of Gyalthang and posits a partially tongue-in-cheek typology of “atheist” monks, “superstitious” Chinese, and “reconverted” Tibetans’ (p. 187), is particularly effective in showing how processes of rationalization and re-enchantment are shaping new interpretations of Tibetan Buddhism not only among Han Chinese audiences, but also among monastic and lay Tibetans.

Recent years have seen a growing scholarly interest in issues of religious hybridity in the Sino-Tibetan Buddhist context. While Esler's monograph does not engage with Fabienne Jagou's 2018 edited volume The Hybridity of Buddhism,Footnote ² it further contributes to this area of discussion. That said, Esler's approach is empirically rather than theoretically driven. While he employs concepts such as “hybridity” and “syncretism” intuitively throughout his work, he does not engage in any detailed discussion of their meanings. By leading instead with the more expansive concept of “superscription” (borrowed from the work of Prasenjit Duara) (p. xxiv), he gives himself space to explore a wider range of issues and meanings that emerge from his rich interview data and fieldwork findings. In Esler's usage, superscription refers not to a “top-down imposition of meaning and value” (p. xxiv), but rather to “a more egalitarian process of interpretation, enabled by the evolving neo-liberal capitalist environment of modern Greater China, which has given rise to more individuated forms of religious interpretation” (p. xxv). This does not mean that Esler sees Tibetan Buddhism in Chinese society as free from top-down impositions. He explicitly addresses the sweeping efforts of the PRC state to disempower and/or co-opt Tibetan Buddhist lineages, and, following Charlene Makley, characterizes the expansion of Tibetan Buddhism beyond geographic Tibet as part of a process of “counter-mandalisation” (p. 2) beset by ongoing political restrictions and challenges.

Tibetan Buddhism among Han Chinese speaks most directly to scholars of religion in China, whose work Esler draws on extensively to provide background, context and framing for his own material. At the same time, he demonstrates a sound sociological knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism and draws on a significant body of secondary literature to reinforce his analysis. Scholars and students interested in contemporary Sino-Tibetan religious interactions, the globalization of Tibetan Buddhism, and religion in modern-day China more generally, will benefit from reading this book.