The poetics of Exotica Tibet requires a critical postcolonial analysis of Western representations of Tibet, and this can be performed effectively by focusing on a few cultural sites commonly associated with Tibet and Tibetans. This is a (partial) story of Western interactions with Tibet during various historical periods-it is about the production of images of Tibet within these interactions as well as about how the interactions were in turn framed under specific imaginative regimes. The constitutive relation between Western interactions and imaginations of Tibet is the subject of this chapter. Following Doty, these Western interactions can be seen in terms of imperial encounters, which convey the idea of asymmetrical encounters in which "one entity has been able to construct 'realities' that were taken seriously and acted upon and the other entity has been denied equal degrees or kinds of agency" (1996b, 3).

Until the beginning of the twentieth century Tibet was seen as an absence on the map, as Landon puts it, the "last country to be discovered by the civilized world" (1905, xi). This was also because it "was never the actual place [of Tibet] that fired the imagination of romantic seekers: it was the idea of Tibet, far away, impenetrable, isolated in the higher spheres of the earth" (Buruma 2000). Preconceived facts about Tibetans were often of the proverbial kind. Tibet was seen as the quintessential Asia of the Western imagination, the poor oppressed land with an ancient culture and spirit (Feigon 1996, 22). Exotica Tibet has been full of contrasts and superlatives.

A significant characteristic of Exotica Tibet is its richness in terms of imageries and imaginaries (for a detailed treatment, see Bishop 1989, 1993; Lopez 1998). [26] "Tibet is, in Foucault's terms, a heterotopia, a plurality of often contradictory, competing, and mutually exclusive places simultaneously positioned on a single geographical location" (Bishop 2001, 204). Representations of Tibet range from extremely pejorative ("feudal hell") to unmitigatedly idealistic ("Shangri-la"). Tibet for some is a blankness [27] upon which they can write their desire; for others, it is an overcoded space mingling the fantastic with utter simplicity. Forman wrote, "In the heart of ageless Asia, brooding darkly in the shadow of the unknown, is to be found a veritable explorer's paradise-Tibet, the strange and fascinating, forbidden land of magic and mystery… where the opposites are kin and the extremes go hand in hand" (1936, vii).

In this chapter, I expand my analysis of the poetics of Exotica Tibet by focusing on a selection of cultural sites most commonly associated with Tibet during the twentieth century. I examine the sites in the context of images they portray.

An archive of preexisting images and imaginaries as well as the archiving of new ones were central to the way initial encounters between the Westerners and Tibet were made sense of. "Archive" is commonly understood as a place or collection containing records, documents, photographs, film, or other materials of historical interest. But "archive" can also be taken to refer to a repository of stored memories or information, often outside the purview of statist discourses. As Bradley writes, the "archive is the repository of memories: individual and collective, official and unofficial, licit and illicit, legitimating and subversive" (1999, 108). These memories and information can be based on "real" encounters or on fictional ones.

In situations where the culture was relatively unknown-like the Tibetan-hearsay, legends, and fantasies performed an ever more important archival function. Representers of Tibet, especially before the twentieth century, drew upon these archives, supplementing the rare missionary and travelers' accounts. The legendary traveler Marco Polo refers to "Tebet" in the late thirteenth century. Apart from other things (such as the cannibalizing of human beings put to death by the authorities, "canes of immense size and girth," natives as idolators and "out- and-out bad"), Marco Polo fetishizes Asian promiscuity. He highlights a marriage custom where "no man would ever on any account take a virgin to wife" for "a woman is worthless unless she has had knowledge of many men," and therefore Tibetans offer their women to travelers to "lie with them" and thus make them fit for marriage (but once marriage takes place, it is a "grave offence for any man to touch another's wife"). He jokes: "Obviously the country is a fine one to visit for a lad from sixteen to twenty-four" (1958, 79-80, 142, 144, 142-43). A similar, though less fantastical, characterization of Tibet as the strange, tantalizing, available East inviting (by forbidding) Western men persisted during the colonial era. During most of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Tibet was off-limits for the Europeans. This led to a "race for Lhasa," [28] competition among explorers and adventurers to be the first into the "Forbidden City." The Queen, The Lady's Newspaper on 12 December 1903 published a brief account of a visit to the "Forbidden Lands" by "a Lady" (just before an article on "fashionable marriages"). When stopped by monks from entering a religious establishment, she fumed: "It was very tantalising and not a little galling to the independent Briton to be stopped in the fair way by a few dirty old lamas" (in IOR: MSS EUR/F197/523).

Richardson argued that the early allusions of Westerners reveal little more than that the Tibetans had a reputation in neighboring countries for "strange ways and rare magical powers" (1962, 61). This reputation persisted during the twentieth century as the production of knowledge about Tibet continued to be inspired by Tibetophilia, fascination with religious and social practices of Tibetans, the spread of Buddhism in the West, countercultural movements in the West, and so on. The fantastic has always been a part of image/knowledge about Tibet, and works have drawn upon an archive of preexisting representations (see Bishop 1989; Klieger 1997; Lopez 1998). The fact that Tibet was never colonized by Europeans facilitated creation of a utopian archive best evident in James Hilton's novel Lost Horizon (1933).

Hilton's Lost Horizon, which introduced the term "Shangri-la," was first published in 1933 and made into a film by Frank Capra in 1937. "Shangri" has no meaning in Tibetan; "la" means "mountain pass." The name is apparently inspired by "Shambhala," a mythical Buddhist kingdom in the Himalayas according to Tibetan legend (see Allen 1999; Bernbaum 2001; LePage 1996; Trungpa 1995). [29] The main character in the novel is a British Indian official, Robert Conway, who, along with the younger official Charles Mallinson, a missionary, Miss Roberta Brinklow, and an American businessman, Henry Barnard, is hijacked and taken to an unknown mountainous region somewhere in Tibet. They are transported to a hidden valley of the blue moon. The valley has a lamasery named Shangri-la that combines the best of Western technology with Eastern luxury. The head priest, who is several hundred years old, wants Conway to take over his position. Conway is told that the valley affords a very long life to selected people and the main purpose of the establishment is to act as a sanctuary when the outside world is in chaos. Conway falls in love with a quiet Chinese woman, Lo-Tsen, not knowing that she and Mallinson are becoming lovers. While Barnard and Miss Brinklow agree to stay in the valley (the former to help in gold mining and the latter to convert Tibetans to Christianity), the impatient Mallinson persuades Conway to accompany him and Lo- Tsen to safety outside the valley. Conway departs in despair, all his hope lost as he realizes that he is forever a wanderer between two worlds: "he was doomed, like millions, to flee from wisdom and be a hero" (Hilton 1933, 264).