Xiaofei Kang received her Ph.D. from Columbia University. She is Associate Professor of Religion at the George Washington University. She has published on religion, ethnicity, tourism, and gender, including "The Cult of the Fox: Power, Gender and Popular Religion in Late Imperial and Modern China" (Columbia, 2006). Donald Sutton (Ph.D. Cambridge) is Professor Emeritus of History and Anthropology at Carnegie Mellon University. He has published books on 20th century warlordism and popular religion in Taiwan, and numerous articles on the 18th century Miao in west Hunan and on ritual in past and recent Chinese societies.

This book is the first long-term study of the Sino-Tibetan borderland. It traces relationships and mutual influence among Tibetans, Chinese, Hui Muslims, Qiang and others over some 600 years, focusing on the old Chinese garrison city of Songpan and the nearby religious center of Huanglong, or Yellow Dragon. Combining historical research and fieldwork, Xiaofei Kang and Donald Sutton examine the cultural politics of northern Sichuan from early Ming through Communist revolution to the age of global tourism, bringing to light creative local adaptations in culture, ethnicity and religion as successive regimes in Beijing struggle to control and transform this distant frontier.