Religious Leisure And Identity Construction Of Tibetan And Non-Tibeton Pilgrima

Under the context of "One Belt and One Road" Initiatives, Tibet has become a significant destination for foreign and domestic pilgrims, especially after China opened a new pilgrimage route to India. Religious leisure in this study refers to those leisure activities performed to pursue religious faith by both Tibetans and non-Tibetans. It includes both core religious leisure activities that are practiced daily by pilgrims such as rotating prayer-wheels in hands, singing the mantras, visiting temples and burning aromatic plants (lha bsang), but also balanced religious leisure activities that occur less frequently such as mountain pilgrimage.During the mountain pilgrimage, Tibetans and non-Tibetans learn the specific types of norms, actions, and behaviors that are unique to the Tibetan religious culture and practice. Accordingly, they construct a particular aspect of identity. The study proposes three stages of identity construction, i.e., identity development, identity maintenance and identity reconstruction.The thesis adopts the narrative approach and netnography approach in analyzing the identity-related tourism experience of Tibetan and non-Tibetan pilgrimage tourists. Narrative interviews are conducted on nine Tibetan students in Chinese universities by snowball sampling.145 micro-blogs related to Tibetan pilgrimage are selected from the Chinese biggest blog platform weibo.com as the analysis material of non-Tibetans.The results indicate that:(1) Identity Development:Tibetans learn rituals and religious identity through spiritual models of their families, and they have developed the identity of faith since childhood. The majority of non-Tibetan pilgrims do not have such belief. Therefore, they go pilgrimage to search for their identity and gain their tourist identity and hobbyist identity on the way; (2) Identity Maintenance:Tibetans further acquire the knowledge of pilgrimage through participation and reification, thus maintain the salience and centrality of the identity of Tibetan Buddhism followers. Non-Tibetans possess knowledgeably skilled identity through related books, movies, songs and documentaries. Also most of them regard pilgrimage as a harsh trip withunbearable environment and poor living conditions; (3) Identity Reconstruction: New generation of Tibetans are receiving high level education and are exposed to internet technology and modern society. They can tell superstition from religion, yet their fidelity to Tibetan Buddhism have still decreased. In contrast, Non-Tibetan pilgrims are experiencing more identity reconstruction. New tourist environment creates an opportunity for them to construct their identities as well as a new hobby.