Introduction

Traveling through rugged Deqin County in China's northwest Yunnan Province today, the landscape is quite distinctive, the Lancang River (Dzachu in Tibetan, upper reaches of the Mekong) and Jinsha River (Drichu in Tibetan, upper reaches of the Yangtze) flow through deep, dry, and arid canyons flanked by forest-covered mountains and high, snow-capped peaks. Along the banks of these rivers and their tributaries are scattered Tibetan villages, today identifiable by a common yet surprising sight – vineyards. In 2011, while researching the economic impacts of hydropower resettlement in the region, through daily ethnographic engagement with villagers I then began to understand just how important these vineyards have become to livelihoods and daily agricultural life (Galipeau 2014, 2015). Based upon these initial findings, I embarked upon a much larger ethnographic exploration into the history and overall project surrounding this village agricultural industry. I found it was based upon a long if yet small Catholic history in a few villages, combined with recent state-based schemes to simultaneously improve local livelihoods and further promote commodities produced within, and the development of the landscape of ‘Shangri-La.’ By Shangri-La, in this chapter I am referring to both a recently incorporated administrative unit of Yunnan Province and an imagined space for commercial use.

This chapter illustrates the story of household wines produced in northwest Yunnan's Deqin County, and how they have worked to produce distinctive and unique regional economic identities among Tibetan villagers.