Paper short abstract:

The paper will discuss how remembering the Chinese mountaineering enterprises on Mt. Everest is a revealing expression of China’s achieved control over Tibet, and how the mountain become a symbolic but ambiguous place for China’s political practice

Paper long abstract:

On the 25th of May 1960, three members of the Chinese mountaineering expedition, Wang Fuzhou, Gonpo (a Tibetan climber) and Qu Yinhua conquered Mt. Everest (Tib. Chomolangma), placing onto the summit a bust of Chairman Mao.

This paper will tell how remembering the past and present Chinese mountaineering experience on Mt. Everest is enacting China's appropriation and control over Tibet and Tibetan society.

Mountaineering expeditions in China began in the 1950s as a reaction to the British Imperial legacies of the 19th and early 20th century, and as a symbol of modernity and technological prowess of the newly established Communist State. Tibetan mountains have been the first targets of the Chinese Mountaineering Association: Mt. Everest was climbed in 1960, following the 1959 Tibetan Uprising, and in 1990 after Tian'an men Square protests. After Lhasa riots in March 2008, a team of the Chinese Mountaineering Association summited Mt. Everest on the 8th of May, carrying the Olympic Torch.

By discussing the biographies and tales of the climbers involved in the expeditions, the paper will analyse remembering as a revealing expression of China's construction of a political space. Mt. Everest become an ambiguous place where the boundaries among British legacies, Chinese celebration of the politics of amities between minorities (Ch. minzu tuanjie), territorial appropriation and climbing practice are shifting, and where Tibetan climbers are at the same time active actors of the central state and Tibetans