In recent years, Xinjiang has rapidly risen to prominence as one of China’s most desirable domestic travel destinations, amplified by television dramas and social media imagery. The Kanas Nature Reserve, home to the Tuva people, has become especially iconic—celebrated for its so-called “exotic” minority culture and its sublime, almost painterly landscapes. Yet behind this heightened visibility lies a complex transformation. Tourism has reshaped remote villages in profound ways: newly built infrastructure has opened access to education, employment, and mobility, while economic growth has alleviated poverty for many. At the same time, however, development has often bypassed local participation. As noted by numerous anthropological studies on ethnic tourism in China, cultural representation is frequently curated for outsiders rather than authored by the community itself. Traditional Tuva cottages are converted into picturesque guesthouses; souvenir shops flourish—but cultural centers, archives, or museums dedicated to the community’s lived history and identity remain absent. Culture is consumed, not necessarily preserved. This photographic project, Allochthonous, examines how tourism inscribes itself onto the landscape and cultural fabric of the Kanas region. Through images of sites where natural environments intersect with human interventions, the work reflects on a changing sense of belonging—how the Tuva people may come to experience their homeland as a performance space for others, and how the familiar can quietly become estranged. This project is also deeply personal. After returning to China following four years in the UK, I, too, found myself negotiating a disorienting distance from a place that was once unquestionably home. The landscapes of Kanas—and the people within them—became a mirror for my own sense of displacement. Allochthonous is thus both an anthropological inquiry and a personal meditation on identity, estrangement, and what it means to inhabit a place that is simultaneously yours and not entirely your own.