Zhang Yimou's Impression Lijiang is regarded as a successful project using the symbols and icons of Lijiang's ethnic minority culture to create images for tourists to experience the authentic indigenousness of a tourist town on China's southwest borderland. This study describes the cultural authority of the production to represent Lijiang's cultural and physical landscape, and its role in helping domestic tourists understand the local ethnic culture and make sense of the meaning of borderland and home. This investigation proposes that the production and construction of a notion of an ethnic landscape in Lijiang is shaped by a hybrid homemaking process, that combines the state's cultural authority, market forces, and mobility.