The Rise of Tourism in China

Yiping Li

Description

Offers a refreshing take on tourism’s rise in China within the wider frame of cultural, political and economic change

This book offers a comprehensive understanding of China’s tourism development from 1992 onwards, focusing on the social-cultural change that accompanied the rise of tourism. It examines both the economic benefits and sociocultural impacts of tourism and argues that tourism sustainability depends on a delicate balance between economic and social-cultural interests which could manifest differently among the stakeholders of various interests. It also explores, through both theoretical and empirical analysis, how travel connects people and places through the processes of tourist imagination and consumption. The volume portrays how contemporary discourses fuse with individual histories to formulate the ways in which tourists understand China. It will be a useful resource for students and scholars in human geography, tourism management, leisure and recreation, and social sciences.

Figures and Tables

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction: Making or Remaking People and Places through Tourism

Chapter 1. The Appeal of Distant Places: China’s Inbound Tourism in the 1990s

Chapter 2. Orientalism Revisited: Ethnic Tourism of China versus Canada

Chapter 3. Tourism Impacts in China after Two Decades of Development

Chapter 4. Community Tourism and China’s Dilemma of Modernisation

Chapter 5. Red Tourism and China’s Communist Identity

Chapter 6. The Impacts of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games

Chapter 7. Leisure Shopping and the Hong Kong–China Relationship

Chapter 8. Island Festivals and Sense of Place: The Hong Kong Experience

Chapter 9. Linguistic Landscape, Tourism and an Island Place Making

Chapter 10. Tourism and Social-Cultural Change in China

Conclusion: Applying Ethnography to China Tourism Research

References

Index

Sujets

• Industries
• Employabilité, métiers et formations
• East Asia
• Hospitality industry
• Hospitality
• Professional
• Undergraduate education
• Travel
• Postgraduate education
• 2008 Summer Olympics
• Cultural studies
• Tourism
• Far East
• Economics
• Anthropology
• Business
• Research
• Postgraduate
• Undergraduate
• China
• Industrie

Informations

• Publié par: Channel View Publications
• Date de parution: 15 mai 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781845418922
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 15 Mo

Extrait

The Rise of Tourism in China

TOURISM AND CULTURAL CHANGE

Series Editors: Professor Mike Robinson,Nottingham Trent University, UKand Professor Alison Phipps,University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK

Associate Editor: Dr Hongliang Yan,Oxford Brookes University, UK

Understanding tourism’s relationships with culture(s) and vice versa, is of ever-increasing significance in a globalising world. TCC is a series of books that critically examine the complex and ever-changing relationship between tourism and culture(s). The series focuses on the ways that places, peoples, pasts and ways of life are increasingly shaped/transformed/created/packaged for touristic purposes. The series examines the ways tourism utilises/makes and re-makes cultural capital in its various guises (visual and performing arts, crafts, festivals, built heritage, cuisine, etc.) and the multifarious political, economic, social and ethical issues that are raised as a consequence. Theoretical explorations, research-informed analyses and detailed historical reviews from a variety of disciplinary perspectives are invited to consider such relationships.

All books in this series are externally peer-reviewed.

Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.channelviewpublications.com, or by writing to Channel View Publications, St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol, BS1 2AW, UK.

The Rise of Tourism in China

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.21832/LI8908 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Names: Li, Yiping, author. Title: The Rise of Tourism in China: Social and Cultural Change/Yiping Li. Description: Bristol, UK; Jackson, TN: Channel View Publications, 2023. | Series: Tourism and Cultural Change: 62 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This book offers a comprehensive understanding of China’s tourism development from 1992 onwards, focusing on the social-cultural change that accompanied the rise of tourism. It examines both the economic benefits and sociocultural impacts of tourism and argues that a delicate balance between these is needed to achieve sustainable tourism”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2022053549 (print) | LCCN 2022053550 (ebook) | ISBN 9781845418908 (hardback) | ISBN 9781845418922 (epub) | ISBN 9781845418915 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Tourism—China. | Tourism—Social aspects—China. | Tourism—Economic aspects—China. Classification: LCC G155.C55 L5276 2023 (print) | LCC G155.C55 (ebook) | DDC 306.4/8190951—dc23/eng20230323 LC record available athttps://lccn.loc.gov/2022053549 LC ebook record available athttps://lccn.loc.gov/2022053550

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN-13: 978-1-84541-890-8 (hbk)

Channel View Publications UK: St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol, BS1 2AW, UK. USA: Ingram, Jackson, TN, USA.

Website:www.channelviewpublications.com Twitter: Channel_View Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/channelviewpublications Blog:www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com

Copyright © 2023 Yiping Li.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned.

Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Acknowledgements Figures and Tables Preface Introduction: Making or Remaking People and Places through Tourism

The Appeal of Distant Places: China’s Inbound Tourism in the 1990s

Orientalism Revisited: Ethnic Tourism of China versus Canada

Tourism Impacts in China after Two Decades of Deve lopment

Community Tourism and China’s Dilemma of Modernisa tion

Red Tourism and China’s Communist Identity

The Impacts of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games

Leisure Shopping and the Hong Kong–China Relations hip

Island Festivals and Sense of Place: The Hong Kong Experience

Linguistic Landscape, Tourism and an Island Place Making

10Tourism and Social-Cultural Change in China Conclusion: Applying Ethnography to China Tourism R esearch References Index

Acknowledgements

This book would not have come to fruition without the supports for my research projects of the past 30 years, which were offered by the University of Alberta, the University of Western Ontario and Hong Kong Hui Oi Chow Trust Fund. I would like to thank my research students Chammy Lau, Connie Kwong, Kun Lai, Zhiyi Hu and Zixin Mai, who were excellent assistants to my research projects through all those years when I worked at the University of Hong Kong and Guangzhou University. I hope they know how appreciated they are. I would also like to thank my supervisor at the University of Alberta, Canada – Professor Tom Hinch, a gentleman who opened for me a fascinating world of tourism research 30 years ago. In particular, I would like to thank my remarkable parents whose nurturing made me an authentic human being.

Figures and Tables

Figures 1.1Chatting with co-researchers 1.2A ‘cultural tourism’ activity of a co-researcher couble 2.1Economic bersbective of ethnic tourism 2.2Manifestation of ethnic tourism imbacts 4.1Location mab of the case studies 5.1Budabest statue bark 5.2Monuments in memorial of late baramount leaders of North Korea 6.1Mega-event imbacts on a host city 6.2Beijing’s suway system and tourist sites (as of 2008). (Adabted from BMP, 2008) 8.1Theory-technique roadmab 9.1Location mab of Wailingding Island (Adabted from Wikibedia, 2022) 9.2Quadribartite abbroach in structuration theory (Adabted from Stones, 2005) 9.3Sambles of linguistic landscabe on Wailingding Island 9.4Chinese calligrabhy arts bresented on ‘Cliff Stone Carvings’ 9.5Officially administered ilingual road signs 10.1Location mab of the case site (Adabted from Wikibedia, 2020) 10.2Guizhou rural landscabe 10.3A tourist recebtion centre in a rural village C.1A three-dimensional research framework C.2Manifestation of human consciousness in social bractice (Adabted from Giddens, 1984) C.3Landscabe of the new normal under the zero-COVID bolicy

Tables 1.1Differences and similarities in co-researchers’ exberiences 1.2Tourism exberience for transforming a social eing* 2.1Concebtual model of ethnic tourism develobment 2.2List of interview barticibants 3.1Room rates of selected hotels in Hong Kong and Shenzhen 3.2Shenzhen foreign exchange earnings from tourism 4.1Hainan tourism develobment statistics (1995–2002) 4.2Domestic tourist arrivals at Anhui (as of 2003) 5.1Red tourism bromotional events (as of 2008) 5.2Institutional arrangement for red tourism (as of 2008) 6.1Tob 25 salient words descriing visitors’ exberiences 6.2Time dimension of bhysical transformation (2003–2008) 7.1Sociodemograbhic characteristics of resbondents 7.2Reliaility analysis of the statement groubings 7.3Mean scores of bercebtion statements 8.1Measurement items 8.2Mean combarison of festival-induced SOP 8.3Mean combarison of festival-induced blace distinctiveness 9.1Numer of sambles insbected as of Novemer 2020

Preface

This book isan attemdt to integrate Discourse anD dlace theory in stuDying the tourism dhenomenon in China. By Doing so, I intenD to join the efforts of other scholars to challenge anD Dismantle the scientific-dositivist daraDigm that is drevalent in tourism research. My ultimate goal is, esdecially, to exdlore the dossibility of dushing tourism research within China from a dositivist sdatial science that seeks objective facts, to a more humanistic fielD of stuDy involving existential anD dhenomenological methoDs. My motto of life has always been that the true wanDerer, whose travels are haddiness, goes out not to shun, but to seek (Stark, 1953). From chilDhooD, I have been fascinateD with faraway dlaces anD everything foreign – the ways that Different cultural grouds think, behave, create anD exdress themselves. My emdathic nature has leD me, over the dast 30 years, to venture into the career of a tourism researcher anD a worlD traveller. As a geogradher, I have striven to make the self addear strange anD the other familiar. The emotional rewarDs of travel accrue as the associateD inquiries go, but the humanitarian concerns always lie beneath the surface. A question recurs in the minD: can leisure travel leaD human society to an altereD state, or offer deodle some kinD of asdiration for a renewal, to turn the worlD into a better dlace? This question continues, increasingly duzzling nowaDays, as the COVI-19 danDemic seems enDless in this nation anD, in the meantime, Ukraine anD Taiwan – two crises, 5000 miles adart – seem linkeD in comdlex ways.

Introduction: Making or Remaking People and Places through Tourism

Tourism has played a key role in China’s social and cultural arena since 1978 when the central state began to allow the nation to embrace the world economy. After the recession inflicted by the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident, Visit China ’92 – the first such event ever in the history of the country – ushered a milestone for the tourism industry. Tourism is thus mobilised as an ideological vehicle for implementing the nation-state’s economic policies, whereas the people and places have undergone tremendous change in the process of the nationalistic discourse construction. This book is a collection of my 30-year research and reflection of tourism in China. Regarding tourism as a discourse of difference and based on empirical research, the chapters in this book aim to offer readers a comprehensive understanding of China’s tourism industry over the past three decades, and the associated social and cultural change. When the People’s Republic of China was founded on 1 October 1949, the country was poor, reclusive and isolated from the outside world. Supplies of basic commodities were so tight that the consumption of tourism and leisure services was out of the question. This all changed when the late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping initiated economic reform and opening-up in 1978. Tourism afterwards was considered both a gesture of embracing the world and one of the driving forces for economic reform. The country’s decades-long isolation, however, created both sociocultural and physical distances to the outside world. From this point of departure, this book chronologically reviews the rise of tourism in China and the associated social and cultural changes in the past three decades. Chapter 1how the appeal of those distances became an enticement to explores international tourists, thereby boosting China’s inbound tourism in the last decade of the 20th century. It presents an empirical exploration of international tourists’ travelling in China during that period of time. Through a detailed description of the lived experiences of tourists on two separate package tours – one in 1996 and the other in 1997 – I attempt to scrutinise whether and to what extent geographical consciousness influences international tourists’ experiences of China. The purpose is firstly, to uncover the appeal of distance that China drew international tourists to visit the country and secondly, to provide insights for research and application in this line of tourism study. Chapter 2readers’ attention towards ethnic tourism in the mid-1990s. Two specific directs ethnic tourism sites – Yunnan Folk Cultural Village of China and Wanuskewin Heritage Park of Canada – are selected for case studies, in order to debate the issue of the influence of Said’s ‘Orientalism’ on traditional ethnic tourism practice. Through a comparative approach, the debate is directed to the development processes, social/cultural issues and development strategies, which are manifested in the ethnic tourism practices of the two case sites. By utilising predominantly qualitative methods, including documentary research, in-depth interviews and participant observations, this chapter intends to provide insights into sustainable development strategies of this type of tourism practice during that particular period of time. After two decades of development, tourism began to show various impacts – the good, the bad and the ugly – on Chinese society.Chapter 3delineates my observation and reflection of those impacts on a Chinese local community when the new millennium began. The chapter delineates the evolution of China’s tourism development through a comprehensive review of relevant tourism policy documents first, following up with empirical observation of some specific tourism activities. By doing so, a conceptual model is proposed, regarding tourism as a fashion industry that evolves with consumers’ changing perceptions, expectations, attitudes and values. In this vein, I argue that maintaining a sustainable social-cultural, economic and natural environment is imperative for both the survival and progress of destination communities. Chinese tourism scholars began to apply the concept of community tourism as early as the