Scenic Spots: Chinese Tourism, the State, and Cultural Authority

Scenic Spots: Chinese Tourism, the State, and Cultural Authority

by Pál Nyíri
Scenic Spots: Chinese Tourism, the State, and Cultural Authority

Scenic Spots: Chinese Tourism, the State, and Cultural Authority

by Pál Nyíri

eBook

$24.49  $32.00 Save 23% Current price is $24.49, Original price is $32. You Save 23%.

Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers


Overview

Twenty years ago, commercial tourism in the People’s Republic of China hardly existed. Today, China has a burgeoning tourist industry, characterized by a unique style with deep roots in traditional Chinese culture. Scenic Spots is an engaging exploration of why Chinese tourists pursue certain kinds of experiences, what they make of them, and how their experiences and interpretations are shaped by the state.

Working from within a Chinese cultural framework, Pál Nyíri argues that China’s brand of tourism is distinct from the traditions of both Western bourgeois tourism, which values authenticity, and Soviet tourism, with its emphasis on rugged and selfless experience. In China, tourism development is guided by the state, and “scenic spots” (jingdian) and theme parks are used to demonstrate China’s heroic past and as tools of patriotic education and modernization – or as forms of “indoctritainment.” The tourist site is perceived as a product, and, as such, it is bounded, approved, rated, and consumed.

In a style both straightforward and provocative, Nyíri argues that the uniformity and undisguised commercialism of Chinese tourist sites are a direct result of the state’s ultimate authority to determine the meaning of landscape and to control culture. Scenic Spots serves as a lens through which to explore mechanisms of cultural control and resistance in a highly commercialized sphere of everyday life in contemporary China.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780295800493
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Publication date: 04/01/2011
Series: China Program Books
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 152
File size: 11 MB
Note: This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Pal Nyiri is director of the Program in Applied Anthropology at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.

Table of Contents

Preface

1. What's in a Site?: The Making of "Scenic Spots"

2. Two Sites and a Non-Site: Mounts Emei, Jiuzhaigou, and Songpan

3. Making Sense of Scenic Spots

4. Scenic Spots Beyond the Border: Migration, Tourism, and Cultural Authority

Notes

Bibliography

Index

What People are Saying About This

Tim Oakes

Scenic Spots will be of great interest in tourism studies, the China field more generally, and to non—China specialists with interests in cross—cultural perspectives on tourism, the cultural economy, and even landscape studies. It will be central to a nexus of topics currently being taught.

Robert P. Weller

Scenic Spots offers an elegant combination of theory and data on an increasingly important topic. It makes useful comparisons (like to Russia) that probably no one else in the field could do, and it is presented in a way that makes it plausible for undergraduate use.

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews