ABSTRACT
Until recently, the vast majority of both tourists and tourism researchers were based in the industrialized ‘western’ countries of Europe, North America and Oceania. Therefore, the activities and experiences of tourists as well as their analysis were based on occidental, Christian and marketeconomy values and behaviour patterns. This chapter is a first attempt to discuss the potentially liberating influences of the growing number of Asian – not least Chinese – tourists in international tourism on the way tourism, especially tourist motivation and tourist behaviour, is conceptionalized in tourism theory, hopefully leading towards more holistic insights. The following pages can only strive to give suggestions for further research by looking rather unsystematically at a number of related topics. The main problem beside the novelty of the phenomenon is the fact that currently almost no research results connected to such questions especially from Chinese colleagues both from inside or outside Mainland China are available, with the notable exception of the works of Wang Ning.1 The reasons for this sorry situation are discussed below.
