ABSTRACT
Endowed with large land territory, endemic flora and fauna, rich biodiversity, and diverse ecological systems, China has witnessed a booming development of nature tourism in the last three decades. Nature-based tourism (NBT), or nature tourism in short as it is known in the western world, is described as all forms of tourism that, “ … use natural resources in a wild or undeveloped form—including species, habitat, landscape, scenery, salt and fresh-water features”; it is “travel for the purpose of enjoying undeveloped natural areas or wildlife” (Goodwin, 1996). However, as discussed in the following, Chinese perceive “wild” and “developed/undeveloped” in a culturally different tradition compared with westerners. Nature tourism, or nature-based tourism, a term seldom used in China both academically and practically, would be described as any travel to the natural environment, i.e. less humanly constructed areas in the Chinese context. This chapter focuses on tourism related to the natural resource sites which have diversified titles similar to “national park”.
