In recent years, cultural anthropologists and critical human geographers have mapped the ideational and material contours of Chinese domestic tourism with increasing specificity. Scholars such as Timothy Oakes (1998), Eileen Walsh and Peggy Swain (2004) and Pal Nyiri (2006) have sought to understand Chinese tourism on its own terms rather than assume a priori that tourist practices in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) proceed according to familiar Western models. Nyiri especially has devoted considerable attention to analysing mainstream Chinese tourism’s emphasis on the act of authenticating and on confirmation over authenticity and discovery as the ultimate goals of the journey. While these interventions have been largely salutary, I suggest that in contrast to visions of tourist itineraries that brook no semiotic dissent via a thoroughly over-determined presentation of sites worthy of visitation, tourism in contemporary China is productive of at least two sets of discontents.