ABSTRACT
Cultural relics and historical sites were listed as the main attractions for China in 1994 and became the country’s national tourism theme for that year (He 1999). Advocates of history consider this timely, since it represents the beginning of a reversal of the appalling inattention to the nation’s rich historical and cultural heritages following the Cultural Revolution. The interest was mainly fueled by the desire to capture a larger part of the world’s international tourist market as well as to cater to the growing domestic market. The year is important, marking for the first time the central government’s official acknowledgment of the contribution that tourism can make to raising the wealth of the country and giving jobs and economic and social mobility to its people. With this decision comes a heavy responsibility to recognize the possible impacts heritage tourism can have on local communities and on the heritage resources of the country. Within tourism literature, commodification and displacement as impacts have been widely researched (e.g. see Gotham (2007) on New Orleans; Picard (1996) on Bali; Philp and Mercer (1999) on Burma). In China, however, they are only emergent topics. This book attempts to explicate the politics behind China’s project of heritage tourism development. The study is based on an analysis of Lijiang Ancient Town, a mature destination that has often been cited as a successful model of tourism policy-making.1 More specifically, we intend to unravel the dialectical relationships between global and domestic capital, tourists and locals as they collude, collaborate and contest one another in transforming the town for tourist consumption. In discussing these tensions, we will show how complex tourism development can be even as it strives to do good for the majority of the people affected.
