ABSTRACT

What are we to make of these case studies? In what way can we call the practices described in the previous chapter articulations of a potentially “authentic” modern subjectivity? Is it enough to argue that villagers are eager to exploit their own touristic potential because of their intense desire for modernity, and that they willingly reproduce state-sanctioned categories of culture and identity in order to further their own modernization agenda? Throughout Guizhou, hundreds of village heads journey each year to tourist bureaus in Anshun, Kaili, and Guiyang. They bring with them “portfolios” of their villages: recordings of songs, photographs of architecture and scenery, petitions signed by thousands of villagers. They look with envy upon the dozen or so villages in Guizhou that have been developed as tourist attractions. While no doubt naive about the exploitative machinations of the tourism industry, they very clearly understand both the high stakes of their pursuit of modernity and the misplaced desire for authenticity and tradition among metropolitan tourists. They believe that, beyond tourism, there is very little else on the immediate horizon for their communities as they attempt to escape the trap of rural poverty and continued dependence upon an increasingly degraded resource base. The state's charge of commercializing the rural economy makes tourism one of the most apparent and most desired routes toward this goal for many rural villagers in Guizhou.