ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses locals’ reactions to tourists at their sites and explores the interactions between locals, tourists, the local governments and tourism enterprises. At first, this chapter identifies that there is a deep sense of emotional connection/bonding between locals and tourists when they felt they communicated or connected with each other. There is a cultural and social impact of World Heritage listing and increasing tourism. While some residents reported on the negative impacts of tourism found by other researchers, this was not the full story. Locals, particularly in Xidi, where they had greater control over tourism, reported a range of positive economic as well as cultural and social gains. Second, this chapter will also discuss how the local governments of both villages used a so-called ‘international standard’ that resulted in maintaining the physical authenticity of the sites to legitimise their local management policies, and impose those policies on locals through management practices. Contrary to Yan Haiming’s research on the Fujian Tulou World Heritage site, where the local government used the concept of ‘harmony’ to legitimise their hegemonic values, the case of Xidi and Hongcun illustrated that the hegemonic process the local governments in both villages utilised was still framed within the European AHD, as represented by the ‘international standard’. In addition, the majority of locals in both villages, and in particular in Xidi, expressed disappointment with those management policies and practices, which they considered significant in blocking their sense of place and causing alienation for their villages. Tourists also felt the sites, and in particular Hongcun, ‘had been managed’ too much. Their sense of freedom was constrained by both the physical boundaries of the site and the management practices of the local governments and tourism companies. In this sense, the management policies and practices conducted by local governments and tourism companies caused dissonance in the two villages.
