《神州交流》Chinese Cross Currents

Foreword:
Tourism or Culture—
Some Ways Ahead?

Vol. 3, No. 1, January-March 2006

For a periodical publication dedicated to “crossing currents” within China and other cultural areas, should it be a surprise that this issue has focussed its special dossier on “Tourism and Culture”? There might be some objections to doing so.

World news in recent months has not ceased to contain matters worth worrying about: diplomatic tensions and open conflicts, well known or commonly ignored by the mass media (such as those in Africa); growing economic disparities between industrialised and under-developed countries; sluggish labour markets in many societies and the social unrest resulting there from; education challenges that could threaten the welfare of future generations; and fragile familial harmony widely spread throughout the world. All these aspects of today’s life, not to mention terrorist threats or the avian influenza, should attract our attention more than… tourism!

And all the more so for those who, like us, live in China. There is no day, no week that does not bring information related to some important problem, be it safety in the coal mines, fair compensation for seized land, the control of rivers and air pollution, the development of civil society, or the convenient usage of internet. So why dedicate a number of contributions to… tourism?

As we are reminded by one contributor to the dossier, tourism is not new in Chinese cultural history. Yet it has recently dressed itself up in new clothes. It would have been banal to repeat here what we can learn from other media concerning the rebirth of tourism in China. It was due to the recent performance of the economic reforms launched by Deng Xiaoping at the end of the Cultural Revolution. Their success has not yet benefited everyone equally in the countryside nor in all provinces, yet many citizens’ lives have improved a lot, a cause for rejoicing by all. Inbound and outbound tourism has similarly developed. Some statistics project that, towards the year 2020, there might be about 100 million Chinese tourists, individually or in groups, wandering around the world!

In Macau, observers can tell that, nowadays, the greatest number of tourists comes from “the interior,” as the local expression has it, more than the number of Japanese tourists or, of course, Westerners. For the year 2005, tourists were estimated to have numbered 20 million.

Such a phenomenal growth calls for reflection. All the more so as, strangely enough, tourism is considered first, from the point of view of the economy, to be an industry, despite, that is, Wikipedia's definition: “Industry: businesses concerned with goods as opposed to services. [Example:] There used to be a lot of industry around here, but now the economy depends on tourism.” Is that all we are concerned about?

The dossier presented in this issue aims to give some answers.

Tourism implies travelling, and Chinese cultural history has known many important travellers: Xuan Zang (602-664) who went to India in a quest for Buddhist sûtras, or Ennin (794-864), a Japanese Buddhist monk who lived seven years (838-845) in China for the same purpose. We selected admiral Zheng He (1371-1434) since, in the year 2005, we celebrated the sixth centenary of his first maritime expedition (1405) to South-East Asia. Roderick Ptak, in the opening contribution to the dossier, presents the place of this historic and legendary figure in traditional Chinese literature. Historians continue to debate the purposes of these expeditions. Closer to our time, the “Global Travel Writing by Yu Qiuyu” is the subject of Nailene Chou-Wiest's article, in which a fine analysis of a “Cultural Baedeker for Chinese Tourists Abroad” explains the challenges and experiences of a great tourist. It is followed by the reflections of Zhang Liang who meditates, as an urban specialist, on the mutation of sightseeing induced by contemporary forms of Chinese tourism, which is artificially focussed on consumerism. At the other extreme of the spectrum, Michael Saso recalls what he has learned in his “travelling to the Sacred Mountains of China”, particularly through his conversations with religious Daoist Masters. Getting back to lower lands, Mao Sihui finally warns about the “new challenges for Macao in the age of simulation,” as if tourism were some illusory “Desire for the (Hyper)Real”.

Two special features follow. The first in memory of Ba Jin, who recently passed away (2005), by Xu Youyu: are we to inherit or surpass the great author? Then, Françoise Le Corre reminds us that it is easy to migrate around the globe without boundaries: yet, on this “planet of the birds” of ours, all influences and contaminations intermingle.

Thus, tourism can be a good or bad metaphor for human life.

Yves Camus, Director