Urban place-making centred on equity and social justice
THE INVENTION OF RURAL ETHNIC MINORITIES:
DESTABILIZING DISCURSIVE BOUNDARIES IN CHINESE DOMESTIC TOURISM
The demand for domestic tourism in China has emerged spontaneously since the economic reform in 1978 as a result of rapid modernization in China’s urban centres and the increased wealth among urban elites (Chio, 2014). Since then, tourism has been actively mobilized by the government as an important tool for rural economic development and modernization. By 2015, the tourism sector had contributed to 10.51% of China’s GDP, overtaking traditional industries such as education and automobile production.
However, domestic tourism in China is also charged with ethnic and social implications due to the relatively high concentration of the 55 officially-recognized ethnic minority groups in rural tourist destination regions.
In this paper, I illustrate domestic ethnic tourism as a site of contradictions that can help expose the constructedness of discursive binaries between Chinese urban Han and rural ethnic minorities. I will draw on Marx, Foucault, and agency-centric frameworks to deconstruct urban/rural and Han/ethnic binaries, interrogate identity-forming institutions, and highlight the power relations and performative practices that are necessary to reinvent, reify, and reproduce these discourses.
INTRODUCTION: CHINESE DOMESTIC TOURISM
The demand for domestic tourism in China has emerged spontaneously since the economic reform in 1978 as a result of rapid modernization in China’s urban centres and the increased wealth among urban elites (Chio, 2014). However, as economic development has been unevenly distributed across the nation, domestic tourism has been characterized by a unidirectional urban-rural movement. Recognizing the potential of this industry, the Chinese government has declared domestic tourism to be an important tool for rural economic development and modernization through enacting policies such as Open Up the West and New Socialist Countryside (Chio, 2014). By 2015, the tourism sector had contributed to 10.51% of China’s GDP, overtaking traditional industries such as education and automobile production (Liu, Nijkamp & Lin, 2017).
Given the state support and significant market demand, the tourism industry has demonstrated tremendous success in developing China’s rural economy. However, Crang (2015) and Chio (2017) suggest that domestic tourism in China is also charged with ethnic and social implications due to the relatively high concentration of the 55 officially-recognized ethnic minority groups in rural tourist destination regions. To illustrate, state-led tourism development strategies purposefully encourage the movement of Han people – comprising 92% of China’s population – to areas occupied by ethnic minorities, bringing with them economic growth and improved suzhi, or “moral qualities” to develop less affluent areas populated by ethnic minorities (Chio, 2014; Crang, 2015). Given the modernization agenda, the state officially recognizes domestic tourism as a temporary development instrument that seeks to eventually assimilate rural ethnic minorities into the more advanced Han lifestyle (Oakes, 1993).
China’s modernization approach to social development encourages underdeveloped areas to exploit and commoditize any competitive advantage to achieve development (Oakes, 1992). For many rural ethnic regions, one of such advantages is the supposed “exotic” culture, which has been revived, reinvented, and reconstituted in the national economy to become a localized commodity consumed through tourism (Oakes, 1993). In recent years, much of Chinese literature advocate for localities to operate under the framework of “cultural and ecological tourism”, a form of sustainable industry in which both natural ecosystems and ethnic traditions and heritage are protected for non-destructive consumption (Han, 2018). Thus, various scholarly studies and recommendations to improve tourism sites touch on themes of preserving and developing unique natural ecosystems, ethnic cultures, histories, and intangible heritage features (Han, 2018; Peng et al., 2018).
To support the cultural and ecological tourism framework and to accommodate the influx of tourists who come to visit natural sceneries and exotic cultures, rural ethnic landscapes have undergone tremendous material transformations in terms of physical infrastructure, built forms and landscapes, and modes of production (Crang, 2015; Li, 2004; Lee & Abrahams, 2018). However, Gladney (1994) argues that the commodification of minority ethnic characteristics is more than just the result of consumer tourism; rather, it is a process that carries symbolic weight that informs a nation-building agenda. In other words, material changes in rural ethnic landscapes are not only products of the tourism industry, but also active (re)producers of hegemonic discourses about rural ethnic subjects of the Chinese state. Similarly, Oakes (1993) argues that places and localized cultural identities, as facilitated by tourism, are constantly reinvented through the active appropriation of past history and commercial opportunities available in the broader context of political economy. Therefore, domestic tourism has profound effects on the way that ethnic minorities are represented in China.
FRAMING DOMESTIC ETHNIC TOURISM
I reconceptualise “domestic tourism” as “domestic ethnic tourism”, a site that intersects the discursive binaries of urban-rural and ethnic majority-minority. Scholars have argued that these dichotomies emerge from processes of proliferation of hegemonic discourses, commodification and fetishization of ethnic culture, and active formation of identities. To illustrate, tourism is not only a tool to facilitate economic development and modernization, but also a state-managed apparatus that produces discursive urban-rural dichotomies, exotifies ethnic cultures, and commodifies ethnic people to justify hegemonic power relations and social order (Lee & Abraham, 2018; Chio, 2014; Gladney, 1994). However, as Oakes (1993) points out, these discursive categories are not simply imposed upon ethnic communities as many scholars might suggest; as local ethnic groups position themselves within the state-led tourism infrastructure and interact with incoming social, economic, and political forces, they also become agents who re-inscribe meaning and reinforce these identity inventions.
In this sense, symbols and signs of ethnic minority communities are encoded and mobilized by the Han-dominant tourism industry to produce two competing and contradictory discourses. On the one hand, the urban-rural dichotomy frames rural ethnic communities as backwards people who need improvement and modernization (Chio, 2017; Gladney, 1994). On the other hand, the extraction of value in the tourism industry requires the fetishization of rural ethnic communities, which preserves ethnic minorities in a fixed time, space, and tradition that rejects modernization (Lee & Abraham, 2018; Crang, 2015). Through domestic ethnic tourism, the state, urban Han tourists, and local tour providers construct a “backwards” and “primitive” ethnic subject that is simultaneously undesirable and desirable.
In this paper, I illustrate domestic ethnic tourism as a site of contradictions that can help expose the constructedness of discursive binaries between Chinese urban Han and rural ethnic minorities. First, I review the theoretical frameworks through which scholars have reviewed the processes through which ethnic discourses and power relations get repeated and reinforced in tourism to set the stage for further analysis. Second, I provide a brief history of ethnic configuration in China to deconstruct the notion of ethnic nationalities. Following this, I situate ethnic categories within the hukou (household registration) institution to link ethnicity with notions of modernity. Then, I examine the state’s support for domestic ethnic tourism as a way to modernize rural China and unify diverse ethnic identities. Finally, I draw from the aforementioned theoretical frameworks to review case studies on various ethnic tour sites and examine how these identity-defining institutions, coupled with state-led policies, facilitate further discourse production in tourism development practice. Ultimately, I provide a holistic perspective to destabilize the supposed dichotomies between urban-rural and ethnic majority-minority, highlighting the power relations and performative practices that are necessary to reinvent, reify, and reproduce these discourses.
A NOTE ON METHODOLOGY
Most of the evidence to support my argument are extracted from case studies from a variety of ethnic tour sites across China. There are several reasons for this broad approach. Primarily, China has a large number of ethnic tourism sites and it is difficult to find one region with a high concentration of research literature. Additionally, the broad geographic and cultural scale of analysis allows me to notice that despite research being done in diverse landscapes and ethnic regions, they demonstrate similar themes of discourse production, power relation, and performative practices. This observation also suggests that instead of delineating many different ethnic nationalities, domestic ethnic tourism effectively produces two categories of people: The Han and the ethnic other. As Gladney (1994) and Schein (1997) argue, peripheral minorities are collectively constructed as an ethnic “other” to act as foil to a modern Han self-identity. Therefore, rather than using one ethnic tour site and potentially making normative claims about a specific ethnic identity, I demonstrate that these categories, including the urban Han, are all constantly produced, invented, and mobilized to justify hegemonic social order.
It is important to acknowledge that this approach is also an important shortcoming in my analysis as not all ethnic minority groups have the same political history and experience. Therefore, findings of this paper will apply to rural ethnic minorities who are subject to rural tourism development, and should not be generalized to other political issues associated with ethnic minorities.
Theoretical frameworks: Marx, Foucault, and Agency
Within the current literature on domestic tourism, I identify three major theoretical frameworks to analyze the process through which urban-rural and ethnic majority-minority dichotomies are discursively invented and reified. First The Foucauldian governmentality framework posits that ethnic tourism is state technology that facilitates normative discourses and “truths” about rural ethnic minorities, thus disseminating hegemonic state power to invent governable ethnic subjects (Lee & Abraham, 2018; Li, 2004). Following this framework, Lee and Abraham (2018, p.178) conceptualize tourism as a “worldmaking” mechanism through which representational strategies dominated by Han elites highlight particular aspects of ethnic culture, history, and society to constantly reproduce “truths” about ethnic identities. Simultaneously, tourism is also a “way of learning” for tourists who consume the packaged representation of an ethnicity as normative truths through seemingly objective first-hand experiences (Lee & Abraham, 2018, p.177). This feedback between knowledge production and consumption discursively reinforces the division and power dynamic between urban Han tourists and rural ethnic minority hosts in aspects of culture, modernity, and power.
To supplement, the Marxist value production framework suggests that the motivation for such truth production is the need to extract economic value from intangible cultures (Yang, Wall & Smith, 2008). In this sense, ethnic cultures are commodified and fetishized in ways that generates the most economic value, which consequently produces governable ethnic state subjects (Chio, 2014; Li, 2004). Through various tourism development policies and entrepreneurial initiatives led by Han urbanites who have more political and economic power, domestic ethnic tourism accentuates lucrative aspects of ethnic minority cultures (Yang, Wall & Smith, 2016). As these particular cultural elements tend to be vastly different from the urban Han life, commodification through tourism – an inherently capital-driven industry – institutionalizes, reifies, and normalizes cultural differences and discursive division between urban Han and rural ethnic minorities.
Importantly, these two frameworks can be difficult to distinguish and are often conceptually fused in many case studies as domestic ethnic tourism is meant to achieve both nationalist and economic goals. Those who have the power to produce ethnic subjects are also those who have the most resources to produce capital as well. Additionally, these frameworks also make similar conceptual assumptions; while they are useful to uncover the processes through which the discursive dichotomy between urban Han and rural ethnic minorities are reified and reproduced, they assume that there is a naturally existing “culture” from which a certain representation can be emphasized and disseminated (Oakes, 1993; Chio, 2017). Furthermore, their emphasis on the role of the powerful effectively silences the agency of local ethnic minorities who also engage in the tourism industry (Oakes, 2016).
To address these critiques, the third framework that I identify recognizes the notion of rural ethnic minority as a relational identity and acknowledges their agency to participate in the process of discourse formation and identity reinvention (Chio, 2017; Oakes, 1993; Yang & Wall, 2009). As Oakes (1993) argues, cultural identities do not have intrinsic qualities; rather, they are actively negotiated, constructed, and produced within a context of broader economic and sociopolitical forces. This perspective effectively blurs the boundary of power, suggesting that the meaning of tourism destinations, as well as their associated ethnic residents and cultures, get materialized and reified through dynamic interactions between various actors who have individual agency (Oakes, 1993). Under this framework, rural ethnic communities who participate in the tourism industry maintain a degree of autonomy, even if it is informal, to react to government-led tourism development schemes and appropriate them for their own purposes. Importantly, the way ethnic minorities reimagine and reinvent themselves do not always resist state intentions, but nevertheless contribute to the process of identity creation.
The construction of 56 ethnic nationalities in China
China officially recognized 56 ethnic nationalities as a result of the ethnic identification and recategorization campaign in the 1950s. The nationality policy was driven by several anxieties. First, the Chinese central government had an interest in asserting more control over ethnic minorities as they inhabit 50% to 60% of China’s remote territory and occupy strategic national borders that are important for natural resources and defence from foreign forces (Wu, 2014). Second, the central government recognized that ethnic minorities are essential components of the Chinese nation and was motivated to construct “one big co-operative family” within the new socialist regime. (Wu, 2014: 64). Ke (2012) and Wu (2014) argue that this campaign was a technology of the state to repress nationalist independence ideologies and construct ethnic minorities as modern national subjects. An overview of the history of ethnic configuration in China reveals that “ethnicity can be invented, constructed or reconstructed as a particular representation in relation to state formation” (Ke, 2012: 919).
Soon after the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, the Chinese central government sent out five delegate groups to visit the peripheral parts of Chinese territory – including the southwest, northwest, mid-south, northeast, and inner Mongolia regions – to officially designate ethnic nationalities (Ke, 2012). China’s ethnic landscape had been incredibly diverse: Self-report in the first national census revealed over 400 identities, and official expedition reported more than 80 groups in Guizhou province alone (Ke, 2012; Jacka et al., 2013). The immense diversity compelled an “urgent bureaucratic regrouping” of ethnic identities into officially manageable and legible nationalities (Fan, 2010; Mullaney, 2010). Therefore, ethnic nationalities can be conceptualized as a modern phenomenon that accompanies China’s transition from an “empire” to a “nation” (Gladney, 1994).
The campaign defined ethnic nationality based on common territory, language, economic production, and culture, which institutionally erased a great amount of ethnic and cultural diversity that are not considered in the abovementioned criteria (Crang, 2015). For example, the campaign in Yunnan province merged 260 identities into 22 ethnic nations (Crang, 2015). This erasure did not only apply to ethnic minority groups as the majority Han ethnic nationality also resulted from the consolidation of diverse cultural groups. To illustrate, Cantonese, Hakka, and Fujianese are well-recognized subgroups within the Han ethnicity that can easily assume their own ethnic identity (Gladney, 1998). However, Gladney (1998) suggests that the Chinese state deliberately created a single Han majority ethnicity as a strategy to avoid potential ethnic conflict between sizable groups. Therefore, ethnic categories are not naturally existing, but actively constructed and invented through a modernization project driven by deliberate political decisions.
The delineation of nationalities has legitimized state control in two contradicting ways. First, through the exclusion of the ethnic “other”, the state is able to facilitate unity among the majority Han ethnic group. The ethnic “other” is also placed at the bottom hegemonic social hierarchy as they are assumed to lacking Confucius civility and has yet to undergo Marxist social evolution (Leibold, 2010). Furthermore, the formation of a majority ethnic group has fostered Han ethnocentrism that assumes Han to be more “advanced”, “modern”, and “civilized” than minority ethnicities (Leibold, 2010). In the context of tourism, Han ethnocentrism facilitates the romanticization of ethnic primitivism and exoticism. Therefore, this ethnic categorization process can be framed as a process of self-orientalism in which an exotic ethnic “other” acts as a foil to the modern Han self-identity, and provides an unifying effect for the Han majority (Shein, 1997; Gladney, 1994; Ke, 2012).
Second, given the mandate for nation-building after forming the People’, the state is also compelled to assimilate this “cultural other” into China’s historical past (Ke, 2012). This narrative constructs ethnic minorities as national subjects that need to be “changed” and “civilized” in order to create a “big family of socialist nationalities” (shehuizhuyi minzu dajiating; Ke, 2012). To manage ethnic diversity, the Chinese government borrowed from principles of Soviet-style multiculturalism by identifying official ethnic groups, forming Special Autonomous Regions for regions dominated by minority groups, and designating affirmative action policies for minorities to form a harmonious, unified nation (Jacka et al., 2013; Crang, 2015). The official government discourse suggests that national unification of ethnic nationalities was a natural outcome of historical cooperation, and that “it was in the fundamental interest of national minorities to stay with the PRC” in order to receive help from the more modern and advanced Han to achieve economic and cultural flourishing (Wu, 2014, p.65).
Fan (2012) describes the relationship between Han-dominant state and ethnic minorities as one of “social contract” or “patron-client”. While ethnic categories are needed to enable each minority group to achieve autonomy and representation in the People’s Congress, political representation also requires ethnic minorities to comply to officially assigned identities (Wu, 2014; Fan, 2012; Shih, 2007). In his observation of the annual Chinese New Year’s program that gets broadcasted in the entire country, Gladney (1994) notices that about half of the concert program is dedicated to ethnic performances, despite 92% of the population being Han. While performers in colourful and exotic costumes sing and dance on the stage, the audience is filled with Han spectators in modern and grey suits that symbolize western modernity (Gladney, 1994). Gladney (1994) compares these performances to ritualized offerings that tributaries had offered to ancient Chinese empires to sustain central-peripheral political relationships. These dynamics legitimizes the Chinese government’s modernist project to erase diverse and heterogeneous ethnic identities, and reinvent the ethnic landscape into nationality categories that are legible and governable by the state.
ETHNICITY IN THE HUKOU INSTITUTION
Under the current ethnicity and hukou regime, every Chinese citizen inherits one ethnicity by birth; in the case where one’s parents have different ethnicity, they must choose one ethnicity to register the child (Jacka et al., 2013). By registering attributes of a household, the hukou system institutionally produces urban and rural Chinese subjects distinguished by whether they reside in urban or rural locations, what ethnicity they belong to, and whether they engage in agricultural or non-agricultural work (Chan, 2015). Hukou registration has powerful influence on all aspects of life as it restricts the freedom of mobility, creates barriers to employment, and limits access to public services beyond what is attributed to one’s registration (Chan, 2015; Chio, 2014). Although most scholarly research on hukou are concerned with domestic migrant workers, the impacts of hukou also apply to the ethnic minorities who have rural hukou status and live in the least developed regions in China.
The hukou system was originally established during the Mao-era to prevent rural agriculture workers from forgoing agricultural world and moving to industrial cities (Chang, 2015). This restriction on mobility has led to a phenomenon of “under-urbanization” despite rapid industrialization, as well as a physical rural-urban boundary (Chan, 2015). Although the physical boundary between rural and urban has been lifted since the economic reform and rural peasants are now able to move to cities to find work, there are still little economic and social support available migrant workers with rural hukouregistration in cities. Thus, the rural-urban divide is now characterized by social stratification. Zheng (2011) argues that the lack of social and economic support for rural ethnic migrant workers restricts them from permanently moving to urban areas and reinforces the physical divide between urban Han and rural ethnic minorities. To illustrate, Yang & Wall’s (2009) research shows that more ethnic minority youth are aspiring to seek better job opportunities in urban cities, but return home after a few years as they are unable to find satisfactory work and or find a sense of belonging.
Furthermore, this two-fold physical and social division has mobilized a dominant discourse that blames rural peasants and ethnic minorities’ low suzhi (moral quality) for “[holding] the Chinese nation back from achieving its rightful place in the world” and full modernization (Anagost, 2004, p.190). Since modernization and urbanization after the economic reform, the central government has problematized the “three rural (nong) problems” – agriculture (nong ye), peasants (nong ming), and villages (nong cun) – without recognizing that “rural” is a product of the hukou system in the first place (Chio, 2014). Therefore, through these feedback and reiterative processes, the rural migrant population has become the subject that requires development for China to achieve full modernization. Ultimately, by institutionally constructing an urban Han and rural ethnic minority divide in terms of geography, ethnicity, and mode of production, the hukou system produces a low suzhi rural ethnic minority population that must be managed, improved, and modernized.
State support for domestic ethnic tourism
To achieve modernization and national integration, national and regional officials have encouraged ethnic minority regions to mobilize comparative advantages of local natural and cultural resources to develop a tourism industry and attract urban capital (Han, 2018; Peng et al., 2018; Jackson, 2006). This modernization strategy uses rural ethnic tourism to not only economically stimulate the region, but also to socially develop purportedly “backward” ethnic minorities, produce “change and improvement toward more civilized elite forms”, achieve literacy, obtain modern education, and cultivate entrepreneurial spirits in rural ethnic regions (Li, 2004; Oakes, 1998: 136). In this sense, beyond generating economic benefits for the rural poor, rural ethnic tourism also allows the state to demarcate the desired outcome of national integration, reconcile the discrepancies between Chinese nationalism and ethnic diversity, and justify the legitimacy of state-led modernization projects for ethnic minorities (Oakes, 1998; Yang et al., 2006).
Importantly, tourism is explicitly used as a tool to improve suzhi, domestic consumption, and national pride as means to achieve “material and spiritual civilization” for both Han visitors and rural ethnic hosts (Chio, 2014, p.92). China’s Central Spiritual Civilization Steering Committee produced a document in 2006 called “Plan to Raise the Civilized Tourism Quality of Chinese Tourists” to address the internationally notorious Chinese tourist behaviour, and to develop an ideal modern Han tourist to help peasants improve rural suzhi (Chio, 2014). In tourism, the Han tourists is framed as a bringer of new ideas from the city to the countryside, motivation for peasants to learn standard Chinese and receive higher education, and incentive for locals to incorporate technology to manage their business (Chio, 2014). Underlying tourism development policies is the assumption that rural peasants, including ethnic minorities, are fundamentally different from and inferior to, but must be improved to become more like urban Han Chinese.
Notably, the Chinese government has provided policies to improve the quantity and quality of domestic ethnic tourism. In 1993, the Chinese government began to formally regulate and manage domestic tourism by establishing regional tourism bureaus, ensuring travel agency’s legitimacy, restructuring pricing, building infrastructure, and protecting the environment (Chio, 2014). In 1999, the central government introduced Golden Week holidays to institutionally provide urban workers more opportunity to travel to faraway rural regions (Chio, 2014). During the 2008 October 1st National Day Golden Week, China National Tourism Administration reported 178 million tourist trips, which is a 22% increase compared to the year before (Chio, 2014).
The Chinese government has also established guiding principles for tourism through two main policies. In 2000, the Open Up the West Campaign aimed to modernize the Western region by establishing non-agricultural industries, urbanizing rural landscapes, and improving the suzhi of rural ethnic communities (Chio, 2014). The campaign also demarcated the boundary of “West” to include five Ethnic Autonomous Regions where two-thirds of the population identify as one of 49 ethnic minorities (Chio, 2014). In 2006, the Chinese government commenced the New Socialist Countryside campaign to promote civilized rural tourism, effectively targeting rural peasants as subjects to develop, civilize, and modernize (Yang et al., 2016). Coupled with the “harmonious society” goal in the 11th Five Year Plan, state-led tourism development aimed create high-quality countryside lifestyles for peasants and “neat and clean villages” for Han tourists (Chio, 2014).
Chio (2014) suggests that these campaigns effectively discursively equate rural ethnic minorities with socioeconomic underdevelopment, reinforces the discourse that they have low suzhi, and compels state intervention to improve and integrate them into the Chinese nation. However, domestic ethnic tourism also promotes an exotic, romantic, and primitive image to attract tourists (Gladney, 1994). As Chio (2017) eloquently states, “[rural ethnic minorities’] greatest economic resource is their perceived sociocultural differences from socio-politically dominant urban and mainstream conditions” (p.420)”. Therefore, the underlying mandate of domestic ethnic tourism – to unify diverse ethnicities under one socialist nation – creates a discursive divide and hierarchical dynamic between urban Han tourists and rural ethnic hosts. Whereas the urban Han tourist is seen as the ideal modern Chinese, the rural ethnic host is placed in a contradictory position as a subjects of the state that must simultaneously be modernized and preserved (Yang et al., 2006). Given this paradoxical nature of domestic ethnic tourism development, I review more context-specific case studies that examine the role of government, capital, and local ethnic communities in shaping tourism development and ethnic identity representations to problematize and challenge the stability of discursive binaries between urban Han and rural ethnic minorities.
CASE STUDIES
Producing ethnic people
PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS IN LONGJI
Lee and Abraham (2008) posit that promotional materials are the medium that disseminates narratives about a travel destination and the “repertoire of tourist appreciation” that trains potential tourists to fantasize and imagine themselves in the destination (Franklin, 2004, p.298). These imageries are produced by governmental officials and tourism enterprises and consumed by outside tourists, the majority of whom are of Han ethnicity and have more economic and political power. Therefore, through the dissemination of Han-led ethnic imagery, tourism becomes a productive “discourse of identity construction, promotion, recognition, and acceptance” that also reinforces power relations between the economic and ethnic centre and periphery (Hallet & Kaplan-Weinger, 2010, p.5).
Lee and Abraham (2008) observe that the promotional images for Longji disproportionately depicted rural ethnic women, mostly dressed in traditional ethnic dresses and in isolation from their male counterparts. These promotional images produce feminized signs of otherness in rural ethnic minorities, which serve to emasculate rural ethnic minorities, construct them as a weaker and more passive subject that justifies the central government’s mandate to dominate and modernize them (Lee & Abraham, 2018). Simultaneously, promotional materials reduce ethnic cultures into clear symbolic markers of ethnicity such as the ethnic costume. The “colourful, exotic, flamboyant, and primitive portrayal of [ethnic] hosts” through costumes not only acts as foil to consolidate the alleged “Han orderliness, rationality, and modernity”, but also renders ethnic culture into a fantastical commodity (Lee & Abraham, 2018, p.189; Gladney, 1994).
In effect, ethnic minority regions are converted into sites of consumption that materially transforms local life and landscapes into exotic, fantastical, and playful experiences (Lee & Abraham, 2018). Since the effectiveness of a supposedly authentic rural ethnic tourism experience depends on how much it can pull Han tourists out of their modern lifestyle and indulge them in something different, the very nature of tourism as a commodity necessitates the creation of binaries between urban Han and rural ethnic minority. Lee and Abraham (2018) argue that the process of commodification can lead to a trivialization of Longji’s ethnic culture as consumption gets conflated with understanding.
PORTRAYAL OF ETHNIC PEOPLE IN ETHNIC VILLAGES
Since the decentralization of administrative power in the 1980’s, local governments and tourism bureaus have taken on a more important role in developing tourism industries to alleviate poverty and establish self-reliance in minority communities (Yang et al., 2006). In practice, tourism development at the local level presents itself as a profit-driven process that represents rural ethnic minority subjects as commodities with economic value. Importantly, local tourism bureaus in Autonomous Ethnic Regions are always managed by Han directors with mostly Han staff, and they have offered preferential policies for Han entrepreneurs and developers to attract urban investment (Yang et al., 2006).
Ultimately, the rural ethnic tourism industry became dominated by Han outsiders both economically and politically, while ethnic minorities are shunned to the fringes of the industry (Yang et al., 2006). This position gives government officials and outside investors the ability to propagate their perception of ethnic resources, traditions, and artifacts by direct the ways in which ethnic characteristics get framed, commodified, and communicated to attract tourists (Zhang, 2003). For example, the TBBP designated a number of villages as tourist attraction sites to showcase ethnic minorities living in their supposedly authentic environments that are “primitive”, “uncorrupted”, and “pre-modern” (Yang et al., 2006, p.764). Li’s (2003) analysis of these villages suggests that they are highly feminized and exotified to produce a stark contrast with the supposedly dull urban life and generate a romantic yearning for Han men to visit. As promotional images featuring local women of Dai ethnicity dancing in colourful costumes, bathing in rivers, and working in traditional homes circulate all over China, Xishuangbanna has become a symbolic zone of sexual experimentations that attracts male Han tourists who come for Dai women (Lee & Abraham, 2008; Davis, 2005). Ironically, most sex workers are non-Dai women who dress up in Dai costumes to attract customers (Davis, 2005). In this sense, ethnic minority identity is reduced to imageries of gender, costumes, and lived space that get encoded by outsiders’ fantasies.
Producing cultural commodities
CULTURAL TRINKETS IN XISHUANGBANNA
Ethnic culture, customs, and nuances have been rendered into material symbols that tourists can see, buy, and experience as commodities (Lee & Abraham, 2018). In tourism, officials and entrepreneurs have the power to select which cultural resources and elements get commodified to maximize profit. Therefore, the materiality of rural ethnic imageries can be easily appropriated to fabricate a sense of “authenticity” through mass production.
The appropriation of authenticity is evident in handicrafts and souvenir trinkets. “Authentic” cultural materials based on traditional designs, forms, and technologies, such as traditional clothing, wood carvings, and handbags, are hardly competitive against low-priced factory-made replicas (Yang et al., 2006). Although officials recognize that mass production of cultural resources can lead to a loss in the authenticity of tourism goods and services, they also maintain that “not all traditional culture is worth saving” (Yang et al., 2006, p.765). This attitude reflects the assumption that only cultural aspects that have competitive market value are worth preserving and promoting. As a result, the traditional handicrafts on the market that are officially regulated and authenticated are only a select portion of local culture that is deemed by the state, local government, and entrepreneurs to be distinct from products that can be replicated through modern technology (Yang et al., 2006).
The case of handicrafts demonstrates that through the modernization framework, the tourism industry is compelled to extract any value out of local cultures. Through the process of value extraction from cultural resources, ethnic culture and imagery are selectively represented to produce a supposed ethnic authenticity that is differentiated from a purported urban Han identity. As tourism bureaus and entrepreneurs are mainly dominated by Han outsiders, they have the power to decide which aspects of ethnic culture is desirable for tourists. As a result, they project certain ideologies and imaginations about ethnic minorities and replicate them through promotional materials and tourism infrastructure.
The three cases studies illustrated above focus on the discourses distributed by tourism agencies and state planning for profit generation, while regarding local ethnic minorities as passive recipients of state-led discourses. However, Oakes (1993, p.47) contends that this perspective fixates on a central-peripheral power relationship perpetuates an “idealistic construct of the past, based on a static conception of culture kept separate from a dynamic conception of economics”. Therefore, Oakes (1993; 2017) would urge these authors to reconceptualize ethnic identity as a constantly evolving entity that gets reinvented and negotiated by various actors under a broader context of political economy.
COMMODIFYING PERFORMANCES IN GUIZHOU
Another ethnic symbol is the traditional cultural dance, which has become increasingly commodified and performative to entertain tourists. To illustrate, ethnic villages in Qiandongnnan, Guizhou are known for their festivals and dances that are performed during different stages of the agricultural timetable to pray for a successful harvest (Li, Turner & Cui, 2016). However, with the rise in tourism and a shift from farm activities, local residents have expressed that “festivals, songs, and dances have lost their original meanings, and local residents nowadays take part more for money than for blessings” (Li et al., 2016, p.56).
In Xijiang Village, Qiandongnnan, a full-time performance team consisting of 30-40 performers are trained by a government-led tourism company and are scheduled to perform twice a day for tourists (Li et al., 2016). Rather than a tribute to the agricultural calendar, rituals and dances have become a task for economic income and performance to showcase exoticism (Li et al., 2016). By focusing on commodifying rare aspects of local ethnic identity that are drastically different from that of urban Han tourists, such as festivals and dances, the state and government-led tourism agencies perpetuate a discursive divide between the two identities even if these performances become inauthentic.
Importantly, villagers participate in the commodification of cultural performances through “everyday politics” of nuanced concessions and evasion. Li and colleagues’ (2016) research shows that villagers embrace the roles in cultural performances when income is stable and desirable, but withdraw from performing when other economic opportunities appear more urgent and promising. For example, in Basha village where tourism is less developed than in Xijiang village, organizers of the performance team express that it is much more difficult to find performers during off-peak tourism seasons and peak harvest seasons (Li et al., 2016).
In this sense, Li and colleagues (2016) would conceptualize the traditional ethnic performances and dances as damaged or losing its authenticity. However, Chio (2017) argues that cultural norms and traditions among local ethnic communities constantly evolve under contexts of socioeconomic opportunities. Rather than accepting government-led initiatives, rural ethnic minorities who participate in the local tourism industry also reconfigure their identity as they navigate through economic and cultural opportunities available to them.
Producing ethnic architecture
BAMBOO VS. CONCRETE HOUSES IN DAI GARDEN, XISHUANGBANNA
While imageries, material commodities, and cultural representations of rural ethnic minorities can travel around the nation, tourism is still a place-based economic activity that compels rural ethnic minorities’ lived spaces to be fixed in time and space (Crang, 2015). This preservation is driven by two contradicting fears. For one, rural ethnic tourism requires cultural preservation in order to guarantee a “purity” and “authenticity” of local ethnic culture to attract tourists. Conversely, as tourism brings economic development to allow rural ethnic minorities to modernize their lives, it ironically reduces the locality’s appeal for tourists.
To illustrate, the Dai Garden complex, one of the most promoted sites in Xishuangbanna, consists of five ethnic villages. Newly affluent families from tourism are reconfiguring their lifestyles by replacing traditional Dao bamboo houses in villages with concrete and brick homes that symbolize modernity (Li, 2004). The trend has become influential among village residents in the Dai Garden as poorer families often feel ashamed for being poor and borrow from relatives to build these homes (Yang et al., 2006). However, modernization runs counter to the mandate for cultural preservation which necessarily fetishizes exotic components of local ethnic culture. In response to this trend, management inside Dai Garden complex has even turned to the local city planning bureau to actively try to stop villagers from constructing concrete Han styled houses (Crang, 2015; Li, 2004). These cases demonstrate that the rural ethnic minority identity is actively crafted and preserved through political governance for the sake of sustaining the authenticity of ethnic culture and the lucrative tourism industry.
This contradiction calls to question what “authenticity” and “ethnic identity” means. As Oakes and Chio argue, rural ethnic identity is not intrinsic to any group of people; rather, it is a relational condition that emerges from negotiations under broader sociopolitical conditions. In the case mentioned before, the owner in Dai Garden insisted on his right to build his house on his own land, and 20% of the villagers echoed the sentiment that government should not interfere with their right to construct houses (Li, 2004).
Although Li (2004) argues that Dai Garden, as managed by entrepreneurs and government officials, reserves great influence to narrate and represent what is considered “authentic” Dai culture, the case study of housing replacement demonstrates that villagers are capable of resisting these impositions and reimagine their ethnic imagery.
ARCHITECTURAL RENDERINGS OF UPPER-JIDAO
In 2015, state officials announced a plan to build 6000 “model tourism villages” by 2020 as means to expand rural tourism under the “Build a New Socialist Countryside” mandate (Chio, 2017). These projects expect that “rationalization of village environments and the modernization of infrastructure” would simulate rural production, encourage civilization, and promote democratic rural administration (Abramson, 2016, p.158). Local governments, state officials, and international actors have considered rural ethnic tourism villages in Upper Jidao, where tourism had been sponsored by the provincial government with support from international consultants through the UN World Tourism Organization.
Chio (2017) bases her analysis on the 2012 proposal renderings, architectural drawings, and models of modernized rural ethnic tourism villages in Upper Jidao to reveal the social imaginaries and discursive binaries associated with rural ethnicity. The rendering illustrations came from a US architecture student, an art student from China, and a local company, each producing Upper-Jidao’s rural ethnic minority imagery in two main ways (Chio, 2017).
First, as a modernist project, the renderings of tourism villages defined features of “rural” and “ethnic” entity through visible and material built structure. The illustrations and resulting construction projects covered up existing buildings with new wooden planks, decorations, and slopping tile roofs over concrete ones (Chio, 2017). This embellishment masks the rural realities and presents an imagine ethnic rurality that in turn produces expectations about how Upper Jidao should appear.
Furthermore, all renderings presented tourism as a threat to “ethnic tradition” that must be managed and separated from “village life” (Chio, 2017; Xue, Kerstetter & Hunt, 2017). The renderings spatially removed hotels for tourism from the fields in the lived villages, despite a strong local push for tourism activity in the village area (Chio, 2017). This type of imaginary reflects the idea that tourism as a modern industry should be spatially and functionally separate from village life, thus reinforces the binary between urban modernity and ethnic rurality (Chio, 2017).
Despite the institutional influence of these designs, Chio (2017) suggests that the renderings have never successfully been implemented across the village because the ways in which residents live in and appropriate these spaces silently resist the modernist visions of these designs. Although they may not have the institutional power to delineate their own village, rural ethnic minorities express agency through non-commitment, lack of enthusiasm, and appropriation of constructed spaces for their own purposes (Chio, 2017). As there is a constant push and pull between outsiders’ and local ethnic minorities’ vision of what a tourist village should look like, Upper Jidao’s built form and residents’ sense of identity are produced in relation to opportunities within and outside the region.
GOVERNING THROUGH HERITAGE ARCHITECTURE IN DANJIANG
A similar refurbishment project happened in the town of Danjiang, Guizhou where urban plans redesigned concrete buildings that were previously considered “urban and modern” to incorporate characteristics of diaojiaolou, a traditional Miao village house whose architectural design is recognized by the state as an intangible cultural heritage. As a result, Peaked tile roofs, wooden posts, and lattice window coverings were plastered all over Danjiang town to produce a tourism scenic spot (Oakes, 2017). The project also constructed a public square filled with symbols that are traditionally associated with Miao ethnic minorities, including water wheels, wooden drums, and flour mills (Oakes, 2017). Ultimately, heritage was “rendered visible” through the architectural design of the town (Oakes, 2017).
Interviews with local officials reveal that town leaders firmly believe that a change in the lived environment could improve the moral quality of its citizens and bring about more civilization to the town; therefore, heritage architecture is mobilized as a tool to achieve modernization with Miao characteristics that distinguishes itself from the Han modernization, which officials regard as having too much western influence (Oakes, 2017). We can see elements of Foucauldian governmentality as discursive categories of heritage and ethnic differences get reproduced, reified, and materialized at the local scale. However, through observing how local ethnic communities use this heritage space, Oakes (2017) cautions us that the effectiveness of this power should not be overestimated.
Oakes (2017) observes that despite the town square being filled with ethnic and heritage symbols with the intention to guide the conduct of citizens, town residents, most of whom identify as Miao and grew up in more traditional rural villages, did not find the performative heritage symbols to be relevant. Far from performing activities associated with Miao traditions, town residents appropriated the space to conduct urban activities that could be found in any other urban square in China: Square dancing groups danced to pop songs; and children played with roller blades and electric mini-cars (Oakes, 2017). Therefore, despite institutional intentions to govern and define rural ethnic identity and direct their development to highlight heritage, local residents have the agency to appropriate new spaces for their own purposes and produce their identity in relation to their perception of broader socioeconomic trends of urbanity. This perspective challenges the structuralist notion that there is an intrinsic ethnic essence to rural ethnic minorities by highlighting their identity as a processual formation.
Conclusion
In this analysis, I have conceptualized domestic ethnic tourism as a site of contradictions that can help expose the constructedness of discursive binaries between Chinese urban Han and rural ethnic minorities. In the context of industrialization and modernization, domestic rural ethnic tourism in China aims to bring about economic development and modernization to rural ethnic minorities who are perceived to be socioeconomically underdeveloped. However, operating under state-constructed frameworks of ethnic categories and urban or rural household registration, the tourism industry necessarily draws upon perceived ethnic and cultural differences between rural ethnic minorities and urban Han to entice tourists. Consequently, tourism development marks rural ethnic minorities both as national subjects to improve and modernize, as well as exotic commodities to preserve, fetishize, consume.
I have outlined three theoretical frameworks through which scholars have examined the process through which rural ethnic minorities are discursively differentiated from the urban Han in tourism development. While the Foucauldian governmentality and Marxist value production frameworks focus on the power of government officials, Han entrepreneurs, and desire of tourists in directing the ways in which rural ethnic identity gets represented and disseminated, scholars like Oakes and Chio emphasize the role of rural ethnic minorities themselves in interacting with broader trends of socioeconomic conditions to respond to state-led discourses, thus contributing to the reinvention of their own identities. This perspective departs from structuralist and essentialist views and instead highlights the processual evolution of the sense of identity.
Drawing on these theoretical frameworks, I review case studies of various ethnic tour sites to explore the production of discursive binaries. Ethnic identity has been represented through the feminizing and exotifying ethnic minority people, reducing their culture into material symbols that often get appropriated, performing allegedly traditional rituals outside their cultural contexts, and displaying ethnic characteristics in architectural design. These representational strategies, often led by Han officials or outsiders, produce seemingly objective “truths” about rural ethnic minorities and discursively discriminate them from urban Han tourists. However, Chio, Oakes, and Li and colleagues argue that local ethnic minorities who participate in the tourism industry constantly challenge these discursive binaries. Whether they embrace, appropriate, express reluctance towards, or resist against institutionally directed framings of their identity, rural ethnic minorities are also agents who contribute to the constant negation and reinvention of their identity. Ultimately, this analysis has served to highlight the power relations and performative practices that produce and reify supposed dichotomies and social hierarchies between urban Han and rural ethnic minorities, and challenge the stability of these seemingly intrinsic social arrangements.
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