Beyond the everyday? Rethinking place meanings in tourism

ABSTRACT

Existing tourism scholarship on place meanings seems to retain an underlying assumption of a contradiction between tourist places and the mundane world. In contrast, this paper contends that the production of the meanings of tourist places is also closely related to everyday life. To make its case, it interrogates the creation of meanings of two scenic sites of Tianya Haijiao and Nanshan in Sanya, a famous coastal destination in southern China. Although both scenic sites have been recently developed, their significance stems from historical and cultural meanings in traditional Chinese culture, which are frequently communicated in people's daily conversations and practices. Besides, the meanings of the tourist sites are neither fixed by legitimate discourses nor dominated by tourism publicity; they are continuously shaped by wider socio-spatial events in mundane societies and re-interpreted through tourism mobilities in accordance with tourists’ everyday concerns. This paper echoes the ‘new mobilities turn’ in tourism studies and contributes to the discussions of the mundaneness of tourist places.

摘要

现有旅游研究似乎一直有一个潜在的假设, 旅游地方与世俗世界存在冲突。与此相反, 本文认为旅游地方意义的生产与日常生活密切相关。为了证明这个 观点, 本文调查了中国南部著名海滨旅游目的地三亚的天涯海角和南山两个旅游区的意义生产。尽管两个旅游区的都是最近才开发, 但是他们的价值都源于中国传统文化中的历史文化意义。这种历史文化意义经常在人们日常谈话与实践中交流。另外, 这两个旅游区的意义既不被正统的话语所限定的, 也不被旅游宣传所主导。他们不断地被世俗社会中的社会事件所塑造, 同时被与旅游者日常关切密切相关的旅游移动性所反复解读。本文呼应了旅游研究中的‘新移动转向’, 并且有助于讨论旅游地方的日常性。

KEYWORDS:

• Tourist place
• meaning
• everyday life
• tourism mobilities
• myth
• China

关键词:

• 旅游地方
• 意义
• 日常生活
• 旅游移动
• 神话
• 中国

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Chris McMorran for his insightful remarks and suggestions for the early draft of this paper. We also want to thank three anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In China, tourist sites are categorized into star-rated and unauthorized scenic spots, and the best tourism attraction is given as five star rating by the government.

2. 1 Li is about 500 m.

3. 1 Yuan is about 0.16 US dollar.

4. According to the official website of Tianya Haijiao tourism zone, this place, like many other tourist sites, has received some important Chinese politicians. Many tourists do not spend time gaining these information by themselves, but rely on tour guides’ introduction and their temporal experiences in this place.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jingfu Chen

Jingfu Chen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore. His research interest focuses on the politics of everyday mobilities, and his recent work concerns leisure, everyday mobilities and power in China.

Ningning Chen

Ningning Chen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of geography, National University of Singapore. Her research interests are socio-cultural geographies of rural China, and geographies of religion and sacred space. Her current research is about lineage spaces in contemporary rural China.