Poetry and the tourist being-in-the-world: connotations behind the Tang Poetry

ABSTRACT

Poetry discloses the fundamentals of truths and values about lives. Tourism in its purpose enhances tourists’ well-being through inhabiting the environments of poetics and authenticity compared to everydayness. This study employs a hermeneutic phenomenological analysis of Three Hundred Tang Poems, guided by Heidegger’s ideas of Dasein and being-in-the-world, to explore the intrinsic connection between poetry and tourism. This study also proposes a conceptual framework of ‘tourist being-in-the-world’. Through the manual qualitative identification method, the findings reveal that: (a) the interpretation of the tourism essence should be grounded on the existential state of human being; (b) tourist being-in-the-world should be considered as a constitution of Dasein, as the most connotations in Three Hundred Tang Poems are associated with tourism (86.9%). Seeing life as a journey, men are born tourists in philosophy, who make sense of the experience of a tourist being-in-the-world (the appearance of authentic selves). Our findings elucidate how tourism destinations were depicted, manifested, and transcended by the Tang Poetry and highlight that the traditional Eastern ideologies of ‘nature as humanity’ and ‘humanized nature in the sense of spirituality’ were embedded in tourism.

KEYWORDS:

• Poetry
• Dasein
• being-in-the-world
• tourist being-in-the-world
• hermeneutic phenomenology
• Three Hundred Tang Poems

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Three Hundred Tang Poems was used for the research described in the article that can be attained by anyone through library or internet.

Additional information

Funding

The whole work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China to Shien Zhong (No. 41971174).

Notes on contributors

Shien Zhong

Shien Zhong is an associate professor in School of Business Administration at Nanjing University of Finance and Economics. His research interests include tourism culture, children’s and family tourism, theme park, and heritage tourism. Email: [email protected].

Hongsong Peng

Hongsong Peng is an assistant professor in the School of Business Administration at Nanjing University of Finance and Economics. His research interests include tourism geography, tourism environmental impact, and tourism planning. Email: [email protected].

Peizhe Li

Peizhe Li is a research assistant in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at North Carolina State University. His research interests include climate adaptation planning for cultural heritages, tourists’ stress and coping. Email: [email protected].

Xiao Xiao

Xiao Xiao is an assistant professor in the School of Community Resources and Development at Arizona State University. Her research interests include climate adaptation planning for parks and recreation areas and transportation management in parks and protected areas. Email: [email protected].