A Landscape of Travel: The Work of Tourism in Rural Ethnic China

327 Pages·2014·2.392 MB·English

by  Jenny T. Chio

Studies on Ethnic Groups in China
Stevan Harrell, Editor
Studies on Ethnic Groups in China
Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers, edited by Stevan Harrell
Guest People: Hakka Identity in China and Abroad, edited by Nicole Constable
Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China,
by Jonathan N. Lipman
Lessons in Being Chinese:
Minority Education and Ethnic Identity in Southwest China,
by Mette Halskov Hansen
Manchus and Han: Ethnic Relations and Political
Power in Late Qing and Early Republican China, 1861– 1928,
by Edward J. M. Rhoads
Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China, by Stevan Harrell
Governing China’s Multiethnic Frontiers, edited by Morris Rossabi
On the Margins of Tibet: Cultural Survival on the Sino-Tibetan Frontier,
by Åshild Kolås and Monika P. Thowsen
The Art of Ethnography: A Chinese “Miao Album,”
translation by David M. Deal and Laura Hostetler
Doing Business in Rural China: Liangshan’s New Ethnic Entrepreneurs,
by Thomas Heberer
Communist Multiculturalism: Ethnic Revival in Southwest China,
by Susan K. McCarthy
Religious Revival in the Tibetan Borderlands: The Premi of Southwest China,
by Koen Wellens
In the Land of the Eastern Queendom:
The Politics of Gender and Ethnicity on the Sino-Tibetan Border,
by Tenzin Jinba
Empire and Identity in Guizhou: Local Resistance to Qing Expansion,
by Jodi L. Weinstein
China’s New Socialist Countryside: Modernity Arrives in the Nu River Valley,
by Russell Harwood
Mapping Shangrila: Contested Landscapes in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands,
edited by Emily T. Yeh and Chris Coggins
A Landscape of Travel: The Work of Tourism in Rural Ethnic China, by Jenny Chio
A LAndscAp e of TrAveL
The Work of Tourism in Rural Ethnic China
jenny chio
university of washington press | seattle & london
Publication of this book was supported by a generous grant from the
Association for Asian Studies First Book Subvention Program.
© 2014 by the University of Washington Press
Printed and bound in the United States of America
Composed in Minion Pro, typeface designed by Robert Slimbach
17 16 15 14 5 4 3 2 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
University of Washington Press
PO Box 50096, Seattle, WA 98145, USA
www.washington.edu/uwpress
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chio, Jenny.
A landscape of travel : the work of tourism
in rural ethnic China / Jenny Chio.
p. cm.
(Studies on ethnic groups in China)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-295-99365-2 (cloth : alk. paper);
ISBN 978-0-295-99366-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Rural tourism—China. 2. Ethnicity—China. 3. China—Ethnic
relations. 4. China—Rural conditions. I. Title.
G155.C55C4828 2014
338.4'79151—dc23
2013046931
The paper used in this publication is acid-free and meets the minimum
requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—
8
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48– 1984.
To Teacher Pan, C. Q., W. Q.,
and their families in Upper Jidao
and
the families of Yulong, Yueliang Wan,
and Hong Lajiao guesthouses in Ping’an.
Thank you.

conTenTs
Foreword by Stevan Harrell ix
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xxix
Map of China 2
Introduction
Landscape, Mobility, Visuality 3
1 | Similar, with Minor Differences
A Tale of Two Villages 21
2 | Peasant Family Happiness
A New Socialist Countryside 73
3 | Leave the Fields without Leaving the Countryside
The Orders of Mobility 101
4 | “Take a Picture with Us”
The Politics of Appearance 133
5 | The Ability to Be Different
Socialities and Subjectivities 173
Conclusion
Upper Jidao, Meet Ping’an 209
Glossary of Chinese Characters 233
Notes 237
References 261
Index 285
foreword
Stevan Harrell
Jenny Chio’s A Landscape of Travel is about China becoming a nation
that travels. Its rural workers by the hundreds of millions travel yearly
to the cities to make clothes, to build skyscrapers, to serve diners, and to
clean hotel rooms. Its consumers bought almost seventeen million cars in
2012, causing both monumental traffic jams and perhaps the world’s worst
urban air pollution. Its premier high-speed train now takes travelers from
Beijing to Guangzhou in eight hours, while its freeways are engineering
marvels, allowing travelers to glide through, rather than over or around,
formidable mountain ranges.
One way of traveling is to be a tourist, and China is also becoming a
nation that tours. In 2010 Chinese tourists took an estimated 2.1 billion
domestic tourist trips. They go to big cities to see historical and nationalist
sites; they go to national parks and nature reserves to see scenery and to
escape the city; they even go to the countryside to experience nostalgically
that rough rural life that their grandparents and today’s migrant workers
have fought so hard to escape. And increasingly, they go to China’s eth-
nic minority towns and villages to experience difference: the difference
between their fast-paced, urban life and the bucolic rhythms of a longed-
for simpler time; the difference between their cosmopolitan world, which
can be a little gray, and the local world replete with colorful songs, dances,
and clothing; the difference between their own affluence, with its noise
ix