Ethnic minority tourism in China – Han perspectives of Tuva figures in a landscape

Abstract

Ethnic or indigenous tourism has attracted significant academic research, but with the exception of Taiwan's minorities much of the research in the English language journals has been dominated by the perspective of western tourists gazing upon the minorities. Additionally such studies have tended to be quantitative in nature. This paper studies the attitudes of Han tourists towards the Tuva minority of Kanas Scenic Area and reports results derived from 650 respondents. Equivalencies with western-based research are found, with about only 11 per cent of tourists having any significant interest in minority cultures, although evidence exists that Tuva and their Kazakh neighbours contribute to destination image as figures in the landscape – a landscape that is attractive to Han tourists for aesthetic and relaxation reasons. However, while simpler analysis is found to be effective in creating clusters, a causal model fails due to issues of auto-correlation and multi-collinearity, which problems may be pertinent in other studies that report the gaze of a majority on the culture of the minority. The implications of both findings and research method are discussed.

Introduction

A significant literature exists about tourism centred on the culture of ethnic minority peoples (e.g. Butler & Hinch, 2007; Robinson & Boniface, 1999; Ryan & Aicken, 2005; Zeppel, 2006) and a number of themes have been identified. Tourism has both been seen as a source of cultural commodification, and as an agent of modernisation as minorities grapple with denying, selecting or succumbing to different value systems dominated by western cultures based on market practices. Tourists interested in indigenous peoples' cultures have also been identified by socio-demographics (Chang, 2006), levels of interest (McKercher & du Cros, 2002; Moscardo & Pearce, 1998) and benefits sought (Yang, Wall, & Smith, 2006). Economic benefits have been noted (Scheyvens, 1999) and tourism has been credited with the rediscovery of cultural practices (Craik, 1995; Dyer, Aberdeen, & Schuler, 2003). The political consequences of indigenous tourism have also been commented upon by writers such as Ryan, Chang, and Huan (2007), who argue that it permits minority peoples to enter the mainstream of economic and political life within a country.

With reference to research on indigenous tourism, the literature has tended to be dominated by two features. The first is that a significant proportion of it has been quantitative in nature, based often on questionnaires self-completed by visitors. Second, in much of this literature the position that has been described has been one where tourists from a predominantly western culture have gazed upon peoples described as an ‘exotic other’ (Yang, 2011) – a gaze informed by the tourists' own cultural traditions which have included those of the ‘noble savage’ and possibly a feeling that societies based in pre-industrial patterns of life have retained values lost to their modern and post-modern contemporaries (Robinson & Boniface, 1999). There is, in the English language literature, less written about how the newly enriched Han tourists of China regard tourism product based upon Chinese ethnic minorities, or how those minorities respond. This study presents findings from an empirical study of Han visitors to the Kanas Scenic Area of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. It provides evidence to support the contention of McKercher and du Cros (2002) that few tourists are purposefully seeking a cultural experience, but does so in a very different context and form of data set. McKercher and du Cros (2002) were studying visitors to Hong Kong and used data derived from a sample of 2066 international tourists departing from Hong Kong International Airport. This study is based upon a rural setting far from significant urban centres of population. The nature of tourism in the villages of the Kanas has been described by Wang, Yang, Chen, Yang, and Li (2010). The tourists are primarily accommodated in hotel resort complexes from which a series of day trip activities are organised, primarily to scenic areas, but also to small villages occupied by Tuva and Kazakh peoples. These day trips are thus dominated by package tours, but free independent travellers are also present as revealed by observation and survey data. The data were collected by the first author during the summer tourist season of May to September while she was living throughout the year for her PhD study. The total sample shown in Table 1 comprised of 650 useable responses representing 93 per cent of those approached.

The research questions are:

• To what extent is the culture of local minority people important as a motive for Han tourists visiting Kanas Scenic Area?

• To what extent is there an interaction between visitors and local minority peoples in Kanas Scenic Area?

• To what extent does that interaction contribute to the visitor evaluation of their visit to Kanas Scenic Area?

• What conclusions may be drawn from this example of the nature of tourism based on the culture of minority peoples in China?