Commercial tourism in China as an industry is still in its infancy. It is an industry, though, that has much potential and is being actively developed by Chinese national, provincial and local governments.

There is much worth seeing for both domestic and international tourists. China has a diverse landscape, with a long coastline, deserts and mountains. An equally rich and diverse range of minority cultures makes travelling in China provides a linguistic, visual, artistic and gastronomic adventure. China’s long and often troubled history and colourful mythology provides the industry with the potential to create sites of multi dimensional (intellectual and emotional, as well as visual, culinary, etc) engagement.

However, currently, extracting this richness can be a challenge without thorough preparation. Even then, a native speaking friend or guide is needed to fill in the blanks left by local traditions, lack of signs, etc.

For international tourists, the challenge for Chinese tourist authorities and businesses is how to create a sense of manageable authenticity: to profit from enabling foreigners to experience the richness of China without condemning them to crass organised tours. This challenge is not an easy one to meet, because it must be balanced with the, perhaps different, needs and wants of domestic tourist.

I have seen examples of the struggle to balance there competing objectives For example, at the Terracotta Army site in Xi’an, inside the compound men pulled scale replicas wrapped in newspaper from inside their shirts offering them for sale. Immediately outside the compound main exit the tourist gift shops were flanked by a wall bedecked with an enormous advertisement for laundry detergent. While the site probably deserves its label as the eighth wonder of the world, some more gravitas would seems appropriate.

In a similar vein, there is a strong tradition here of asking, perhaps of result of a long history of changing circumstances and limited documentation of policies and procedures. However, this does not translate well for international tourists, who are either wanting to be both more independent and less faced with ambiguity and/or lack the capacity to ask. Frequently, signs and machine translated and it is a struggle to understand them. This is a great pity in a country that produces excellent foreign language graduates at the international studies universities.

These observations are not, of course, reflections of any ill will. The Chinese are justly proud of much of their country’s history, culture and landscape. But, all of us struggle to understand those who are embedded in different traditions and have developed different expectations. Tourism is a way to help overcome this, to negotiate a shared understanding. International tourism in China, and, I dare to guess international tourism for Chinese, is just beginning this negotiation (much as the world struggled to work out how to accommodate Japanese tourism some year ago). Parts of Lijiang and the surrounding villages demonstrate that this can be done in ways that are sensitive to local traditions, and the need to keep then alive both for greater humanitarian and economic ends.

Lurking in these observations is germinating a research idea, and with practical application. Given that the Chinese governments (national, provincial, local) are trying to develop both domestic and international tourism. It strikes me that there is a lot of opportunity for developing (and diffusing) better understanding of comparative conceptualisations of travel, as applied to international and domestic tourism in China. Such research would clearly have a strong empirical aspect, documenting the, probably changing, rational and expectations of tourists and potential in China.

Good academic research should not just be empirical (consultants can be left to do that alone). Rather, good academic research needs to critically engage with the underlying theories and methods that frame empirical work. An examination of existing ways of categorising tourist would be needed. Similarly, cross cultural research is always good at providing data to challenge existing ways of theorising interaction with the world.

There is also room for some directed research and knowledge transfer. For example, UK cultural sites have been good at creating narratives around their artifacts and using that narrative to create more powerful (and revenue generating) engagement. Perhaps some form of knowledge transfer partnership (KTP) could be deployed. During my travels I couldn’t noticing that British tourists in China seem rather smaller proportion than the country’s wealth, population and propensity to travel would suggest. Perhaps some form of KTP would help UK tourists understand better this exciting and important country.

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Posted by email from my mobile phone.