I’ve not posted, because I’ve not had much to report.

Did make a tower of a burger though.

Its obvious, though, I’m no food photographer.

I was in Shanghai last weekend with a visiting colleague. The day was lovely. Warm, relatively clear.

We went to a new art and cafe district (Taikang Lu) to look at a photographer’s studio, wander a little and have a cold beer. The area is great and has a wonderful atmosphere. People wander around looking in the stores of artisans and sit in- or out-doors in a large number of cafes and restaurants.

During our beer, in one of the key intersections a couple decided to pose for their wedding photographs. The two of them, photographer and two photographer’s assistants made a small spectacle, with people banked up in the three small feeding streets politely waiting and not wanting to interrupt the photography.

Since they were being inconvenienced, quite a number of passers by also took photographs.

I took one as well. The groom is in the front left with his back to the camera (so his untucked shirt cannot be seen). One of the photographer’s assistants is out-of-site behind the groom as a point of focus for the brides attempt to stare dreamily into the distance.

Yesterday afternoon, after arriving and settling in my hotel, I wandered the central city area and caught up on some necessary shopping — a rugby top because it is cooler here than I expected and a small card wallet to replace the one I lost in Shanghai, the cards will have to wait until I return to the UK.

I did my shopping in some of the famous Japanese department stores. The service was something to admire. It reminded me why Japan is an essential visit for anyone studying marketing, and retail in particular.

I tried my luck for dinner at a nice looking restaurant and tried my luck with a set meal and some sake. All went very well despite the lack of language. It seems my buddy’s convention that it is hard to find a bad meal in Japan may be true. The highlight was some sushi roll served a little warm with some warm, sweetish sauce.

The central city area is rather nice, a grid of small streets bounded by much bigger main ones. The small streets are quite narrow and pleasantly busy.

Today was spent mostly waking in the old town, on the edge of the modern central city and one of the only traditional city centres left untouched by second world war bombing.

The district is full of small, mostly wooden houses. People still live in some of there, others are restaurants. I also wandered around the grounds of a lovely hillside park overlooking the city and a temple. The temples have an important history here, being bases for fighting forces throughout the city’s long history.

Wandering through one narrow landway, I chanced upon a sudden scuffle of non-professional photographers (sorry, not sure how to spell the ‘a’ word. I stood back to see what the little crowd was interested in. It turned out to be a procession of female traditional Japanese opera singers in their full makeup and clothing. They entered the rear of a little traditional theatre. The photographers seem to have been waiting, and gave the impression of being quite dedicated fans. One, given his age, enthusiasm and old camera may have been coming each day to this spot for decades.

I also spent some time wandering the shops. I found two specialist second hand camera stores. Japan seems to have quite a vibrant second hand market for expensive but somewhat fashionable goods (as does Singapore). Cameras, watches, pens, etc. I’ve not got the energy to explore why this might be, enough to say its quite intriguing, and an education to see an almost museum quality collection of cameras.

More notable are the artisans’ stores, selling various fine goods developed by the famous merchants and tradesmen of the city over centuries. There include beautiful parasolls and umbrellas, some textiles and fine sweets (at least that I have read about and discovered so far). Given the refined nature of some of the goods I examined (and the price), I was not surprised to learn that, some artisans’ families have been in their field for upto 20 generations.

I’m back in the office and at work, so don’t have time again to update the blog regularly (at least until the lecture preparation is done, email cleared and some meetings out of the way).

However, I’ll try during the odd break to post a photograph or two from the trip.

This is the first one, its of the Stone Forest outside Kunming.

You can read the details of the visit to the Stone Forest here:

The Stone Forest Proper

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.

Yesterday we arrived in Lijiang. From my twitters, you’ll see that it is a very scenic place, like Kunming, sitting on a mountain plateau. Unlike Kunming, the mountains are visible all around.

The main part of the commercial city proper seems quite small, having, even, a dusty country town feel to it. Very low rise, with only very few buildings over 4 or 5 stories, perhaps to keep the view.

The central avenue is three lanes either way, lines with buildings and terminating, not in some suburban sprawl, but in a snow capped mountain.

Our hotel, a sprawling complex of very nice villas, is on the outskirts of town, overlooked by the biggest of the nearby mountains. It was amazing to walk back from breakfast and see it towering over me.

Interestingly, many woman workers visible, diving taxis, working on roadwork crews and on building sites at the hotel. I have no idea why this is the case, perhaps the men have moved to larger cities for other work. Perhaps my observations to slight and not sufficient to judge.

The key tourist attraction is the old town, which, rather than being demolished has become what seems to be the city’s key industry. Very large by old town standards (we wandered for 6 hours), it consists of narrow streets and streams, lined with restaurants, stores selling traditional local wares and tourist tat.

The restaurants and shops are housed in stone and tile buildings with seemingly typical oriental ornaments. They wind in ways suggestive of some Greek islands (say, Hydra or Mykinos).

The town seems part cultural heritage site and part ethnic minority theme park. While the atmosphere was great, mildly festive even, I also thought I was playing part in some strange play, turning a local culture into a performance. Whereas once the local crafts would have been made for use by the maker and barter, they are now sold to tourists. Dances once performed for pleasure now performed for the pleasure of paying customers. People like me, of course, are complicit, however discretely we attempt to photograph.

While this reflection does leave something of a wary regret, I think the colour and atmosphere override it. Hopefully, this balance can be maintained and the old town can remain, as it seems so far, an exemplar of Chinese tourism management.

Yesterday was quite a lazy day too. It was raining so our walking options were limited.

We found a coffee shop for a late breakfast then took a taxi and wandered around the central area with some pagodas and a mosque. Spent a chunk of the late afternoon drinking tea and reading my novel. I tried Yunnan brown tea, which sounds altogether more illicit. Tasted more like English breakfast than other fermented teas I’ve had in China.

Dinner was taken at a busy street-side restaurant. We had a dry chicken dish served in piles of roasted chili, cumin and other highly aromatic, but unknown (to me at least), spices that were somewhat reminiscent to those in Xi’an. This dish is also served at the Robin Hood (the restaurant at the staff hotel at UNNC). Its one of my prefered dishes there but now will seem somewhat bland. Also had a spicy tofu dish and some delicious spinach.

While I enjoyed the food a lot, I suspect it was rather more spicy than I have become accustom, and I felt briefly a little faint and spacey afterward.

In all a relaxed way to spend Sunday, and it (along with early nights) has proved, despite the chilli episode, helpful in restoring my energy and health.

This is being penned, so to speak, in the hotel car on the was the the Stone Forest. Fingers crossed no language problems and some interesting photographs to post in due course, there had better be, I’m lugging my tripod along for the journey.

Not much time to post news, thoughts or photographs unfortunately. As you may have seen from my twitter posts the last week has taken me quite some distance (Ningbo, Yiwu, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Xi’an, Beijing and back to Ningbo). Tomorrow, I’m back to Shanghai for another education fair.

I have not had time to go through even the few photographs from my trip in any detail and didn’t even have the time to take any in Beijing (the loss of a small, but crucial part of my tripod is another, annoying, issue).

I did manage to sneak this photograph of steamed bun production in Xi’an. As I posted from my iPod, the food there is really quite different to here in the southern part of China. I hope my students will enjoy seeing, hearing and smelling the differences — quite valuable to realise that China is a very large and diverse country.

The steamed buns appeared in several large stacks of trays, five trays appear in this shot and each stack was probably twice as high. You can get a sense of the number of buns produced. When I came back about an hour later I managed to buy one of the very last ones.

Hopefully in about two weeks, I’ll have time to update a few more photographs.

Having settled in my room in the staff hotel at the university in Ningbo, I’ve had a chance to quickly go through my photos to put up some of the Shanghai new year crowds I mentioned in the last post.

This photo shows the crowds on Nanjing Lu (street), the long pedestrianised shopping precinct.

The road was packed with people enjoying the cold, but mostly clear evening. The atmosphere was very nice. Some, but by no means all of the shops were open, so I think people were more enjoying their day off and spending time ambling with friends and family than out with any great purpose.

Xintiandi is a very upmarket bar and restaurant area, ironically centred around the school were the CCP had one of their first meetings. My colleague and I passed through the area twice and it was relatively quite, though on one day there were some men performing with a Chinese dragon.

Like Nanjing Lu, but unlike Xintiandi, the retail area built in traditional style near the old town was also very busy. Here most of the shops were open and people were eating traditional foods (and many street food vendors were in sight). The area was adorned with Chinese lanterns. As much as the density of people with the colours was intriguing, it was far too crowded for my liking. I will return though, the area has a number of excellent dumpling stores.

I’ve arrived in Shanghai, and am observing lunar new year celebrations. I had hoped to do this last year but the flu got in the way.

The atmosphere is lovely and relaxed. Most of the shops are closed but enough is open for people to be buying gifts, hampers of fruits seem common.

Those not shopping and visiting freinds and relatives and are out enjoying the winter sun seem to be just relaxing. Nanjing Road and Old Town are packed. Huahai Lu, Changle Lu and Xintiandi are very quiet.

Photos will be posted once I’m settled in Ningbo.