The Sociocultural Changes Of Beijing Hutong And The Development Of Tourism

Beijing, the world-class metropolis of the 21st Century, still has old traditional folk alley - hutong. Hutong is seemingly plain and not luxurious, but retains a long history of Beijing. It takes an important position in the rich, long, and splendid history of Beijing. In the 90's of the 20th Century, with a rapid change in society and culture, hutong played a traditional, historical cultural heritage with thick flavor of Beijing, and began to attract attention. In this modern age of a lot of changes, if it were not for this slow, tardy attention, even more hutongs had disappeared.This study is to review how hutong and siheyuan (4-building surrounded garden), which had not been the objects of national conservation, came to attract the attention of the authorities concerned in the 90's of the 20th Century, and became the objects of development and conservation, and to what direction such conservation and development should go.As a foreigner, the writer studied hutong culture in terms of cultural anthropology at the sight angle of an exterior observer. Study of other cultures is the traditional research object of cultural anthropology. While comparative studying in cultural anthropology, this kind of study conducted from the outside is greatly instrumental to the study of interior researches. The writer hopes this study would help national scholars of China to study their own culture in some respects.Chapter 1 discusses the origin of Beijing hutong culture and its social, cultural change centering on historical literatures systematically.Chapter 2 describes Shichahai Natural Conservation out of historical, cultural reserve areas; introduces rich tourism resources of the district; discusses the change of the history of the district, features of each era and contemporary conservation and development status of the district; and observes the meaning Shichahai has retained over the history of cultural exchange between Korea and China. In this chapter, the writer points out that Shichahai is not only paragon of Beijing hutong but also the symbol of culture with thick flavor of Beijing.Chapter 3 mainly discusses the phenomenon that hutong and siheyuan in the Shichahai Natural Conservation have become historical and cultural heritage and come to attention. Particularly, the writer has clarified how siheyuan has got attraction in the residence culture, foreigners' curiosity and particular attention and opined the issues of conservation and development of civil cultural heritage.Chapter 4 discusses the birth and development courses of hutong trip, and new relationship between general citizens and resident committee in hutong. Here, the writer analyzed the contemporary people's consciousness of their own culture and the relationship between such consciousness and economy. Although hutong trip has a certain economic effect, there are a lot of problems to solve. We can't neglect the importance of hutong trip in the respect of culture. In the course of solving the problems in the tourism industry such as hutong trip, it would be possible to find out a way to conserve and develop hutong district.As mentioned above, Chapters 1 and 2 analyze history of Beijing hutong and Shichahai Natural Conservation, and Chapters 3 and 4 analyze the contemporary hutong culture being currently formed.The cultural anthropology features microanalysis of history and contemporary society. The contemporary academic circles also engage in a broad research on the formal history and hidden history by employing such research method of cultural anthropology. This shows that people start to handle the issues that have not been dealt with before. Comparing with the research on the grand culture already recognized earlier, the research on hutong culture is a comparatively unacquainted area. Furthermore, people are lacking awareness thereof now. Conservation of civil culturalheritage and non-material cultural heritage is not sufficiently thought much of. The writer asserts that the awareness of traditional culture sho...