City Image Show And Traveler Perception

This paper focuses on the different exhibitions of the city image which are presented in the travel guidebooks of Shanghai and the travelers’perceptions. As the author gets some information about the travelers’ perceptions, he finds that it has a big gap about Shanghai’s image, which is exhibited in the guidebooks and in the travelers’ descriptions. More specifically speaking, in the guidebooks for Shanghai, the most distinguishing feature of city image is prosperous and modern, at the same time the entertainment culture and consumption culture are thriving. So the exhibitions in the guidebooks tend to simplify Shanghai’s city image. On the contrary, the image in travelers’eyes doesn’t matches to that in the guidebooks. To Chinese travelers, except prosperity, darkness, wars and class differences exist at the same time. But in their descriptions, they tend to transform the prosperity and modernity into potential dangers. And this phenomenon shows the travelers’ national consciousness and patriotism. The author takes the journalists in China as the chief object for foreign travelers. They gaze this city from an external standpoint, so their opinions are based on the dual narrative. They concern about the different national identity between the east and the west. To be journalists, they pay more attentions to what happens in Shanghai and the powers’change of two parties in the1930s. Therefore, either the descriptions of Chinese travelers or the travelers’from overseas, it shows that the city image and urban culture is diversified. So it is suggested that Shanghai’s city image is described, constructed and remembered by means of selective exhibitions in the guidebooks and travelers’experiences, and then it shows the magic and multiple aspects of Shanghai’s city image.