The Interpretation Of Tourism Festivals And Special Events Cultures, And Their Social And Cultural Impacts On Community

Tourism activity is a progress of symbolization. Tourism festivals and special events (TFSEs) are important activities in tourism destination communities. They are symbolized displays of tourism cultures. To study tourism in views of semiotics is a way in particular for tourism and tourism culture research, which is the base of interpretation of TFSE culture and of the study of their social and cultural impacts on communities.TFSE originated from traditional festival. Festival has the similar heavenliness and rite-liking characters as religion, and it is the sublimation of daily life cultures. Traditional festival decided the contents, styles and the spirits of modern TFSE being. TFSE is a kind of popular entertainment and performance whose hold time is unfixed. It displays the regional cultures and considers the needs of residents and visitors. It is a kind of tourism product to attract more attendees as possible. It is updated at times to meet the needs of visitors.Going with lots of symbols creations in TFSE, it makes sharp impacts on spirits of traditional festivals. TFSE becomes a symbol of performance, a live performance. The symbols in TFSE are the media of host-guest interactions. The styles and contents of TFSE are adjusted and deducted, which in turn affect the actions of residents. The new created cultures and the original cultures are interacted with each other in cycle, and they created a new landscape and lifestyle of the tourism destinations. In TFSE, symbols and social space are integrated. It concluded from a case study of fire dragon festival in Luodai old town that the successful holding of TFSE accelerated the culture consciousness and self-identities of residents greatly, it enriched the leisure life of community, improved the quality of life, infrastructure and environments, but that it didn't let the residents take more attentions to the outside world, and that the residents didn't care about the negative impacts such as fire danger, social security disorder, traffic congestions and environmental pollutions. The residents agreed the protection of dragon dance and the creation of it also, which reflect the comprehensive spirits of culture. They cared about the economic interests. The holding of TFSE can also upgrade the values of the old town.For the sustainable development of FSE tourism, this paper used "the front stage, the purdah, and the back stage" theory to call the self-rouse of their culture. And then, it used project management theory and put forward some approaches for marketing, finance, risk, and logistics management. The social functions of FSE tourism was neglected by researchers, and these functions could make FSE tourism become a new treatment for the consequence of modernity. This paper put forward some basic stratagems for development of FSE tourism.This paper views that we should combination the etic and emic methods, against the method-oriented way, understand the interpretation of cultures in views of metaphor, and use interdisciplinary methods. So this paper mixed participant ethnography methods and questionnaire research methods. Then it used structural equation model and text analysis methods to integrate the results.This paper emphasized the interpretation of TFSE cultures, the social and cultural impacts of TFSE on communities, and put forward some countermeasures, which are important for the sustainable development of FSE tourism on base of possible reaction of the community. It is also good for cultures inheritance, development, creations, and transcendence.