Research On Tourism Development And Protection Of Ancient Ethnic Village Of Taoping Based On Cultural Authenticity

Ethnic Tourism is an economic activity and also a cultural activity. On the one hand, the development of Ethnic tourism brings about many positive impacts on tourist site, such as bringing economic benefits, bringing employment opportunities, promoting cultural exchanges with the outside world. On the other hand, ethnic tourism also brings about some negative impact, such as distortion of local culture, assimilation of ethnic culture, over-commercialization of ethnic resort. Against this background, "authenticity" has become an issue, which triggers a lot of concern from foreign and domestic scholars."Authenticity"has great significance in development and protection of ethnic tourism. With the push of tourism, commercialization of ethnic is inevitable, only the thought of"authenticity"could help developers of ethnic tourism to find a balance between commercialization and protection of ethnic culture. "Authenticity" should be the core and principle of ethnic culture protection,"authenticity"should be the method that runs though the whole process of tourism development and planning.To make a summary of research results of foreign scholars, authenticity has been discussed mainly through four aspects: objectivism, constructivism, post-modernism and existentialism. Objectivism claims that authenticity is the nature of tourism attractions, and there is an absolute and objective criterion used to measure authenticity; constructivism believes that"authenticity"is the result of social construction,concept of authenticity is changing constantly, it emphasizes perception difference on the basis of objective authenticity; post-modernism totally deny the concept of"authenticity"; existential authenticity means tourists feel themselves to be true, they find their"real self". Chinese scholars'study on authenticity is mainly about the introduction, conclusion and further study of results of foreign scholars, and about empirical studies of domestic cases.The author believes that ethnic tourism is constructed by tourism object and subject. Both authenticity of toured object and authentic perception of tourists should be emphasized during the process of development. In this article, objective authenticity and perceived authenticity of tourists were studied. This article gives a detailed description on the current"authenticity"status of the tourist site itself, the study shows that the commercialization of the various cultural elements of the ancient village of Taoping has both positive impact and negative impact. Questionnaire survey and interviews of tourists also shows that tourists require different type of authenticity from different ethnic culture, the results indicates that only if the different ethnic culture reflect the authenticity required by tourists, tourists'perception of authenticity could be enhanced."Cultural Island"and excessive"staged authenticity"are not conducive to the development of ethnic tourism. Authentic traditional culture in ethnic tourism should be referring to a culture that can maintain the core elements of traditional culture during the process of cultural commercialization. The purpose of developing an ethnic tourist site is to restore the culture rationally for tourists without losing its original culture.The ultimate goal of cultural commercialization is to make tourists and the true culture closest to each other without endangering the cultural authenticity. Some proposals on culture protection, tourism development, restoration and reconstruction after the earthquake have been put forward according to"authenticity"principles.