Religious Symbols Function Of Cognition: Different Perspectives Of Tourists And Religious Believers

There have been debates over whether pilgrimage is tourism, and whether pilgrims are tourists in the realm of the study in the fundamental theories of tourism. Different opinions are reflected behind the debates on what the essence of tourism is, how to define tourism and tourists. Therefore, this paper aims to clarify the relations between the pilgrims and tourists, as to contribute to the research in the fundamental theories of tourism.Semiotics, to some extent, has been applied to the tourism research. According to some semeiotic ideas, the world of tour is full of various signs. Tourists acquire varieties of experiences through the choice and decoding of such signs. This paper tries to use the semeiotic methodology to look into such questions as which signs the pilgrims and tourists may choose when entering the religious sites, how these signs are deciphered and what kind of experiences are obtained in the process, so as to figure out the relation between tourists and pilgrims.This research is based on the Buddhism tours in some Han residences and uses the qualitative analysis method. The paper, firstly, by referring to the previous theoretical classification and the characteristics of the Chinese Buddhism belief, classifies the study objects into three kinds of people: common tourists, pilgrims and converts. Then, according to the principle of objective sampling, 20 interviewees are selected, with each having a 1-to-2-hour interview on the basis of a semi-structural interview outline laid out earlier.Based on the encoding of the above interview data, this paper selects 8 Buddhism signs and analyzes the different cognitions of these signs by the three kinds of people. The results reveal that there exist abundant misperceptions and incomplete perceptions in common tourists' cognition of the religious signs; whereas, the degree of misperception and incomplete perception among the pilgrims are lower than the common tourists; converts gain the full perceptions. The different perceptions of these religious signs, thus lead to different experiences among these three kinds of people. The common tourists focus upon sightseeing, enjoying the cultures so as to obtain the experience of the secular joy. The divine religious experience they get is usually marginal, which is mainly motivated by the sacred air of the temples or the behaviors of the pious pilgrims and converts. However, the pilgrims are utilitarian-purposed, by burning incenses, making vows, praying to Buddha for blessings. Their experience is religious and sacred kind, which is activated by their reverence to Buddha's supernatural power and theurgy. Pilgrims seldom or never value the experience of the secular joy those tourists get through sightseeing and enjoying cultures. In contrast, converts mainly go to those religious sites to practice Buddhism, and what they get is sacred experience. They are impelled by the Buddha's spirit and therefore produce the divine experience within themselves. Compared with tourists and pilgrims, they don't pay any attention to the experience of the secular joy via sightseeing and enjoying cultures.This paper concludes that, the general tourists are those who are interested in the exotic sceneries and cultures, which are the very purposes of their going to those religious locations. They try to eliminate the boredom originated from the daily life by means of traveling. Their tours to the religious holy lands, is in substance, the same as those to the other tourist attractions, which are only different in destinations. Pilgrims belong to those business travelers who cross between secular and heavenly world. They hope to realize their secular wishes and eradicate the difficulties and pains they encounter in their daily lives through their communication with the Buddha. However, converts are those Buddhism-practicing travelers. They go to those religious places, with the hope of getting to know ways of moksa and doctrines of becoming Buddha. Those three kinds differ in cognition, which leads to their different experiences they get from the religious holy lands. Thus, pilgrims and converts are not tourists but travelers.