Research On Tourism Development And Traditional Culture Representations Of Ethnic Minorities

Tourism development as an important development path has brought an important opportunity for ethnic minorities in rural areas. Besides, traditional culture as an oriental culture capital has improved the development of local transportation, catering, accommodation, shopping, and entertainment industry. Tourism development is external power of the traditional culture transaction and the villagers themselves is the internal power which are seeking the way to develop, and these two powers have shaped the traditional culture and evolved new forms to adapt to the changes of environment and people’s values.This paper is a qualitative research. The data collection is composed by twice field investigations, the one was started from July2010to August2010, and the other was started from July2011to August2011. The twice survey sites are mainly chosen at Southeast Autonomous Prefecture in Guizhou Province, including:Pianpo, Zhenshan, Xijiang, Langde, Basha, Zhaoxing and other ethnic minority rural tourism areas. Reference to the relevant outcomes of academia, the paper chose with the theoretical framework of cultural consciousness and rational choice theory. Data was collected mainly by questionnaire and in-depth interview, which target to explore the impact of tourism development on traditional culture transaction at the minority rural areas and other multiple effects.By exploring the status of cultural development of tourist areas, this article based on the two culture forms:the surface culture forms and the deep culture forms. These forms can be extend to the mode of livelihood, architectural style, dress and traditions and customs, ways of thinking, religion, aesthetic, cultural identity, etc. Through analyze the mechanisms of cultural change, which result in the four basic characteristics of the traditional culture transaction, precisely, covering the choice of culture restriction, the duplicity of culture reconstruct, the difference of culture transaction and recognition of cultural behavior respectively. From study the government, Tourism Company, community resident, and tourist to analyze the mechanism of the traditional cultural representations. According to the survey, the conclusion of the dissertation is that:tourism development respects for culture change and coordinate to the traditional culture transaction will be benefit for the development of the tourist sites. Besides, tourism development have accelerated the change of the traditional culture and dramatically increase the local people’s cultural identity, accordingly, tourism development conduce to the preservation of traditional culture of the tourist areas. Tourism development at different stages can be result at different cultural consciousness. Community residents’ select other culture into their traditional culture, through the culture reconstruction to adapt to the change of new environment. Finally, this paper proposes that the "government-led, residents empowerment, market participants, multi-party collaboration" is the ideal model which suits for the development of the rural area’s tourism and the protection of the traditional culture.