The Construction Of Tourists' Local Imagination Under The Background Of Modernity

With the reform and opening-up policy,Chinese society has been experiencing a radical transition to modernity.Although social members’ life is getting better off and more efficient,modernity also leads people to negative experiences such as increased living pressure and the loss of stable and authentic social life.As a response to the “living crisis”,people start to expect places which seems to be “uncontaminated” by modernization.Under such background,by using grounded theory and text analysis,this paper investigates the construction of place expectation of tourists for Lijiang,especially under the influence of family hotels in Lijiang.In this paper,first of all,the author collected 105 travel notes and 228 pictures from Mafengwo website,and then took tourist behavior and host behavior in Lijiang as objects of study.It argues that(1)tourists’ construction of place expectation for Lijiang involves two dimensions,namely the representations and imaginations of Lijiang’s place identity depicted by tourists and the construction of Lijiang’s place identity via the names and behaviors of the family hotels which are largely influenced by modernity;(2)each tourism activity in Lijiang is a planned one and tourists are expecting a world that has been already designed by the hosts;(3)the host of Lijiang,as a member of the modern city,clearly know the thinking model and living status,so they build a world as what the tourists imagine;(4)the place expectation or place imagination towards Lijiang is a performance between tourists and hosts,themed as seclusion and self-exile.Tourists enjoy a life which has been defined by tourism industry,and they think they find the authenticity.