Heritage and Romantic Consumption in China

By Yujie Zhu

The drums beat, an old man in a grand robe matters incantations and three brides on horseback led by their grooms on foot proceed to the New Wedding Courtyand, accompanied, watched and photographed the whole way by tourists, who have bought tickets for the privilege. The traditional wedding cerrmonies are performed for the ethnic tourism industry the Lijiang, a World Heritage town in southwest China. Heritage and Romantic Consumption in China examines how beritages interacts with social-cultural changes and how individuals perform and negotiate their identities through daily practices that include tourism, the one hand, and performance of ethnicity on the other. The wedding performances in Lijiang, not only serve as a heritage 'product' but show how the heritage and tourism industry helps to shape people's values, dreams and expectations. This book also explores the rise of 'romanic consummer' in contemporary China. Chinese dissatisfaction with the urban mandates leads to romanticized interest in practices and people deemed to be natural ethnic, spiritual and aesthetic, and a search for tradition and authentively. But what, exactly, are tradition and authenticity, and what happens to them when they are turned into performance? Book jacket.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9462985677
• ISBN13: 9789462985674
• Release Date: August 2018
• Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
• Length: 168 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.3" x 9.3"