What has happened since 2001 when Zhongdian (中甸), a traditionally Tibetan village in Yunnan Province, changed its name to Shangri-la after the “lost paradise” immortalized in James Hilton’s Lost Horizon?
Minnpost.com has just published Manufacturing Shangri-la, a 3-part series, that explores that question, particularly the seemingly inevitable impact of tourism, not just foreign but domestic too:
Across China, minorities not seen as a threat (Tibetans, Uighurs) are generally portrayed as colorful people who sing and dance and love to entertain visitors.
This stereotype is visible at Yunnan’s ethnic tourism sights. Strolling around Lijiang, a tourist-mobbed town south of Shangri-la, can be shocking for many Americans accustomed to political correctness. Women in “native” costumes—many of them Han—wave clappers outside a raucous strip of bars, where patrons watch dancers in neon headdresses perform Tibetan, Lisu and Yi moves to thumping music.
“The different cultures have different standards of what’s a good tourist time,” says Ed Grumbine, an American professor who studies botany in Yunnan. “In the US, if you had a bunch of Hispanic people dressing up and doing a Navajo dance and claiming it was legitimate, it would be an outrage. In China, it’s not an outrage, it’s business as usual.”
Indeed, commercializing the culture is the whole point. And rather than being a source of tension, the added income is a key ingredient in Shangri-La’s peaceful coexistence.
March 9th, 2013 at 6:16 am
In what way is the commercialisation of tourism in Zhongdian different from (Han) Chinese authors who commercialise conflicted Tibetans with Han lovers (or otherwise appropriate the identities of ethnic minorities) or Chinese artists who make their name by doing boringly orthodox Western-style paintings of Tibetan nomads? Business as usual, maybe, but to what extent does this reflect the will of the people whose culture is being so exploited, and to what extent does it merely exemplify the extraordinary lengths that the Chinese will go to to make a buck? The tourist industry is a pretty tawdry business at the best of times, especially ‘cultural tourism’, which essentially destroys that which it is commercialising (an ‘authentic’ cultural experience). I don’t feel that applying a cheerful cultural relativism in this case is particularly apt. I don’t blame the people who are trying to make a living. They are to be admired for their extraordinary inventiveness and resilience. I do think, however, that excusing their recreations is a bit like loving stuffed animals or cartoon recreations even as the animals themselves are being hunted to extinction. When the animal itself is gone, what consolation is there in having a plastic imitation? Being a happy consumer of such ersatz culture is not a cap to wear with pride.