A dynamic view on tourism and rural development : a tale of two villages in Yunnan Province, China

Abstract

This study traces tourism and agriculture development in two typical villages of contemporary China, where one is tourism-oriented and the other is agriculture-oriented. Through in-depth interviews with 57 villagers, the study presents the complexity of the socio-cultural relationships underpinning agriculture and rural tourism and confirms that these relationships are not static. The comparison sheds light on the villagers’ varying attitudes toward rural tourism, their collective management approaches, and the experiences of rural culture they share with visitors. To capture the changing nature of these findings over time, a dynamic model of rural development is generated as a framework for future studies. This study suggests that large-scale villager participation in rural tourism may not be a desirable outcome, as it may contribute to the decline of rurality. It offers a warning against the use of tourism as the sole tool for rural development, even though that has been advocated by the Chinese Central Government as a primary economic strategy for numerous impoverished rural villages. 本研究追溯了农业和旅游在两个典型中国村落的发展（村落1以旅游业为主，村落2以农业为主）。通过对57名村民的深度访谈，本研究呈现出了基于农业和乡村旅游的复杂的社会文化关系，并确认这些关系的动态趋势。文章着重对比两村村民对乡村旅游和集体管理机制的不同态度，以及他们向游客展示的不同乡村文化体验。为了更好地分析各变化因素，本文提出了乡村发展的动态模型以备日后研究参考。本文指出大规模的村民参与到旅游中并不一定会取得预期的效果，反而会降低乡土气息。研究结果警惕将旅游作为唯一的乡村发展途径，尽管这样的做法被政府大力提倡作为诸多贫困村落的首要经济发展战略