Chineseness and behavioural complexity: rethinking Chinese tourist gaze studies

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to reconsider Chinese tourist gaze studies, examining the extent to which extant studies and theoretical models relating to the Chinese tourist gaze have overcome the Eurocentric limits of John Urry’s concept of the tourist gaze and elaborated the complexity of Chinese tourists’ gazes and visual practices. Design/methodology/approach Content analysis is carried out, examining research articles, books, book chapters and PhD and MSc theses collected from multiple English and Chinese databases. Findings The research results manifest that, overall, the previous studies, mobilise cultural essentialism, with an overestimation of the “Chineseness” of Chinese tourists’ behavioural patterns, which are widely believed to be framed by, but also constituting of, unique Chinese culture. Overdependence on Chinese cultural values and traditional philosophies as sources for rationale has resulted in a handful of theoretical frameworks, which appear to be of insufficient magnitude both in terms of their contribution to the original tourist gaze model and in their manifesting of the complexity of Chinese tourists’ visual behaviour. Indeed the divide that once deliberately set apart West and East, or more precisely Western and Chinese tourist gazes, seems to become accentuated in most attempts to study and write about Chinese tourist gaze(s). The previous studies thus largely serve to mirror the Eurocentrism of Urry’s gaze, rather than challenging it. Research limitations/implications This study has a few limitations, especially, as this study only reviews and analyses the studies of the Chinese tourist gaze. It means that the conclusion might not well be generalised to either the investigation of the tourist gaze in another culture or the Chinese tourist studies, at large, which might exhibit a different pattern deserving more academic attention in future. Moreover, the authors recommend the future researchers, who are eager to probe Chinese tourists’ behavioural pattern, to seek for new pathways and alternative paradigms, which would be useful in overcoming the limits of cultural representations and in reducing the problematic Sino-Western divide. Originality/value Despite not aiming to reconceptualise the Chinese tourist gaze, this review paper contributes to the field of tourist gaze studies by engaging critically with the bias and theoretical insufficiencies that have emerged, while this concept is appropriated and re-formulated to explain Chinese tourists’ gazes and visual practices. On this basis, the authors suggest a critical redirection of the extant Chinese tourist gaze studies, which would be rather significant to those researchers in future with an interest to research what the Chinese tourists prefer to see in travel and how they engage with the gazee.

Tourists’ (mis)understandings of nature: international and domestic visitors’ perceptions of invasive alien plants in New Zealand

“…It is likely that in-depth qualitative approaches can be valuable in this regard. While this study points to an East-West divide in terms of IAS perceptions and attitudes among visitor groups, to address any possibility of falling into a culturally essentialist interpretation of these findings (Li et al 2021), further in-depth qualitative research will be valuable in ascertaining why such attitudes prevail.…”

“…Of course, to consider that all Chinese (or all Asians) subscribe to a consistent human-nature cosmology runs the risk of essentializing Chinese-ness and/or Asian-ness (Li et al 2021),…”

“…Of course, to consider that all Chinese (or all Asians) subscribe to a consistent human–nature cosmology runs the risk of essentializing Chinese-ness and/or Asian-ness (Li et al 2021), just as it would be a generalization to say that all Westerners subscribe to the human–nature dichotomy described earlier. From the perspective of this research, these are merely labels to be used as convenient starting points to explore whether and how attitudes to IAS may vary.…”

Tourist Gaze at Chinese Classical Gardens: The Embodiment of Aesthetics (Yijing) in Tourism

“…The Concept of Tourist Gaze Tourist gaze describes how people view the places they visit, emphasizing visual consumption in tourists' experiences (Urry, 1990(Urry, , 1995. It critically shifts the focus of tourism research from institutional production to tourist consumption (Li et al, 2021). From the perspectives of cognition and consciousness, the eye gaze signals the direction of one's attention and future actions (Land & Hayhoe, 2001).…”

“…Urry and Larsen (2011) suggested that vision can orient the functions of other sensations, and the tourist gaze constitutes a holistic way of viewing the world rather than a singular sense. Recently, scholarly endeavors also explore the tourist gaze across various contexts and interpret it as a more heuristic concept that encompasses both objective and subjective nature, reflects dynamic human interactions, and serves as a vehicle to achieve an experience (e.g., Li, 2015;Urry & Larsen, 2011).…”