Ancient poetry in contemporary Chinese tourism

Tourism Management 54 (2016) 393e403

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Ancient poetry in contemporary Chinese tourism Xiaojuan Yu*, Honggang Xu Sun Yat-sen University, China

h i g h l i g h t s  Ancient poetry continues to influence Chinese tourism in terms of what and how to gaze.  Ancient Chinese poets and their poems create value for places as tourism attractions.  Poems may help enhance tourists' landscape appreciation and aesthetic experience.  Poetry may be combined with scientific knowledge to improve environmental interpretation.

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 10 June 2015 Received in revised form 5 December 2015 Accepted 15 December 2015 Available online xxx

Classical poetry is an important part of Chinese culture. This study explores its roles in contemporary Chinese tourism based on participant observation of tourist destinations in the Three Gorges and surrounding area along the Yangtze River and content analysis of tourism guidebooks. Classical poetry is used to guide Chinese tourists in terms of what to gaze at and how to gaze. Specifically, first, poets and their poems create historical and cultural value for a place, which forms an essential foundation for its attractiveness as an object for Chinese tourists gaze. Second, poems may be used to enhance tourists' aesthetic appreciation of a landscape along the spatial and temporal dimensions, creating transcending poetic experiences. Such influence of classical poetry exemplifies the cultural continuity in China that should be well understood and considered in contemporary tourism. Implications in tourism development and marketing, aesthetic experience creation, environmental interpretation, and literary tourism are discussed. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Chinese classical poetry Culture Destination attractiveness Time Space Landscape appreciation Environmental interpretation Literary tourism

1. Introduction Poetry was the most respected and practiced literary genre in ancient China and is an important cultural heritage to contemporary Chinese (Lin, 2009). A number of studies have sporadically recognized its influence on both the supply and demand sides of Chinese tourism (Li, 2005; Packer, Ballantyne, & Huges, 2014; Peterson, 1995; Sofield & Li, 1998, 2011; Xu, Cui, Ballantyne, & Packer, 2013; Xu, Cui, Sofield, & Li, 2014; Xu, Ding, & Packer, 2008). Most of these studies recognized that tourists tend to go to places associated with poems (Sofield & Li, 1998, 2011). Also, poems are used in tourist site interpretation because they are commonly known by Chinese tourists (Xu et al., 2013, 2014). However, few studies have really examined how poems work to

* Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (X. Yu). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2015.12.007 0261-5177/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

guide tourists' experiences in a more systematic way. While we tend to learn more about this issue from research on literary tourism (e.g., Fawcett & Cormack, 2001; Herbert, 1996, 2001; Watkins & Herbert, 2003), which consists of visits to “places celebrated for literary depictions and/or connections with literary figures” (Squire, 1996, p. 119), we have not obtained many insights. First of all, most of the published literary tourism studies mainly focus on the artists, the resident houses of artists, and particularly they focus on one artist. Artists and their works are the main motivation for tourists in these studies. Yet, Chinese poems are embedded in many Chinese attractions. They often function as a moderator to enhance the tourism experience and to help tourists understand the natural or cultural resources that they are visiting. Secondly, in this growing subsection of cultural and heritage tourism, there is still such a lack of research on this phenomenon in China that Hoppen, Brown, and Fyall (2014) assumed that literary tourism “tends to be more of a European and North American

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phenomenon” (p. 38). A notable exception is Ryan, Zhang, Gu and Ling's (2009) research on tourism related to a classic Chinese novel and its television series. Yet the vast reservoir of poems and their continual influence on Chinese tourism has yet to be empirically studied. The information extracted from these poems can be used as material for reconstructing the past world, as is often done by literary geographers (Liu & Ma, 2012; Wang, 1990; Yan & McKercher, 2013), as well as for marketing and branding a destination and enhancing the tourist experience, as in other literary destinations (Hoppen et al., 2014). This study aims to explore how classical Chinese poetry is and may be further used in destination marketing and tourist experience production through the study of tourism in the Three Gorges and surrounding area along the Yangtze River, which is full of poems. This paper is organized as follows. The literature review includes three relevant topics: (1) the influence of culture on tourism in China, which delineates the context in which this study in embedded; (2) classical poetry in China, which describes the status of poetry in Chinese culture; and (3) the role of poetry in tourism in China, which summarizes the insights about this specific issue that are scattered in existing tourism studies. In order to delineate the role of poetry in the current Chinese tourism field, participant observation and content analysis of tourist guidebooks are conducted with regard to the Three Gorges area; these are reported in the methods section. The findings reveal how the Chinese gaze is shaped by classical poetry. Implications of these findings are discussed in the last section with regard to destination marketing, landscape appreciation, environmental interpretation, and literary tourism. 2. Literature review 2.1. The influence of culture on tourism in China Tourists leave their ordinary life and environment with an expectation of obtaining a pleasant experience, partly by gazing upon extraordinary landscapes or townscapes (Urry & Larsen, 2011). A tourist's gaze is not a matter of individual psychology, but “is conditioned by personal experiences and memories and framed by rules and styles, as well as circulating images and texts of this and other places”, which lead to the culturally constructed nature of the gazed world (Urry & Larsen, 2011, p.2). As the Chinese tourist market has surged both domestically and internationally in recent years, studies on Chinese tourists' gazes have also grown. The cultural distinctiveness of the Chinese gaze has been revealed in several micro-level behavioral studies, including preferences for and perceptions of built and natural attractions and on-site interpretations (Ballantyne, Hughes, Ding, & Liu, 2014; Ong & du Cros, 2012; Xu et al., 2013), preference for tourist destination landscapes (Sun, Zhang, & Ryan, 2015; Yang, Ryan, & Zhang, 2013), and attitudes toward nature, animals, and environmental issues (Packer et al., 2014). Besides the micro-level studies above, the role of traditional culture in tourism in China has also been discussed at a macro-level (Pearce, Wu, & Osmond, 2013; Sofield & Li, 1998, 2011; Xu et al., 2008; Xu et al., 2014). These studies pointed out some of the overarching influences of traditional culture in tourism in China. Chinese poetry may be seen as embedded in a network of elements that comprise Chinese culture as a whole. It provides a unique window to the understanding of this culture through its distinctive characteristics and its connections with other elements. More specifically, poetry has been pointed out as an important part of, and a common vehicle for, Chinese common knowledge, which continues to influence tourism in China today in various ways. However, no detailed studies have been carried out on such

influences. 2.2. Classical poetry in China China has a very long tradition of poetry that is deeply ingrained in society. Its first anthology of poetry, The Book of Poetry, was compiled by Confucius, followed by a variety of poetic forms developed in different periods in history (Liu, 1962). Chinese poems are generally very short and easy to recite, which facilitates their dissemination. The composition of poems, inheriting Confucius' intentions for the anthology, can be a kind of moral instruction and social comment, an expression of personal emotions, poets' contemplation of the world and their own mind, and a literary exercise and cultivation of eloquence (Liu, 1962). In the scholarly and political system in imperial China, poetry was regarded as the highest accomplishment of the literary art, an essential part of the educational system, the most solid and easiest way of testing a man's literary ability, and was an essential part of the Chinese imperial examinations for selecting government officials for more than 1200 years starting from the Tang dynasty (618e907) (Lin, 2009; Martin, 1901, 1948). All Chinese literati were poets, or pretended to be, and poetry usually took up half of the contents of a scholar's collected works. These scholar-poet-officials are exactly the kind of people that have continued to be remembered and revered by later generations. Further, poetry holds a high position in the spiritual field of Chinese life, as Lin Yutang commented: “poetry has taken over the function of religion in China, in so far as religion is taken to mean a cleansing of man's soul, a feeling for the mystery and beauty of the universe, and a feeling of tenderness and compassion for one's fellowmen and the humble creatures of life” (Lin, 2009, p.247). In contemporary Chinese education, poetry still serves simultaneously as a means for learning the Chinese language and as a foundation of Chinese common knowledge and “Chinese-ness” (Li, 2005). A special kind of poetry toward landscapes, the Chinese shanshui (literally, mountain and water) poems, developed since the Weijin Dynasty (256e420 AD) (Yan & McKercher, 2013), is still perhaps the most admired type of poetry today (Sofield & Li, 2011). As part of the shanshui movement, it captures the unity between human and nature (Sofield & Li, 2011). Ancient scholar-poetofficials, encouraged by the Confucian ethic “to seek ultimate truth from the landscape” (Peterson, 1995), traveled extensively around China and have left countless poems that have immortalized many sites around China and made them household names for Chinese people (Packer et al., 2014; Sofield & Li, 1998; Xu et al., 2013, 2014). This cultural heritage has been inseparably embedded in the natural heritage, which is recognized by the national ranking of tourism resources and also internationally by UNESCO in the listing of four mountains as mixed cultural and natural heritage sites. 2.3. The role of classical poetry in tourism in China Our synthesis of existing studies shows that classical poetry, as a part of Chinese cultural heritage, continues to influence tourism development and site design on the supply side and tourist destination choice, expectation, on-site behavior, and experience on the demand side. On the supply side, classical poetry has been recognized as an important part of cultural heritage that is embedded in natural sites, as discussed above. Inscriptions of poems are a common decoration for tourist sites, which imbues them with profundity and caters to a preference for a traditional cultural flavor (Xu et al., 2014). While in Western eyes this might be regarded as a form of graffiti and hence the antithesis of environmental values (Sofield &

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Li, 1998), it is acceptable and even necessary for the Chinese eyes, as a representation of the unity of human and nature. On the demand side, since the 1990s, when Chinese people finally gained the economic and technical means to travel, their preferred destinations naturally included places that have an accumulation of poems and cultural heritage and have become familiar to them since childhood (Ballantyne et al., 2014; Xu et al., 2013). On the contrary, places without such a heritage are regarded as disadvantaged by their lack of emotional connections with the population. An examination of tourist posts on www. mafengwo.cn (the most popular tourist tips website in China) found that tourists may use poems to describe their experiences and express their feelings toward a certain destination (e.g., Yaya, 2013, retrieved on Nov 10, 2014). Peterson (1995, p. 150) suggests that Chinese domestic tourism to such places constitutes “a voluntary cultural decision more akin to a pilgrimage to historical, cultural, and political centers” made in order to validate the poetic knowledge of these places. When Chinese people are culturally and nationally united by such shared images and attachment to these places, two consequences may follow. First, when hundreds of millions of Chinese are “united” in their choice of destination, one result is the congestion and crowding of the famous sites in China. It may also follow that the mass tourism development model is more necessary in China, though alternative models have been advocated in the West (Xu et al., 2008). Second, in terms of tourist experience, the poetic and historical-cultural images deeply ingrained in the Chinese tourist's mind may be more important than the physical features. As Sofield and Li (2011) commented, “When Western tourists look at the Yangtze, they see a river; the Chinese see a poem replete with philosophical ideals” (p. 367). The concept of authenticity may also have different meanings in the Chinese mind. When Chinese tourists are gazing upon a replica or a rebuilt site, they may still have a kind of authentic experience (Sofield & Li, 1998; Xu et al., 2008), because what is important is to be at the place where the poets lingered (Peterson, 1995) and to reexperience their feelings deposited in their poems and contemplate on their life and their insights. Other Chinese behavior influenced by classical poetry has also been recognized by researchers. First, when visiting mountainous areas, Chinese tourists are strongly motivated toward ascending the peaks, encouraged by poems such as one from Du Fu: “When shall I reach the top and hold all mountains in a single glance” (会当凌绝顶, 一览众山小) (Xu et al., 2014). This cultural behavior may come into conflict with a management imperative that designates mountain tops as the core area of a nature reserve and forbids entry. Such conflict should be reconciled in order to improve management effectiveness. Second, Chinese tourists prefer interpretations that employ an aesthetic approach, which includes relevant citations of poems (and other Chinese common knowledge) and engages visitors emotionally with the landscape, rather than the scientific approach loaded with knowledge (e.g., regarding biology, geology, animal behavior) that is common to natural areas under the western management model (Xu et al., 2013). Hence, in order to create an effective interpretation and enjoyable experiences for Chinese tourists, poems as a part of and a vehicle of common knowledge will serve as a very valuable means. This issue will be addressed by the findings of this study. Research on traditional Chinese landscape travel literature has examined its aesthetic characteristics and values from different perspectives (e.g., Wang, 1998, 2008). Wang (1998) summarized that landscape poetry, building on the perceptual images of landscapes, may positively add to the aesthetic experience of tourists at least in four aspects: the typification of images of natural scenes

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and objects; the poetic feelings attached to scenes; the philosophical connotations associated with landscape; and the historical vicissitude that transpired at specific places. This type of research involves direct analyses of the content of landscape literature and its possible influence on tourism is usually inferred rather than directly observed. While existing studies have shown the importance of classical poetry in both the supply and demand side of Chinese tourism, these studies did not focus on the relationship between poetry and tourism. Overall, there is a lack of empirical research on how classical poetry is actually used in Chinese tourism. This study attempts to lessen this gap by examining the use of poetry in tourism in the Three Gorges and surrounding area in China. 3. Methods This study followed a two-stage process. The first stage involved participant observation by the first author in a ten-day field trip aimed at experiencing and observing Chinese tourism practice in general. Shortly after the trip started, observations of tourist objects, tour guide interpretations, and tourist behavior found that ancient poets and their poems hold an important position in local tourism. This observation helped focus the objective of this research on this specific phenomenon. Specifically, the field trip included a cruise along the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, embarking at Yichang, Hubei on July 4, 2014, traveling upstream through the Three Gorges (Xiling Gorge, Wu Gorge, and Qutang Gorge), and disembarking at Chongqing on July 8 (see Fig. 1 for locations and schedule of the trip). Such a cruise is the typical way to experience the Three Gorges, a top-10 national scenic area in China (www.cnta.gov.cn). The trip is characterized by two features. The first is a continuous river and mountain scene experienced from the ship, which is interpreted by accompanying tour guides with frequent citations of poems. The second includes organized excursions to tourism sites on the shore, where tourism products are often found to be related to classical poetry. The excursions each take two and a half to four hours. After a side trip, the author visited Wuhan on July 12 and 13. A variety of natural and cultural tourism products were experienced. Pictures were taken to cover almost every scene and event encountered. Observation notes were recorded upon return from the trip. In the second stage, to further explore how poems are used in tourism, tourism guidebooks that cover the Three Gorges and surrounding areas (including parts of Hubei, Chongqing, and Sichuan) were acquired and content analyzed for their usage of poems. While data about the tourist experience of poetry may be obtained by directly interviewing tourists, this is hardly feasible methodologically. Based on the past research experiences of the two authors, tourists usually are unable to express nuanced perceptions and feelings, especially referring to their poetic and aesthetic experience examined in this study. Hence, instead, travel guidebooks are used as a valid data source for the following reasons. First, travel guidebooks usually introduce to tourists in comprehensive and detailed ways all tourism products and services offered in a destination and help identify their values (Wong & Liu, 2011). As travel guidebooks are an important information source for tourists (Dey & Sarma, 2010; Grønflaten, 2009; Wong & Liu, 2011), they should, at least to some degree, reflect their need for information and influence their destination choice and experiences. Second, descriptions and interpretations of a destination in guidebooks reflect various social and cultural discourses regarding a place and constitute at least part of its image in society, i.e., what people generally know and think about a place (Wong & Liu, 2011). Third, it was observed in our field trip that tour guides usually offer interpretations that are almost identical to that of other tour guides

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Fig. 1. The location of the research area and field trip along the Yangtze River in China.

and are also similar to those in guidebooks examined later. This observation is consistent with Wang and Ma's (2007) criticism that Chinese tour guides usually recite and repeat interpretations monotonously. On the other hand, tour guides are also trained to provide flexible interpretations in response to the dynamic and idiosyncratic needs of tourists (e.g., Tour Guide Examination Office of Tourism Administration of Guangdong Province, 2013). Either way, guidebooks provide essential information sources for tour guides. Hence, guidebooks also influence the experience of tourists who are at the receiving end of the guides' recitation. Fourth, guidebooks are often reproduced through the market to meet the market demand. If the information from the guidebooks produced at different times show some consistency, then it is possible to conclude that the information actually reflects what the tourists like. Hence, guidebooks are a valuable source for information about both what a destination offers and what tourists receive and experience. The guidebooks also helped to crosscheck and complement data collected in the field observation. Travel guidebooks related to the Three Gorges area were acquired in the following way. First, a search in August 2014 on Amazon.cn, a leading online bookstore in China, resulted in five books, as shown in Table 1. The search strategy included (1) using keywords “Three Gorges travel/tourism”, which led to Chen (2010), Wen (2005), and Weng (2004); and (2) using keywords “Chongqing travel/tourism”, considering that the Three Gorges are largely located in Chongqing, which led to Yang and Yang (2006/2010) and Lonely Planet (2013). Further searches in other leading bookstores such as dangdang.com, winxuan.com, gg1994.com led to no other guidebooks that focused on the Three Gorges area. Though other guidebooks that covered larger areas and included the Three Gorges as a small part were available (e.g., Lonely Planet (2013)), it was deemed that their very limited content would add little to the current analysis; hence, they were not analyzed. A search in a large municipal library (gzlib.gov.cn) resulted in 10 other guidebooks related to the Three Gorges. They were published between 1982 and 2006, which was much earlier than the other sources. The five books (Table 1) were published from 2004 to 2013; hence, they represent the more current books on the market that should reflect the new developments and discourses of tourism in this area accompanying and after (1) the construction of the Three Gorges dam inundating many tourism sites and (2) the surge of Chinese domestic tourism. Furthermore, authorship was also considered in selecting the five guidebooks: their authors range from the more

government related writer Yang and Yang (2006) and the dedicated local photographer, writer, and journalist Chen (2010) to the veteran traveler Weng (2004) and backpacker Yi Xiaochun who contributed the part about the Three Gorges in Lonely Planet (2013). As shown in Table 1, Wen (2005) and Yang and Yang (2006) relied mainly on compiling second-hand sources, while Weng (2004), Chen (2010) and Lonely Planet (2013) added their personally acquired information. Overall, the five-guidebook sample is a result of purposive sampling that covers (1) the period of new tourism development in the Three Gorges area and (2) diverse authorships and information sources. The content analysis of poem usage in guidebooks was conducted as follows. The book “Into the New Three Gorges: Tourism Guidebook to the Three Gorges and Surrounding Areas” (edited by Wen, 2005) was first analyzed to establish an initial conceptual framework, as this book is specifically titled as a tourism guidebook and showed up first in the book search process. The entire volumes of the first three books, as shown in Table 1, and relevant sections from the last two books were analyzed, which included about 580,000 words in total. First, any line that looks like (part of) a poem was checked in the Baidu search engine to identify its author and title (if they were not provided in the guidebook) to make sure that it is a poem. The search results also showed numerous instances of these lines used in introductions of these destinations or in tourists' posts, suggesting their wide application in tourism discourses. Second, an instance of poem usage is identified by demarcating the group of sentences in which the poem is meaningfully embedded. A total of 61 instances of poem usage were identified in Wen (2005), among which 11 cases were poems printed on pictures without other texts and were not included in further analysis. Third, the remaining 50 cases were subject to a three-level coding process (descriptive codes, interpretive codes, and pattern codes; see Table 2 for the interpretive and pattern codes) (Jennings, 2010), with a focus on how the poems were used and in what context. The previous steps were done by the first author singlehandedly; hence, in the fourth step, this content analysis was written down with sufficient details for the second author to evaluate and improve the appropriateness of interpretation and coding. After much discussion, the authors agreed on all the interpretation and coding, indicating high inter-rater reliability. Fifth, the coding scheme is applied to the analysis of poem usage in the other four books, as presented in Table 1. The scheme worked well, probably due to its general nature, as will be shown in the

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Table 1 Surveyed tourism guidebooks related to the Three Gorges and surrounding area. Guidebook

Year

2005 Into the New Three Gorges: Tourism Guidebook to the Three Gorges and Surrounding Areas The Three Gorges New Tourism 2010

Authors and their background

Content

Wen Ya

Descriptions and pictures of places of interest and travel information for each destination are provided.

Chen Wen Chen is a local photographer, writer, and journalist dedicated to research, writing, and communication about the cultural aspects of the Three Gorges.

The book covers both traditional travel contents and the author's personal travel experiences and recommendations, especially accounting for the changes in the physical and social landscape brought by the Three Gorges dam and reservoir completed in 2009. The book records his travel from Chongqing to Yichang in 1997 2004 Weng Yi Weng is a retired photographer and journalist who has with the purpose to witness the physical and social landscape that will be submerged by the Three Gorges reservoir under traveled extensively around China. construction. The book includes traditional touristic information about places and spots, the author's photography processes, and the influence of the Three Gorges reservoir. [Chapter 5 Three Gorges, p. 121e204] Yang Huilong & Yang Yuan 2006; reprinted Both authors are local government affiliated part-time The book is one in the Series of Excellent Tour Guide Interpretation used by tour guides in China. It also uses materials writers. in 2010 compiled by official tourist bureaus and travel agencies. [Three Gorges, p. 415e422] 2013 Lonely Planet Authors personally traveled each place and provide succinct The author Yi Xiaochun is a travel enthusiast and has formatted information about scenic spots, food, accommodation, been writing for Lonely Planet and other similar and transportation. guidebook series in China for ten years.

A Traveler's Testimony: The Everlasting Three Gorges

Chongqing's Tour Guide Interpretationa

Sichuan and Chongqinga

Note: a The Three Gorges are located mainly in Chongqing. Within these two guidebooks, only the sections about the Three Gorges were examined.

Table 2 Usage of ancient poetry in Chinese travel guidebooks: themes and counts. Themes

Number of cases in each guidebook

Pattern codes

Interpretive codes

Wen (2005)

Chen (2010)

Weng (2004)

Yang and Yang (2006)

What to gaze How to gaze

Poets' presence and activities Poets' direct promotion Finer gaze Far-reaching gaze Imaginary overlooking Record of past event and life Past-present comparison and sense of continuity Past-present comparison and sense of change (lost/ deteriorated/improved)

6 14 7 2 5 3 7 6

20 15 9 1

13 14 21

11 4 7

4 11

1 11

7

5

The value creation role The spatial dimension The temporal dimension

Total number of poems Total number of pages examined Poem/page

4 2 4

50a 211 0.29

55 309 0.18

70 303 0.23

Sum Lonely Planet (2013) 50 (23%) 47 (22%) 45 (21%) 3 (1%) 10 (5%) 29 (13%) 9 (4%) 23 (11%)

1

1

39

2 b

84 0.46

b

8 0.25

216 (100%) 915 0.25

Note: a Another set of eleven poems in Wen (2005) are printed on pictures without other texts and are not included in the analysis. b Only the sections about the Three Gorges were analyzed from Yang and Yang (2006) and Lonely Planet (2013).

findings. Overall, the guidebooks use poems in similar ways in two aspects. First, the guidebook writers tend to cite the same set of poems. For example, among the 59 instances of poem usage in the sections about Fengjie, White Emperor town and Qutang Gorge (the three are in the same place) in the five guidebooks, 42 instances (71%) cite the same 12 poems. That is, each of these 12 poems is cited by two to all five different guidebooks. It may indicate that the guidebook writers inherit and use the same cultural heritage. Second, as the coding scheme fits all of the five books quite well, it means that the guidebook writers used the poetry heritage in rather similar ways. As shown in the research process reported above, this study tried to achieve a higher degree of validity and reliability by using two types of triangulation (Sarantakos, 2013). First, method triangulation was used by engaging both participant observation and analysis of existing guidebooks written by authors with diverse backgrounds. Second, investigator triangulation was used by

combining the expertise of two investigators. Besides, this study was also reported and discussed in three research conferences/ seminars and feedback from multiple colleagues was used to improve this study.

4. Findings All the five tourist guidebooks used classical poems considerably in their interpretation of destinations, specifically, 227 cases in total and one in every two to six pages (Table 2). Based on the content analysis of these instances of poem usage and the participant observation during the field trip, two general themes emerged regarding the specific roles of poems in Chinese tourism. The first theme is related to the question of what to gaze at (Table 2). That is, poets and their poems play important roles in creating historical and cultural value for a place and increasing its attractiveness as a tourist destination, in other words, as an object of tourists' gaze.

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Guidebook writers cite poems to demonstrate poets' presence and activities in a place and to exploit their direct poetic promotion of places (two subthemes shown in Table 2). The second theme is related to the question of how to gaze in the two dimensions of space and time. Poems offer guidance for the appreciation of the environment ordered along the spatial dimension, starting at zooming in for a finer gaze, then zooming out for a further gaze, and finally reaching an imaginary overlooking at the vast land. In the temporal dimension, poems serve as records of past events and life in general. Sometimes such records are used to generate reflections on historical continuity or changes. The frequency of each type of poem usage is shown in Table 2. Poems are most frequently used in its value creation role, i.e., guiding tourists in terms of what to gaze (45%), and are evenly distributed between the spatial and temporal dimensions of “how to gaze” (27% and 28%, respectively). In the following report of findings, to avoid redundancy and to save space, each subtheme is discussed with one or two examples. The original texts of each instance of poem usage are fully presented and translated here. 4.1. The value-creation role of poets and their poems Ancient poets and their poems continue to (or are used to) influence the value of a place as an object of contemporary tourist gaze. This is done mainly in two ways: by their presence and activities in a place (whether related to poetry or not) and by their direct extol of a place. First, the presence and activities of poets at a place constitute an important part of its local historical and cultural heritage cherished by Chinese people, which becomes an essential resource for tourism development and an object for tourist gaze. Among the numerous tourist destinations along the Yangtze River, two are discussed as examples below, Fengjie and Yellow Crane Tower. Both places have obtained their cultural and touristic value because of their relationships with poets and their poems. Fengjie, a city located at Kui Gate (the entrance of the Three Gorges), is famous as a “poetry town” because of the famous poets who lingered there and left countless poems (Wen, 2005; Weng, 2004). In Wen's words (2005, p. 94): “Fengjie in our mind has always been an archaic and quiet town immersed in the aroma of books. Since the Tang and Song dynasties, poets have splashed tens of thousands of poems to this ancient land. Poems such as Li Bai's (the Poetic Immortal) 'Leaving at dawn the White Emperor in rosy clouds; I've sailed a thousand miles back to Jiangling in one day' (朝辞白帝彩云间, 千里 江陵一日还) and Du Fu's (the Poetic Saint) 'The boundless forest sheds its leaves shower by shower; The endless river rolls its waves hour after hour (translation by Xu, 2012)' (无边落木萧萧下, 不尽 长江滚滚来) have won Fengjie the reputation of 'poetry town'.” Li Bai (701e762 AD) and Du Fu (712e770 AD) are the top two poets in Chinese history and are highly venerated by Chinese people. For example, a total of 14 poems by Li Bai are included in the current Chinese textbooks used in elementary and middle schools (Jiang, 2007; Zhang, 2013), including the poem cited here. Du Fu stayed at Fengjie for two years and wrote approximately 430 poems here, which are about one third of his legacy left to today (Wen, 2005). The two poets are also cited most frequently in Wen (2005), nine and ten times, respectively. Their past presence and poetry legacy continue to define what Fengjie means to Chinese people today, which is evident in all the five guidebooks examined and in the tourism activities observed in the destination. As observed by the first author in the field trip, poems and stories of poets are purposely used as tourist attractions by local

tourism providers. They even transfer these intangible heritage into tangible products. For instance, a typical way observed is to set up steles of poems in tourism attractions (see Fig. 2, top right picture, for an example). Tourists also show great interest in and gaze at steles of poems while tour guides deliver their history and related stories and explain their meanings (Fig. 2, top left picture). Copies of these steles are also offered for tourists to buy at the souvenir shop (Fig. 2, bottom left picture). As a marketing effort to establish its destination image in 2015, the local tourism bureau even hired a handsome young man to act as the ancient poet Li Bai, roaming around the city and attracting the attention of tourists (www. fengjiely.com, retrieved on May 8, 2015). A single building, the Yellow Crane Tower, initially built in 223 AD and then rebuilt seven times at Wuhan by the Yangtze River, has also been made famous by the visits of poets and their poems (Wen, 2005, p. 186): “This is a culturally famous tower that proudly overlooks the rivers and mountains with an uncommon grandeur and profound cultural flavor. It has been carrying the weighty cultural dreams of countless travelers. Famous literati in past dynasties such as Cui Hao, Li Bai, Bai Juyi, Jia Dao, Lu You, Yang Shen, Zhang Juzheng, visited it one after another and composed and chanted poems here, among which Cui Hao's immortal work 'Yellow Crane Tower' has made the tower world-famous: The sage has gone away on a yellow crane; Left here is only the Yellow Crane Tower. Once gone, the yellow crane will never return; White clouds still float but in vain year after year. By sunlit river trees come clearly into view, On Parrot Islet green grass lushly grows. Where is my hometown beyond the setting sun? The mist-veiled waves of the river makes me homesick. (昔人已乘黄鹤去, 此地空余黄鹤楼。黄鹤一去不复返, 白云千载空 悠悠。 晴川历历汉阳树, 芳草萋萋鹦鹉洲。日暮乡关何处是, 烟波江上使人 愁。Translation adapted from Xu, 2012)” The current tower was rebuilt in the early 1980s, a hundred years later after the previous one was destroyed in 1884. This new tower has dedicated an entire floor for the presentation of poems and poetry books, and another floor for murals of poets related to the tower. These presentations are extensively gazed upon by crowds of contemporary tourists, as observed by the first author in the field trip and shown in Fig. 3. Hence, what attracts Chinese people to this site is mainly not the physical building itself but its intangible cultural heritage, the collective poetic memories that are inherited by Chinese people throughout its history without interruption, despite the physical ups and downs. The presentation of poetry and poets inside the tower reflects its essence and is supposed to meet the expectation of Chinese tourists, helping them relive the poetic experiences of the past. The second way in which poems create value for a place is that they directly express appreciation and admiration toward the natural features and social elites of a place. These poems are frequently used as marketing materials. Fourteen such usages are identified in Wen (2005), among which one cites a poem from Yuan Zhen (779e831 AD) to describe the beauty of the Wu Gorge (p. 118): “Yuan Zhen wrote: 'No other water is noticeable once the sea is seen; no cloud is enjoyable unless it is at the Wu mountain' (曾经沧 海难为水, 除却巫山不是云). Seated in the embrace of the twelve peaks of Wu Gorge, the river, the gorge, the mountains, and even

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Fig. 2. Poetry related tourism activities in Fengjiedthe city of poetry. Pictures taken by the first author on July 6, 2014.

Fig. 3. Poetry related tourism activities at Yellow Crane Tower, Wuhan, China. Pictures taken by the first author on July 13, 2014.

the rain and clouds are the perfection of beauty with an abundance of wonders. If you have seen the clouds and rain in the Wu mountain, what else can be compared to it?” Although poems are not hard evidence that prove a destination's superiority, they are frequently used by guidebook writers for this purpose, in a way assuming that Chinese tourists would accept

such “proof” by default. Chinese tourists are attracted to famous historical figures, who of course have left their prints in a certain place and constitute its historical and cultural heritage (Ballantyne et al., 2014; Xu et al., 2013). The admiration expressed by a poet would testify and strengthen their admirableness and hence their attractiveness to visitors. For example, the Autumn Wind Pavilion in Badong was first built in the Song dynasty, and since then it has been renovated

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multiple times to commemorate Kou Zhun (961e1023 AD), the county leader who improved local livelihood by introducing and popularizing more advanced agricultural techniques and easing tax burdens (Wen, 2005; Chen, 2010). Wen (2005, p. 130) cited Su Zhe's (1039e1112 AD) poem in the introduction of this tourist site: “Towers, pavilions and temples in China are often pregnant with profound and lasting historical meanings. Today, the spirit to which the Autumn Wind Pavilion holds fast still renders inspiration. The existence of the pavilion is granted a special kind of meaning. Standing at the same spot where Kou Zhun stood in the Song dynasty, we may come to appreciate this virtuous minister's passion for helping the country and people. 'Local people know that Badong benefited from Mr. Kou the revered; But they have no idea of his contribution to three reigns of the dynasty. Where has gone his lonely boat? In the Spring wind still stands his pavilion at the riverside. (人知公惠在巴东, 不知三朝社稷功。平日 孤舟已何处?江亭依旧傍春风。)' The three literary giants of the Su family were deeply moved when they visited Badong. Now the local people, in memorial of Kou Zhun, cherish the Autumn Wind Pavilion even more.” Kou's love for people is symbolized by the pavilion and further extolled by later poets. Pavilions are built everywhere, but this one in Badong has special appeal to people because of Kou. His contribution and importance in history is made more pronounced to gazers by poems of famous poets. In this way, the attractiveness of the place may be enhanced. In summary, poets and their poetry activities have played an important role in creating cultural value and image for places, either through their mere presence and activities or through their direct extol of a place and its people. On the contrary, places that are not endowed with such heritage seem to be at a disadvantaged position. For example, locals at the Wujiang River in Guizhou say:“People say that the Three Gorges is great, I say that Wujiang River is even better. Then why is it unknown? Because Li Bai and Du Fu have not been here”(人说三峡好, 我说乌江高。为啥不出名?李杜未曾到。) (Lonely Planet, 2013, p. 422e423). The Wujiang River is the largest tributary to the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and is also in the Three Gorges area. It has beautiful natural scenery and is called the “Wujiang River Art Gallery” after tourism began to develop there since the 1990s. However, it does not have the accumulation of culture in history due to its geography and transportation difficulty. Hence, it does not have the historically accumulated fame, which probably makes it more difficult to establish itself in the Chinese market. Chen (2010) also records the efforts of tourism developers who searched for ancient poems in order to make a relatively new attraction more recognizable and acceptable to the Chinese market. These cases further confirm the reliance of Chinese tourism on classical poetry and other cultural heritage as discussed in Ballantyne et al. (2014) and Xu et al. (2013). While poems lead tourists to certain places and point to what to gaze at, as shown above, they may also guide tourists in terms of how to gaze. Poems are frequently used to enhance the experience of tourists and provide them the poetic gaze while they are cruising on the Yangtze River, as observed by the first author in the field trip. Two particular poetic gazes are used: one is in the spatial dimension and the other is in temporal dimensions, as discussed below. 4.2. Poetic gaze in the spatial dimension As found in the examined guidebooks, poems may be used to enhance tourists' aesthetic experience along the spatial dimension by providing a finer gaze, a further-reaching gaze, and an imaginary overlook to intensify or transcend the “here”.

The finer gaze may be illustrated by Wen's (2005) description of the Kui Gate (the entrance of the Qutang Gorge) using a line from Du Fu (p. 102): “Here the width of the river is only slightly above a hundred meters, which tightly girds the mighty river into a ravine. The flow of water passes at fifty to sixty thousand cubic meters per second. 'Numerous rivers gathered at Fu and Wan; Arriving at Qutang Gorge they have to fight for one gate confined ' (众水会涪 万, 瞿塘争一门)dby using one word 'fight', Du Fu ingeniously described the imposing water flow at the Kui Gate.” Such citations may help tourists direct their attention and develop aesthetic appreciation, making the scene more dynamic and interesting. This poem is the most frequently used one when the cruise is moving through the gorge. Some poems may be used to direct tourists for a furtherreaching gaze. Wen (2005, p. 187) cited poems from Du Fu and Li Bai to describe the broad view of the Yangtze River at the Wuhan Yangtze bridge: “The Yangtze River bridge cuts across the Yangtze River like a flying rainbow … Standing on the bridge and overlooking the four directions, seeing the grand river rolling to the east and the three towns of Wuhan all covered in one view, one is full of towering heroic and romantic feelings. 'The boundless forest sheds its leaves shower by shower; The endless river rolls its waves, hour after hour.' 'His lessening sail is lost in the boundless blue sky; Where I see only the endless River rolling by (孤帆远 影碧空尽, 唯见长江天际流。Translation by Xu, 2012).' The chanting of the ancients still resounds in one's ear, and the rolling river cannot tell all the romance in the past thousands of years.” The further gaze can naturally develop to an imaginary overlook that goes beyond what can be actually seen. Such an overlook transcends the spatial limitation of human vision and adds more to the experience of a gazing tourist. For example, Fu Zuoji's (about 1661e1727 AD) line is used in Wen's (2005, p. 95) description of the geographical location of Fengjie: “Fengjie county was called Kui prefecture in ancient times and is located at the west beginning of Three Gorges of Yangtze River. 'It controls Ba and Yu in the west, collecting tens of thousands of valleys; It connects with Jingchu in the east, bearing down on chains of mountains' (西控巴渝收万壑, 东连荆楚压群山). It is a famous city with more than 2300 years of history.” Ba, Yu, and Jingchu are ancient names of regions. While the location of Fengjie is already described clearly in the first sentence in the passage above, the cited poem renders a more dynamic, romantic, and imaginative gaze. Such poetic gaze may help tourists transcend their physical limitedness and embrace the vastness of land. Overall, the gazes of various scales embedded in the poems by past poets may help tourists develop a deep connection with the landscape that are both immediate and beyond.

4.3. Poetic gaze in the temporal dimension Touring the Three Gorges is attractive because of its history and its significance as a national heritage. The heritage is revealed and interpreted through various poems. In this way, poems may be used to help tourists to transcend the “now” and connect with the thousands of years of history that shape and permeate contemporary Chinese life. First of all, the poems that are still cited today are themselves the product of a past time. The earliest poem cited in the tourism guidebooks is from Qu Yuan (340e278 BC), composed about 2300 years ago. Other cited poems are from every dynasty in

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Chinese history, with a few from contemporary poets. The citation of such ancient poems brings tourists naturally into a gaze of the poets' perceived world in the past, enabling them to imaginatively experience what the poets have seen and felt. The ancient poems thus help tourists transcend what they might perceive and feel by themselves in the now and add enormously to their experience. As found in the guidebooks, poems may be used in several specific ways to add to the temporal experience of tourists. A poem may serve as a record of some historical event. One example in Wen (2005) involves two minor gorges in the Xiling Gorge: one named after two stones there that looked like a book and a sword; the other after two stalactites there that looked like a horse lung and ox liver. The iconic shapes of these stones and stalactites have attracted the gaze of passing-by travelers for thousands of years, which have turned these natural formations into cultural relics. Wen (2005, p. 143) included a story and cited from Guo Moruo (1892e1978): “In 1900, the British warship that invaded the Xiling Gorge bombed the banks and destroyed the lower half of the horse lung stalactite. When Guo Moruo visited the Three Gorges he wrote 'Two Poems When Passing by the Xiling Gorge', in which there are lines 'The stones retain their book and sword shapes; Yet the horse lung and the ox liver tell about the rampage of invaders' (兵书宝剑存形似, 马肺牛肝说寇狂).” It is noted that the story may not be truedthe cause of the diminished stalactites may be natural erosion rather than British bombardment according to Chen (2010). However, the poem and its story may have had a broader spread. The poem is cited in Weng (2004), Wen (2005), and Chen (2010) and numerous Internet records (e.g., description of the place in the Baidu encyclopedia, retrieved on 2014/09/20), but the dispute to this record of the historical event is only cited in Chen (2010). A poem may also provide an idea of society and life in the past. A sense of historical continuity may be conveyed by such poems, as in Wen's description of the Yangtze River, which cites Lu You (1125e1210 AD) (2005, p. 134): “Lu You wrote in his poem 'Caught in Rain at Badong': 'With the company of the clear creek I'm fishing; On the sand my cloak is damped by the rain drizzling. From now on I'll write poems in Badong; They no longer belong to the wind and rain of Baqiao.'(暂 借清溪伴钓翁, 沙边微雨湿孤蓬。从今诗在巴东县, 不属灞桥风雨 中。). The details of the poet's rumination on his poems have already been lost in the mist of history. Yet the Yangtze River we gaze upon today is still the river the poet gazed upon when he composed his poems nearly a thousand years ago.” A sense of connection with past generations may thus arise based on a shared gaze upon the unchanged natural scenery. In other words, the poems serve as a vehicle to deliver ancient poets' observations and feelings to contemporary tourists and to create a sense of historical social connection and continuity that characterizes the Chinese mind. A poem may also be used as a record of prosperity lost to the past, which it helps to imagine and recapture. At the Book-Granting platform on the Flying-Phoenix peak in the Wu Gorge, a Goddess temple was initially built during the Tang dynasty to commemorate the legendary Goddess who granted a book on water control to Yu who tamed numerous rivers (Wen, 2005). Since then, travelers passing-by on the Yangtze River would stop there and pay their homage to the Goddess. Many poems were composed during those visits and engraved in steles left in the temple. The temple was destroyed later in wars, and the steles disappeared into oblivion. But its prosperity is preserved in poems from then and may be

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recaptured in imagination, as suggested by Wen (2005, p. 126): “In the times when wooden boats sailed in the gorges, without exception, passing-by travelers would stop at the foot of the Flying-Phoenix peak and climb to the Book-Granting platform to pay their homage to the Goddess. Hence there were many steles left in the temple, engraved with poems written by generations of literati. With ages passing by, these steles gradually disappeared into oblivion. Yet from Tang dynasty poets' lines, such as 'The Goddess temple emerges in the dispersing clouds in the Wu Gorge; Among green ponds and red trees rises its jagged image ' (巫峡云开 神女祠, 绿潭红树影参差), 'In the spring mountain the temple secludes the dawn moonlight; To the dark green trees the waves resound' (庙闭春山晓月光, 波声回合树苍苍), and 'I moored my boat at the foot of the twelve peaks; Smelt at midnight is the secluded fairy incense' (停舟十二峰峦下, 幽配仙香半夜闻), we can still meditate on the prosperous scenes at the Goddess temple in ancient time.” A new Goddess temple was built in 1995 as an icon of the Wushan county (Chen, 2010). In the thousands of years of Chinese history, physical structures naturally suffer from the erosion of ages and rise and fall with the wax and wane of dynasties. Yet from the perspective of tourism marketers cited above, poems seem to offer a trustworthy glimpse into the past life, a reliable link between past and present, and a vehicle for cultural continuity. This role of poetry echoes researchers' recognition that what is important to Chinese tourists is not the objective authenticity of physical features (Sofield & Li, 1998; Xu et al., 2008) but may be this poetic experience that provides a unity of past and now. A poem that depicts past life may serve as a benchmark for a past versus present comparison, which highlights changes for tourists to imagine and in turn might stimulate feelings of nostalgia. Wen (2005, p. 114) cited a line from Li Bai in the description of Daning River, a branch of the Yangtze River: “Daning River is the least polluted river in the entire Three Gorges reservoir area. It has very clear waters, and the cobblestones on the riverbed are clearly visible. The scene recorded in 'On the riverbanks apes cry without stop' (两岸猿声啼不住) is no longer available in the larger Three Gorges, yet it can still be seen in the smaller Three Gorges.” This famous poem from Li Bai is used here to epitomize the Three Gorges landscape in ancient times. Its usage here seems to address Chinese tourists' anticipation for seeing monkeys and hearing their cries as the poem is learned by almost every Chinese person at a young age and is an essential part of the cultural image of the Three Gorges. However, this landscape and its ecosystem has been drastically changed since the construction of the Three Gorges dam, which was completed in 2009. Interpretation of this newly formed landscape cannot avoid, and must take into consideration, the poetic images embedded in the Chinese mind. In summary, there is an inherent time dimension in ancient poems that can help tourists transcend the “now” and enjoy a much richer experience. Poems are usually accepted as reliable records of events, social life, and environmental conditions in the past. They often lead spontaneously to a comparison between the past and the present, which develop a sense of historical continuity or change and derive culturally enriched experiences beyond what can be physically seen in front of the tourist.

5. Conclusion and discussion China is the oldest country in the world with a continuous living

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culture. The influence of culture should be fully considered in order to understand contemporary Chinese tourism, even though it is only a recent phenomenon that has been developed in about three decades. This research sheds light on this cultural continuity by focusing on and revealing the specific roles of ancient poetry in modern tourism practice: poetry may influence tourism in terms of what to gaze at and how to gaze. It contributes to the understanding of the cultural nature of the Chinese gaze as a poetic gaze and adds to the knowledge about literary tourism in China. Based on the findings of this study, discussions are made with regard to four specific topics: tourism development and marketing, landscape appreciation, environmental interpretation, and literary tourism. First, it seems common for Chinese tourism marketers to use the past presence of poets at a place and their extol of a place to testify and enhance the value of the place as a tourist destination. Poetic works are presented in various concrete ways as objects of tourist gaze. This general pattern found based on a new data source, i.e., guidebooks, further confirms similar observations such as in Ballantyne et al. (2014) and Xu et al. (2013). It is also consistent with the cultural relationship between place and literati (Wang, 2008). It is recognized by generations of ancient literary critics that a place otherwise unknown would become more prominent and attractive because of the writings of literati. The contemporary tourism phenomena that Chinese tourists like to follow important people such as the scholar-poet-official elites (Ballantyne et al., 2014; Xu et al., 2013) and that tourism practitioners rely on these elites to promote the value of their destinations both reflect this same continued cultural influence. This observation is also consistent with the finding by Wang and Xu (2014) that Chinese tourism companies that are dependent on the most important and well-known cultural and natural resources receive higher levels of visitations and revenues than tourism companies without such resources. This reliance on cultural resources seems to put places with a rich poetry heritage at an advantage in the tourism market, while it presents a challenge to those places lacking in such resources. Second, this study reveals in detail the Chinese gaze as a poetic gaze, especially in terms of landscape appreciation under the influence of shanshui poems. While poetry may seem to be abstruse, elusive, and hence difficult to use, this study proposes to apply classical poems in an organized and operational approach along the spatial and temporal dimensions as a result of a systematic analysis of the usage of poems in guidebooks. Poems may be used to direct tourists' appreciation of landscape by zooming in for a finer gaze and zooming out for a further gaze and an imaginary overlook at the vast homeland. They may also be cited to reflect on past events and life in general and to arouse an appreciation of the historical continuity or changes beyond the immediate scene. Experiences that intensify and transcend the here and now may thus be created. By comparing this study with research on the influence of the general principles in Chinese culture, especially the Chinese search for harmony and the unity of man and nature (Li, 2005; Sofield & Li, 2011; Xu et al., 2014; Xu et al., 2008), it is observed that the citation of poems in guidebooks seldom discusses these higher-level, philosophical principles. Yet these principles are embedded in the poems. For example, Lu You's poem “With the company of the clear creek I'm fishing; On the sand my cloak is damped by the rain drizzling” conjures up a picture in which the fishing poet, the creek and the rain co-exist harmoniously. Yet the citation of a poem in the tourism context involves a multi-dimensional relationship complex. The tourist may see through the eyes of a poet by reciting a poem, gaining a more poetic appreciation of the landscape, while feeling at one with and sympathizing with the poet who gazed upon the same land hundreds or thousands of years ago, or sighing at the grand changes that contrast with an ancient poetic picture. Such a Chinese poetic gaze looks for a harmonious whole of human

and nature in the past and the present. It contrasts with the more analytical responses to the question “What makes a destination beautiful” in Kirillova, Fu, Lehto, and Cai (2014). Third, the analysis of poetry usage in this study provides a foundation to develop practical means to address the need for more effective environmental interpretation in China. Xu et al. (2013) found that Chinese tourists prefer the traditional Chinese aesthetic approach to environmental interpretations and are less responsive to the scientific approach used in the western model of nature management. Two suggestions are proposed here. First, the use of poems as part of the aesthetic approach is also valuable in enhancing people's understanding and appreciation of nature and their attitude toward nature conservation. Second, the aesthetic and scientific approaches may be integrated to offer effective interpretation. Poems may be used either to describe a landscape in the spatial dimension or to stress the continuity or change of an ecosystem along the temporal dimension. Such application should be adapted to the specific conditions of a place. For example, Li Bai's poem “On the riverbanks apes cry without stop” is a reflection of the primitive ecosystem of the Three Gorges in the past, which is drastically changed due to the construction of the dam and reservoir in the last two decades. This poem may be used to start an introduction regarding the new environmental conditions and challenges. By combining poetry and science, interpretation may build on Chinese tourists' common knowledge, arouse their interest, and then educate them with relevant scientific knowledge. Fourth, this study reveals some distinctive features of literary/ poetry tourism in China. As shown in this study, poetry has a highly respected and permeating existence and influence in Chinese society and tourist destinations. Many places (such as the White Emperor town and the Yellow Crane tower) are associated with a constellation of poets/poems that came one after another in China's long-lasting tradition of poetry. In comparison, destinations studied in previous literary tourism research tend to be associated with individual authors/works (among which novelists and novels seem to dominate) (Hoppen et al., 2014). For example, Laugharne is associated with Dylan Thomas and Chawton with Jane Austen (Herbert, 2001). Sites in Prince Edward Island, Canada are associated with L. M. Montgomery and her Anne of Green Gables (Fawcett & Cormack, 2001). While literary tourism is a subfield of cultural and heritage tourism in the West (Hoppen et al., 2014), poetry seems to permeate the whole field of Chinese cultural and heritage tourism. Hence, the above discussions regarding the other three topics including destination development and marketing, landscape appreciation, and environmental interpretation are not constrained to the literary tourism subfield but is applicable to the entire Chinese tourism field. A limitation of this study is that tourists were not directly interviewed about their poetry-related experiences, considering that it is difficult for them to express nuanced aesthetic feelings. Instead, their poetry-related behaviors were observed and their experiences inferred from guidebooks. This approach does not mean to assume that tourists are passive recipients of projected images. Rather, it is recognized that their gazes may be the result of negotiation with, and even divergence from, such projections, as suggested by Hollinshead (1999), Ong, Ryan, and McIntosh (2014) and Ong, Minca, and Felder (2015). This should be examined in future studies with careful research designs. Further research questions include the following: What are the roles of classical poetry in Chinese tourists' behavior and experience? Would tourists remain at a shallow level of heritage/cultural experience (Zhou, Zhang, & Edelheim, 2013; Maoz, 2006)? How to use classical poetry more effectively in tourism development and marketing and experience creation? Further, when Chinese tourists go abroad and tour a foreign land, do they bring a Chinese poetic gaze with them? For international tourists unfamiliar with Chinese poetry, it presents a challenge but also an

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Xiaojuan Yu is a Lecturer in the School of Tourism Management at Sun Yat-sen University (No. 135, Xingang Xi Road, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China. Email: yuxj5@mail. sysu.edu.cn). She obtained a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a MS and BA from Beijing University, China. Her research interests include tourist behavior, tourism marketing and management, cultural and heritage tourism.

Honggang Xu is Professor of the School of Tourism Management at Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China (Email: [email protected]). She obtained a PhD and MA from the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand, and a BA from Beijing University, China. Her research interests include sustainable tourism, tourism geography and complexity theory in tourism.