Romantic Consumption and Heritage Performance in China

Abstract

Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher. a World Heritage town -in conscious homage to the likes of Rock and Goullart. They publish their impressions in blogs, journals, and websites, reinforcing the image of this peripheral region as a place of authenticity, ancientness, unbroken tradition, and untrammelled nature.Rock and Goullart's stories, along with Hilton's novel Lost Horizon (later a film), the documentaries, the blogs, the Lonely Planet guidebooks and the rest have helped to construe Lijiang as a 'stage' on which visitors can enact fantasies of exploration and discovery. The authenticity of these stories does not affect their impact on the Western imagination -and as such, they are now embraced by the state to promote the area's romantic image for purposes of tourism -to the extent that a number of Chinese as well now subscribe to the same mythology.