Tourism routes through a mobile lens: The case of China’s Chamagudao

Abstract

This article examines how various stakeholders’ practices on the ground mobilise and immobilise the Chamagudao’s heritage as a historic trade and caravan route. The research is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Yunnan, China, following movements of tourists, guides, residents and information on the remaining trails of the Chamagudao. It outlines how nodes, constructed by state actors and touristic media, rather than the lines of mobile heritage primarily constitute the Chamagudao, and the implications for tourists’ awareness and understanding of the Chamagudao as mobile heritage. Explicitly mobile practices occurring along its trajectories are challenging the nodal interpretations of this historic route. The article offers a mobile perspective on assessing the opportunities and challenges faced by tourism routes in China in the governments bid to develop these as mobile heritage destinations.

Tourism mobilities, tourist performances: Editors-in-chief’s notes

“…This issue takes readers from examinations of tourism routes that are personal, public and planned to investigations of global scuba diving imaginaries to urban music tourism performances. Witte’s (2023) piece on China’s ancient trade route opens the issue, focussing on the Chamagudao and its contemporary adaptation as a heritage trail. Adopting a mobilities perspective, Witte (2023) shows how stakeholder efforts were centred on immobilising the ancient trade route’s historical and heritage narratives – and through that immobilisation the stories that thread through the attractions of the ancient route were ignored.…”

“…Witte’s (2023) piece on China’s ancient trade route opens the issue, focussing on the Chamagudao and its contemporary adaptation as a heritage trail. Adopting a mobilities perspective, Witte (2023) shows how stakeholder efforts were centred on immobilising the ancient trade route’s historical and heritage narratives – and through that immobilisation the stories that thread through the attractions of the ancient route were ignored. In addition to connecting to themes of ‘mobile heritage’ in heritage studies, Witte’s work builds on Tourist Studies tradition of critical scholarship that both focusses on and interrogates the autonomy, agency and freedoms of individuals.…”