Tourism Management 54 (2016) 393e403

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Tourism Management
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tourman

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: Classical poetry is an important part of Chinese culture. This study explores its roles in contemporary
Received 10 June 2015 Chinese tourism based on participant observation of tourist destinations in the Three Gorges and sur-
Received in revised form rounding area along the Yangtze River and content analysis of tourism guidebooks. Classical poetry is
5 December 2015
used to guide Chinese tourists in terms of what to gaze at and how to gaze. Specifically, first, poets and
Accepted 15 December 2015
Available online xxx
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
Keywords:
Chinese classical poetry
poetic experiences. Such influence of classical poetry exemplifies the cultural continuity in China that
Culture should be well understood and considered in contemporary tourism. Implications in tourism develop-
Destination attractiveness ment and marketing, aesthetic experience creation, environmental interpretation, and literary tourism
Time are discussed.
Space © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Landscape appreciation
Environmental interpretation
Literary tourism

1. Introduction guide tourists' experiences in a more systematic way.

Poetry was the most respected and practiced literary genre in
ancient China and is an important cultural heritage to contempo-
rary 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: yuxiaojuan214@163.com (X. Yu).
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 “pla-
ces celebrated for literary depictions and/or connections with lit-
erary 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

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2015.12.007
0261-5177/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
394 X. Yu, H. Xu / Tourism Management 54 (2016) 393e403
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 empir-
ically 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 desti-
nation 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 experi-
ence 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 re-
ported 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 in-
terpretations (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 pre-
tended 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 simul-
taneously 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-poet-
officials, 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 immortal-
ized 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 na-
tional 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 desti-
nation 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 &
 X. Yu, H. Xu / Tourism Management 54 (2016) 393e403
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 regar-
ded 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 conse-
quences 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 neces-
sary 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 re-
experience their feelings deposited in their poems and contem-
plate on their life and their insights.
Other Chinese behavior influenced by classical poetry has also
been recognized by researchers. First, when visiting moun-
tainous 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 land-
scapes, may positively add to the aesthetic experience of tourists at
least in four aspects: the typification of images of natural scenes
395
and objects; the poetic feelings attached to scenes; the philo-
sophical 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 at-
tempts 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 ob-
jects, 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 per-
ceptions 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 rea-
sons. 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 experi-
ences. 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
396 X. Yu, H. Xu / Tourism Management 54 (2016) 393e403
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 com-
plement data collected in the field observation.
Travel guidebooks related to the Three Gorges area were ac-
quired 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 vet-
eran 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 sam-
ple 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 con-
ducted 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 in-
stances 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 mean-
ingfully 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 interpre-
tation 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
 X. Yu, H. Xu / Tourism Management 54 (2016) 393e403 397

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

Guidebook Year Authors and their background Content

Into the New Three Gorges:
Tourism Guidebook to the Three
Gorges and Surrounding Areas
The Three Gorges New Tourism
A Traveler's Testimony: The
Everlasting Three Gorges
Chongqing's Tour Guide
Interpretationa
Sichuan and Chongqinga
2005 Wen Ya Descriptions and pictures of places of interest and travel
information for each destination are provided.
2010 Chen Wen The book covers both traditional travel contents and the author's
Chen is a local photographer, writer, and journalist personal travel experiences and recommendations, especially
dedicated to research, writing, and communication accounting for the changes in the physical and social landscape
about the cultural aspects of the Three Gorges. brought by the Three Gorges dam and reservoir completed in
2009.
2004 Weng Yi The book records his travel from Chongqing to Yichang in 1997
Weng is a retired photographer and journalist who has with the purpose to witness the physical and social landscape
traveled extensively around China. that will be submerged by the Three Gorges reservoir under
construction.
The book includes traditional touristic information about places
and spots, the author's photography processes, and the influence
of the Three Gorges reservoir.
2006; Yang Huilong & Yang Yuan [Chapter 5 Three Gorges, p. 121e204]
reprinted Both authors are local government affiliated part-time The book is one in the Series of Excellent Tour Guide
in 2010 writers. Interpretation used by tour guides in China. It also uses materials
compiled by official tourist bureaus and travel agencies.
2013 Lonely Planet [Three Gorges, p. 415e422]
The author Yi Xiaochun is a travel enthusiast and has Authors personally traveled each place and provide succinct
been writing for Lonely Planet and other similar formatted information about scenic spots, food, accommodation,
guidebook series in China for ten years. and transportation.

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 Sum

Pattern codes Interpretive codes Wen Chen Weng Yang and Yang Lonely Planet
(2005) (2010) (2004) (2006) (2013)

What to The value creation Poets' presence and activities 6 20 13 11 50 (23%)

gaze role Poets' direct promotion 14 15 14 4 47 (22%)
How to The spatial Finer gaze 7 9 21 7 1 45 (21%)
gaze dimension Far-reaching gaze 2 1 3 (1%)
Imaginary overlooking 5 4 1 10 (5%)
The temporal Record of past event and life 3 4 11 11 29 (13%)
dimension Past-present comparison and sense of continuity 7 2 9 (4%)
Past-present comparison and sense of change (lost/ 6 4 7 5 1 23 (11%)
deteriorated/improved)
Total number of poems 50a 55 70 39 2 216
(100%)
b b
Total number of pages examined 211 309 303 84 8 915
Poem/page 0.29 0.18 0.23 0.46 0.25 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 in-
stances (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 cul-
tural 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 trian-
gulation 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 consider-
ably 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 partici-
pant 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.
398 X. Yu, H. Xu / Tourism Management 54 (2016) 393e403
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) in-
fluence the value of a place as an object of contemporary tourist
gaze. This is done mainly in two ways: by their presence and ac-
tivities 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 dy-
nasties, 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 pro-
found 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 inter-
ruption, despite the physical ups and downs. The presentation of
poetry and poets inside the tower reflects its essence and is sup-
posed 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
 X. Yu, H. Xu / Tourism Management 54 (2016) 393e403 399

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 abun-
dance 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 destina-
tion'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
400 X. Yu, H. Xu / Tourism Management 54 (2016) 393e403
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 inspi-
ration. 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 dimen-
sion 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 further-
reaching 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 contempo-
rary 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
 X. Yu, H. Xu / Tourism Management 54 (2016) 393e403
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 spe-
cific 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 re-
cords (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
401
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 se-
cludes 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 experi-
ence 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 cobble-
stones 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
402 X. Yu, H. Xu / Tourism Management 54 (2016) 393e403
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 de-
cades. 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 apprecia-
tion, 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 phe-
nomena 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 pro-
mote 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 in-
fluence 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 driz-
zling” 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 com-
plex. 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 reser-
voir 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 inter-
est, 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 soci-
ety and tourist destinations. Many places (such as the White Em-
peror 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 in-
dividual authors/works (among which novelists and novels seem to
dominate) (Hoppen et al., 2014). For example, Laugharne is associ-
ated 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 desti-
nation 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 inter-
viewed 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 heri-
tage/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
 X. Yu, H. Xu / Tourism Management 54 (2016) 393e403 403

opportunity to learn about the culture, so would it enhance the Sofield, T., & Li, S. (2011). Tourism governance and sustainable national development in
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quality of their experience in China? These questions need to be
Squire, S. J. (1996). Literary tourism and sustainable tourism: promoting 'Anne of Green
answered in further studies, and this study serves as a comparison gables' in Prince Edward island. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 4(3), 119e134.
point regarding what is and may be offered to tourists. Sun, M., Zhang, X., & Ryan, C. (2015). Perceiving tourist destination landscapes through
Chinese eyes: the case of South Island, New Zealand. Tourism Management, 46,
582e595.
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