Folklore, Authenticity and the Tourist Gaze in Touring Chinese Cultural Heritage

Of late, Chinese cultural heritage buildings have enjoyed attention as desirable destination images. This has been boosted by the tourist gaze, which derives its object of desire from the soft power of transnationally broadcast Chinese historical films and television series, such as “Longest Day in Chang’an”. Within the experience of tourism lies the issue of finding authenticity, which consists of three types: objective authenticity, constructive authenticity and existential authenticity (Wang 1999). In this globalised and super-diverse environment (Vertovec 1997), does fixed authenticity based on historical experience still exist? I demonstrate how this media-enhanced tourist gaze sublimates its fantasy through tourism of Chinese heritage buildings, through a quantitative survey of tourists’ experiences of authenticity in visiting one such Chinese heritage building. Ultimately, much like “Dracula-tourism” in Transylvania, this phenomenon facilitates the embodying of the folklore of Chinese cultural heritage as desirable images. This in turn represents a form of constructive authenticity similar to film tourism, which mitigates the re-enactment of tourists’ projection of authenticity upon toured objects.