Paper short abstract:

The paper examines how a Chinese minority group, the Naxi, living in Lijiang, Yunnan Province, are encountered with the radically developed tourism business in the past decade, presenting themselves to the millions of domestic tourists with their traditional culture in an attempt to optimise their socioeconomic achievements. The tourism industry has indeed assisted the revitalisation of the culture, though its negative impact has been far from careful assessment.

Paper long abstract:

For centuries, many of the Naxi living in the mountain area have been practising a religious custom called 'dongba' religion. Although it was banned for half a century by the central government since 1960s, it is revitalising by the Naxi farmers and social elites who both embrace it as their new ethnic icon in front of other Han Chinese tourists. The involvement of tourism in this rehabilitation plays a significant role in reshaping the religion in several aspects. In the first place, by luring many young dongba working in urban areas to entertain tourists, the tourism industry is weakening the traditional bonds between the religious practitioners and their serving communities. Secondly, modern school learning, partially sponsored by tourism capital is replacing the traditional master-disciple relationship, putting pressure on the quality of the religion study. Thirdly, the intercommunication between the younger generation of dongba, across many regions, has been expanded unprecedentedly, which will profoundly influence the future development of the practice. Last but not least, the modern leisure-concerned social medium, i.e. TV dramas, the Internet blogs and newspapers, has bombarded many young domestic tourists travelling to Lijiang with some commercialised selective images of the Naxi group, interpreting the peculiar incident of 'love suicide', that some of young Naxi used to practiced more than half a century ago, into a 'romantic' or 'seeking for true love' scenario, showing no concern for its ambiguous social and religious background.