Coming of age of the Chinese tourists

Abstract

Unlike most previous tourism research that has focused on Western tourists, this article investigates the interactions between Chinese tourists and Vietnamese hosts in border tourism in Vietnam. It proposes that a study of non-Western tourism between non-Western destinations is long overdue. The last decade has witnessed a massive influx of Chinese tourists into many Asian tourism landscapes. As a category of non-Western tourists, they are certainly producing immense economic and cultural impacts on the host societies. Conceptually, this article extends Urry's tourist gaze to the host, showing that the hosts, rather than being passive objects of the tourist gaze, are in fact active agents casting fierce gazes on the tourists. It also examines the Chinese tourist gaze, which serves as a point of departure of looking into Chinese moving desire and transnational modernity within the context of expanding Asian tourism.