Fourth International Conference on Tourism and Leisure Studies

Abstract

The World Heritage Site of Honghe hani rice terrace, also a poverty-striken marginal rural region in Southern China, is undergoing rapid change because of urbanization and heritage tourism. Influenced by out-migration and changing ways of living in urbanization, the place sees a tendency of losing its rice terrace landscape and traditional housings. However, heritage tourism tends to keep the authentic past, valorise them for tourism purposes and diversifies rural livelihood strategies. The place stands at this development tragectories, where the same resources are subjected to different uses by different actors. Seeing place as a social construct, the research seeks to answer the questions of how the site is transformed in urbanization and heritage tourism? And what’s the negotiation and co-construction process by different institutions, practices and actors? The reseach aims to describle the transformation of traditional settlements and rice terraces and describe the place-making process. To answer the questions and achieve the objectives, the research uses a mixed of methods including direct observation, participant observation, interviews; collects various data of images, words, narratives and statistics, and analyze them qualitatively and quantitatively. It is hoped that the research would reexamine and re adapt the concept of heritage, reveal the conflicts it entails in development, bring more thoughts from a functional perspective on heritage in relation to rural development, and give concrete suggestions on the management and development of the place.