Volume 11, No. 1 88 Performing Locality and Identity: Rickshaw Driver, Narratives, and Tourism Lijun ZHANG Guangxi Museum of Nationalities, Nanning, PRC Email:
[email protected] Abstract: The paper examines the fusion of narratives, time, space, and personal identity through ethnographic study of rickshaw driver’s performance in the context of “Hutong tour” as a form of urban tourism in Beijing, a cosmopolitan capital city with a long history and rich traditional (both vernacular and high) culture. While tour companies in Beijing are making efforts to market vernacular culture in the modernized ancient city, the study subject rickshaw driver Zhang constructs his own knowledge structure of vernacular culture in the daily practice of urban tourism. Zhang also constructs his own sense of locality and identity in the process of performing personally constructed vernacular culture and national past connecting to the tangible landscape and “scenic spots” in Beijing. Key words: Performance, Rickshaw Driver, Vernacular Culture, Locality, identity The paper is belonged to the project of BNU, The Daily Life Research of Urban Status Groups (SKZZB2015032) supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, PRC. Cambridge Journal of China Studies 89 In the center of the modernized ancient city Beijing, there is a piece of cultural conservation land which is tourists' must-go place to experience the history of the capital city as a significant part of the national past and the so-called authentic old Beijing culture as a representative sector of the local present1 . In this are allies the grant Imperial Place, the beautiful man-made lake Shichahai(什刹海), the well-known vernacular architecture quadrangles (siheyuan 四合院), the narrow alleys between the quadrangles referred to as hutong (胡同) in vernacular language, and many other tourist attractions.