Your Current Visit to Pu-Tuo
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http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/ Research Commons at the University of Waikato Copyright Statement: The digital copy of this thesis is protected by the Copyright Act 1994 (New Zealand). The thesis may be consulted by you, provided you comply with the provisions of the Act and the following conditions of use: Any use you make of these documents or images must be for research or private study purposes only, and you may not make them available to any other person. Authors control the copyright of their thesis. You will recognise the author’s right to be identified as the author of the thesis, and due acknowledgement will be made to the author where appropriate. You will obtain the author’s permission before publishing any material from the thesis. Buddhism and Tourism at Pu-Tuo-Shan, China A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Tourism Management at The University of Waikato by Cora U. I., Wong 2011 Abstract This thesis is a study of pilgrimage and religious tourism in a Chinese Buddhist context, with a focus on both the host monastic community and visitors. The selected research site is Pu-Tuo-Shan, one of the Four Buddhist Sacred Mountains of China. While the Western literature on pilgrimage and religious tourism in the context of Buddhism in China remains thin and the many studies in Chinese have their research focus primarily on how to make use of religions to develop tourism and stimulate economic growth, this thesis aims to present the perceptions of Buddhist monks and nuns towards receiving visitors and tourism. The perceptions of religious hosts towards tourism development, and how they cope with the subsequent challenges created by tourism in China, are subjects that have not been studied. Additionally the thesis analyses data derived from a survey of 777 visitors to the island; the quantitative analysis sheds light on the profile of visitors. As elsewhere in the world, the religious sites of China attract not only believers, but also leisure and cultural tourists. The popularity of Pu-Tuo as a tourist destination inevitably disturbs the serenity of the monastic life of the approximately thousand monks and nuns who live there in their monasteries and nunneries. The first objective of this research is to generate a typology of visitors, and this was done through a quantitative approach grounded in post-positivism. The visitor survey was used to construct a visitor typology. The second objective of this thesis, to address how Buddhist monks and nuns perceive receiving visitors and tourism, and their ways to manage visitors’ behaviours, is achieved by adopting a qualitative approach grounded in an interpretive-constructivist paradigm. In-depth interviews with 25 monks and nuns were conducted to capture rich contextual data of their understandings. The two objectives of the thesis are related in the sense that the impact of the visitors on the monastic community and how the monks and nuns i perceive their presence in Pu-Tuo depend on the visitors’ reasons for their visits, their behaviour and the strength of their belief in Buddhism. The findings provide insight into how the concepts of ‘pilgrimage’ and ‘pilgrim’ are understood from a Buddhist perspective. The attitudes of the Pu-Tuo Buddhist monks and nuns towards receiving visitors and tourism are found to be mostly welcoming and supportive. This contrasts with the literature on sites belonging to religions other than Buddhism which indicates that tourism is perceived by religious hosts as a burden and as a threat to the sanctity of their religious/sacred sites. Yet, there are challenges created by the visitors in Pu-Tuo and these are noted by the monks and nuns. Their ‘Buddhist way’ of undertaking visitor management is found to be different from what is described in the existing literature about non-Buddhist sites. It is suggested that the empathetic nature of Buddhism is at the root of the visitor management strategies adopted at Pu-Tuo. The findings thereby contribute to the existing scholarly knowledge of how Buddhist sites are managed in the Buddhist way. ii Preface and Acknowledgements The journey of my PhD started in July 2008 and I have to express my sincere gratitude to a number of people, in particular to my supervisors Professor Alison McIntosh and Professor Chris Ryan for their kindness, love and care given to me. To Alison and Chris: Thanks for having been brave enough to accept me as your PhD student and having thereby opened for me the door to the academic world of tourism studies. Thank you so much for your love given the fact that both of you were always willing to spend hours after hours to transfer your knowledge, to share your research experience and to guide me step by step in the path of understanding what the meanings of doing research is. Your passion inspired me a lot and let me appreciate both the value and the fun of doing academic research. I thank both of you for taking good care of me along my PhD journey so that the learning process was always filled with bliss and joy. I feel truly lucky and I am grateful for having the two very wonderful, knowledgeable and renowned scholars as my supervisors and mentors in my life. To my guru: Thank you so much for your encouragements and blessings. To my family: for all the love and support given to me. To all the monks and nuns at Pu-Tuo who have supported my research: I thank all of you for being so kind to me. Thanks so much for all the tea and meals in your iii monasteries and nunneries. I will forever cherish the quality time that I spent with all of you. I miss your pastries, nuts, fruits and smiling faces. The way you shared Buddhism with me not only contributed enormously to my thesis but also purified my heart and soul. To XiaoYan: Thank you so much for your kindness in helping me with the field work and for showing me around the monasteries and nunneries of Pu-Tuo. To Chin-Ee: Thank you buddy for faithfully accompanying me through all the ups and downs of this journey. Thank you so much for helping me to step into the academic world and for putting me into the safe hands that allowed me to acquire the skills and the proper mind needed to do research. To Kasu: Thank you for helping me with the installation of computer programmes and a lot of troubleshooting along the way. To Leonie and Maria: Thanks for your help and kind assistance throughout my PhD journey. Last but not least, to the Buddha and Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara: I know you have always taken good care of me and thus you have sent so many wonderful people to help me, teach me, guide me and protect me. I truly treasure what I have and I believe that the scheme of things that you planned for me was the best I could have hoped for. Thank you for everything. iv v Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................... i Preface and Acknowledgements ................................................................................. iii No table of figures entries found. ................................................................................ ix Chapter 1: Introduction .......................................................................................... 1 Rationale and Contribution of the Research Study .................................................. 4 Organisation of Thesis ............................................................................................... 5 Chapter 2: Buddhist Monasticism and Pilgrimages ......................................... 7 2.1 Pilgrimages and Sacredness: Eliade’s Centre of the World .................................... 7 2.2 Buddhist Monasticism ........................................................................................... 12 2.2.1 The Birth of Buddhist Monasticism .............................................................. 12 2.2.2 The Evolution of Buddhist Monasticism in China .......................................... 17 2.2.3 Sources of Income in the Chinese Buddhist Monasteries Today ............. 19 2.3 The Buddhist Pilgrimage ....................................................................................... 21 2.3.1 Concepts of Pilgrim from a Buddhist Perspective ......................................... 21 2.3.2 The Origins of the Buddhist Pilgrimage ......................................................... 25 2.4 Chapter Summary ................................................................................................. 27 Chapter 3: Literature Review - Pilgrimage and Tourism .............................. 29 3.1 Overview of the Literature on Pilgrimage and Tourism ....................................... 29 3.1.1 The Evolution in the Nature of Pilgrimage ..................................................... 35 3.1.2 Pilgrims versus Tourists .................................................................................. 37 3.1.3 Motivations and Behaviour of Visitors at Religious Sites .............................. 42 3.1.4 Impacts of Tourism on Religious Sites ........................................................... 52 3.1.5 Host-Guest Relationship ................................................................................ 57 3.2 Chapter Summary ................................................................................................. 60 Chapter 4: The Pu-Tuo Monastic Community ................................................ 62 4.1 Mountain Pu-Tuo, China ......................................................................................