ECONOMIC AND SOCIO-CULTURAL IMPACTS OF TOURISM DEVELOPMENT IN FENGHUANG COUNTY, CHINA By XIANGHONG FENG A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY Department of Anthropology AUGUST 2008 © Copyright by XIANGHONG FENG, 2008 All Rights Reserved © Copyright by XIANGHONG FENG, 2008 All Rights Reserved To the Faculty of Washington State University The members of the Committee appointed to examine the dissertation/thesis of XIANGHONG FENG find it satisfactory and recommend that it be accepted. _____________________________________ Chair _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I owe much gratitude to the local people in Fenghuang County. They shared with me their lives and experiences, which not only provided research material, but also enriched me as a person rather than a researcher. I acknowledge with warm thanks the valuable support of the official Mr. Yugang Shi at the State Ethnic Affairs Committee of China, the field assistance provided by the official Mr. Jun Shi at the People’s Government of Xiangxi Hmong-Tujia Ethnic Groups Autonomous Prefecture, the official Ms. Rufen Tian at the People’s Government of Fenghuang County, and my college friend Ms. Jinqun Shi, a sociologist scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Science (CASS) in Beijing. Jinqun’s family in Tuo River Town let me stay with them during my three visits, and treated me as their daughter. My dissertation research was partly funded by the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service through its Summer Doctoral Fellowship, and the Department of Anthropology at Washington State University through its International Research Award. My gratitude is also to the faculty and graduate students at Department of Anthropology, Washington State University, for their greatest support to me as an international student far away from my home country China. I am indebted to my doctoral committee chair Dr. John H. Bodley, for his great inspiration and encouragement, as well as his endless patience and support to me. Dr. Bodley has been guiding my way since I first came to join this doctoral program from China in Fall 2003, without whom I could have never come this far. I want to thank my other doctoral committee member Dr. Nancy Mckee, Dr. William Andrefsky, Dr. John Young, Dr. Linda Stone (former), and Dr. Hua Han (former), as well as other faculty Dr. Bill Lipe, Dr. Steve Burkett, Dr. Jeannette Mageo, and Dr. Jeff Sellen at Washington State University. I also want to thank Misty iii Luminais, Ming-Kuo Wu, Kerensa Alison, Christa Herrygers, Ben Columbi, Maia Clay, Kim- Trieu Nguyen, and Troy Wilson, whom I feel lucky to have as friends and classmates. Special thanks to Mark Hill, not only for his assistance with the map illustrations and his comments on my every single draft, but also for his moral support to help me through the hardest time. Additional thanks to the editors, especially Dr. David C. Griffith at Human Organization, Dr. Ann Kingsolver at Anthropology of Work Review, and Dr. Roderick Sprague at Journal of Northwest Anthropology, and the associated anonymous reviewers. Their thoughtful insights and specific suggestions on my three articles (included in this dissertation after some expansion as Chapter 3, 4, and 5), greatly helped me improve them, and I am very appreciative of the opportunities of publishing them as the journal articles (Feng 2008; 2007a; 2007b). I also appreciate the individuals associated with the Society for Applied Anthropology such as its Executive Director Dr. Tom May and the anonymous reviewers for its 2005 Peter K. New Prize, and the individuals associated with the 60th Northwest Anthropological Conference and the anonymous reviewers for its Graduate Student Paper Competition. These two awards had been great encouragement for me to believe in and continue on my dissertation research. My final thanks are to my family and friends in China. Without their moral support, the numerous days and nights alone in U.S. during the past five years would have been much harder for me. The five-year life as a doctoral student at WSU is a treasure for me, which is not only invaluable because of the academic training, but also invaluable because of these life experiences in America for me as a cultural anthropologist. The five-year life is full of tears and laughs, sadness and joys, doubts and hopes, confusions and excitements. It had seemed to be endlessly long; while looking back, it feels as fast as a blink. Now, this five-year life is about to come to an end, I already start to miss it, but I am more looking forward to a new chapter in my life. iv ECONOMIC AND SOCIO-CULTURAL IMPACTS OF TOURISM DEVELOPMENT IN FENGHUANG COUNTY, CHINA Abstract by Xianghong Feng, Ph.D. Washington State University August 2008 Chair: John H. Bodley The Chinese government is making tourism an important rural development strategy. Local governments and outside developers jointly manage and develop natural and cultural resources to increase tourism revenues. The government sells development and management rights to large for-profit corporations. This paper examines one such project in Fenghuang County, Hunan Province, where Yellow Dragon Cave Corporation (YDCC) and the local government of Fenghuang County are jointly promoting tourism. Pleasant climate, stunning views, “colorful” ethnic minority cultures, and the newly discovered and partially restored Ming Dynasty “Southern China Great Wall” are the primary tourist attractions in Fenghuang County. This project impacts 374,000 people, made up of 29 national minorities and representing 74 percent of the local population. Some researchers argue that this public-private partnership successfully produces profits for developers and creates economic growth. The present research uses a power and scale perspective to identify the preliminary economic and socio-cultural impacts of this capital-intensive development model on local communities. Open-ended interviews with residents, government officials, and business representatives are combined with demographic and economic statistics to identify the decision-makers, document the distribution of social power, and identify the flow of costs and benefits through the tourism system. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………………... iii ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………….v LIST OF TABLES………………………………………………………………………………..ix LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………………………….…...xi CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………1 The Research Problem and Its Theoretical Foundation…………………………….1 a. The Research Problem……………………………………………………...….2 b. The Theoretical Foundation………………………………………………...… 3 China’s Contemporary Economic Context…………………………………………6 Tourism Development in Hunan……………………………………...…………….9 a. The Outlook of Hunan Province…………………………………...…………..9 b. YDCC’s Monopolization of Tourism Resources in Hunan………………...…11 c. YDCC and Fenghuang County…………………………………………….....16 Research Objectives and Methods……………………………………………...…18 2. FENGHUANG COUNTY AND ITS TOURISM….......................................................27 Fenghuang’s History and Administrative Structure…………………………….....27 Fenghuang as a Physiographic, Ethnic and Economic Periphery…………………30 a. Geography………………………………………………………………….…32 vi b. Population…………………………………………………………..………...35 c. Resources……………………………………………………………………...40 d. Economy……………………………………………………………………...47 Fenghuang’s Eighteen Year (2002-2020) Tourism and Urbanization Plans………50 3. TOURISM IN TUO RIVER TOWN………………………………………………..…54 Impressions of Tuo River Town…………………………………………………..54 a. Physical Environment………………………………………………………...54 b. Social Environment………………………………………………………..…57 Mapping Economic Benefit Distribution and Social Power……………………...60 a. Tourists………………………………………………………………………..60 b. PATT, the County Government, and Local Residents……………………..….65 4. TWO VILLAGE TOURISM DEVELOPMENT MODELS…………………………..79 Yellow Silk Village vs. Gouliang Hmong Village……………………………….79 a. Yellow Silk Village: Local Government’s Big “Headache”………………….81 b. Gouliang Village: Official Tourism Development Model…………………...86 c. Comparisons…………………………………………………………………93 Studies of Other Ethnic Tourism Projects in China’s Peripheries……………….94 5. GENDER AND HANDICRAFT BY FENGHUANG HMONG IN THE CONTEXT OF TOURISM…………………………………………………………………………....97 Traditional Fenghuang Hmong Women’s Handicraft………………………..…..99 Hmong Women’s Handicrafts in the Context of Tourism……………………....100 a. Resistance…………………………………………………………………...101 b. Accommodation………………………………………………………….…103 vii c. Competition…………………………………………………………………108 Gender Roles and Handicraft Practice among Hmong Women………………….112 a. Case I: Liuai Wu, Shanjiang Town…………………………………………..113 b. Case II: Jianyuan Long, Shanjiang Town……………………………...……115 c. Case III: Chunxia Long, Jianhua Wu, and Hexiu Long, Ala Town………….116 6. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………...…119 Evaluation of Economic and Sociocultural Impacts of Fenghuang’s Tourism….119 a. Economic Impacts…………………………………………………………...121 b. Environmental Impacts……………………………………………………...122 c. Social Impacts………………………………………………………….……123 d. Cultural Impacts……………………………………………………………..125 e. Elite-claimed Benefits vs. Actual Results…………………………………...126 Implications and Suggestions……………………………………………………128 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………133 APPENDIX A. HMONG, HAN, AND TUJIA POPULATION DISTRIBUTION