Touring China: A History of Travel Culture, 1912–1949

Yajun Mo

Published by Cornell University Press 2021

Touring China

A History of Travel Culture, 1912–1949

Yajun Mo
Preface by: Eric G. E. Zuelow

In the series Histories and Cultures of Tourism

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501760631

Overview
Contents

About this book

In Touring China, Yajun Mo explores how early twentieth century Chinese sightseers described the destinations that they visited, and how their travel accounts gave Chinese readers a means to imagine their vast country.

The roots of China's tourism market stretch back over a hundred years, when railroad and steamship networks expanded into the coastal regions. Tourism-related businesses and publications flourished in urban centers while scientific exploration, investigative journalism, and wartime travel propelled many Chinese from the eastern seaboard to its peripheries. Mo considers not only accounts of overseas travel and voyages across borderlands, but also trips within China. On the one hand, via travel and travel writing, the unity of China's coastal regions, inland provinces, and western frontiers was experienced and reinforced. On the other, travel literature revealed a persistent tension between the aspiration for national unity and the anxiety that China might fall apart. Touring China tells a fascinating story about the physical and intellectual routes people took on various journeys, against the backdrop of the transition from Chinese empire to nation-state.

Author / Editor information

Yajun Mo is Assistant Professor of History at Boston College.

Reviews

James Carter, Saint Joseph's University, author of Champions Day:

Yajun Mo impressively combines entertaining stories with clear arguments. Her topic is rich and Touring China does not disappoint. Indeed, it exposes a fundamental feature of modernity: to be a modern nation is to be a nation of tourists.

John M. Carroll, University of Hong Kong, author of A Concise History of Hong Kong:

Touring China persuasively de-Westernizes the history of tourism in China. A fascinating and important book, it draws on an extensive range of sources with great skill.

Touring China persuasively shows how travel writing in the Republican era brought remote parts of China, previously seen as something of a barbarian wilderness, into national history and geography in ways that show remarkable continuities with the PRC's post-1989 tourism canon. In this sense, the book has unearthed a "missing link" between imperial and post-socialist travel.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Foreword Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xv
Introduction: Tourism, Travel Culture, and the Making of the Chinese National Space Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Travel as a Business: The Making of Modern Chinese Tourism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	15
2. Travel as Narratives: Producing Quanguo through Travel Print Media Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	54
3. “Head to the Northwest”: Modern China’s Movement Westward Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
4. Facilitating the Exodus: Wartime Travel and the Southwest Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	132
5. Between Empire and Nation-State: Tourism and Travel in Manchuria and Taiwan, 1912–1949 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
Conclusion: Legacies of Republican-Era Tourism and Travel Culture Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	206
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	257
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	287

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 318
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 1
- Images: 12
- Other: 12 b&w halftones, 1 map
Keywords: Domestic tourism in Republican China; Travel Culture in Republican China; The history of Chinese tourism; History of China Travel Service; Travel columns in Chinese magazines

eBook

Published: December 15, 2021
ISBN: 9781501760631