Flights of Fancy from a Sedan Chair: Marketing Tourism in Republican China, 1927–1937

This article examines how the first Chinese-run travel agency, China Travel Service ('Zhongguo lüxing she) and its travel magazine (lüxing zazhi) marketed the new idea of pleasure travel, the new roles of service industry and client, and the new location of a modern tourist site during the Republican era. Two populations were targeted: middle-class mainland Chinese and Asian overseas Chinese. The article first explores how the China Travel Service created a service industry and a network of services, and then uses magazine travelogues to examine the marketing process and site development in two sites with different characteristics: (i) Huangshan, a traditional site visited by mainland Chinese, and (z) South and Southeast Asia, places few mainland Chinese visited.