Scenic Spots: Chinese Tourism, the State, and Cultural Authority

4. Scenic Spots Beyond the Border: Migration, Tourism, and Cultural Authority

4 SCENIC SPOTS BEYOND THE BORDER Migration, Tourism, and Cultural Authority ince the People's Republic embarked on the modernization drive that became supreme state ideology and social mantra after I978, Chinese citizens have continuously been challenged to travel in multiple ways (see Rofel I992). As Xin Liu (I997) has pointed out, a "spatial hierarchy" arose in which one's "success" as a modern-or "advanced" (xianjin), "civilized" (wenming), "cultured" (you wenhua), or "high-quality" (you suzhi)-Chinese subject was linked to mobility. At the pinnacle of that hierarchy was international migration to the United States, the country that most symbolized global modernity. Migration, having onlyrecentlybeen seen as treachery, was now reevaluated as an act ofpatriotic potential: "successful" migrants could contribute not only to their own modernization and glory but also to that of the Fatherland (Ny£ri 200I). Migrants are symbolic figures because they represent the vanguard ofmodernity, not only by virtue of their connection to more "advanced" nations, but also by the very fact oftheir mobility. As with its policy reversal on domestic tourism, China changed from a state that prevented foreign travel to one that encouraged it but attempted to control its meaning. The public discourse in I990S China, from academia to the media, equated travel abroad with migration in pursuit ofindividual "development" (fazhan) through education orworkand, ultimatelyand optimally , entrepreneurship. Indeed, the master narrative ofthe "new migrant" was one ofwhat Harvey (I989) termed "flexible accumulation." The "new 99 migrant" was a figure that represented a new, globally modern and yet authentically national-even racial-way ofbeing Chinese. The image was ofsomeone who is successful in the global capitalist economy and rises to a position of economic and even political power in the country that epitomizes modernityand power, the United States, and is able to do so precisely because ofcertain innate Chinese moral qualities. These include a natural, selfless loyaltyto the homeland thatmanifests itselfin donations and investments (Nyiri 2002b). To cite a typical example, a recent paper by a Chinese scholar claimed thatnew migrants, whose achievements "reflectthe national policyofreform and openingand display the Chinese people's talents to the world," have a special "feelingofChineseness," and "realize that their roots are in Chinese culture" (Ju 2004) OutsideChina, this image ofthe Chinese migrantwas metwith neo-Yellow Peril images of Chinese migration that circulated in mainstream media in Europe and Asia (and, in part, in America) and frequently associated new migration from mainland China with illegality, crime, and threats to economic security, demographic balance, and public health (e.g., Friman 2002; Lomanov 2002). Nonetheless, the "new migrant" image had a powerful impacton the fashioning ofChinese migrant subjects, on the way migrants saw themselves, theirvarious environments, and their relationship to China and the countries they resided in, and in the way they justified their choices and actions (Nyiri2002a, 2002b). This was because "new migrant" imagery, carried into individual homes by a burgeoning global Chinese media, gradually replaced locally constructed media discourses (Nyiri 2005). Media adopting this discourse included the satellite channel of China Central Television and private channels with business interests in mainland China and Hong Kong, as well as newspapers published byHongKong-based concerns and bynewmigrants (seeYang1997;XudongZhang 2001a; Nyiri 2002b; and Parker 2003).1 World Cities, the "New Migrant," and Chinese Modernity Overseas Chinese have played central roles in Chinese discourses of a national culture on several occasions in the country's modern history (see, e.g., Duara 1997). Today again, the economic success of overseas Chinese and, in particular, "new migrants," plays a central role in assertions ofcultural nationalism. As Rojekand Urrypointout, tourism's contribution to the creation of a "national culture" may involve sites across national borders, 100 SCENIC SPOTS BEYOND THE BORDER and this is necessarily the case for diasporic (or transnational) populations (1997:12). For China today, global cities ofthe Westincreasingly acquire the meaning ofsuch national sites beyond the border, signifying migrant success through a plethora offilms, television dramas, and fiction. Beginning with the hugely successful soap opera based on the 1991 novel ABeijing Man in New York, migrants in these accounts play the role ofboth scoutandvoyeur for the nation, providing a continuous peep show accompanied by a commentary on foreign localities as backdrops for evolvingways ofChinese life (Sun 2002:67-II1). In these books, films, and television programs, Tokyo, Moscow, Paris, and New York are above all sites of an unfolding global Chinese modernity. This function, as Wanning Sun observes, shapes the visual...