This is a book of very high scholarship that should be on the bookshelves of sinologists, tourism academics, anthropologists, and others, regardless of their specializations. It provides a wide array of insights into contemporary China that extend well beyond the relatively narrow connotations of the title with its emphasis on faiths and religions. At the broadest level, the fascinating and diverse chapters explore governance of the world's most populous country and the strains it confronts to maintain unity and stability. Sharpening the focus, it examines how the secular state, utilizing tourism as one major instrument for the transformation from communism to aspects of a capitalist market economy “with Chinese characteristics,” is an active participant in the revival of sacred places, spaces, and behavior (once condemned as “illegal superstitions”) under a headlong drive for modernization. Themes—such as issues of identity that are inherent in adherence to religious faiths, but carry the potential of a clash with patriotism, national unity, and state security; demographics, inequities between rural and urban populations, and the place of minzu (loosely translated as Minorities nationalities) in Chinese society; and ideological contestation between faith, cultural heritage, commoditization, and materialism—are all explored through the lens of religious belief systems within contemporary tourism development where the State's exercise of power is rarely challenged. However, as all of the authors demonstrate, the capacity of the state to control behavior that stems from the re-emergence of religions in twenty-first century China, by harnessing them as acceptable cultural theater for touristic consumption, is less than complete.
A basic premise of this anthology is that the orthodox typology of tourist motivations and behaviors cannot be relied upon to draw clear distinctions between the realms of tourism and pilgrimage, which are “abstract constructions that cannot hold up to the empirical messiness of the social world” (p. 7). Oakes and Sutton suggest a continuum from “tourist” to “pilgrim,” with elements in between displaying a mix of both tourist and pilgrim. Thus, many pilgrims display interest in the sights (sightseeing) beyond their participation in religious activities, and many tourists engage, even if only briefly, in forms of behavior that are typical of pilgrims (e.g. burning incense, saying prayers, etc). Just as visitors are heterogeneous in terms of behavior and activities so sites are “heterotopias” (Oakes and Sutton, p. 11, citing Haiyan Lee); such tourists they suggest are half pilgrims and vice versa.
This approach is not quite as novel as its editors imply however. The dichotomy of “pilgrim” and “tourist” has been challenged for more than a decade, and the volume on Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys edited by Dalen Timothy and Daniel Olsen (New York: Routledge, 2006) explored this convergence in substantial detail.
But to suggest that tourists and pilgrims are “half-half” is to place perhaps too strong an emphasis on similarities when in fact deep divides are present. For many pilgrims their over-riding purpose in visiting a site will be for religious observance based on a deep-seated commitment to the ideology behind the physical space/place and its perceived sacredness, whereas for many tourists their main motivation will be curiosity/entertainment, and at some levels there is no cross-over.
Nevertheless a major value of this text is that Oakes, Sutton, and their co-authors have thrown off the straitjacket of standard typologies to explore with fresh eyes the phenomena that constitute tourism/tourists and pilgrimage. They combine to provide an array of often profound insights into the various manifestations that tourism/tourists and religious sites take in China, especially in the context of the re-emergence and resurgence of Minorities religions in the environment of an atheist state that officially provides no support for religion. The ideological gymnastics that result in some religious elements being accorded status as cultural heritage which can then attract government support for tourism exploitation (the rebuilding of temples, monasteries, and mosques, and support for festivals and events even when their underlying structure is manifestly religious) is an analysis that gains particular traction in some chapters; e.g. McCarthy on Buddhism among the Dai Minority of southern Yunnan (Xishuangbanna), McKahn on Naxi (dongba) ritual in Lijiang (northern Yunnan), Makley on Tibetan Buddhism and tourism, Sutton and Kang on religion and ethnicity in northern Sichuan, and Oakes, who provides a fascinating exploration of the “fossilizing” of tiaoshen 跳神 as dixi 地戏, a form of masked ritual theater performed by tunpu 屯堡, rural communities in Guizhou. Oakes's conclusions concerning the instrumentalism displayed by the Chinese authorities, in attempting to dismantle the contradictions between religious worship/faith on the one hand and touristic promotion of such practices as ethnic culture on the other, constitute a major strength of this chapter.
Additional chapters—by Yu Luo Rioux on “red tourism” (the sacralization of sites commemorating famous Communist Party milestones on its “long march” from the 1920s to Mao Zedong's interment in Tiananmen Square in 1976, which are now visited by millions of Chinese each year), Svensson's insightful investigation of the revival of Buddhist and Daoist temples in Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province, and Dean's chapter on the return visits of overseas Chinese to ancestral villages in Fujian re-introducing “authentic” ancestral worship whose practices had been ostensibly destroyed during the Mao regime—present quite different but equally fascinating explorations of the major themes that hold this book together.
Given the topicality of Tibet and the revival of Buddhism in this Autonomous Region (and throughout other Tibetan regions within China) with an energetic temple/monastery rebuilding program actively supported by the Chinese Government, I would have liked to see a chapter that tackled the issues of the TAR more directly than the chapter by Makley. While her analysis demonstrates a profound familiarity with Tibetan Buddhism, its focus on the Tibetan exhibition within the Beijing Ethnic Park—an artificial representation of both tangible and intangible Tibetan religious heritage—bypasses to some extent an examination of the situation regarding CCP governance, tourism to Tibet and ethno-religious identity intrinsic to Tibetan Buddhist activities, and the role of the Dalai Lama. Having been involved in eight tourism development projects in the TAR, the Greater Shangri-La Region Project, and other Tibetan regions of China over the past nine years, all of which included the objective of showcasing Tibetan culture to the world (a direct refutation incidentally of the Dalai Lama's claim that China is practising “cultural genocide” on “his” people), I believe the situation inside the TAR highlights more strongly than the Beijing Ethnic Park the Chinese Government's rediscovery of traditional culture and how state organizations are helping to revive “sacred spaces” as exploitable sites for tourism development. Nevertheless Makley's detailed scrutiny of the Tibetan exhibition in Beijing does allow pertinent factors to be revealed, e.g. the “value shift” inherent in Buddhist exposure to capitalist exploitation of their religion as objects for the tourist gaze and the power plays behind the construction of the Kalacakra mandala temple; and her scholarship on Tibetan Buddhism merits the inclusion of this chapter, which makes its own unique contributions to the volume as a whole.
Calling the book “Faiths on Display” with the sub-title “Religion, Tourism and the Chinese State” is defusing its message. It would have been much better if these had been reversed, since at first sight the lead part of the title is likely to attract the attention only of those with specific interest in religious studies. It is the sub-title that provides a sense of direction that will engage a much broader readership, and a second edition might consider reversing the current title.
