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JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY  2021, Vol. 51 Issue (1): 145-154    DOI: 10.3785/j.issn.1008-942X.CN.33-6000/C.2019.05.162
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From Ancient to Modern Tourism in China: Changes in Connotations Between Lüyou and Woyou as a Key to Understanding Developments
Pang Xuequan, Fang Fang
College of Humanities, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China

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Abstract  An extensive literature on ancient tourism, focusing on the history of tourism as well as tourism culture, economics, and geography, is now widely available, but the significance of these researches has always been problematic: lacking a clear connection with modern tourism, the effectiveness of ancient tourism studies appears limited. Our approach to challenging this status quo can be summarized into three questions: Why do we need to study the meaning of tourism in ancient Chinese culture? Why is tourism, as practiced in contemporary China, not a straightforward inheritance of ancient Chinese tourism, so that the internal logic of its development is chaotic and research meanings disconnected? And how can we connect the paths between ancient Chinese culture and the philosophy of contemporary tourism?Starting with an understanding of how connotations of the character “you” (游)have formed and changed over time, this paper explores the synchronicity and chronological connotations of “lüyou” (旅游) in ancient Chinese culture. In the synchronic form, lüyou retains the philosophical and aesthetic meaning of “you”. In the chronological state, there is a connection and difference between tourism and “woyou” (卧游) that has formed through “wo” (卧). As opposed to “wo”, where one does not leave the house, “lü” refers to leaving the residence. From the perspective of linguistic semiotics, woyou has the function of a link throughout the transformation of ancient Chinese tourism into modern tourism.In a word, modern tourism is not a direct inheritance of ancient tourism, nor should it simply be regarded as the superficialization of ancient tourism. The richness of the connotations of tourism concepts gradually changes with the generation and development of meaning within the same synchronic characteristics and diachronicity of differences. During the Tsung Ping period of the Southern Song Dynasty, the practice of woyou took form. In the late Ming Dynasty, tourism and woyou continued to develop, interacting and integrating. The integration of lüyou and woyou helped develop a modern tourism that combines the intrinsic motivations of the subject and the external motivations driven by information. At the same time, woyou has become a tourism imaginary integrated into modern tourism practice and the tourism experience. Such an understanding not only makes the distinction between ancient Chinese tourism and contemporary tourism characteristics clear and rigorous, but also links the relationship between ancient Chinese culture and modern tourism and, further more, makes the integration of far-reaching Chinese cultural perspectives in the study of tourism possible.
Received: 16 May 2019     
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https://www.zjujournals.com/soc/EN/10.3785/j.issn.1008-942X.CN.33-6000/C.2019.05.162     OR     https://www.zjujournals.com/soc/EN/Y2021/V51/I1/145
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