A Brief Note on “Wandering in the Clouds” (1)

From July 8 to 15 I went to Yunnan with my parents for a trip—“cloud roaming,” for short. Of course, this sort of traveling can’t compare with the real “cloud roaming” I yearn for. I’m using this title for the post just to indulge my own yy~

We went with a Spring and Autumn Travel Agency group. Spring and Autumn is one of Shanghai’s old-established travel agencies; back when my parents went on their honeymoon by travel package, it was also Spring and Autumn, so it was certainly more正规 and reliable than those small, fly-by-night agencies. Still, no matter what travel agency it is, it can’t be compared with independent travel.

In my mind, traveling and the activities those tourists carry out are two entirely different things. I’m willing to call what they call “travel” “fake travel.” But then again, perhaps that sort of activity is actually closer to the ancient meaning of the word “travel”—just look at the two characters 旅 and 游: both carry the “side” radical, and that radical originally meant “banner” or “flag,” didn’t it? So “travel” probably means something like a group of people marching along behind flags, which is rather apt as an image for how tour groups move about, eh~

When I say that sort of activity is “fake travel,” I don’t mean that it doesn’t count as real travel and that only something meeting some standard counts as true travel—there is no such standard. I call it “fake travel” because this activity begins by aiming at falsity. Tourists don’t care whether what they see is real or fake; at many times they don’t even care whether it’s interesting or boring. In many cases, the real thing is actually unwelcome. For example, if you go “climbing a mountain,” you always have to lay down steps, build cable cars, erect viewing platforms, plant trees and flowers, and by the way bring in some foreign grasses for greening; in short, you have to make the place utterly unrecognizable before it can count as a “scenic spot.” Or, if you go to visit ethnic customs and local color, you first need to hire actors, set up a stage, arrange performances, and only then can you “experience” and “understand” them. Even if you know full well that these performances are not the locals’ real way of life, most tourists are still satisfied, after all—they only need to enjoy the fake performance, and have no intention of probing the real life behind it.

Another false pursuit is “taking photos,” which has already become the tourists’ first “task” when they wander through scenic areas. Many people touring a scenic spot are either taking photos or looking for the next place to take photos. I once heard a classic line from a tour guide: “On the bus, they sleep; off the bus, they pee; at scenic spots, they take photos; when they get home and are asked about it, they know nothing.” That’s probably the pattern for most Chinese tourists.

Of course, as always, I was carrying my camera and snapping photos at will. But obviously I don’t like that kind of thing where, upon arriving at a scenic spot, one poses, puts on a fake smile, and then takes a commemorative photo. Naturally, such photos can be kept as mementos, to be looked back on later. But for evoking memories, the photos I take casually can work even better, because they are records of the actual itinerary, not deliberate performances.

When one encounters an interesting scene, feels joy in the heart, and goes to take a photo with it, that of course is also a good thing. But in fact many of the photos taken by tourists are absolutely not taken when they are feeling excited. In many cases, tourists insist on leaving a photo somewhere simply because this place is a “scenic spot,” a place pointed out by the guide, and so they must take a photo there. The purpose of leaving a photograph is not only to help oneself later remember what happened at the time (in that case, simply taking photos of the scenic spot directly, as I do, would suffice), but also to smuggle in the psychology of “I was here.” It is as if, unless one appears in the photo, one cannot adequately “prove” that one has “been here.” Here, the tourist’s aim is still not the real scenery or the actual experience; it is not about “traveling here,” but about “this place has now been traveled by me.” Whether or not one needs to show the photo off to relatives and friends, one’s own presence in the picture is enough to bring some kind of false sense of accomplishment.

Of course, some people simply like taking photos, and then “taking photos at scenic spots” is a very natural thing. But after all, scenic spots are first and foremost for “traveling,” aren’t they?

Apart from taking photos, shopping is also a major part of tour groups’ business. Although many tourists complain that there are too many shops the guide leads them to, that it’s too annoying, or that they’re being ripped off, there are still more tourists who go home lugging back a substantial haul of “loot.”

Here again the “I was here” mentality is at work. Buying some “loot” to take back is also a way of “proving” that one has “been here.” I often buy a few small souvenirs to bring back too. Once you’ve been to enough scenic spots, you learn that many little knickknacks claiming to be local specialties can actually be found in tourist markets all over the country—most of them probably wholesale from Yiwu. I generally buy things that are interesting, genuinely local, easy to carry, and cost less than a hundred yuan—such as this time in Lijiang, when I spent 30 yuan on a bark painting. In Lijiang’s equivalent of the City God Temple, with its eyes full of identical merchandise, this was something I only found in a nondescript “studio,” so it was rather distinctive. The rest were two cakes of Pu’er tea and a can of Yunnan coffee with no sugar and no creamer, which should still count as moderate. Dad, on the other hand, bought a piece of ink-jade pixiu for more than four thousand yuan. Compared with that, we were still fairly rational.

Tourists’ money is the easiest money to make. First, tourists are all outsiders; they’re unfamiliar with the place and easy to fool. Second, tourists come and then go home; even if they realize they’ve been fooled, they rarely come back to make trouble. Third, once people become tourists, they are often people who have money and are willing to spend it. Fourth, the “I was here” mentality makes people actively look for “loot.” Fifth, when traveling there is a kind of logic that plays an important role: “I’ve already spent several thousand yuan to come traveling, so if I get ripped off for this little hundred-yuan thing, then so be it.” Sixth, when traveling people are always in a state of excitement; the jewelry store that sits right by their door at home may be invisible to them, but once they reach a scenic spot they can suddenly be stimulated into a pressing need, as if those things have become things they have to buy sooner or later, so they might as well buy them now.

Of course, tourists always set out with all kinds of motives. Aside from people traveling for work or study, most people probably travel for entertainment and relaxation, right? Especially the “petty bourgeois” types—in other words, the middle class—who mostly use travel to escape their busy daily work and the monotonous yet fast-paced city life.

I don’t need to escape anything. This trip was an uncommon family outing, so I simply went along with my parents.

For me personally, first of all, I don’t need to choose travel in order to escape the city once in a while. Although I do criticize urbanization, I don’t actually feel much aversion to my living environment; every day is lived pleasantly and comfortably. Second, I also wouldn’t travel for purposes like “I was here.” If I too need a sense of accomplishment to entertain myself, reading and writing are more than enough. Third, I also wouldn’t travel in order to increase my “knowledge.” Though it’s true that “to hear a hundred times is not as good as seeing once,” when it comes to knowledge such as history, geography, and culture, books are still more reliable and effective. And if one really wants to understand local “local knowledge,” then one should use the backpacker style of travel.

In my view, only backpackers can really be called true travelers: pursuing reality rather than illusion, pursuing understanding rather than conquest, pursuing “participating here” rather than “having been here.”

But backpackers alone can’t drive the tourism economy. It’s said that Lijiang Old Town was liked by Western backpackers very early on, and only after it became known to Chinese people because of the 1996 earthquake did it gradually develop from a poor county in an out-of-the-way place into a rather prosperous tourist city.

My use of the word “prosperous” carries no praise. In Shanghainese, there’s a more apt way to put it: it’s “really bustling and noisy.” Basically, it feels like Shanghai’s City God Temple. Put the City God Temple in already prosperous and noisy Shanghai, and it still seems to fit. But if that City God Temple were opened in a historic and cultural old city known as the “Suuzhou of the plateau,” then it would truly be a sorry sight—let alone the fact that the entire old city itself has been turned, from top to bottom, into a small-goods market.

When I went to Pingyao Old City, I had already sighed over its commercialization. But who would have known that once I saw Lijiang, I would finally understand what it means for the lesser witch to meet the greater sorcerer—there is not a single house left in the whole of Lijiang “Old Town” that hasn’t been developed for commercial use. Looking around, where is there still even a trace of “old”?

I’m afraid the title of “World Cultural Heritage” for Lijiang Old Town is about to be revoked soon; otherwise one has to wonder what UNESCO is even there for. Just like blowing up the Bamiyan Buddha statues, perhaps you can blow up a gold mountain from within, but the heritage is destroyed in the end. You might even argue that destroying the heritage in order to get the gold mountain is a good thing, but if you are bombarding it while at the same time claiming to be protecting heritage, then that is just ridiculous.

But should preserving heritage mean depriving local residents of the chance to get rich? How should the opinions of local people be respected? What kind of Lijiang City do the local people actually want, and what do we want?

I’ll stop here for now. After some time, I may gradually jot down some more miscellaneous notes, and when I write about Lijiang again later, I’ll talk about it then.

July 16, 2008, Fushan Road, Shanghai

Latest Comments

• Ceiling

  2008-07-16 19:20:01

  What a coincidence, I just came back from “muddled roaming.” And I was backpacking too~ haha~~

• Gǔ Chù

  2008-07-16 21:14:03

  Alas, when will a backpack take me out too~ Backpacking really depends on having good travel companions; if you let me go out alone, then it really would be nothing but “cloud roaming.”
  In a few days I’m planning to buy a big backpack and a full set of gear, and I’ll try to go cloud roaming a few times every year.

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.