This is a pre-print version of an article published in Tourism Geographies. The definitive version can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2014.948043 Tourism and the Villagers without “History”: A Critical Review of the Studies of

Yubeng, China

Abstract: In recent years, Tibetan Yubeng Village, located in the southwest China, has become a hot point for

studying community tourism development in China’s minority areas. Studies of Yubeng Villages have been made

on its two tourism benefit distribution systems that are dominated by the community: the accommodation income

distribution system and the caravan rotation system. Analysis and discussion of researchers have based on the

formation, change and influence of these two systems. However, different researchers have different expressions on

some fundamental facts whether in terms of the time of the systems’ changes or in terms of the specific contents of

such changes. Based on firsthand interview records and auxiliary secondhand materials obtained from field

investigation, this study mainly takes “time of system change” as example to discuss the reasons of these

differences and advises that researchers shall be more rigorous when facing those fundamental facts.

Key words: community tourism; village; system change; history; time

INTRODUCTION

Yubeng Village is governed by Yunling Township, Deqin County, Diqing Tibetan

Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province in China. Since the mid and late 1990’s, it has gradually

become a hot destination for domestic and foreign backpackers, explorers and ecological, religious

and cultural tourists. Since 2001, the name “Yubeng” has began to appear in some research

achievements relevant to the development of tourism resources [1-4]. Hillman (B. Hillman) [5]

perhaps is the first scholar to involve the studies of community tourism in Yubeng Village. With

the cooperation of local government and some domestic and international NGOs on nature

conservation, Yubeng Village has obtained more and more focus as an environmental change

monitoring location impacted by external forces [6-8].

In 2006, planning experts from Tourism Planning and Development Research Center of Sun

Yat-Sen University systematically investigated and analyzed the tourism development mode

dominated by community participation in Yubeng for the first time in the preparation of Overall

Plan of Shangri-La Ecological Tourist Zone. They thought that although it is not perfect,

“Yubeng’s community tourism is the most typical community tourism founded at present in China

and villagers truly participate in the various segments of tourism decision-making, management,

benefit distribution [9]. Benefit sharing mechanism independently grasped by Yubeng Villagers is

regarded as an instructive case for the development of community tourism in China and written

into the book of Tourism and Community Development: Asian Practices published by the World

Tourism Organization [10]. Since then, study on Yubeng’s tourism has developed into a stage taking

community participation as the core issue. Researchers in China began to intensively publish some

research articles around Yubeng, among which three papers from Bao Jigang and Sun Jiuxia [9](Paper A), Chen Zhiyong and Yang Guihua [11] (Paper B) and Liu Xiangjun and Yang Guihua [12]

(Paper C) can be taken as representatives.

However, when reviewing three papers, these words used for describing community tourism

development process of Yubeng Village do not coincide with each other on several fundamentally

significant facts. Similarities of three papers lie in: the accommodation income distribution system

(A-system) and the caravan rotation system (C-system) are the core of Yubeng’s community

tourism mode, and the former is the more important; with time and condition changing, the

A-system has experienced several structural adjustments. But the basic facts described in the three

papers showed distinct differences when referring to the adjustments of A-system (Table 1):

(1) Most obviously, each time clear but entirely different expressions on the time of system

change are given in Paper A and Paper C;

(2) Three changes of system are indicated in Paper A and Paper C at least, but only one

system is introduced in Paper B;

(3) Expressions on the second system change are almost completely different in Paper A and

Paper B;

(4) In the new system after the third change, in terms of charged amount of income obtained

by reception families①, Paper A points out that a duty family② shall charge 10 Yuan per tourist

from each reception family according to the number of tourists hosted, but Paper B and Paper C

definitely state that 50% of income shall be charged from all reception families according to the

number of tourists hosted.

① Reception family: a family that is actually hosting tourists. ② Duty family: a family that is supposed to host tourists in turn, no matter whether it is capable to do so or not. All families in Yubeng has been given a serial number in order to be a duty family in turn. If a duty family cannot host any tourists, it will transfer the tourists to a family that is capable, i.e., the reception family.

Table 1 Comparison of Expressions in the Three Papers on Change of A-System Paper A (Bao and Sun)

Published time: August, 2008 Paper B (Chen and Yang)

Published time: April, 2009 Paper C (Liu and Yang)

Published time: June, 2009

The first change

Time: early 2002 Tourists are divided into batches and hosted by families in turn. A duty family charges 10 Yuan per person every night from the

actual reception family according to the number of tourists.

Time: unknown Tourists can select reception

family by themselves. If the reception family is by

coincidence the duty family, lodging fees will be paid by the reception family.

If the reception family is not the duty family, the reception family need to give 50% of all incomes to the duty family.

Time: June 1998 Tourists are divided into batches and hosted by families in turn. If tourists do not want to be hosted by the duty family, the duty

family will get half of lodging fees (10 Yuan per person every night) from the actual reception family.

The second change

Time: early 2003 Tourists are divided into batches and hosted by families in turn. Tourists can select the actual reception family by themselves. A duty family charges 10 Yuan per person every night from the

actual reception family according to number of tourists.

Time: April 2005 During each “Golden Week”①, the village cadres lead the duty

families to arrange accommodation for tourists and charge the earning shares from the reception families.

A duty family is responsible of the above procedure at other time.

The third change

Time: August 2006 Tourists can select the reception family by themselves. Every four families comprise a duty group. A duty group charges 10 Yuan per person from the reception

family according to number of tourists. The money is divided equally by the four families in such a

duty group.

Time: April 2007 Every four families comprise a duty group. A duty group arranges tourists to check in and charges half of

income from the reception family every night according to the number of tourists.

The money is divided equally by the four families in such a duty group.

The forth change

N/A N/A Time: August 2008 Every four families comprise a duty group. A duty group arranges tourists to check in and charges 5 Yuan per

person once and for all from the reception family according to the number of tourists.

The money is divided equally by the four families.

Sources: sorted out according to references [9], [11] and [12].

① From 1999, the Chinese central government authorized three weeks, each with successive seven days, as public holidays. They are: Spring Festival Week, Labors’ Day Week, and National Day Week. Chinese people called these weeks as “Golden Weeks” because they are the longest public holidays and have produced tremendous tourist population each and every time since 1999.

What is the actual development process of Yubeng Village community tourism? The three

papers show three versions of history of Yubeng Village’s community tourism, and a serious

paradox occurs: if all the histories of community tourism provided by them are based on

meticulous and rigorous field investigation of researchers, then a small Tibetan village with only

100 people has three contradictory “histories” at the same time. As a result, this annoying fact

makes the villagers of Yubeng become the villagers without “history” [13].

LOOKING FOR HISTORY IN THE FIELD

In early October 2006, I first entered Yubeng Village for investigation and made a

preliminary understanding on tourism development state. From the end of July to the beginning of

August, 2008, I organized a fieldwork group to enter Yubeng Village again for investigation, with

the main purpose of more comprehensively understanding the process of local tourism

development and community changes. In order to make the results more referential for subsequent

research, we focused on clarifying the specific process of every system change, especially clearing

the initiation and implementation time of the new system, key figures pushing system change and

specific contents of every system change. In the questions designed for open interviews, the

following questions pointing directly to the fundamental facts of system changes were involved:

Question 1: who was the first to open a family hostel?

Question 2: who putted forward to receive tourists by turns?

Question 3: when did the reception by turns begin? (Concerning the characteristics of the first

system change)

Question 4: when were the tourists allowed select accommodation by themselves?

(Concerning the characteristics of the second system change in Paper A and system change solely

mentioned in Paper B. As to the second system change described in Paper C, I had never heard

about it before the second field investigation and it was seldom mentioned by the informants)

Question 5: when was the A-system transformed into every four families charging lodging

fees by turns? (Concerning the characteristics of the third system change)

Question 6: when was the lodging fees charged by every four families by turns determined as

5 Yuan per person? (Concerning the characteristics of the forth system change in Paper C. It was

too late to be incorporated into Paper A for analysis before it was published according to the time

of change mentioned by Paper C)

Question 7: when was the C-system established?

Investigation team tried to find the following key figures for interviews: successive village

heads in the two sub-villages: the Upper Yubeng and the Lower Yubeng, village accountants,

leaders of the caravan and owners of every inn. At that time there were 16 inns, of which two inns

were managed by outsiders. The village is small and there were only 34 households/families in

August 2008, with a population of less than 180. The villagers are honest by nature, so the

investigation group could smoothly conduct interviews into their houses. Finally, the investigation

group completed 31 in-depth interviews of villagers from 25 families within a week, including 9

key figures with “titles” and 12 householders who running their own inns, possibly covering the

main groups that might have effect on the system change in the village. Table 2 lists the answer

points sorted out according to interview records for the seven questions above.

Table 2 Answer Points Sorted out according to Interview Records No. Gender Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Question 7

01a Male - Forget Forget - - - -

02a Male Shenpu Inn Amu - - 2006 May to June, 2008 -

03a Female - - - - - - Year of sheep①

04a Male - Amu 2002 2003 - June, 2008 Forget

05a Female Shenpu Inn - - - - - When Amu was the

village head.

06a Male Shenpu Inn - When Amu was the village head

- - - When Amu was the village head.

06b Male Shenpu Inn A tourist named

Tashi 2002 2003 October, 2006 June, 2008 -

07a Female Shenpu Inn - - - - - 2001

08a Female - - - - - July, 2008 -

08b Male - Raoding and Amu 2003 2003 - July, 2008 -

09a Female - Amu - - - June, 2008 -

11a Male Shenpu Inn - 2002 2003 October, 2006 - 1999

11b Male Shenpu Inn - 2002 2003 - 2008 -

11c Male Shenpu Inn - - - - - 2000

12a Male Shenpu Inn - 2000 (uncertain) 2003 Winter of 2006 to

April, 2007 June, 2008 1998

12b Male Shenpu Inn Amu 1999 2003 - May, 2008 End of 1999

13a Male - - - - - - -

16a Male - - - - - June, 2008 -

18a Female - - - - 2007 - -

19a Male Shenpu Inn - 2004 - July to August,

2007 - 2003

19b Male - - 2004 - - - -

21a Female Walkers’ Inn - 2003 - 2006 - -

① “Year of sheep”: a traditional Chinese cycle of year by naming each year with an animal in the following order: mouse, ox, tiger, rabbit, Chinese dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, chick, dog, and pig. The most recent year of sheep is 2003 in the Gregorian Calendar, and the next one will be 2015.

21b Male - - 1998 - - - 1998

24a Male Shenpu Inn - 2001 - 2004 - 1996

25a Male Shenpu Inn Raoding and

Amu 2002 2003

Autumn of 2006 (or May, 2007)

May, 2008 2003

26a Female Shenpu Inn - - - - - -

28a Male Teacher Arong’s Inn Arong 2003 2005 October, 2006 October, 2006 -

29a Male - - - - - - 1998

30a Male - - 2005 After 2005 After 2005 - -

Notes: (1) The digitals in the No. column represent family numbers and the attached letter represents different informants from the same family. In order to make the distribution of income more

convenient, each family in Yubeng has a fixed family number, of which No.31 to No.34 are the newest families that have just broken up from big families and recognized as separate families

recently; (2) The bold fonts represent 9 key figures with titles. They are (some of them have more than one titles): two former heads, two present heads, two former accountants, two present

village accountants, two former caravan captains, and two present caravan captains; (3) The short transverse line, “-”, represents that the informant didn’t provide any relevant information.

SUCH AN AMBIGUOUS HISTORY

The seven questions are analyzed according to a comprehensive sorting of investigated

materials to try to clarify the basic facts happened in Yubeng Village.

Question 1: who was the first to open a family hostel?

Almost definitely, Shenpu Inn is the first.

Question 2: who putted forward to receive tourists by turns?

Amu who had been the head of Lower Yubeng might have played a leading role. Amu said

that there were two considerations to put forward a system of accommodation by turns: firstly, the

caravan had begun to take turns in the village for a while and he thought that “taking turns is

better” to resolve the contradiction in the village; secondly, Teacher Arong’s Inn, Meili First Inn,

Walkers’ Inn and Shenpu Inn occurred very early but they often had conflicts with each other from

time to time. Besides, “they opened their inns without the village’s approval” and they shouldn’t

make money only for themselves, thus “money made should be shared by the whole village”. In

his opinion, “mounts and streams belong to every family” was a local tradition and all villagers

must unite in the tourism business.

However, Arongma, the present head of Lower Yubeng, said that a tourist named Tashi came

to the village in 2002. Tashi once run a teahouse in Shangri-La (the capital town of Diqing

Prefecture) before and found there also a problem of sharp competition among local enterprises

for tourists, thus he gave his advice to Amu that tourists could be received for accommodation by

turns according to the serial number of tourist groups. “The village held a householder meeting to

decide on numbering for every household, and later on any group of tourists will be sent to a duty

family by turns”. But in the interviews with Amu, he never mentioned this “Tashi”. Anyway, the

narrative of Arongma did not deny that Amu was the first to propose the plan in the householder

meeting. From the general reflection of participants in the meeting and other villagers, Amu was

the first advocate indeed.

Furthermore, in the early study relevant to the development of Yubeng Village’s community

tourism, Teacher Arong was regarded as a key figure. He graduated from a local normal school

and taught for many years in this village and several surrounding primary schools, namely a

“village elite” with better education qualification and rich experience. According to his own

statements, he founded the phenomenon that inns competed for tourists around 2002. In order to

avoid damage to the tourism development and deterioration of relationship among the villagers, he

initiated a plan to receive tourists by turns and successfully eliminated the anxiety of local

government on the market-oriented development of Yubeng Village, and promoted the voting and

passing of this plan at the householder meeting and its implementing [10]. Although, from the

information in Table 2, the function of Arong as a “village elite” is not identical like his own

statements, considering that he and two former village heads, Wujin and Amu, are brothers, Amu

might be indeed affected by Arong before formally put forward the plan.

Question 3: when did the reception by turns begin?

This question made us feel very confused at the beginning. From the information in Table 2:

the system could begin in 1998 (mentioned once), or 1999 (once), or 2000 (once), or 2001 (once),

or 2002 (five times), or 2003 (three times), or 2004 (twice), or 2005 (once). In addition, one

informant said it began at the time “When Amu was the village head”, which can be a mostly right

answer but is of little value. Five of nine key figures gave similar answer (“2002” or “When Amu

was the village head”), but both Amu and his son Dingcili gave the answer respectively as 1999

and 2000.

In the autumn of 2006, I entered Yubeng Village for investigation for the first time and

photographed a notice board as shown in Figure 1. According to the date in the notice board and

considering that Hillman published his paper on Yubeng Village’s tourist allocation by turns in

2002 [5], it is quite certain that Yubeng Village had implemented the A-system at the beginning of

2002. However, when was the exact starting point? At the year 2008 when we recorded all the

interviews, Amu said that he held the position as the village head from 1999 to 2002 and he

“haven’t been the head for 5 and 6 years”; moreover, his predecessor, Luzhui, recalled that he

retired from the position of village head from 9 years before, when Amu took his place and

worked for 4 years, and then Luzhui’s son Arongma succeeded for the next 5 years. Memories

from Amu and Luzhui can be referred mutually roughly and are basically identical. Therefore,

taking 2008 as the base year to calculate backwards, the emergence of the A-system of Yubeng

Village would not be earlier than the starting point of Amu’s term, namely 1999.

Fig. 1 Notice Board for Accommodation Arrangement Hanging on the Road Access to

Yubeng

Hello, dear tourists! Welcome to visit Yupeng. For the sake of our stability and unity and your safe journey, through the agreement of all villagers in our village, accommodation of all tourists who want to live in the hostels will be uniformly arranged by the community cadres of our village. Therefore, in particular, please contact our community cadres first for your accommodation arrangement when arriving at Yubeng, but do not look for accommodation by yourself. The consequences will be undertaken by you if villagers have conflicts due to your behavior. Notice is hereby given and your cooperation will be appreciated. Phone: 0887-8411081, -8411082

Announced by Upper and Lower Yubeng Villages, March 1, 2002

Photographed by Xiaoming Zhang in September, 30, 2006.

Question 4: when were the tourists allowed select accommodation by themselves?

Night of ten informants answering the question selected 2003. The time point seems to be no

much doubt but specific month cannot be determined.

Question 5: when was the A-system transformed into every four families charging lodging fees by turns?

Seven of eleven informants answering the question selected 2006, or October 2006, autumn

of 2006, winter of 2006, without too great differences. When I first entered Yubeng Village in

early October 2006, I had an interview with Anazhu, the owner of Walkers’ Inn. According to the

record, Yubeng Village still operated the A-system by family number at that time and had not

adopted the alternating form of the system by family group. Therefore, the appearance of later

system was not as early as October 2006, which would be a more credible situation.

When could be the latest time of its appearance? Arongma who was the present head of

Lower Yubeng and Dingcili, one of the two present caravan captains, provide some detailed clues.

During the National Day Golden Week of 2006, the village tried to implement the mode that the

village heads and accountants together would collect money from each reception family and then

equally distribute the money to each family, when each family could get about 400 Yuan, instead

of the duty families charging money all by themselves. It seemed that everyone felt good, so the

mode of taking turns according to the family number alternated into four families, two from Upper

Yubeng and the other two from Lower Yubeng, respectively collecting money from every family

with an inn according to the standard of 10 Yuan per tourist accommodated, and finally the money

collected was equally distributed by the four families①. However, some inns were not honest and

began to hide guests and their luggage in order to pay less, so some villagers forcibly entered the

guestrooms to count tourists, which caused many disputes. Until April, 2007, all families finally

agreed to not enter the guestrooms to assure the safety of guest’s belongings, and charged and

distributed money only according to the amount reported by the inn owners. “April 2007” was a

referenced time offered by Dingcili, though he was not quite sure about it and indeed he was the

only one to give this time. However, it can be affirmed that this new system had appeared in 2007

at the latest and had been adjusted slightly at that year.

Question 6: when was the lodging fees charged by every four families by turns determined as 5 Yuan per person?

Because this change just happened recently, the answers to this question did not show many

differences, which can be determined basically around June, 2008. However, the statement of “5

Yuan” was not agreed by all informants, and some indicated that it was “4 to 5 Yuan”. Many

owners of inns and ordinary villagers bluntly pointed out that: actually, when each group entered

an inn to charge money, owner of the inn gave some money at will without a strict accordance to

the actual number of tourists accommodated, and families in a group usually felt ashamed to enter

the inn to count the number of tourists after the terrible conflicts in October, 2006. With the

decreasing mutual trust among villagers and the increasing consciousness of private property, it

① Actually there are 34 families in total, so there are 8 groups, while two of them each consists of 5 families.

became more and more difficult for Yubeng Village to continue its A-system that had been

autonomously maintained by the community members, possibly resulting in a systematic crisis.

Question 7: when was the C-system established?

Information collected seems to be very chaotic. In terms of time, it covered a very broad

range between 1996 and 2003. However, if the time “When Amu was the village head” is an

indefinite but correct answer, at least six answers out of thirteen informants meet the background

of Amu’s term of being a village head, namely from 1999 to 2002.

In August 5, 2008, Aqingbu, the householder and owner of Shenpu Inn, took out several

notebooks for our investigators to read, including the page shown in Figure 2, which records the

meeting contents relevant to the establishment of C-system, written by Ayingbu, the former

accountant of Lower Yubeng and the brother of Aqingbu. From the clear temporal mark of

“evening of October 30, 2000”, it is quite possible that Yubeng Village had implemented the

C-system before November, 2000, which was very probably much earlier than the beginning date

of the A-system (See relevant analysis of question 3). It can be also deduced that “taking turns”,

the core element of the A-system, had a prototype in the C-system.

Fig. 2 Meeting Minutes Relevant to the Establishment of Caravan Rotating System

Photographed by Xiaoming Zhang in August 5, 2008.

2000 Time

At Baha’s house , two villages discussed on horse riding and transporting. Issue of taking turns.

Taking turns shall be operated by family turns, whether the horse is ridden by a circumbulator or a tourist.

Permissible: one can serve friend and relatives by one’s own horse. Anytime a horse carries a person, one turn should be marked. Participants of the meeting: (names omitted)

Evening of October 30, 2000

In fact, about the caravan’s establishment, informants provided various kinds of other

information, with the following valuable ones: firstly, a lot of people thought that the rotation of

caravan began earlier than that of accommodation by pointing out that the caravan had served the

China-Japan mountaineering team in mid 1990s, when no horse were used to carrying people but

only stuff; secondly, Dingcili recalled and said that, when the caravan was established, “the

tourists were few and only came for natural investigation,” and “tourists became more and more

and some families competed for tourists and had big contradiction since 1998”, which brought out

the rotation system. The information seemingly implied that the caravan in Yubeng Village was

once used for carrying things for villagers formerly and turned to serve the tourists, and the time

could be highly located after Amu became the head of Lower Yubeng in 1998. However, when the

investigators spoke of “caravan”, they didn’t distinguish caravan of “carrying things” from

caravan of “carrying tourists”, so it was likely that some informants supposed they were talking

about the caravan of carrying things, while some others provided the established time of the

caravan of carrying tourists. Indeed, the “tacit knowledge” of which the investigators had

originally thought that the villagers could understand as the same created a big misunderstanding

herein.

WHY THE HISTORY IS SO AMBIGUOUS？

Various difficulties occurred in the process of establishing the development history of Yubeng

Village’s community tourism, especially the system changes, may firstly blame the

communication barriers caused by linguistic differences. Yubeng villagers generally use Tibetan

language, but few informants can directly communicate with investigators in fluent Mandarin.

Although it was originally expected that there might be some communication barriers and the

investigation group had invited a girl who came from a nearby village and was studying in a

university as translator, it had a limited efficiency on solving the communication problems. Some

important information lost in translation, resulting in a lot of regret left in the interview records.

The other reasons are basically relevant to “time”, the element which is mostly valued and

difficult to be determined by the investigation group: informants always could not recall the exact

time when an event happened, and sometimes they gave different versions of time about the same

event when being interviewed at a re-interview, or they could only remember the “year of sheep”

but not be able to recall the accurate year and month in the Gregorian Calendar.

Is it really important to constantly questioning the issue of time? From the above tedious

discussion, it is of great importance obviously. Discussion of time is not only related to how to

specifically understand the change background of internal system of Yubeng Village’s community

tourism, but also related to the “thinking logic” of identifying the facts of Yubeng Village. As to

“thinking logic”, it is to remind that, whether the wide differences between the manner of local

people memorizing these social facts and expressing these social facts and the manner used by

researchers will be considered when the researchers put forward various questions for local people

in order to represent the social facts, especially by using various words or “terms” in those

questions. In other words, to discuss the time issue clearly is not only a way of improving the

studies on Yubeng’s community tourism, but also a way of helping researchers to rethink and

retrospect their investigation methodologically.

The following speculations perhaps can be regarded as a preliminary interpretation of the

time issue.

Firstly, the time when the system change happened is not important in the social life of

Tibetan people in Yubeng Village, and the key question should be what system is being operated at

the moment. “When it happened” is only a question from researchers according to their own

research interest and has no meaning for the real life of villagers.

Secondly, perhaps, the sequence of events (i.e. “relative time”) is important in the general

memorizing mode of villagers or their thinking habits, but the precise time of an event (i.e.

“absolute time”) is not so important. Therefore, it is very difficult to ask them to give a specific

memory based on absolute time, but it is easy to ask them to describe the relative sequence of

several events. Many studies on social anthropology have found that the temporal thinking of

different ethnic groups is of greatly difference. For example, Geertz introduced the

“permutational” calendar of Balinese people in his classic work Interpretation of Cultures.

Balinese keeps a record of events according to the basic cycles of 5 days, 6 days and 7 days, and

there will be a festival when some cycles overlap at a specific date. For example, common

multiple of 5, 6 and 7, namely a circle of 210 days, is equivalent to the concept of “new year” used

by outsider. In other words, what Balinese need is not “what the time it is now” but “what kind of

time it is now” [14]. Perhaps, Tibetans of Yubeng Village also have their own unique temporal

thinking and method of using time, but researchers have not carefully examined it.

Thirdly, the time of system change was neither recorded in words, nor embedded as part of

social memory. On the one hand, the villagers once had meeting minutes, but what happened in

the process of system change after 2002 wasn’t written down. Although local literatures such as

Village Regulation and Public Agreement of Yubeng Village keep a record of time when the

literatures were published, but obviously it is not equal to the time when the systems changed. On

the other hand, only tourism development events such as the A-system change that constitute a

synchronic relationship with those originally attached to the local social process are likely to

become a relatively stable social memory. For example, although some system changes can

memorized by villagers individually more or less, they will not be awakened in a moment like

collective memory [15] preserved as anniversary, festivals, ceremonies and rituals and are

substantiated into visible, audible and sensible physical forms such as clothing, props, ritual

headdress, masks, songs, dances, and so on. The exact time needed by researchers is only a rough

“copy” of an event that occurs rather than the symbolic meaning that is valued and shown by the

villagers and supporting the stable collective memory behind. In other words, the collective

memory pointing to the exact time - or a particular “history” - is just what researchers need rather

than what the observed groups need. If researchers as “the others” haven’t come for their own

inquiry one after another, the villagers wouldn’t have ever consciously preserved any memory of

time relevant to the development history of community tourism.

To sum up, authors of the three papers in Table 1 may have similar difficulties encountered

by our group: not understanding Tibetan language, experiencing various situations that the

informants are found to provide exact memory of time, and facing the big difference between

researchers and informants on “thinking logic” of time. How do they deal with it on earth?

Regrettably, length of papers published may be strictly limited, so that researchers have not given

any statement on the method and process that they determine the time of every system change in

the paper. Because the system change is largely neglected in Paper B, here some simple

comparisons are made between the preliminary conclusions of Question 3 to Question 6 and those

of Paper A and paper C: (1) In Paper A, determination on time of the first and second system

change is relatively reasonable and determination on time of the third system change is

insufficiently reasonable; (2) In Paper C, determination on time of the first and third system

change is insufficiently reasonable, and the time and the content of the second system change

described in Paper C cannot be revisited and verified at present; (3) Difference between“10 Yuan

per person” and “half (or 50%) of income” in the third system is ironically produced because these

reception families charged 20 Yuan per person every night for lodging fees from tourists at that

time, so “10 Yuan per person” and “half of income” are the same thing in fact. However, when

some reception families began to charge 25 Yuan per person or more for lodging fees recently,

each family group was still permitted to charge their money according to “10 Yuan per person” as

a consolidated principle, and this charging rate dropped to “5 Yuan per person” in the forth system

later. Comparatively speaking, expression consisting of absolute numbers in Paper A is more

accurate than that of relative percentage in Paper C. It shows that, at least in the case of Yubeng,

apparent difference and ambiguous history emergence not because confusion of the system itself

makes researchers misunderstand, but expression approach adopted by the researchers is not

proper.

However, under the circumstances of ambiguous fundamental facts and improper expression

approach, all three papers completed their case studies on Yubeng, basically including fieldworks

and material sources, core topics, theories, perspectives, analysis, conclusions, references and

implications, and their standard in terms of academic norm was self-evident (Table 3). If fault

needs to be founded for the preciseness on expression or structure of them, an obvious problem

lies in: since the researcher of Paper C quotes Paper A as references, it has no excuse to fail to see

obvious difference on fundamental facts between Paper A and Paper C, but it does not mention

such difference with any words and provides no interpretation.

Table 3 Analysis of the Writing Structure of Three Papers Paper A Paper B Paper C

Fieldwork and

material source

Observed, interviewed and videotaped in May 17-18, 2006; paid a return visit and investigated in early October, 2006; door-to-door visit in April 13-16, 2008

“Fieldwork conducted by me at Yubeng community”; Detailed Planning on Construction of Yubeng Tourism Area in Shangri-La Meili Snow Mountain National Park

Came to Meili Snow Mountain Yubeng Village and surrounding villages to investigate for four times from 2007 to 2008 and used methods such as participatory observation, questionnaire survey, depth interview and document literature

Core topic

Community tourism in Yubeng is the most typical community tourism founded in China at present

Facing the involvement of external interest subject, what kind of dominant community tourism development model is appropriate?

Research on mechanism of Yubeng Village community participation in tourism income distribution system change

Theory or perspective

Community participation; empowerment theory

Community participation; social interaction theory; industrial organizational theory; property-rights economics

Community participation; studying system change from perspective of traditional culture

Main conclusion

Yubeng has basically achieved economic empowerment, psychological

Problems such as insufficient tourism resource development and public products in short supply cannot be resolved only

“Fair” value and power struggle around “fair” in the householder meeting jointly result in constant change of Yubeng Village

empowerment and part of political empowerment, but has not achieved social empowerment

depending on “endogenous source” in the community

community participation in tourism income distribution system

Implication and

suggestion

Empowering the villagers and implementing institutional empowerment

Entrepreneurial joint-stock system becomes a better mode for community tourism development following involvement of external interest subjects

Sustainable development of tourism in minority areas can be promoted only when considering traditional cultural background

Sources: sorted out according to references [9], [11] and [12].

CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION

It is not difficult to understand that Yubeng villagers are “absent” in the process of

researchers’ establishing history: they hide behind the researchers, these interview records and

in-between the lines relevant to paper; they keep silent and no longer say anything about the

history of their village and hardly have any chance to see community tourism development history

finally completed by the researchers after helping the researchers to complete the investigation;

and they isolate with their “history” since then and all post production, transmission, use and its

effectiveness are controlled by the researchers. Metaphor contained by this annoying reality is: the

villagers do not need such a history and they also do not care and have no way to care how

“others” write their own history. However, the researchers can not take such a free and easy

attitude towards history. Common sense engaged in academic research is that research involving

specific area shall be based on complete and accurate grasping of the factual history. If some

important items such as time, figure and process in the history have not been mutually

corroborated in the narratives of different researchers, the credibility of relevant researches will be

inevitably damaged. Interpreting the same fact from different aspects may be an effective and

trusty way to put heads together and improve the academic research, but analysis and conclusion

are not acceptable when the fundamental facts are unclear.

Tourism researchers face many difficulties when studying such a remote ethnic village like

Yubeng: researchers and local people do not know each other or cannot speak each other’s

language, and researchers are not familiar with the local people’s living habits and family

characteristics, their social system and values, and the details of local tourism development

process. Moreover, limited by accessibility and time of investigation, it is more difficult for

researchers to comprehensively and accurately grasp the local tourism features. Therefore, just like

reflection from three papers criticized in the paper, it is easy to understand that some researchers

choose to turn very quickly into a way that a ready-made “universal theory” is used to explain the

specific “local phenomenon”, and the local “tourism development condition” compiled by them is

the outcome under a usually very strong theoretical presupposition context. Many people do not

concern or deliberately ignore: although what so-called “universal theory” presents are not all

empirical results of European and American scholars on the tourism development in developed

countries, most of them are provided from the experiences of tourism development in those

destinations that were taken as colonies at one time but now have become famous sightseeing

countries or regions such as Caribbean, Melanesia, Indonesia, Thailand and most of Africa, and

the latter could be just repeated verification cases for the former to a great extent. With the

constant spreading of discourse advantage of Europe and US tourism academic community, such

verification now arrives at China, one of the biggest destination countries of the twenty-first

century.

These researchers excitedly found a lot of phenomena with which they are very unfamiliar

after entering the site, but subject to short investigation time, many people had to abandon their

strict methodology that they originally upheld, especially the compromise made by scholars under

the background of social anthropology and human geography. Taking the time used for field work

as an example, investigations lasting for several days and several weeks are rare, and

investigations lasting for a few months or even longer are incredible. The investigation in this

paper also faces this criticism, even if it is just for verifying part of fundamental facts and strives

for caution when using the first-hand materials. For these researchers who do not want to waste

their observation, since they have made great concessions in the methodology, it is a suitable

convenient way for them to take the ready-made theoretical presupposition to enter the site - in

fact, they often choose an applicable theory to “give a site” and “arrange the facts” if they hope to

be approved by the mainstream academic community to which they belong. They strategically use

these tourism phenomena at the specific study sites that in which they are very interested to

dialogue with various existing theories: or verification, or supplement, or weakening, or

opposition. In this way, they have no need to take time to be engaged in a lot of field

investigations in order to fully and accurately grasp the development history of local tourism and

can gracefully work on paper writing at the same time.

However, benefiting from the existing academic community operation mechanism, this

“history” is often smoothly recorded into relevant knowledge system. The current academic

research and publication system often conceal such a presumption: if the fact itself is reliable

(such as having “the first hand information obtained by field investigation”) and the expression

and logic are in conformity with the specification or common sense, a paper can be accepted at

least in the consideration of “academic norm”. If such paper is finally published, although other

researchers may have different opinions on theoretical perspectives or specific conclusions out of

trust for academic rigor of editing academic publications, they will often accept all kinds of

information delivered by it as real without a second thinking, including the history and present

situation elaborately written down. The historians, White and Connerton respectively used the

concepts of “historical compilation” [16] and “historical reconstruction” [17] to warn researchers to

keep conscious reflection on materials and facts, views and arguments, and Fabian also reminded

that the anthropology is in the construction of otherness through time, or others exist in the time

invented by anthropologists[18]. Therefore, all researchers shall be more calm and cautious and

avoid mistakenly recording “facts” and rough “extextualization” [19] in order to meet the need of

academic development or the ethnic perspective to respect the local people.

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