“CHINA, FOREVER”: Tourism Discourse and Self-Orientalism

Literature on tourism representations has focused on Western-produced representations of Others. Missing is a critical investigation regarding how the Other represents itself in contemporary tourism discourse. Seeking to understand how non-Western tourism discourse has evolved, we analyze a tourism promotional video: “China, Forever”. Employing critical discourse analysis, this discussion proposes that “China, Forever” conforms to Orientalistic discourse through two specific practices: 1) it reveals a changeless, nostalgic, mythical and feminized China that speaks to a Western Orientalistic imagination; and, 2) it creates a modern China subjugated to Western understanding and authority over modernity. It argues that contemporary non-Western tourism discourse recognizes the marketability of Otherness and caters affably to Western tourists through reinventing, reconstructing and renegotiating marketable Chinese identities—self-Orientalism.