A Discourse Analytic Approach To The Ten Views Of The West Lake

The present paper is concerned with discourse and tourism resource development. It focuses on the case of the Ten Views of the West Lake, a renowned tourism resource in Hangzhou. Beyond conventional political-economic or social-economic approaches, the present author adopts a discourse research framework to analyze and assess the discourses of the Ten Views of the West Lake tourism development. Meanwhile, the author also employs principles of Chinese traditional cultural values and internationally recognized criterion protection of culture and nature to study the discourses of the Ten Views of the West Lake.The data are gathered from various kinds of public media productions such as newspaper reports, municipality documents, web publications and official historical documents and literary works. Through systematic and detailed qualitative studies, the paper summarizes several conclusions. First, the tourism resources could be constructed discursively, thus different historical versions on the Ten Views of the West Lake are formed. Second, ordinary citizens start to have a say in selecting the Ten Views of the West Lake. And the reasonable suggestions are adopted officially by the government. Third, the proportion of cultural tourism resources in the Ten Views of the West Lake increased in the past historical dynasties. Hence, the West Lake is not the natural resources but cultural resources as well. Fourth, the participants of selecting the Ten Views of the West Lake demonstrate two characteristics: pluralism and democratization. It is congenial to develop tourism resources and achieve man-nature harmony.However, development and exploitations of tourism discourses of the Ten Views of the West Lake also illustrate a trend. That is, modern economy is over-emphasized. While protecting and developing tourism resources with Chinese characteristic historical and cultural values are neglected to some certain degree.