Ethnic minority tourism in China – Han perspectives of Tuva figures in a landscape

Ethnic or indigenous tourism has attracted significant academic research, but with the exception of Taiwan's minorities much of the research in the English language journals has been dominated by the perspective of western tourists gazing upon the minorities. Additionally such studies have tended to be quantitative in nature. This paper studies the attitudes of Han tourists towards the Tuva minority of Kanas Scenic Area and reports results derived from 650 respondents. Equivalencies with western-based research are found, with about only 11 per cent of tourists having any significant interest in minority cultures, although evidence exists that Tuva and their Kazakh neighbours contribute to destination image as figures in the landscape – a landscape that is attractive to Han tourists for aesthetic and relaxation reasons. However, while simpler analysis is found to be effective in creating clusters, a causal model fails due to issues of auto-correlation and multi-collinearity, which problems may be pertinent in other studies that report the gaze of a majority on the culture of the minority. The implications of both findings and research method are discussed.