Huai-Hsuan Chen
Huai-Hsuan Chen is a 2 nd year graduate student in sociocultural anthropology. Her research interests concern tourist encounters and performances in terms of community development, the involvement of nation and globalization. Her current project is in Southwest China, Yunnan and focuses on tourist experiences as dynamic interactions of performer-audience relationship. She is interested in exploring the embodiment of a tourist destination through the collective performance of various social actors.
In summer 2007, she conducted her preliminary research in the areas of Lijiang and Shangri-la to investigate the ongoing invention of different narratives and performances in northwest Yunnan . She become curious about how local people as nonprofessional performers participate in the promotion of government-sponsored cultural performances to collectively and interactively embody a place for tourism development. Her further research will focus on how such roles as farmers and minority groups have been symbolized and presented creatively in the development of tourism in different scales.
