Tourism Management 32 (2011) 1438e1441

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Tourism Management
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tourman

Research note

Rural tourism in China

Baoren Su*
College of Tourism and City Administration, Zhejiang Gongshang University, #18 Xuezheng St, Jianggan District, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province 310018, PR China

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 28 August 2010
Accepted 15 December 2010

In the latest two decades, Rural Tourism (RT) has speedily developed and become an important concept
of tourism in China. However, there remains little understanding in the western world about RT for its
special role in Chinas rural socio-economic regeneration. This paper represents an attempt to analyze six
different models of RT development. More specically, the collective imagery of Nong jia le (Happy
Farmer Home) tourism, a Chinese version of rural tourism, is examined. The ndings of this study not
only highlight the widely-held beliefs about the important role of RT but also identify a number of
related problems and challenges facing its sustainable and healthy development in future, which
hopefully would stimulate the interest for further studies in this area.
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Rural tourism
Nong jia le tourism
Farm diversication

1. Introduction and literature review

Rural Tourism (RT) has long been recognized in certain parts of
Europe as an effective catalyst of rural socio-economic regeneration
for over a hundred years (He, 2003). For instance, Germany has
a long tradition of rural tourism, and its origin dates back more than
150 years (Oppermann, 1996). Along with the development of rural
tourism worldwide, rural tourism concept has many interpretations. For instance, in Bramwell and Lanes study, rural tourism can
include activities and interests in farms, nature, adventure, sports,
health, education, arts, and heritage taking place in countryside as
a multi-faceted activity rather than farm-based tourism only
(Bramwell & Lane, 1994, quoted in MacDonald & Jolliffe, 2003). In
1996, Pedford further broaden the concept of rural tourism to
include living history of countryside such as rural custom and
folklore, local and family traditions, values, beliefs, and common
heritage (Pedford, 1996).
Since the 70s of 20th century, tourism activity in rural areas has
remarkably increased in all the developed countries worldwide,
which has played a key role in the development of rural areas that
were economically and socially depressed (Perales, 2002). On the
other hand, the widespread rural restructuring is a common feature
prevalent in the rural areas of the western world. With the emergence
of post-productivist phase, rural resources that were traditionally the
basis for the primary businesses are now increasingly subject to other
demands (Daugstad, 2008). The challenges facing agriculture e poor
commodity prices, rising input costs, globalization, and others e are

* Tel.: 86 571 87663687.

E-mail address: baorens@yahoo.com.
0261-5177/$ e see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2010.12.005

substantially eroding small farm incomes across the United States,

Europe, and throughout the world (McGehee, 2007). In Europe, the
rural tourism has been widely encouraged, promoted and relied on as
a useful means of tackling the social and economic challenges facing
those rural areas associated with the decline of traditional agrarian
industries (Wang, 2006). In countries such as France, Austria, and the
United Kingdom rural tourism already represents a signicant factor
and has a growing demand (Pevetz, 1991).
More recently, tourism-based farm diversication in countryside
has increasingly been considered as an engine of rural development
and regeneration (Sharpley & Vass, 2006). As described by Kneafsey
(2001), the countryside is increasingly viewed as both a commodity
in itself and as a set of commodiable signs and symbols which may
be attached to particular places, peoples, products, and lifestyles.
The decline in the ability of farm agriculture to generate sufcient
income has caused many farmers to seek for new sources of income
and for the diversication of the agriculture base (Fleischer & Pizam,
1997). To increase incomes and build a harmonious society for
previously marginalized groups in less-developed rural regions,
tourism development is thought to be a signicant driving force for
poverty elimination, sustainable development, and environmental
protection (Ryan, Gu, & Zhang, 2009). While it has become inevitable for rural regions to seek alternative uses for local resources
(Liu, 2006), in many countries elsewhere, farm diversication into
tourism has not only been more widely seen as an effective means of
addressing the socio-economic problems of rural areas in general
and the agricultural sector in particular but it also enjoys varying
degrees of government and state support (Hjalager, 1996; Sharpley
& Vass, 2006).
One such country that has sought for rural socio-economic
regeneration through the promotion of RT is China, as the Chinese

B. Su / Tourism Management 32 (2011) 1438e1441

government is driven by a socio-economic imperative to generate

income to address the problems of poverty in China (Gu & Ryan,
2009), although China is a relatively late-starter in this respect. It
is because China was and still is the biggest agrarian society by
population in the world, and the challenge of rural social and
economic development has always been the rst and foremost
issues for Chinese governments to address because of the fact that
peasants constitute about 75% of Chinas population and the
success of chinas economic modernization depends largely on
rural economic development (Chen, 1997).
Since 1998, when China Rural Tourism Year 1998 was rst
introduced to start by the China National Tourism Administration
(CNTA), followed by China Eco-tourism Year 1999 and Chinese
Life Tourism Year 2004, a series of RT-promoted activities, created
by CNTA offering both nancial incentives and government policy
support, have facilitated farm diversication into tourism. As
a result, the number of rural communities has greatly increased in
pursuit of different forms of rural tourism, particularly Nong jia le
tourism, a dominant form of RT in China (Hu, 2008).
2. The development of Nong jia le tourism
The last over 20 years have witnessed a signicant increase in
the supply of RT in form of Nong jia le tourism (Zheng & Zhong,
2004). According to Shao (2007), the director of CNTA, since
1980s more than 20,000 tourist attractions have been established,
over half of which are located across the vast areas of rural China
with 359 national model sites of RT attractions founded by CNTA
throughout 31 Chinas provinces and autonomous regions, covering
a variety of agricultural industries. The rural tourism attractions
nationwide received and entertained more than 300 millions of
tourists per year, creating 40 billions RMB in revenue. Every year
during the holidays of Golden Week in May Day (May 1st),
National Day (October 1st) and Spring Festival (Chinese New Year),
there are 70% of urban residents nationwide opting to take rural
tourism for their outing choices, creating a nationwide market of
rural tourism enjoyed by 60 millions of tourists for each golden
week (Shao, 2007).
With the changing pattern of Chinese leisure time (Dong, Zhang,
& Liu, 2007), which was, in some cases, encouraged by the
launching of Golden Week policy in 1999 by Chinese government
for several state-set holidays as well as the speedy increase of
private vehicles at the same time, Nong jia le tourism developed
vigorously at a good pace. As a distinctively Chinese version of rural
tourism, Nong jia le tourism, among other forms of RT such as
folk-custom tourism, rural eco-tourism, agro-tourism, leisure farm
tourism, etc., has been developed not only as a new style of holiday
making among the Chinese urban residents, but also as a new form
of privately-owned small enterprise among millions of Chinese
farmers. Featured with having fresh food, tasting green vegetables,
experiencing traditional courtyard living, doing hard farming work,
entertaining farmers plays, and purchasing indigenous products
from farm families (Zou, 2005), Nong jia le tourism draw on the
strong contrasts between rurality and urbanity, forging a way
in which the relationship between rural life and urban life represents an interesting twist, as the cultural hierarchy engendered
between countryside and city since the 1949 communist revolution
in China has made city synonymous with modernity while countryside has been made synonymous with tradition and continuity
with the past. In the eyes of most common people, Chinas rurality
has been ideologically identied with two ambivalent layers. The
rst one is a legendary or romanticized layer signifying an idyllic
rural life and natural scenery such as family intimacy, green lifestyles, simplicity, unsophisticatedness, greenness, fresh air, open
space, virgin forest and soil, etc., and the other one is an insulted

1439

or stigmatized layer associated with poverty, ignorance, insanitation, underdevelopment, backwardness, barbarism, stupidity.
Through integrating the cultural tourism and rural tourism,
the Nong jia le tourism appears to be as a new concept cultural
rural tourism (MacDonald & Jolliffe, 2003, quoted in Ying & Zhou,
2007) invested and operated by individual farmers and farmers
families, providing rustic meals (home-made meals) and accommodation (farmhouse) services and amusements for tourists and
vacationers who during the weekend and holidays leave their
homes in city to go, even if for a few hours, to enjoy Nong jia le.
Located in a rural setting of village or town, Nonjiales location,
usually a distinct rural community with its own traditions, heritage, arts, lifestyles, and values preserved between generations
(Ying & Zhou, 2007), combine historic and cultural heritage
elements and natural elements in a harmonious way. The main
feature of such villages and towns are a lack of polluting elements
that could destroy the aesthetic quality of the environment.
As Briedenhann and Wickens (2004) argued that rural tourists
have varied motivations, which might include ecological
uniqueness, special adventure opportunities, cultural attractions,
wild habitat, or the peace and quiet of the countryside in which
greater exibility and a more meaningful experience have gained
prominence.
Since the early 1990s when it carved out a career with the rst
cluster of Nong jia le in Chengdu, Sichuan Province (He, 2005),
Nong jia le tourism has become a popular rural tourism product
for the mass market it served from a market perspective. At its early
stage, Nong jia le tourism has been based on offering board and
lodging with rooms being rented in the owners private home or
rural campsites equivalent to Bed & Breakfast operations in
Europe and North America. The original purpose of Nong jia le
tourism was to complement incomes from agriculture as green
tourism without a threat to the main agricultural activity. As
a newly-coined word in Chinas tourism terminology, Nong jia le
tourism, with about 20 years of development, has got the salient
characteristic of leisure farm to experience and enjoy the
joyfulness of rural leisure life. Its products have evolved from
simple board and lodging operation to more specialized structure
and followed a strategy to capture a more demanding and diverse
consumers for the repeat visits. As Deller (2010) noted in the US
that for many parts of rural America today, the natural resources are
valued not for their direct contribution to the economy but rather
as latent inputs into non-market recreational activities. It is now
quite common for the owners of Nong jia le to substitute leisureoriented activities for agricultural activities, providing a number of
activities related to nature and local historic heritage interests such
as rafting, shing, local medicinal herb therapy, folk-custom
educational courses, fruit-picking, local cuisine recipe, sale of
home-made country products, etc., which is a trendy phenomenon,
especially in Chinas rural areas where agriculture is not economically competitive. By 2009, farmer families operating Nong jia le
in rural China have reached 1.3 millions in number (Sun, 2009).
It should be noted, however, that the trend toward diversication
and specialization of Nong jia le has emerged in recent years,
which include yu jia le (Happy Fishermen Home) in coastal areas
for the tourism related with marine activities; ethnic culture
tourism in rural areas inhabited by minority nationalities such as
Tibetans, Mongolians, Dai nationality, Hui nationality, etc.; folk
culture tourism in rural outskirts of Beijing. According to Canoves,
Villarino, Priestley, and Blanco (2004), this marks the maturity of
rural tourism, a clear path toward a higher degree of tourist
professionalism farmers regard as an image of quality in the eyes
of their clients, which, in some cases, gives rise to the question of
category on whether it is a form of agricultural diversication or
a commercial activity.

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B. Su / Tourism Management 32 (2011) 1438e1441

3. Models of rural tourism development

According to Zheng and Zhong (2004) and He (2005), there are
generally six inter-related models identied for rural tourism
development in China:

for providing technical guidance and necessary training (Luo,

2006), which is most needed for the farmers, considering the fact
that most of farmers are ignorant and semi-ignorant both technically and culturally.
3.5. Corporation plus community plus farmers

3.1. Household-run small business

Model I is household-run small business which is represented by
Nong jia le tourism based on the individual farmer family at its
inception of establishment. Given both the desire of farmer and
farmer families to remain in agriculture and the lack of off-farm
employment opportunities in many rural area of China, on-farm
diversication into tourism in form of Nong jia le tourism in
particular has proved to be most popular particularly with those
whose farm-based entertainments located within or near scenic
sites such as national park, wetland and heritage water town with
cultural interests. At its early stage of development, the familys
womens work in meal cooking and bed making is certainly basic and
essential for the business to survive, whose presence both as owners
and house wives is signicant, and in some cases predominant (Zou,
2005). It is a result of the fact that the emphasis of business from its
outset is placed on offering board and lodging, a traditional and
simple management realm for women and house wives, which can
be traced back to the matriarchal society from 4800 BC to 4300 BC in
ancient China.
3.2. Individual farmstead
Model II is individual farmstead based on farmers autonomy
(Wang & Fang, 2008), which is distinct from Nong jia le in terms of
operational scale and scope. Usually, it is individual farmer who, as
an individual specializing in rural tourism, is responsible for
running and transforming his tourism product and facility into
a tourist-designated spot with larger size and scale. With the
development of individual farmstead as an autonomous business
entity, it is able to take in the surplus and idle labor forces nearby by
engaging them in providing the services of performance, handcrafting, entertainment, and production etc. Led by the exemplary
role of individual farmstead for its success story, the other
farmers are motivated to join in the business of rural tourism,
developing into the specialized families such as fowl-raising
family, green vegetable family, aquatic product family and
folk performance family etc, which evolved into the model III
farmer family plus farmer family.
3.3. Farmer family plus farmer family
Model III farmer family plus farmer family is aimed to
restructure the agricultural economy of rural community through
the RT development, which is characterized by the mode of one
family one RT-related specialization (Zheng & Zhong, 2004). It is
hoped that in this way the rural communitys structure of economy
will properly be adjusted and improved on the whole, bringing
a healthy economy of agriculture to rural China.
3.4. Corporation plus farmers
Model IV is corporation plus farmers, in which the investors
from outside the villages put in a tender, invited by the local
government, for setting up a tourism corporation specializing in the
development and management of the villages rural tourism. The
corporation leases land and other resources from the farmer to get
them involved in developing and managing RT attractions and
facilities. What is more important, the corporation is responsible

Based on the model of corporation plus farmers, model V

corporation plus community plus farmers was developed. In this
model, community refers to a rural tourism association which
represents the local community authority (e.g. village committee in
most cases). All the owners of family-run businesses take part in
the association on the basis of one representative one family, which
make the association function as the board of directors of the
corporation (Han, 2009). The corporation is trusted by the association with specic matters of running and operating villages
tourism business. While as the service-providing units, the farmers
are employed and arranged by the corporation to receive and
entertain the visitors. Being the mainstay of service providers of
rural tourism, the farmers are guaranteed to get their remuneration
and other nancial benets from the corporation in return for their
service provided.
3.6. Government plus corporation plus farmers
Model VI is government plus corporation plus farmer model.
This model can be often seen in the large-scale tourism attractions
developed by the local government in rural areas (Ding, 2009). In
developing a large-scale tourism project, the government at the
local or regional levels need to requisition the land from farmers,
and, therefore, the government is required to employ the farmers to
work as the employees of the tourism corporation which is either
organized by the governments inviting outside investors to run
tourism business or organized by the local community authority as
a collectively-owned rural enterprise. Being the employees of the
rural tourism corporation, the farmers are paid with salaries
monthly and bonus at the end of year.
4. Discussion and conclusion
As observed by Ryan, Gu, and Fang (2009) in their study of rural
community participation and social impacts of tourism in China,
how to develop rural economy within the resources accessible to
rural villages given the poverty that exists has been a core issue
faced by the Chinese government. In this context, the Chinese
government, from its very beginning, has play a decisive role in
developing rural tourism as a priority tool to enhance rural lifestyles and produce positive change in the distribution of income in
poverty-stricken rural areas. The development of rural tourism was
not only providing a supplementary income and new employment
opportunities to local communities but also providing an opportunity to revitalize local crafts and arts such as paper cutting, wood
and stone carving, bamboo weaving, lace-making, folk song and
dance, local cuisine recipe, wine-making, traditional therapy of
medicinal herbs, etc. At the same time, it was noted that a number
of traditional properties have beneted from restoration works
which, had rural tourism not been developed by the government,
would have been fallen into disrepair. What is more encouraging
these years is that younger generation of farmers, who left hometown to work as immigrant laborers for higher income in urban
areas and metropolises, have now returned back to start smallsized tourism-related business using technology and managerial
ideas they learned elsewhere.
On the other hand, however, although the development of rural
tourism in China has made some achievements, a number of

B. Su / Tourism Management 32 (2011) 1438e1441

problems and challenges facing the sustainable development of

rural tourism have also identied. For instance, it is obvious that
most operators and owners of small RT business lack required
management and marketing skills in running an efcient business
considering the fact that most of them have been little educated both
in culture and in technical training, which is especially the case for
those in the less-developed rural areas of western China. Meanwhile, there remains a signicant gap for them to change from the
role of tending farming land to the one of tending people served,
which requires that they deal not only with marketing, nancing and
accounting business but also with public relationship in particular.
Clearly, lack of these skills and knowledge is one of the underlining
threats to sustainable RT development in future. Therefore, as He,
Ma, and Li (2004) argued that, it is absolutely essential for all
levels of governments in collaboration with public sector agencies to
promote a unied training program system in order to train them for
managerial and marketing knowledge and capability they need,
which should be made available not just to those in relatively
developed rural areas, but especially to those in less-developed rural
areas. On the other hand, as experienced elsewhere abroad, strong
support of nance and marketing on the part of governments and
tourist administrative authorities for RT development appears
essential when RT market is inclined toward higher quality products
and personalized services. Given the fact that most of RT establishments tend to be small and simple, the investment alone on the part
of these small businesses in expanding business and marketing
products in order to attract higher-spending tourists from new
markets is beyond the means of them or greater than justied by
potential returns. At the same time, most of them found it difcult to
secure the bank loan because of their small scale of business (He,
2006). Thus, rural tourism development need not only the investment made by farmers themselves but also the investment made by
governments as the government subsidies and support to market
and nance farmers business, since the rural tourism is as a whole
destined to contribute to the improvements for landscape, cultural
heritage and the environment, not merely to supplement and
diversify the farmers income sources.
In conclusion, Chinas experience in development of rural
tourism as an effective tool to diversify rural economy and alleviate
poverty in rural areas has been of increasing interest to the world
with its extreme demographic importance and dramatic economic
growth and success particularly in the latest two decades. It is hoped
that this study will help generate interest for further studies in
Chinas rural tourism to enrich the literature in this academic eld.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Dr. Chris Ryan for his professional advice and suggestion on this research note. The preparation
of this article was supported by a grant from the National Tourism
Administration, P.R.C (11TACK005).
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