Tourism and Musical Performing Arts in China in the First Decade of the Twenty-First Century: A Personal View

This paper is a personal view of how tourism has affected the musical performing arts in China in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The musical performing arts focused on include various styles of indigenous musical theater, especially Kunqu and Jingju, and a variety of minority performance traditions. There have been several important attempts to revive and preserve these major Chinese heritage traditions. Tourism is not necessarily a driver of such attempts at cultural preservation, nor are all attempts to revive heritage items aimed specifically at tourists. However, tourism has assisted greatly in the cause of cultural preservation and has the potential to do so even more.