Tourism, a Classic Novel, and Television

This article reports a study of the importance of the classic Chinese novel, The Dream of the Red Mansion, in attracting visitors to Grand View Gardens in Beijing. That site was built as a replica of a Qing Dynasty palace for a popular television series. The study found that 52% of the 308 respondents stated that the novel was very or extremely important in attracting them to the gardens. The article seeks to go beyond this statistic by examining how familiarity with the novel might help explain some of the statistical findings and concludes by arguing that if one is to obtain an understanding of the tourist experience of a place made popular by fiction, then it is also necessary to engage in cultural, media, and literary studies as well as conversations and surveys of visitors. Hence, the text of the novel is itself part of the data set.