The Cultural Politics of Space—The Formation and Transformation of Authenticity and Integrity of Heritage Tourism in Dasi Township, Taoyuan

• Main Authors: Yu-Min Chiang, 江裕民
• Other Authors: Lan-Hung Nora Chiang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/e5j666

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 地理環境資源學研究所 === 97 === Located in northern Taiwan, Dasi was a blooming inland port city for close to one hundred years from the Ching Dynasty to the Japanese Era. However, due to global economic transitions, transportation innovation, and military control, the development of Dasi gradually slowed down. Recently, Dasi has been getting public attention as a heritage site due to a sense of nostalgia, with its development focusing on heritage tourism. With Dasi Old Streets and the site of the mausoleum of past president Chiang Kai Shek at Cihhu close by, Dasi has become a major destination of heritage tourism. However, the tourism development in Dasi appears to be temporally fragmented and spatially centralized. In this paper, I use the concept of authenticity and integrity in heritage tourism and conservation to examine the problems that result from heritage tourism development. Three issues are discussed in this article. First, by clarifying the interaction between public and private organizations, I discuss how the unauthentic and disintegrated heritage tourism development is reached. Second, through a transformation from busy and mystical images/memories into recent nostalgic and leisurely ones, which form the elements of present day heritage tourism, I discuss how ideas of Dasi Old Streets and Cihhu come to be. Finally I examine the social, economic and cultural dimensions of regional development problems due to unauthentic and disintegrated heritage tourism, as manifested in traffic jams and various other aspects of unbalanced growth.