Author Bios (50 Words for each Author)

Xingyu Huang, is a PhD student in Business Administration with a concentration of Tourism and Sport in Temple University. She holds a bachelor's degree and master's degree from the School of Tourism Management, Sun Yat-sen University. Her current research interests lie in tourism marketing, travel behaviors and tourists health.

Honggang Xu, Ph.D. (xuhongg@mail.sysu.edu.cn), is a Professor and Dean of the School of Tourism Management at Sun Yat-Sen University. Her research interests include tourism geography, mobilities, and system dynamics.

Xiang (Robert) Li, Ph.D. (robertli@temple.edu), is a professor and Director of Temple’s U.S.-Asia Center for Tourism and Hospitality Research. Robert's research mainly focuses on destination marketing and tourist behavior, with special emphasis on international destination branding, customer loyalty, and tourism in Asia. Robert is a current TTRA board member.

Abstract (150 Words)

Border is part of the entrenched history and reality of tourist mobility. This study takes the concept of border as the theorical basis to analyze how local borders are produced, developed and transformed in tourism communities. Taking China’s Hongcun Village, a bordered UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site, and its neighboring community Jicun as the study cases, the authors conducted interviews and observation to explore how local borders are developed. The results show that local borders can be understood from five perspectives in Hongcun Scenic Area: administrative, physical, social-economic, functional and psychological. They are not fixed but interacting with each other and constantly changing. This paper contributes to the literature as it reveals that local borders are always driven by external forces and actors, strongly supported by the market economy. And it conceptualizes borders as processes including bordering, debordering and rebordering, which provides a dynamic perspective to understand tourism impacts.

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A Tale of Two Villages: Debordering and Rebordering in the Bordered Community Scenic Area

Border is part of the entrenched history and reality of tourist mobility. This study takes the concept of border as the theorical basis to analyze how local borders are produced, developed and transformed in tourism communities. Taking China’s Hongcun Village, a bordered UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site, and its neighboring community Jicun as the study cases, the authors conducted interviews and observation to explore how local borders are developed. The results show that local borders can be understood from five perspectives in Hongcun Scenic Area: administrative, physical, social-economic, functional and psychological. They are not fixed but interacting with each other and constantly changing. This paper contributes to the literature as it reveals that local borders are always driven by external forces and actors, strongly supported by the market economy. And it conceptualizes borders as processes including bordering, debordering and rebordering, which provides a dynamic perspective to understand tourism impacts.