[William Smyth] Cultural tourism and intangible cultural heritage in Washington State [1]

Abstract: Technological progress has led to the rapid development of modern tourism.

Washington State's first heritage tourism project was founded in 1995 by the Washington Council for the Arts and came in the form of a cassette with instructions.

After producing seven similar cultural heritage tourism projects, the Washington Arts Council has accumulated a large number of relevant archives and documents, but also faced many issues, such as 1.

authenticity and sense of place; 2.

creativity and excellent artists; 3.

misappropriation; 4.

Diversity and inclusion; 5.

Economic impact and benefits; 6.

Privacy; 7.

Keeping up with the pace of new technologies.

This article introduces the solutions to the above problems by American public folklorists.

Keywords: public folklore; Washington State; Intangible cultural heritage; Heritage tourism; Issues [Introduction to the author] William Smyth: Member of the Washington State Arts Council; Wang Junxia: Institute of Anthropology and Folklore, School of Social Development, East China Normal University

In the broadest sense, tourism has existed since the beginning of people visiting relatives and friends or visiting places of interest.

Similarly, cultural heritage tourism has a history of thousands of years.

Along with this kind of tourism, visual materials and artificial forms of guides are produced.

These guides explain local scenery, ethnic groups and activities to make travel easier, safer, fun, and sometimes more educational.

Early cartography served as a basic travel guide.

The English word tour comes from the Middle English and the Old French word tourner-leisure.

When it is used to refer to recreational travel, it still means to gain enlightenment through travel, just like people use pottery pots to carve.

Tourism) has a long history in the tourism industry in its role in giving meaning and understanding to the local environment.

Hermes [2] was the Greek god of tourists and a liar who revealed the secrets of the gods to mankind.

Hermeneutics (Hermeneutics) is the art of interpretation.

Travel guides become guardians of travelers 'knowledge, and they prioritize places of interest through interpretation.

For the past 20 years, as a public folklore scholar in Washington State, my job has been to help promote, preserve, and protect the intangible cultural heritage of Washington State residents.

One way to do this is by producing explanatory heritage travel guides and audio tapes that focus on information from people in Washington State's diverse communities.

In this lecture, I will talk about how these publications are made and how we deal with a range of intangible cultural heritage issues related to heritage tourism.

Let me first briefly introduce the history of Western travel guides, which will help us build a context for understanding the basic changes that have taken place in the past five years.

Travel guides published over the previous 500 years have left us with three publications: books and brochures; audio tapes; and more recently, digital products.

The development of the Western printing press and steam engine transformed tourism and guidebooks in two ways: by providing people with a wealth of printed material and by providing affordable travel.

Cox and Kings was founded in 1758 and is recognized as the first travel agency in the Western world.

Thomas Cook Travel Agency was founded in 1841 and is regarded as the first modern travel agency in the West to offer package tours in England and Europe.

By the end of 1863, Cook Travel had brought more than 2000 tourists to Paris.

Cook Travel has become the world's largest publisher of travel books.

In the United States, railway companies build hotels and hire artists and writers to promote tourist destinations.

Some of the earliest travel agencies in the United States were affiliated with railway companies.

The heart of early U.S.

tourism started out in New York's Hudson Valley, but quickly covered the entire country.

After World War II, modern tourism developed rapidly, with the ultimate popularity of vehicles and the affordability of aviation costs.

Between 1950 and 1959, 6.6 million cars were sold in the United States; in 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower launched the Federal Interstate Highway System, which gave car owners a rapid increase in driving and travel opportunities.

In the United States, a private group called the American Automobile Association has monopolized the market for helping people make their own personal travel plans.

The association was founded in 1902.

It produced its first map in 1904, and by 1926 it published three editions of its earliest tourist guides.

In 1932, AAA travel agents began designing the "Triptiks Trilogy" to provide travelers with special routes and personalized travel information.

Today, the same design is used by many online travel attractions.

Until the 1980s, most site-specific tourist information appeared in the form of exterior photography devices and display boards.

In the 1980s, the possibility of adapting to new technologies to disseminate tourism information increased.

Cassette recorders and players reached their technological peak in the mid-1980s and became standard on most cars.

The first audio travel guides were cassette-style audio tapes produced in the mid-1980s.

Folklore scholars were the first to participate in the production of these car tape tours.

Cassette tapes with pamphlets are mixed in terms of disseminating heritage information.

There are technical challenges: Recording must be synchronized with driving speed, so only limited information can be transmitted anywhere.

People have to stop or pause playing tapes at certain points; packaging a tape and pamphlet for sale is problematic; in addition, fieldwork, creation, editing, copying, design and printing require a lot of labor and are expensive.

For example, the necessary cost of printing 4000 copies of the Olympic Peninsula Travel Guide at a time is US$45000.

At the same time, some travel agencies have experimented with car radios to receive radio programs about travel information generated on signal transmitters along the driver's driving route.

Today, this is still practiced in the Margaret River tourism circle in western Australia.

A number of radio transmission stations are placed along the route and marked "Go to FM89.7 for cultural information." When the driver often tunes the radio to this channel, he can not only hear information about the incident, but also hear stories about local people and their places of interest.

Generally speaking, this approach has not been successful because it is too expensive to build and maintain these transmission stations.

Washington State's first heritage tour was created by us in 1995.

It comes in the form of a guide book attached to a cassette.

It is dedicated to building a heritage bridge between Othello and Omak in Northwest Washington.

As travelers drive along this route, they hear stories, explanations of place names, music, descriptions of crafts and their professional practices, historical testimonies, etc., accompanied by descriptions of the natural scenery, geology, geography, industry and villages of the towns they pass through.

The recordings simultaneously give information about the places the traveler travels and provide audio and text descriptions of when certain segments begin or end at particular points along the way.

This is limited in time to overlap with local speed limits and the standard driving speed for motorists along the way.

In such trips, we describe the expressions of cultural heritage included in these trips as an "invisible landscape ").

Folklore scientist Robert Baron [3] described these "invisible landscapes"[4],

Intangible landscapes can be regarded as the non-physical dimension of the background back region.

Backstage is a concept created by Dr.

Erving Goffman and absorbed by Dr.

Maccannell into his theorizing of the tourist experience.

They see backstage as a place that is usually closed to outsiders because insiders are wary of being harassed.

For travelers, backstage has a special allure and mystery because they are more authentic areas.

Intangible landscapes are much like the term "intangible cultural heritage".

It is associated with expressions of folklore and traditional culture, including art types such as music, crafts, dance, storytelling, and other creative expressions.

These art types are most often passed down from generation to generation through direct observation and practice, and are embedded in people's memories as part of the cultural life of the community.

Residents of this community often share common national heritage, language, religion, occupations and territory.

Folklore scholars preparing a travel guide for a 150-mile route takes months of fieldwork preparation.

Although the final CD may be as long as 90 to 120 minutes, folklore scholars interview, record, take photos or videotape 70 to 80 local artists and holders of traditional culture.

After producing these seven travel guides, our office has accumulated an archive containing about 10000 pictures and 600 hours of recordings.

These audio archive documents document the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of Washington State.

Advances in technology in the 1980s and 1990s made it possible for individual travelers to listen to cultural heritage information while driving through backstage areas or city blocks.

In addition, many people buy and use computers to listen to our travel guides, and they never leave home.

When making these books and recordings, we faced many problems.

I will talk about seven of the main issues.

1.

Authenticity and place

Heritage audio travel recordings tend to have three basic types of products: 1) Monologues.

One person tells stories, sings songs, and provides information about a place or area; 2) Multiple narratives.

Describing events and places of interest, often accompanied by actors recreating historical events; 3) Introducing locals who tell or perform their own traditions.

Since our goal is to help people better understand and appreciate the richness and diversity of our state's culture, we decided to feature locals who showcase the most important folk art in their communities.

Trained folklore scholars and anthropologists have two tasks: one is to find authentic practitioners of folk traditions in a particular place, and the other is to compile into travel guides the information they have recorded about residents who reflect the diversity of the area.

We strive to identify art forms that are still alive and are an important part of traditional communities.

For example, we met an Native American court flute performer.

This court flute is a traditional instrument used by many Native American tribes.

However, in this case, although the performer was excellent, we did not include him in our profile.

There are two reasons: first, he is not a Native American and does not have close connections with any tribe; second, the Native American flute tradition originated from the Plain Indians of the Midwestern United States and is not a true representative of our native musical tradition in the Northwest.

Folklore scholars can assist communities in advancing the development of their local heritage by helping them inventory their traditional assets and develop stories that convey a place's sense of place and values.

Many of our fieldwork results) have been used by local communities to identify their own artists for their festivals, exhibitions and performances.

Cultural heritage tourism in the United States boomed tremendously in the 1990s thanks to a large number of studies, books, and seminars that helped demonstrate the benefits of the cause.

Mas Masumoto is one of the main spokespersons in promoting the development of heritage tourism.

He conveyed the story of how his Japanese-American family prepared to plow under their pear trees.

This was once a family business for three generations in California, but large food chains did not buy the pears they grew.

The pears they grow are too big and juicy to bear the need to transport them to distribution centers.

When Mas tried to sell pears locally during a standoff, they were very popular.

He attributes the current success of his family farm to people wanting to have a wonderful experience of something that comes from the local area and has stories related to it.

The same phenomenon is happening in the American brewery industry.

While some people still prefer the highly advertised but tasteless big brands such as Budweiser, more and more Americans are starting to favor locally produced beers with more flavors.

In 2009, the United States had nearly 1500 bars, small breweries and local craft breweries selling homemade beer.

Mas is also the spokesperson of the International Slow Food Movement.

The International Slow Food Movement conveys a message about the value of local expressions of culture.

They preach that identifying the process by which food is formed-from seed to table-enhances people's experience of this value.

2.

Creativity and outstanding artists

We try to showcase local traditions that are of high quality and authentic.

Folklore scientists use their ethnographic fieldwork techniques to identify the most skilled and suitable artists (such as Mexican American musicians or Native American basket makers) for inclusion in our travel guides.

An important criterion is that these artists are outstanding masters of their craft.

We also made choices to reflect the fact that folk traditions are not static but are often innovative.

An example is our inclusion of the Mexican-American Corrido musical tradition [6].

In one of our travel guides, we feature a local Mexican-American band performing a song written by one of its members.

As Corrido often shows, it is about recent local events-in this case, the eruption of Mount St.

Helen.

3.

Appropriation)

The term "cultural appropriation" is often used to refer to the inappropriate borrowing of one culture or the misleading representation of another culture.

As we collected stories, poems and songs about their local homes and places where they worked, played, and worshipped God, we realized that some of the information was inappropriate to share with the public and should not be used in our publications.

Two stories can illustrate:

When we interviewed Native American basket makers, we collected information about harvesting locations and harvesting practices.

In some cases, basket makers told us that they were harvesting grass on federal land that once belonged to their tribe.

Showing this information to the public could jeopardize their access to the resources they need, could be condemned for breaking the law, or leak their enviable raw material resources to their competitors.

We carefully organized our materials and consulted with our artists to protect them from harm.

In another case, an elderly Native American told us that there was an ancient cave in northern Washington with ancient hieroglyphs that were of great historical and cultural value to their tribe.

Recently, non-Indian smears damaged the cave.

We face a dilemma: Will introducing information about these caves make them more vulnerable to vandalism or will it increase awareness of the importance of these caves and promote their protection? In this case, we printed information about the cave and believed that cultural heritage tourists could help protect the caves.

4.

Diversity and Inclusion)

The main groups we focus on are ethnic, religious and professional groups.

As an arts council, we particularly want to demonstrate the importance of art in every community in our state.

However, due to the limitations of time and space, we had to provide a sample of cultural expression, and therefore had to exclude many other samples of traditional art.

Nor can we describe the various art forms and the culture within them in greater depth.

In addition to celebrating the skills of outstanding artists from diverse cultures, we also try to spread some of the complexities and cultural conflicts inherent in communities with diversity.

In our first travel guide, we used the story told by the first woman to participate in the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam.

Her account reflects the professional customs surrounding the construction of one of the largest dams in the United States.

In the same recording, we feature stories told by Native American elders about how the construction of the dam destroyed the traditional life of his tribe.

In developing travel guides) and audio tapes, we try to ensure that there are expressions from most, if not all, ethnic groups, some religious groups, some professions with rich traditions of folk life.

In addition, we want to ensure that artists represent the diversity of craftsmanship and performance traditions, and that there is a fair gender balance.

Our book reflects the fact that diverse communities contain many aspects, and not all of them are consistent.

5.

Economic shocks and benefits

Bringing tourist groups to view local traditions can bring huge economic benefits, as witnessed by the state of Louisiana in the 1990s.

The popularity of Cajun [7] culture quickly brought a wave of tourism to the state.

A joke circulating in the Cajun area says that there is good news and bad news: The good news is that it is fashionable to be a Cajun; the bad news is that it is fashionable to be a Cajun.

In today's post-depression American culture, projects that do not have any positive economic impact are destined to go unfunded.

Although our travel guides have not triggered the influx of tourists as many as those seen in Louisiana, we have helped local communities increase their travel revenue.

We position ourselves in the early stages of developing our audience.

At this stage, we try to bring people into the exploration of folk art traditions, but we also realize that if these traditions lose their authenticity and become too commercial, their value will be compromised.

One of the guiding principles in cultural heritage tourism is,"Don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg." This suggests that abuse and excessive commercialization will quickly turn offensive.

One of our sponsors, the Washington State Department of Transportation, organized a survey into the impact of our first travel guide on travel.

They found that 35% of those who bought travel guides did so with the intention of creating a trip to use them.

Others intend to follow the directions of the travel guide anyway and intend to use the travel guide during the trip.

85% of travel guide buyers expressed their intention to stop or have stopped at certain attractions mentioned in the guide.

The effectiveness of these travel guides in cultural heritage tourism attracted tourism organizations to sponsor three of our projects.

6.

privacy

We give visitors information about local events and activities to encourage them to stop and have a local experience.

Heritage tourism surveys show that those who visit cultural sites spend more than other tourists.

Generally speaking, if a tourist stops for at least three hours, they will spend the night there for two extra meals.

We decided to give special times and schedules for festivals, museums, galleries, etc., but not provide specific addresses of traditional artists.

The basic reason for this is to protect the artist's privacy.

We also considered that the accuracy of continuously correcting artists 'addresses as they moved away was too high for us.

Most of the artists we work with are not primarily artists, but rather have other jobs that keep them away from home during the day.

Since our goals are mainly educational, we give a lot of information about artists and their culture, and leave it to travelers to stop and ask about buying local goods and meeting with artists.

Today, when mobile phone and Internet search are popular, it is easy to find people.

7.

Keep up with new technologies

The last question I want to talk about is caused by the influx of new technologies over the past 5 to 10 years.

Recently we have been reviewing the next steps in our travel guide and archival documents that represent information on 100 artists and traditional features in our publications.

Here are some of the new technology forms we are already experimenting with:

One of the main examples of new information is digital online mapping.

Google Maps has become the standard for most web-based mapping projects in the United States because it is free and somewhat easy to use.

Hybrid technology allows audio, video and images to appear in Google Maps production.

New gadgets with unlimited Internet connections already allow us to click into this Internet-based database from almost anywhere.

With many forms of technology, things change quickly and quickly become obsolete.

Here will be a brief introduction to recent gadgets and their applications in cultural heritage tourism.

Ten years ago, those GPS navigation systems such as Garmin, Magellan and Tom became popular.

Heritage travel guides have been developed in particular for this reason.

Working with Visit Britain, RoadTour has created the UK's only audio travel guide for Garmin GPS devices.

The road tour covers 600 of the UK's best heritage locations and 900 pubs.

As you drive through here, you will naturally hear recordings telling you the most interesting stories about the people of Great Britain and their history.

It was downloaded from the Internet for a fee.

Apple launched the first PADpersonal digital assistant in 1992.

At its peak, PAD sales were approximately 3 million units per year.

For comparison, smartphone sales in 2010 were 175 million units.

Many museums, such as the Museum of Anthropology and the University of Colombia, are experimenting with the use of rented handheld PAD travel guides.

The latest PADs are mixed into devices such as iPad and KINDLE.

In May 2011, for the first time in human history, Amazon, the largest online bookstore in the United States, sold e-books more than paper books.

In the past six months, Amazon has sold 25 million e-books.

KINDLE is an Amazon e-book reading software and handheld tool.

For every 100 paper books sold, Amazon sells 145 e-books.

Laptops with wireless Internet access were merged with PADs and mobile phones to produce smartphones (now IPAD) to produce relatively affordable mobile technology capable of producing instant messages.

IPHONE is a model of capturing the best possibilities for GPS, Internet access and mobile technology applications.

The introduction of Apple App) has paved the way for information providers to package information for mobile tourists.

We are developing but have not yet created ways to spread our cultural heritage tourism information through smartphones and handheld tools such as iPads.

We are interested in the possibility of gaining additional audiences.

Some of the factors that we considered were: the cost of developing a software delivery system for computer applications; the cost of extra fieldwork; the cost of copyright for pictures and maps; the ease of use of computer applications like web applications, which are mostly "user-friendly" and do not require a lot of clicks); the cost of computer applications to consumers (the cost of computer applications ranges from free to $900); the price of handheld devices; The cost of having to use the roaming database if the local wireless network is not available; what new and interesting things computer applications can provide and what languages we may use.

Other problems are caused by the rapid spread of the Internet, smartphones and other electronic devices.

If the world is so easily accessible through electronic means, why do people leave their homes and come outside? A recent study in the United States showed that we now spend 8.5 to 9.5 hours a day facing the screen.

A recent article in the Washington Post said the younger generation as a whole is starting to delay applying for a driver's license at the age of 16 because they no longer need transportation to meet friends.

We spend more time at home and less time out.

The exciting side is that new technologies make it possible for people to create and convey information, which can make their local culture and society more valuable to them and others.

Even the smallest towns have their own websites that describe the reasons people should visit them and the places to develop.

We are particularly interested in working with students and young folklore scholars to develop this new and exciting technology as a means of preserving and disseminating cultural heritage.

The Library of Congress, the online collection of American Memories in American Folk Life, and the Global Voices on Smith's Folklore website allow users access to important archival material from documentaries and recordings from around the world.

Local art organizations, state projects such as our Washington Arts Council), national institutions such as museums at the Congressional Center for Folk Life, and artists as individuals are using digital technology to deepen their needs.

Social media operators such as Youtube, Facebook and My Space are becoming basic platforms for news distribution.

Publicity for art works, festivals or CD releases is spread here.

These distribution agencies change so quickly that new agencies appear almost every month, but no one can guarantee that they will last long.

I will conclude my speech today by showing a map of China and introducing the positive application of a digital medium that has the potential to build international bridges.

In the next few weeks, I will be in Beijing to help with the China rattan project.

This is a collaborative project.

American folklore scholars-including folklorists and students-worked with teams in China, including the Folklore Team at Beijing Normal University, to document China folk art.

Field surveys in China will be put on the web page by the American web team and placed at this website www.

chinavine.

org.

This page provides English-based information about China's folk traditions.

This is a good example of using technology to inspire American students to learn more about China and come to China to better understand and appreciate the richness and diversity of China culture.

This application of new technologies provides an encouraging sample of how technology can be most effectively applied to intangible cultural heritage tourism, rather than just recording local traditions for those traveling here.

Now it is shared by people all over the world.

[1]This article is a speech delivered by Dr.

William Smyth, an American public folklorist, at the Liyun Lecture Hall on the 7th floor of the main building of Beijing Normal University on July 8, 2011.

This is the second of two lectures he gave at Beijing Normal University at the invitation of Professor Yang Lihui of the Institute of Folklore and Cultural Anthropology of Beijing Normal University.

Wang Junxia served as the on-site interpreter of the lecture.

The publication of this translation was authorized by Dr.

Smyth, and I would like to thank you.

[2]Hermes, one of the twelve gods of Olympus in Greece, the son of Zeus and Maia.

He was the messenger god in Greek mythology, responsible for conveying the will of the god Zeus to gods and people.

He was also regarded as the patron god of travelers, the patron god of merchants, and the god of eloquence.

[3]Robert Barron is director of the Folk Art Division of the New York State Council for the Arts and a public folklorist.

Co-edited the book Public Folklore with Dr.

Nick Spitzer-translator's note.

[4] Robert Baron.

Sins of Objectification? Agency, Mediation, and Community Cultural Self-Determination in Public Folklore and Cultural Tourism Programming, The Journal of American Folklore, Vol.

123, No.

487 Winter 2010), pp.

63-91--translator's note

[5]The International Slow Food Movement began in 1986 and is a movement to oppose regular consumption of fast food and promote traditional and local diets.

-- translator's note

[6]The music tradition of Corrido is an ancient narrative folk song dating from Mexico.

It usually expresses the themes of farmers 'history, daily life and other important social events.

-- translator's note

[7]Cajun refers to French descendants who moved to Louisiana in the United States.

-- Translator's note (This article was published in Folklore Research, No.

1, 2014)