Abstract
This paper analyses the precarity of tourism in viral pandemic times through an analysis of animal-human relations in China’s panda and valley tourism at Dajiuzhai. Drawing on a tour to Dajiuzhai to see giant pandas and the valleys of Jiuzhai, which was disrupted midway by increased viral infections, we trace ethnographically how disruptions in tourism emerge in the micro-setting of a single viral-hit tour and highlight the roles of natural agents, pandas, valleys and virus play, alongside humans in tourism’s fluid assemblages. Desire/wish to encounter pandas motivated the formation of a fluid constellation of tourism objects, species and humans, which was aligned towards the goal of a stable tourism experience but persistently disturbed. Animal-human relation-based tourism assemblage at Dajiuzhai was found to be a fluid spatiality that coped with Covid-19 disruptions through responses at attractions involving health checks and declarations but remained precarious despite its transformational potentialities.
Introduction
On July 29th, 2021, after months of relative calm where China experienced low Covid-19 infection case rates, trouble brewed in Zhangjiajie, the tourism jewel of China’s Hunan province, home to the popular Wulingyuan Scenic Area. The first few reported infections for this episode occurred at Nanjing Airport, in cleaners tasked with sanitary works at both domestic and international terminals. The cleaners’ families were next to be infected, and as viral infections continued relatively unnoticed, some went on a holiday at the neighbouring Zhangjiajie. A key point in this viral trail was a massive indoor tourism cultural performance, Charming Xiangxi (魅力湘西), where large-scale viral transmissions allegedly happened. This incident at Zhangjiajie was thought to have resulted in viral transmissions to the neighbouring provinces, including Sichuan where the Jiuzhai Valleys and China’s famed panda breeding bases are located.
This episode is of particular interest for its entanglements in the series of delicate but abrupt disruptions in tourism in Sichuan and the role of human and non-human species in such events and processes: the sudden cancellation of flights in Sichuan and many parts of China, the hasty rejection of travellers carrying foreign (non-China) documents, last minute mandatory PCR tests for entry into towns and of course, consequent plunge in tourist numbers at previously overly subscribed destinations. We investigate this episode at Sichuan’s Jiuzhai Valleys and Wolong Panda Centre as a tourism assemblage - an emergent and unsettled socio-material arrangement of entities including individuals, objects, and species which encompasses a series of becomings, orderings, and disruptions (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). The purpose of such a conceptualisation is to allow for an analysis of animal-human relations to be made within shifting tourism terrains.
We contextualise our investigation in China within what is termed as ‘panda and valley tourism’. Beginning with the modern conservation and breeding of pandas in 1959, panda tourism has emerged as tourism provides the financial foundations and societal buy-in for the conservation project (Sofield and Li, 2011). The five giant panda conservation centres are the most popular attractions in Sichuan. The Giant Panda is one of the three signature brands of Sichuan Tourism, while the other two are Sanxingdui relics and Jiuzhai Valleys. Jiuzhai Valleys (or Jiuzhaigou) is located in Aba Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, and was inscribed onto the World Heritage List in 1992 for its diverse forest ecosystems and landscapes. Besides Jiuzhai Valleys, Aba also possesses several famous World Heritage sites such as Siguniang Mountains, Wolong Panda Centre, Huanglong and Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries, along with a newly minted dark tourism site, the 5.12 Wenchuan Museum. These tourist sites near Jiuzhai Valleys are collectively known as the Dajiuzhai region, one of the most popular tourist destinations in China known for its natural landscape and pandas (Nian et al., 2019).
Understanding disruptions in tourism is an important and relevant task. The disturbances and disruptions we seek to understand here are Covid-19 induced ones. In this paper, we respond to critiques in social science concerning the black-boxed nature of analyses of disruptions in our social world and seek to provide a more in-depth explanation of their dynamics. We have also wanted to move away from a dualism concerning animals and humans and between objects and living organisms which accounts for much of social sciences. In such an unpacking of the processes of disruption, we draw on Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy about the social world that we live in. In particular, we seek to move away from the ‘deadening effects’ of representational social science to capture the dynamic and spontaneous nature of social changes. More broadly speaking, recent interest in an assemblage approach has emerged from critiques of static and ‘deadened’ representational research common in studies of monuments and landscapes in the broader social sciences; assemblage theory has shed light on the multiplicities, spontaneities, and linkages in tourism (Lin et al., 2022; Podoshen, 2017). In particular, this approach, along with its Actor-Network counterpart, is well-suited to examine the social connections between materiality, affect, and processes (Elder-Vass, 2014; Franklin, 2004; Müller and Schurr, 2016; Ren, 2011; van der Duim, 2007; van der Duim et al., 2017). The work on materiality (e.g. fatty acids, coral reefs and monuments) in enacting social processes (Abrahamsson et al., 2015) also points to the role of non-humans in motivating processes in our social worlds (Muecke and Wergin, 2014).
Here, we heed Deleauzian and Guattarian thinking’s reminder that changes/disruptions are often hidden within familiar forms and contexts, and we should use the familiar as a springboard to uncover hidden dynamics. In this case, the familiar was a typical trip to the Jiuzhai Valleys conducted for a mix of preliminary research (getting acquainted with research sites) for the first author and a family vacation for the second author. To unsettle the familiar preliminary research-cum-family vacation in order to see the dynamics of disruptions within, we conceptualise the trip as an ‘assemblage’ (agencement in Delueze and Guattari’s French original writing), an active and fluid arrangement of entities (including individuals, objects, and species) within social and productive structures. In such a framework, we look at ‘desire/wish’ (desir in the French original and the alternate translation ‘wish’ removing the sexual associations) rather than power as a motivator for individuals’ decision-making and focus on the unfinished and ongoing – encounters, conflicts, convergences, fractures, and formations, in order to capture the dynamics of change. Assemblages are conceived as passional – constellations of desire/wish. Desire/wish is used in assemblage thinking as a productive force or a ‘spontaneous emergence’ that generates relationships through a coming-together of multiplicities (Goodchild, 1996: 4).
Specifically, we examine how desires/wishes (to encounter pandas) drive and ‘assemble’ tourism and the ease with which such ‘assemblages’ could disassemble as a result of shocks and sudden disruptions. We also examine how such processes are centred not only on human decisions but a combination of human-objects-other species or what is termed the ‘socio-material’ – humans, valleys, pandas and virus. Accordingly, we look at how desires to encounter pandas help pull together this fluid and dynamic assemblage and how desires to stay socially responsible and healthy disrupt and break up such socio-material arrangements at the onset of increased Covid-19 viral infections. We leveraged on assemblage thinking’s adeptness at analysing disruptive social changes (Müller and Schurr, 2016) to see how two biological agents (i.e. panda and the Covid-19 virus) power, fractured and reshaped Dajiuzhai’s tourism assemblages. This was first manifested in how desires to see charismatic animals (pandas) pulled together multiple elements. Second, biological hazards stoking fears of catching the Covid-19 virus resulted in severe disruptions to these tourism assemblages in 2021 (Covid-19 Delta variant), which broke up Dajiuzhai’s tourism assemblages. We will also point to and consider the ordering of the new Dajiuzhai tourism assemblage – new health measures and new panda charms in the ongoing Covid- measures in China. In doing so, we illustrate how tourism assemblages are reshaped in the face of unexpected disruptions and their consequences for various tourism elements, how desires drive formation and disruption in tourism and how non-humans feature alongside humans in such processes. We also seek to contribute to theoretical work in understanding sudden disruptions in tourism and the advancement of assemblage theory and relational approaches in tourism.
Desires and disruptions in tourism: Sociomaterialistic worlds
Postmodern tourism scholars perceive tourism as fluid and contingent and regard the ordering of such flows and materialities as priorities for tourism inquiries and analysis (Bone and Bone, 2018; Franklin, 2004; Ong and du Cros, 2012; Ong and Jin, 2017; Ren, 2011; Shimoyamada, 2019). Such approaches take tourism inquiry beyond cost and benefit analysis, impacts, and binaries (Law, 1999). They also offer intellectual opportunities to decentralise the social sciences from their human-centredness (Bruttomesso, 2018; Latour, 1996, 2004). Of these approaches, the Actor-Network Theory has found earlier acceptance and utility amongst tourism researchers. Working on the interstices between sociology and tourism, van der Duim (2007) introduced the Actor-Network Theory to the tourism community, particularly in environment and nature-based tourism research. Further work in tourism research highlights the benefits of considering the multiplicities and contingencies in tourism (de Jong and Waitt, 2022; Ong and du Cros, 2012; Ren, 2011; van der Duim et al., 2013) and the role of non-human elements and objects in enacting and motivating tourism (Gibson, 2014; Lugosi, 2016; Ong and du Cros, 2012; Ren, 2011). In general, the materialism of our tourism worlds have recently gathered more scholarly attention (Mostafanezhad, 2021), and more specifically, relational materialism has also facilitated tourism analysis into how our tourism worlds are shaped by socio-technological objects, including mobile phones and their applications, aeroplanes and automobiles, guidebooks and even buckets, spades and beaches (Franklin, 2014; Jóhannesson, 2005, 2010; Michalski, 2004; Picken, 2010). The key contributions of relational materialism and associated approaches have been their dedicated and beyond-the-human analysis of socio-environmental disruptions, innovations, and social changes (Altamirano, 2022; Jóhannesson, 2005; Latour, 1996; Law, 1999). Hence, such approaches are aptly suited for our considerations of abrupt environmentally – geological and biologically induced disruptions, innovations in our tourism worlds and how existing tourism products could be denied. In contrast, new tourism products such as disaster, earthquake commemoration, and propaganda-based tourism were fomented in southwestern China instead.
Currently experiencing much greater utility in Human Geography and the allied social sciences than in tourism studies, assemblage thinking arguably converges with the abovementioned approaches in terms of its sociomaterial and sociotechnological concerns. Besides, assemblage thinking is also noted for its adeptness in incorporating the emotional aspects of human processes and a greater partiality than the Actor-Network Theory in accounting for and explaining social changes and disruptions to networks/assemblages (Müller and Schurr, 2016). Within assemblage thinking, human emotions are considered as ‘affects, desires and wishes’ and are commonly adopted to explain the pulling together and powering of assemblages (see e.g. Müller and Schurr, 2016). This differs from a humanistic approach where rich and varied ‘senses’ of place or emotional attachments are sought to socially construct place image or attachment to peoples and communities or the complex emotional processes underpinning specific individual and collective actions (Müller and Schurr, 2016). Specifically, this paper traces how specific individual and collective wishes, desires, and fears enrolled and drove geological vectors and elements (earthquakes, plate tectonics, mountain ranges and valleys, and frequent rockfalls) and their biological counterparts (pandas, Covid-19 virus) and were augmented by the performance of an array of socio-technological apparatus including travel trackers, health codes, disinfectant sprays, surgical face masks, automobiles, and aeroplanes. In particular, we focus on notions of change and disruption when investigating and tracing the formation of constellations of elements and their coding, stratification, and disconnections in Dajiuzhai’s tourism assemblage.
This paper builds on existing efforts in niche tourism, including animal-based tourism (Bertella, 2014; Margaryan et al., 2022; Ong, 2017; Porter, 2018; Xu et al., 2015), nature-based (Duffy, 2015) and geological tourism (Jutla, 2000) and more broadly, studies in China’s sightseeing (Lian and Yu, 2019; Xu and Li, 2021) and domestic tourism (Liang and Bao, 2015; Ong and Liu, 2022; Tian et al., 2021). Since the new millennium, Chinese domestic tourism has blossomed, bringing forth new products and forms alongside the surge in relevant research in the past 20 years. The popularity of social media and their visual-based user-generated content have made destinations with unique photo/video-taken points more attractive (Yu and Sun, 2019). Animal-based tourism with charming and cute animals has driven tourists to travel from afar to be close to the animals like giant pandas and elephants, and these tourists commonly take video clips and pictures to share their experiences (Bueddefeld and Erickson, 2022). However, current research on animal-based tourism has focused on human-animal conflicts (Cui et al., 2012), while this study reflects the fragility of animal-based tourism during the pandemic period.
Sightseeing trips remain the core of Chinese domestic tourism, and mass tourists prefer being close to or part of nature, influenced by Chinese cultural contexts (Xu et al., 2008). Besides the influence of cultural contexts, Chinese nature-based tourism research has mainly prioritised tourist perception, governance, sustainability issues, and surrounding communities (Ren, 2022; Su and Xiao, 2009; Xu et al., 2016), with some recent studies discussing tourism resiliency and post-pandemic trends. Some found correlations between domestic travel and perceived pandemic control (Uglis et al., 2022; Yang et al., 2021), while others suggested the possibility of Covid-19 providing opportunities for tourism development (Zhong et al., 2021) to contribute to a more socially and environmentally just society (Mostafanezhad, 2020). Human-related issues remain the core of China’s tourism research, with relative neglect of the non-human actors. This paper pulls these various forms of tourism together as it considers the multiplicities, contingencies, and interconnectedness in our tourism worlds and its making and undoing.
Methodology: Tracing Dajiuzhai’s tourism assemblage ethnographically
This qualitative research draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Dajiuzhai. Comprising geologically sublime valleys, mountainous landscapes, and a proud collection of pandas, the Dajiuzhai region is a central Chinese international and domestic tourism site. The short fieldwork was a chance encounter where a family vacation (first and second author and their children) which followed after the first author’s preliminary fieldwork with his students, coincided with an onset of increased Covid-19 infections at the destinations and the consequent pandemic control measures (See Table 1). Such an episode offered fleeting but particular insights into how disruption unfolds in tourism. The accidental data was recorded ethnographically on the day case rates started appearing in the neighbouring Zhangjiajie around late July to August 2021. The first and second authors had an epiphany about the data richness that could be reaped by utilising ‘happenstance’ perspectives and experiences as empirical material for understanding change and disruptions in tourism. Using their bodies and affect as research instruments (Basnet et al., 2020; Fujii, 2015), the first and second researchers started recording fieldnotes and reflections on their encounters, subsequent bodily movements, and affect as disruptions unfold the family vacation, as subjective and personal reflections to enrich the existing data collected (Witte et al., 2022).
Tracing viral-hit Dajiuzhai tourism ethnographically.
Such a multi-dimensional methodology of combining personal perspectives and collected empirical data (Kristvik, 2012) is also compatible with this paper’s relational and socio-material approach (O’Gorman et al., 2014). The recorded personal fieldnotes and reflections capturing the sociomaterial unfolding of the vacation trip offered a unique lens through the means of the first and second researchers’ body movements and affect to probe how tourism objects, species and human-tourists come together and how they fall apart consequent of viral-shaped impacts and the possibility of a new constellation of panda tourism emerging. It was a rare window of opportunity for the researchers to observe and experience a single disrupted Covid-induced trip in its entirety.
Specifically, this paper examines the relational and sociomaterial links between species (humans, pandas and virus), objects, and tourism in sudden disruptions and changes in tourism using an assemblage theory perspective. Ethnographic tracing of these elements helps explains the array of small, large and dynamic changes and disruptions that characterised this particular episode and much of Covid-19 impacted tourism in China. Specifically, this short 10-day fieldwork helped trace the process within the assemblage. The trip consisted of 3 days at Jiuzhai Valleys, 1 day at Wolong Panda base, and 6 days shambling between sites, dealing with sudden mandatory PCR testings, rebooking of flights and accommodations when Covid-19 control mechanisms struck.
The personal and ethnographic approach undertaken in this research is augmented by the inclusion of the third author, who had helped conceptualise and visualise the emergence and weakening of assemblages with the two other authors and ‘crystalise’ or provide multiple perspectives to claims to truth in this research process (Ellingson, 2009; Hammersley, 1991). Our intention to represent and articulate the more micro-level processes and the richness of the personal and emotional has necessitated a data representation style approximating autoethnography, in which longer first-person narratives are presented (Sparkes, 2000; Wall, 2008).
Desire/wish and the fluidity of Dajiuzhai tourism assemblage
Desire/ wish for the ‘cuddly’ pandas and sublime valleys kept the assemblage in place. The desire to see Jiuzhai Valleys and pandas were immense in the first and second authors’ family. The children’s eyes beamed with excitement when told they could see the cuddly creatures at some point in their travel. Jiuzhai Valleys ranked highly on the second author’s ‘bucket list’ of sites to visit in her lifetime due to her mother’s praises of the place after visiting it in the early 1990s. Such desires and wishes to see the cuddly and sublime had intensified partly due to China’s partial lockdown in 2020, alongside the general discouragement of travel by municipal and provincial governments during that period. The desire to encounter pandas may be thought to be skewed in the context of the global suspicion of bats and rodents and the trading and culling of mink in northern Europe, etc.
Desires to encounter pandas and Jiuzhai Valleys had pulled what was cartographically far-flung entities towards entities in Dajiuzhai in Sichuan, and the process of motivating and governing tourism at Dajiuzhai happened at a distance. Like most tourists, we accessed popular travel websites for travel information and were attracted to the spectacular landscapes of Jiuzhaigou and the endearing giant pandas. Viral pandemic times also necessitated checking travel advisories and ensuring our Chinese city of residence (Zhuhai city) was not classified as a Covid-19 danger zone which would prohibit our outward journeys. Mundane tasks such as ticketing were done in Zhuhai city for the first and second author as well.
In addition to humans (tourists) like us, desires to see sublime natural landscapes and cuddly pandas motivated the enrolment of an non of elements related to landscape and panda tourism. These elements included objects, humans, and non-humans: pandas, valleys, mountains, rivers, private automobiles and their drivers, tour buses, aeroplanes, travel agents, ethnic dance performers, hill road maintenance workers, ticket sellers, municipality, city and provincial government tasked with monitoring and issuing travel advisories. These elements all possessed potentialities of their own which affected the assemblage in different ways. For instance, the pandas in the conservation base activated animal experts and tourists, while the spectacular valleys of Jiuzhai attracted mass sightseeing tourists. These, in turn enrolled a constellation of other humans and non-humans necessary for tourism success. Transport components such as aeroplanes, private automobiles, and tour buses and their pilots and drivers, and road maintenance workers facilitated tourists’ mobility while ticket sellers, travel agents, ethnic dancers, and the provincial government supported or deterred tourism, depending on Covid-induced episodes or other situations.
Tourism at Dajiuzhai was found to be a fragile arrangement constantly shifting and on the edge of disintegrating. This relates to what assemblage thinking sees as the ‘virtual’ or future possibilities, and this absent presence of the virtual shadows the tourism at Dajiuzhai. Key bodies in the constellation of stratified elements of Dajiuzhai’s tourism assemblage, pandas, were vital in the coding, selection, and completion process of the assemblage. Elements were chosen and ordered in the assemblage according to how they facilitated panda conservation and tourism. As a species and seemingly ill-adept at co-existing with human developments in the wild, pandas appeared to have found their survival niche by looking ‘cute’ in captivity. Their black patches around their eyes, round furry faces, cuddly physique, and what appeared to be generally gentle and playful behaviours motivate immense conservation efforts in China and an expansive international following. A panda tourism assemblage was thus constructed as a result of its charming appearance that went beyond its immediate location in Dajiuzhai.
A part of this is how improvisation had been a key feature in Dajiuzhai tourism. Joint human-panda improvisations had affected the tourism assemblage at the panda centre, as reflected in the first author’s reflection notes:
On our way to the panda centre, our driver told us that the baby pandas were not at Wolong. Instead, they had been moved to another site. Not knowing whether to trust our driver, we carried on with our itinerary. Indeed, when we got on site, we discovered that the panda nursery in the panda centre we were hoping to see was indeed empty! Accordingly, they have been moved to another panda base for special care and will return in a few months’ time. We soldiered on despite the disappointment and found further ways in which pandas and visitors improvised to make the tourism experience stable and intact. According to panda tourism websites, pandas are most active in the early morning when they are fed. We had arrived past that optimal timing and were lamenting our ill-planning and misfortune when some pandas decided to put on a show for us. Three pandas decided to have their post-meal workouts, climbing and rolling about. While another two pandas decided to have a late breakfast despite human-planned meal hours – it appeared they kept some food in the outdoor area of their enclosure and wandered back to feed. These panda improvisations kept the human crowds entertained – snapping pictures and jostling for better views. Like the precarity of the Dajiuzhai tourism assemblage itself, the crowds dispersed rapidly as soon as the pandas decided to wander back to their shelters.
(Reflection notes, First Author, August 2nd 2021)
The valleys of Jiuzhai were also key agents in the Dajiuzhai tourism assemblage. The geological features, the emerald green lakes, and the tranquil forests of the site attracted thousands of tourists per day. Visitors were shuttled along the site from one designated viewing point to the next on big electric buses. At these points, visitors could be observed admiring and taking pictures of or with the landscape all the time. The ‘out of this world’ aesthetics of the Jiuzhai Valleys propelled the passional tourism assemblage, and human desire/wish to see and experience this held it all together. Yet, assemblages are fluid entities that constantly deal with disruptions through improvisations. The viral pandemic and potential closures of attractions, destinations and transport nodes were always at the back of our minds and necessitated the constant availability of backup plans. Procedures and provincial lines constantly improvised pre-set plans. The second author wrote this:
There was always a nagging fear that our Guangdong health code (for showing our approximated health status on virtue of our travel histories) would not be locally recognised as we routinely encountered such problems on the way to the Jiuzhai Valleys. There’s a high probability that we might be barred from attractions and places for not displaying a local health code.
The first author was supposed to lead his students to conduct fieldwork in Jiuzhai Valleys. Yet on the first day of the fieldwork, he could not satisfy the steadfast gatekeeper with his Guangdong health code, as the gatekeeper had no exposure to non-Sichuan province health codes even though there was national approval of all official provincial health codes. As a result, he was unable to lead his students to conduct fieldwork. I was ‘fortunately’ ushered in without my code being verified as I was standing with the group of students and my two kids and assumed to be part of the student group.
Fortunately, after some calls to higher-ups, provisions were made for him to enter Jiuzhai Valleys, but half a day was wasted in this incident.
(Fieldnotes, Second Author, July 27th, 2021)
As a result of the Sichuan health code’s system design, foreigners could not register to use their health code at the time of fieldwork. Additionally, biological gatekeeper agents only followed local rules mandating the display of the local Sichuan Health Code, unaware of national approval of the use of all official provincial health codes.
Interestingly, we observed tourists of European origins and their families in the Jiuzhai Valleys and enquired how they got into the valleys, considering they likely had similar problems with the Sichuan health code. We were told that they improvised by buying tickets from the official Aba Prefecture Wechat mini-app, bypassing any hassle at the gates through prior registrations. We have shown here that the desire to travel constituted of wishes to see adorable pandas and/or splendid valleys, which had motivated Dajiuzhai’s tourism assemblages and how the assemblage was easily disrupted through on the ground entanglements with rules and procedures and yet, human agents adeptly improvised and proceeded to fulfil their desire/wish.
Disturbances and disruptions to the Dajiuzhai assemblage
At first glance, the tourism assemblage at Dajiuzhai may appear as an unchanging, rigid and standardised business system. However, the fluidity which allowed the assemblage to absorb shocks and transform without breaking apart was tested to its maximum when Covid-19 case rates rose on July 21st, 2021 and a series of China’s ‘dynamic zero’ Covid measures started to set in.
Desire/wish to be socially responsible, free of Covid-19 and its associated quarantine pushed the Dajiuzhai tourism assemblage to its extremes. The first author met up with students he knew on fieldwork in Jiuzhai valleys and his thoughts then were that the Dajiuzhai tourism assemblage was a fluid tourism assemblage purposed for a stable tourism experience shaped by the desire/wish for the cuddly and sublime and increasingly stretched by the desire/wish to be socially responsible and free of Covid-19 and its consequent quarantine:
It was Day 2 of the students’ fieldwork at Jiuzhai Valleys when thoughts of rising Delta variant-related Covid-19 infections hit my mind. The fieldwork was focused on conventional tourism livelihoods in the valleys, and the undergraduate and graduate students were working hard on their interviews and questionnaire surveys. Keenly aware that any rise in Covid-19 infections in our city of departure would disrupt air travels and also implicate our return to our home city in the form of enforced quarantine, I asked Hui (a graduate student) regarding the infection numbers.
‘It’s still OK, Teacher. There were 2 cases in Chengdu but some distance away from where you last stayed and the airport. You should be able to fly out OK and not experience quarantine’.
Both the teacher and parent in me wanted to avoid serious travel implications. An outbreak in Jiuzhai Valleys or its immediate vicinity would shatter the dreams of my students’ return to their hometowns and the summer vacation was the only period offering a meaningfully long enough stay back home. It would also prevent my family’s return to our city of residence and force us to cancel other holiday activities. Our work would also suffer severe roadblocks, and I had wanted to catch up on urgent writing and class preparation tasks.
There was also a broader social pressure to conform to norms and conventions of pandemic controls. These manifested in ‘Health Codes’ (coloured indicators based not on your actual health but the perceived health based on the number of Covid-19 infections in your 14-day travel itinerary, the related travel itinerary app (see Figure 1), mandatory PCR testing for residents and tourists, constant disinfection procedures at tourist sites and hotels and in the vibes of Jiuzhai Valleys and its surrounding towns.
The Sichuan health code. Constant biological surveillance via health codes and itinerary travel apps.
(Reflection notes, First Author, July 28th, 2021)
The abrupt onset of Covid-19 cases in the neighbouring Chengdu shocked the Dajiuzhai tourism assemblage. The authorities swiftly put out travel advisories to strongly discourage travel out of one’s city of origin. Visitor numbers started declining sharply as arrival numbers for Jiuzhai Valleys fell to 2000 from summer ranges of 10,000 to 50,000. Fears of being socially irresponsible had deterred many from travelling alongside legitimate fears of being quarantined, forced self-isolation and frequent PCR testings. While occurring at a distance in Chengdu, such negative affects weakened an originally thriving tourism assemblage at Dajiuzhai and eventually dismantled it. Such fears were exacerbated by the foreign identities of the first and second author,
Fieldwork went well, and we could get reasonably substantial data for an initial probing of the site. Nevertheless, the thought of an incoming pandemic ‘wave’ was constantly on my mind and on the ground. As a non-Chinese native (foreigner), I had experienced repeated difficulties entering Jiuzhai Valleys as park operators commonly associated me with foreigners who had just entered China’s borders and who might be a biological carrier and vector of the potent and dangerous virus. Numerous phone calls to the higher-ups and supervisors had to be made and the related long waits endured, all in the name of social responsibility. I went along with it more patiently than I expected. It could be that I had internalised that sense of social responsibility or perhaps fears of standing out, of not conforming.
(Fieldnotes, First Author, July 29th, 2021)
Such Covid-19 fears were nationally marked. Extra anxieties were levied on non-native travellers (foreigners), people who were not born and bred in China and more importantly, did not carry the Chinese identification (ID) card. With the closure of borders, foreigners, like the Covid-19 virus were now considered external elements to be treated with caution. While the borders had been largely closed since the pandemic outbreak, the small number of foreigners living and working within China’s borders had been allowed to travel to its scenic spots and attractions. Yet, not all park operators understood these ‘rarely encountered’ policies given the insignificant number of foreigners still within China’s borders (there was an hasty exodus of foreigners when the Covid-19 virus first erupted in Wuhan). Some of these remaining foreign travellers, when interviewed, expressed reluctance to visit more sites since the challenging encounters at Jiuzhai Valleys – at least till there was proven clarity and ease of travel for foreigners. While previously foreigners were able to purchase tourist attractions’ tickets online, some tourist ticketing apps, as part of Covid 19 measures, had also started blocking off ‘dangerous foreigners from unknown places’ by removing the ability of foreigners to purchase tourist site tickets remotely by mandating the data entry of China’s national identity number and not allowing passport number to be keyed in. Policies also dictated that foreigners must be scrutinised at the site’s ticketing window by the ticketing agent before being allowed to purchase tickets to the desired tourist site. This added further uncertainty for foreign travellers. Hence, the Dajiuzhai tourism assemblage had been weakened as its foreigner human elements without the China national ID started withdrawing and dis-enrolling themselves from the other elements and the assemblage.
Travelling out of Jiuzhai and west into the direction of attractions in Xinduqiao, Moshi and Dapeng, we met a roadblock just outside Xiaojin county. We managed to enter the county, but the experience motivated us and our driver to get our PCR tests done right away. Consequently, we spent the afternoon in Xiaojin county looking for a place to get our PCR tests and getting them done. We eventually landed in the county’s Renmin Hospital. After much navigating of administrative barriers at the registration counters, we had our PCR tests done in a set-up resembling a cyborg (Figure 2).
Health ‘cyborg’ and mandatory PCR testing for residents and tourists.
(Fieldnotes, First Author, July 30th, 2021)
As inter-county and inter-provincial travel became discouraged through stringent pandemic regulations, short PCR test result validity (48 hours or less) was also required to cross boundaries. The need to get ourselves tested regularly not only slowed down and disrupted our itinerary but also dampened our spirits.
Further shocks to our Dajiuzhai tourism assemblage arrived in a series of advance notices of flight delays and cancellations and the widespread reluctance of private-hire drivers to cross prefecture/ provincial lines Unexpectedly, our driver who was originally a passive human agent of our tour became not only the active but also the determining factor of our eventual travel plan. We first booked our flight from Chengdu to Huanglong, at his suggestion (to keep within Aba Prefecture) to accommodate his fears of going into Chengdu, where there had been Covid-19 infections. Three days following our change in booking, our Huanglong flight was postponed by a further 2 days, pushing our departure date to August 8th, 2021.
Fearing the delay could be a precursor to a partial lockdown or severe discouragement of inter-city or interprovincial travels (a typical Chinese pandemic technique), we switched our flights to Chongqing city where flights were plentiful and with no recent infection cases and which our driver was at ease driving to Chongqing due to a lack of cases there. However, that flight was also cancelled two days before our departure and in my annoyance, frustration, and fear, I booked an available flight scheduled for the next day. By then, Chongqing started to have infection cases and our travel app showing our Chengdu travel history might impede us to board the flight. Furthermore, the PCR test we did in Xiaojin Town had also lapsed into the 72-hour zone and we were unsure if we required 48 hour negative PCR result for flight boarding. By then, the fears of our driver had caused him to reject driving us into Chongqing. In the end, to proceed with our wish to board the plane and exit the city as soon as possible, we had to drop our driver and switch to a Chongqing-based driver who was willing to cross provincial lines to drive us from Aba Prefecture to Chongqing albeit at three times the market rate. Thankfully, our Chengdu travel record showed we were far from medium to high infection zones in Chengdu, and we managed to board our flight without difficulty.
(Reflection notes, Second Author, August 2nd, 2021)
The positive travel-related affect had given way to negative ones of fears and frustrations. At this stage of our journey, we witnessed the broader tourism assemblage of Dajiuzhai falling apart and experienced the disintegration of our own as well as that of our drivers. Our original driver set aside his fears of us giving him a negative review for ‘abandoning’ his job while the Chongqing driver forced himself to drive over 10 hours to accept and complete our job as he predicted the lack of income for the months following the Covid-19 outbreak. While we reported our experiences from our personal vantage points, such frustrations and fears of travellers and their service providers were collectively observed at the various transport nodes in the Dajiuzhai region and China at that time. Frustrations with constant cancellations, postponements of flights and fears of catching Covid-19 or being stranded in a city away from home decoupled many human tourist elements and dismantled the Dajiuzhai tourism assemblage by the start of August 2021.
Yet, tourism at Dajiuzhai did not fall apart completely. Stricter health reporting and lower carrying capacity levels and largely intra-provincial and neighbouring provincial tourists (who can drive over) helped maintain (albeit reduced) visitation at the panda base and Jiuzhai Valleys through the heightened Covid-19 infection episode in late July-early August of 2022. These newly enrolled agents of new health codes and lower carrying capacity numbers had helped keep tourism stable and the fluidity of the Dajiuzhai tourism assemblage had facilitated its stability and longevity.
Discussion and conclusion
In this paper, we have examined a constellation of elements – pandas, tourists, coronavirus, drivers, valleys, and health codes. The purpose is to trace and highlight the entangled and multiple ontologies of tourism and how such entangled and multiple ontologies- in forms of tourism assemblages – were driven and fuelled by associated desires/wishes relating to civic consciousness and of avoiding death, injuries or sickness and quarantine brought about by the Covid-19 virus. We have also sought to illustrate the spontaneity and improvisation brought about by the socio-material agents in the tourism assemblage – for example, pandas strolling out for their unscheduled meal and play times and how there were potentialities within the unsettled and ‘always becoming’ Dajiuzhai assemblage.
Specifically, we have argued that biological agents (pandas and virus) are chiefly responsible for the production and disruption of tourism at China’s Dajiuzhai area. Biological agents have also been instrumental in motivating change and improvisation in the tourism assemblage there – changes and improvisations geared at maintaining the stability of the tourism experience at Dajiuzhai and thus of the tourism assemblage itself. Encountering pandas and the valleys in the ‘dangerous times’ of rising Covid-19 infections and the potentialities of being labelled socially irresponsible or of falling ill to said virus and being quarantined highlighted the precarity of the tourism system at Dajiuzhai in specific but also resonated with the vulnerability of tourism assemblages elsewhere. The animal-human relations and their fragility should also be examined within the socio-political context of renewed suspicion of humans and animals. The panda- and viral-human relations discussed in this paper occurred within our socio-material worlds where encroachment of natural habitats, the ‘spillover’ of wildlife in human environments, and the global trade of animals as commodities are existing concerns. Our desire for pandas then could be said to be rather out-of-sync with other human-animal assemblages.
While existing efforts in tourism studies have tended to consider assemblages in broader settings such as health and food production (Lin et al., 2022), tea drinking and foodscapes (Su and Zhang, 2022), we have contributed an assemblage approach analysing biological vectors in tourism involving pandas and valleyscapes and at a micro-level of a single tour/trip. In doing so, we have arguably ventured deeper than recent works, which still tended to consider enrolling of elements in single-dimensional ‘assemblages’ at broader scales (see for example, Lin et al., 2022; Ong and du Cros, 2012).
We have also sought to contribute methodologically to the assemblage approach – accidental fieldwork serving to operationalise assemblage thinking and theory. Opposed to linear causality and focusing on moments of emergence and ruptures of relationships, assemblage theory has its own methodological tendencies (Amelina, 2021; Baker and McGuirk, 2017; Tseng, 2022). It is focused on revealing, interpreting and representing social processes and its methodological tools oriented to processes and encounters. In this paper, the accidental nature of how our fieldwork emerged was closely aligned with the notions of assemblage-informed fieldwork being revealing, interpreting and representing. Our accidental fieldwork was also built on our encounters and experiences in the field, yielding the type of performative data which reveal the labour of sustaining and disrupting assemblages. Thus, in addition to social experimental fieldwork or intended and designed ethnographic fieldwork, which dominates assemblage data -collection, we have demonstrated the utility of accidental ethnographic fieldwork for assemblage research.
Tourism and our sociomaterial worlds have always been dynamic. In this paper, we have not claimed that the Covid-19 pandemic is a uniquely dynamic situation. Rather, we have sought to use assemblage theory and its methods to reveal and analyse the dynamism of the situation and, in so doing, uncover the operations of human-animal relations and its associated distributed sociomaterial autonomies and agencies. Furthermore, in examining coronavirus effects on tourism at Dajiuzhai, we have sought to highlight the suitability of assemblage perspective in tracing and interrogating sudden disruptions in tourism processes.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and constructive comments. The editorial advice of Susan Frohlick is also gratefully acknowledged. This paper benefitted from the theoretical discussions on assemblage thinking and sociomaterialism at Sun Yat-sen University led by Xu Honggang. Fieldwork support from Zhang Chaozhi and his research team at Jiuzhaigou and the local officials at Dajiuzhai were crucial for the completion of this project. Findings, opinions and conclusions expressed, however, are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the individuals and organisations mentioned above
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number [42201246]).
Author biographies
