Paris Offscreen: Chinese and Taiwanese Tourists in Cinematic Paris

This chapter examines from a European-Asian perspective the relationship between media representations and the tourist’s imaginations. We use the case of Chinese and Taiwanese tourists in Paris to investigate how these non-European tourists imagine Europe and how these imaginations are being realised, challenged and modified during concrete tourist experiences. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with tourists and field observations, this chapter shows how both the Chinese and Taiwanese tourist imagination of Europe is strongly influenced by popular representations from the media – American Hollywood films in particular. As it turns out, the Chinese and Taiwanese tourist experience of Paris is characterised by an ongoing negotiation between media-inspired fantasies and personal experiences of the ‘real’ Paris. As a result of this, the way these tourists imagined Europe before their visit is reinforced, but also challenged. Chinese and Taiwanese tourists tend to develop a hybrid perspective: they learn Paris in its complexity while reconstituting their own cultural identity vis-a-vis the European other.