1The remote rural region in China’s Honghe County has been increasingly transformed by tourism and Unesco’s World Heritage program. Already an emerging destination since the early 1990s, the site's inscription as a World Heritage Site of Honghe Hani Rice Terraces (HHRTs) in the year 2013 further accelerated its tourism development. Tourism and heritage are often seen as two intertwined systems that reconstruct local places (Ashworth, 2000; Gravari-Barbas et al., 2016; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1998). They enmesh the site into broader social networks and introduce new social groups who consequently reshape the site. As a result, the built environment and the landscape have been appropriated for divergent purposes, and the place has been endowed with new meanings. The transformation of HHRTs in such contexts was examined in this thesis through four interrelated themes: 1) the transformation of the place into a WHS through meaning construction during and after the World Heritage listing; 2) the visible changes of the rice terrace landscape and the settlement-scape under the “tourist” and “professional” gazes; 3) the tourism-triggered urbanization and changing place qualities; and 4) the power relations and negotiations involved in destination place making.

2Such a multi-facet transformation process is addressed under the central concept of “place making”. Built on the concept of place, which is understood as both material and meaningful (Entrikin, 1991; Relph, 1976), and in an incessant state of “becoming” (Cresswell, 1996; Massey, 1994; Pred, 1984), this thesis suggests that “place making” can be defined as a process in which the meaningful and material aspects of places are constantly re-shaped by various individuals and social groups who interpret and practice the place. To approach each theme with more analytical specificity, it further proposes analytical frameworks by drawing on theorizations of the heritage-scape and World Heritage making (Di Giovine, 2008), landscape and -scape (Jackson, 1986), planetary urbanization (Brenner and Schmid, 2017), tourism-triggered urbanities (Coëffé and Stock, 2021; Stock et al., 2017), and the entanglements of power (Sharp et al., 2000).

3Methodologically, this study dwells on mixed methods. For data collection, participant observation was conducted on-site to understand how different stakeholders engage themselves in the nomination process and post-listing site management. Direct observation and survey were used to track the change of the built environment. Interviews were conducted to collect information of ideas, opinions, events, and stories from various stakeholders (e.g., authorities, experts, investors, and local villagers). Other supplementary data including the site’s historical photos, satellite images, working archives, planning documents, regulations, and nomination files were collected from the Terrace Administration, architects, tourism experts, and Unesco’s website. For data analysis, this study analyzed the texts and narratives by using content and discourse analysis. The aim is to understand the construction of the heritage discourse, the change of the landscape, and the power issues in place making. It also used visual analysis and mapping to describe the change of the settlement and the built environment.

5The second empirical chapter examines the transformation of the landscape and settlement-scape respectively under the “tourist gaze” (Urry, 2002) and “professional gaze”. By adding the suffix “-scape”, the aesthetic, visual character in the transformation of landscape and settlement was highlighted. In terms of the landscape, the results show that influenced by the touristic gaze, the locals rediscovered the beauty of their everyday common landscape and actively used landscape images to promote their touristic services and products. Moreover, under the touristic gaze, more fine-grained, nuanced landscape images were constructed through an organic, bottom-up process by photograph-seeking tourists, local guides, and travel agencies. Tourist imaginaries concretized and differentiated the landscape based on attributes of colors, landforms, locations, and time of viewing. In terms of settlement-scape, the results indicate that the vernacular settlement-scape has evolved into four types under the “professional gaze”, i.e., the modern, semi-vernacular, neo-vernacular, and hybrid settlement-scape. Those typologies represent varied visual characters measured by their continuity to the vernacular type, and they were produced under different conditions of preservation and touristification.

6The third empirical chapter studies the tourism-triggered urbanization process at Pugaolaozhai Village. Empirical evidence indicates that tourism-triggered urban qualities can be observed from the following indicators. Firstly, due to the expanding accommodation services, the built space and population have densified while the land-use types, economic activities, population types have diversified. Secondly, Pugaolaozhai has developed a certain level of touristic centrality, meaning that its large number of lodges has made it tourists’ most chosen place for overnight stays. Thirdly, traditional common space (such as village gate, sacred woods) for locals has deteriorated while public space (such as parking lot, tourist center) for anonymous individuals has emerged. Finally, the architectural style has gained urban features. New houses used modern building techniques and materials, were notably larger, and used building elements that reflect modern aesthetics. However, Pugaolaozhai is far from completely urban but is rather characterized by a hybridity of rural and urban characters. The density of the built environment has increased but is not significantly higher than other non-touristic villages in the region; the economic activities have been diversified, but farming remains the primary economic activity; it is central for tourists and non-local investors but remains peripheral for the locals; traditional common space still exists, and traditional building elements can still be found. The hybrid rural-urban qualities provide evidence of planetary urbanization (Brenner and Schmid, 2017), but also reveal that planetary urbanization occurs in different degrees in less developed economies.

7The final empirical chapter investigates the entanglements of power in Azheke Village. Both the tangible and intangible aspects of the place have been shaped by activities and negotiations among authorities, experts, investors, and local villagers. Those stakeholders were driven by both shared (i.e., improving the living conditions of the villagers) and divergent objectives (i.e., political performance, professional interest, profit). The competing interests gave rise to a series of negotiations around issues of road construction, housing construction, land acquisition, commercial activities, benefit-sharing. The investigation of the issues proved that authorities and experts turned out to be the dominating power while the villagers and investors were the resisting power. Both sides of power actively drew on a wide variety of resources (legal resources, expertise, social status, etc.) and tactics (such as persuasion, manipulation, etc.) in negotiations. But the resisting power was not passive all the time. For example, the villagers sometimes forced the dominating power to make compromises and influenced the built-scape at a micro-level. Hence, this chapter suggests the place making is interwoven in domination/resistance in everyday mundane politics.

8This thesis, therefore, argues for a more central role for the concept of place making in tourism studies, as it opens various possibilities to explore destination development, i.e., from aspects of representations, materialities, as well as human activities. The empirical evidence provides food for thought on the issues of heritage, landscape, settlement, urbanization, and power at destination places. It substantiates the idea of tourism as an essential factor in heritage nomination; it presents the diversified landscape and settlement-scape as a result of heritage and tourism development; it captures the evidence of planetary urbanization with the case study in remote, rural mountain regions; and finally, it sheds light on the resisting power in the destination making process.