SEASONAL LIFESTYLE TOURISM: THE CASE OF CHINESE ELITES Noel B. Salazar University of Leuven, Belgium Yang Zhang Macao University of Science and Technology, China Abstract: This article analyzes Chinese seasonal tourists, whose cultural practices originate from and provide new meaning to traditional Chinese elite culture. We place contemporary seasonal lifestyle tourism in China in its broader socio-historical context and describe how recent political changes have reshaped the place and significance of these practices within Chinese culture at large. Grounded in an anthropological approach, we draw on an explor- atory qualitative study of seasonal tourists in Lijiang, Yunnan Province, to illustrate the multi- ple issues at hand. Our ethnographic fieldwork findings reveal surprising similarities as well as expected differences between Chinese seasonal lifestyle tourism and comparable practices described in the scholarly literature elsewhere. Keywords: seasonal lifestyle tourism, culture, imaginary, anthropology, ethnography, China. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. INTRODUCTION A substantial part of people’s translocal movements is motivated by the wish for experiences and outcomes of a symbolic kind (Salazar, 2011a). Tourism, for instance, is often partially driven by the yearning to gain cultural capital (Salazar, 2010, 2012), while migration is cou- pled with expected social mobility (Salazar, 2011b). Seasonal lifestyle tourism, which has become popular across the Western world and in countries such as Japan, is a response to the desire of relatively affluent people for a more comfortable lifestyle (Hall & William, 2002; Miyazaki, 2008). Situated in the grey zone between tourism and migra- tion, this phenomenon has been variously described as ‘‘residential tourism’’ (McWatters, 2009; O’Reilly, 2007; Tomas, 2006), ‘‘lifestyle migration’’ (Benson, 2011; Benson & O’Reilly 2009a; Sato, 2001), and ‘‘second home tourism’’ (Hall & Mu ¨ ller, 2004; Hiltunen, 2007). Seasonality, both in tourism and migration, is generally attributed to climatic and institutional factors (Hartman, 1986). Regular climatic changes throughout the year—temperature, rainfall, snowfall, and Noel B. Salazar is Research Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Leuven (CuMoRe, Parkstraat 45, BE-3000 Leuven, Belgium. Email <noel.salazar@soc.kuleuven.be>). His interests include imaginaries of Otherness, heritage interpretation, culture contact, globalization and cosmopolitanism. Yang Zhang is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Macao University of Science and Technology (Avenida Wai Long, Taipa, Macau. Email: <yangzhang@must.edu.mo>). Her interests include mobility, tourism contacts between Macao and mainland China, heritage politics, and intangible heritage conservation. Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 43, pp. 81–99, 2013 0160-7383/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2013.04.002 www.elsevier.com/locate/atoures 81