Chinese Calligraphy and Tourism: From Cultural Heritage to Landscape Symbol and Media of the Tourism Industry

In this article, the authors attempt to explain whether and how Chinese calligraphy – a characteristic cultural symbol – plays and will play an important role in the modern tourism industry in China given its historic context and modern renaissance. Chinese calligraphy as heritage, with its long history, diverse types and forms, broad connotation, maturity in theory, wide distribution, pervasive existence, and close relationship to living culture, is a tourist attraction and also a symbolic element characterizing the cultural landscape as national identity; in fact there exists a substantial calligraphic landscape. Investigations have revealed that there are many diverse calligraphy landscapes perceived. Chinese calligraphy connects a system of cultures and forms a cultural chain. Reviewing recent research on cultural landscapes and heritage as well as calligraphy landscapes, some new ideas on tourism landscapes integrated with this culture of calligraphy are discussed in this paper. Based on characteristics of a culture chain that links calligraphy and the Chinese cultural system, a possible model with calligraphy to promote tourism is presented. The transformation process is as follows: calligraphy heritage→calligraphic context→traditional calligraphy landscape →generalised calligraphic landscape→pervasive calligraphic symbolic system. With this process, calligraphy is transferred from cultural heritage to a holistic medium for the development of the tourism industry.