Tourists'Existential Authenticity in a Nostalgic Creative Space:A Case Study of Changsha Wenheyou
Existential authenticity offers a new perspective for understanding the experience in a non-authentic cultural space.It no longer focuses on the authenticity of the object,but emphasises the authenticity as an activity-based approach,concentrating on feelings,emotions,sensations,relationships,and the self.Recent studies on cultural heritage tourism have mostly discussed the reproduction of authenticity from a supply perspective,with less attention paid to tourists'experiences of built cultural spaces.Moreover,these studies have often addressed the original authenticity of cultural landscape restoration in an objective or constructed way,associated with staged authenticity and commodification.Some studies have also noted that authenticity and commodification are not dichotomous,but have failed to show how such authenticity is achieved in the tourist experience,especially in a cultural consumption space that lacks original authenticity.As an alternative to the familiar and globally identical shopping malls,Changsha Wenheyou(Wen and his friends)not only offers consumers a full-scene and immersive dining experience,but also revives the old Changsha city life of the 20th century in a six-storey building,inviting them to connect with the past.Obviously as a built space of creative nostalgia,it is a space that lacks objective authenticity compared to previous cultural heritage tourism sites,yet it attracts large numbers of tourists.So why are people willing to go there,knowing that it is an inauthentic space?Do they still care about authenticity?And what kind of experience do they have?Therefore,this study takes the typical case of Changsha Wenheyou as an example to explore how people acquire authentic experiences in a creative nostalgic space.Online information,participant observation,and in-depth interviews were utilized for data collection.A total of 37 in-depth interview samples were obtained from three stages of fieldwork.Thematic analysis was used to analyse the research data.The study found that tourists'realisation of existential authenticity in this space comes from feeling a sense of bygone times through physical experience,gaining liminal experience in the construction of self-perception,achieving emotional enhancement through peer bonding,and experiencing sincerity and boundaries in social communication interactions.It contributes to the theoretical development of an existential authenticity framework by providing empirical evidence on the realisation process of existential authenticity in non-authentic cultural consumption spaces.It extends our understanding of the cultural heritage tourist experience by highlighting how tourists achieve existential authenticity through bodily sensations,perceptual constructs,peer relationships and social interactions.The result is a multifaceted understanding of how tourists experience existential authenticity through integrated interactions between the physical environment,socio-cultural elements,and interpersonal relationships.It also provides a viable approach to resolve the paradox of commodification and authenticity,and offer a novel approach to cultural inheritance in the new urban consumption space.
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