Can Tourism Buy Us Some Little Sense of Belongingness?
Lately the biggest change in my house (where I live with my mom and bro) was that we canceled the cable and subscribed to a local ISP’s media-on-demand service. We now pay a fraction of the monthly fee. We have less channels, no 24-hour local news, but we get the extra. We now have things like DW-TV (Germany), TV5 (France), BBC World, Bloomberg, Arirang TV (South Korean, in English) and Aljazeera. The media-on-demand service isn’t top-notch, but it’s like what I think Taiwan should always have had 5-7 years ago. Anyway they fit into my taste, and I happen to be able to watch the German and French channels.
The other day I was watching TV5, and I noticed the program, a science and technology one, was made by CBC, the Canadian (quasi?) equivalent of BBC. It talked about transportation technology and the cityscape of Montreal came on screen.
I visited Montreal a few months ago and was in love with the city. But my affairs with cities are not confined to that North American gem. Such is the up side if you plan traveling yourself.
One thing I find, this being very subjective, about the cities I love is that they have this or that quality that I want to call it home–if I can overcome the hurdles of not just being a visitor.
That’s probably som sense that plain tourism can’t emit–the type of tourism, of joing a tour, that we are familiar with. The appeal of a place can come ironicaly from some travails you undergo on the road.
I’m not sure how those cities do it. They don’t seem to try very hard on being a places people want to call home–or if they try, collectively, they aren’t trying too hard that we see the trace.
On this I reflect on what we do in Taiwan, especially when the government and the tourism industry are calling for more visitors and more revenues generated from tourism. Now I measure the success (or not) of such endeavor by if someone recalls a good trip when s/he sees streetscape in any Taiwanese city and starts to want to call the place home, among the many choices and city affairs the person has in life.
lukhnos :: Aug.28.2008 :: bon-vivant :: No Comments »