Love-suicide （xunqing 殉情） is often hailed as a representative component of the Naxi culture. This article examines how representations of love-suicide have transformed from an obscure social taboo to an invaluable...Love-suicide （xunqing 殉情） is often hailed as a representative component of the Naxi culture. This article examines how representations of love-suicide have transformed from an obscure social taboo to an invaluable Naxi tradition in the last two decades. While Han and Naxi cultural elites aestheticize love-suicide as a cultural symbol of moral sublimity, tourists further transform the discourse into a simultaneously spiritual and erotic experience in which they seek and create their own existential authenticity. The apparent revival is not simply a result of Naxi political resistance to the external regime or a natural return to their ＂authentic＂ culture. It rather marks another tide of radical transformation in a multi-agent and highly commercialized global world within which both minority cultures and tourists＇ identities are transformed.展开更多
文摘Love-suicide （xunqing 殉情） is often hailed as a representative component of the Naxi culture. This article examines how representations of love-suicide have transformed from an obscure social taboo to an invaluable Naxi tradition in the last two decades. While Han and Naxi cultural elites aestheticize love-suicide as a cultural symbol of moral sublimity, tourists further transform the discourse into a simultaneously spiritual and erotic experience in which they seek and create their own existential authenticity. The apparent revival is not simply a result of Naxi political resistance to the external regime or a natural return to their ＂authentic＂ culture. It rather marks another tide of radical transformation in a multi-agent and highly commercialized global world within which both minority cultures and tourists＇ identities are transformed.
