Rural Tourism Essay

Rural tourism originated in Europe in the 19th century (He 2001). The birth of rural tourism is marked in 1965 at the establishment of Italian “National Agriculture and Tourism Associations” (Shen 2005). Rural tourism activity has become a key role in the economic and social development, and it has increased since the 1970s in all the developed countries worldwide (Perales 2002).

Many scholars and researchers worldwide studied and have conceptions about rural tourism. One of the studies that was done by Bramwell and Lane (1994) said that instead of only farm-based tourism, rural tourism can include activities and interests in farms, nature, adventure, sports, health, education, arts, and heritage taking place in the countryside as a multi-faceted

The term is started in the South Part of China while the rural tourism, in general is called xiangcunyou (乡村游). Besides nongjiale, there are some other models of rural tourism in China that developed parallel with it, but because of nongjiale has been the most successful model, people use nongjiale as the most used term of China’s rural tourism. The main focus in nongjiale is to experience the village life, in the relation of back to nature and nostalgia. Thus, the object in the nongjiale tourism is to stay in the farmer house (nongjiayuan) and eat the home cooked at the farmer’s house (nongjiafan).

Identical with Roberts and Hall point, in China’s rural tourism, the strong contrasts in between rurality and urbanity are the key point of what the nongjiale tourism draws on, as Su (2010) mentioned in his study.

Based on the tourist attraction’s focus, Wang et al (2012) identified five-inter related classification models for rural tourism development in China. Those are pastoral agriculture tourism, folk custom tourism, village and township tourism, leisure and vacation tourism, and agricultural knowledge tourism.

[1] Pastoral and agricultural tourism focus on agricultural production activities as the tourist