From Nü Guo to Nü’er Guo

Abstract

Tourism at Lugu Lake exploded in the 1990s, drawing on government representations of the Mosuo as “matriarchal” and as engaging in traditional sexual relations (zouhun) outside of marriage. The village of Luoshui is the primary tourist destination; its economy is almost completely driven by tourism. In this article, the author discusses state policy and scholarly representations of the Mosuo, tourist representations that developed from them, and the interactions and responses around ethnicity at Luoshui. Locals daily engage with the commodification of their culture and must continually negotiate tourists’ contradictory desires. The author argues that locals address these contradictions in part through performing both “front” and “backstages.” She interrogates the notion of an “authentic” Mosuo identity while describing how tourism has reified culture as a gendered consumable and has sexualized Mosuo culture in tourist areas.