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This contribution questions the tourism creation process in rural Guizhou, with case studies in three Shui villages, an ethnic minority of Southern China. These villages follow a standardized model of regional development aimed both at developing the economy and building a national identity. One prerequisite often requires the introduction of major changes in their everyday landscape so that they can be promoted to the status of official touristic site. Caught between the state rural development actions and the strategies of local inhabitants, landscapes have become a central stake: to whom do the landscapes in these Shui villages belong? Following a presentation of the three villages, we analyse the villagers’ representations of the landscape transformations they are witnessing, and how these representations have evolved towards some kind of support for this development model. Tensions are however also cropping up between this state model of tourism creation and the way local villagers are implementing it: clearly, their power to sway the orientation of economic and tourism development in their villages remains weak.