The main purpose of this article was to develop a model of sociocultural construction via the cultural production and consumption of literary places in China. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, this article analyzes how different producers contribute to this process, and how they are influenced by tourist consumption. On the one hand, it tries to identify the main processes of social and cultural construction in Fenghuang from three aspects. First, Shen Congwen's literature itself, which provides the original context and cultural background of the sociocultural construction of Fenghuang as a literary place, is investigated through the descriptions (imaginations) of the human and physical landscapes, everyday lives and folk activities in Fenghuang. Second, the function of developers in Fenghuang who rediscover Shen Congwen's literature and reconstruct the settlement as a literary place based on this appreciation is examined. This latter process is in turn influenced by tourist perceptions of Fenghuang, which are used by these developers in representing and reconstructing facilities based on the literature. Third, the impact of the copying of Shen Congwen's literature and production of new texts about Fenghuang that is promoted by tourism operators via their texts or/and embodied performances is also examined, as a type of'culture of Shen Congwen'. On the other hand, the tourists' 'reading' of Xiangxi (or Fenghuang) literature and secondary documents (such as advertisements, traveling notes, and guidebooks and media reports), and their perceptions must also be investigated in relation to the cultural consumption of literary places. This privatizes those parts of the literary culture of Fenghuang that has been publicized by producers and operators as being part of the culture of everyday life, and then provides personalized texts for other tourists. On the basis of these analyses, the main findings of this article include (1) 'Imaginative Fenghuang' is constructed by the 'world of Xiangxi' in Shen Congwen's literary works, and the'real Biancheng (the Remote City)'is constructed by tourism developers and operators, and tourists' perceptions, based on these works. These imagined places are also the socialized textual context for Fenghuang; and (2) Tourists play significant roles in the cultural construction and consumption of Fenghuang as cultural consumers. These findings can be offered as hinges that connect the processes of construction, deconstruction, reconstruction and consumption together. Therefore, we can build up a model of sociocultural construction in literary places on the basis of 'the circuits of culture', which emphasizes social and cultural constructions of space via literature, the activities of developers, operators and tourists within those spaces, and the consumption patterns of tourists. The core part of this model emphasizes the function of tourism in the processes of both producing and consuming such a destination. We hope our findings can provide some ideas for future studies on cultural construction and consumption, and give some advice on the further development of literary tourism in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]