This edited volume focuses on heritage discourse and practice in China today as it has evolved from the 'heritage turn' that can be dated to the 1990s. Using a variety of disciplinary approaches to regionally and topically diverse case studies, the contributors to this volume show how particular versions of the past are selected, (re)invented, disseminated and consumed for contemporary purposes. These studies explore how the Chinese state utilises heritage not only for tourism, entertainment, educational and commercial purposes, but also as part of broader political strategies on both the national and international stage. Together, they argue that the Chinese state employs modes of heritage governance to construct new modernities while strengthening collective national identity in support of both its political legitimacy and its claim to status as an international superpower. The authors also consider ways in which state management of heritage is contested by some stakeholders whose embrace of heritage has a different purpose and meaning.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- (Un)Authorised Heritage Discourse and Practice in China
- Carol Ludwig and Linda Walton
- Section 1: (Re)constructions, (Re)inventions,
and Representations of Heritage
- 1. The Social Life of Heritage-Making
- Cultural Representations and Frictions
- 2. Confucian Academies and the Materialisation of Cultural Heritage
- 3. From Destruction to Reconstruction
- China’s Confucian Heritage, Nationalism, and National Identity
- 4. Set in Stone
- Continuity and Omission in Possessive Representations of the Great Wall
- Section 2: Creating Identities: Constructing Pasts, Disseminating Heritage
- 5. Contemporary Fabrication of Pasts and the Creation of New Identities?
- Open Air Museums and Historical Theme Parks in the UK and China
- Carol Ludwig and Yiwen Wang
- 6. Creating Cultural Identity in China
- Popularizing Archaeological Material and Cultural Heritage
- 7. The Museum as Expression of Local Identity and Place
- Section 3: History, Nostalgia, and Heritage:
Urban and Rural
- 8. The Role of History, Nostalgia and Heritage in the Construction and Indigenisation of State-led Political and Economic Identities in Contemporary China
- 9. Local Voices and New Narratives in Xinye Village
- The Economy of Nostalgia and Heritage
- Section 4: Appropriations and Commodifications of Ethnic Heritage
- 10. ‘Even If You Don’t Want to Drink, You Still Have to Drink’
- The Yi and Alcohol in History and Heritage
- 11. ‘Ethnic Heritage’ on the New Frontier
- The Idealisation and Commodification of Ethnic ‘Otherness’ in Xinjiang
- David O’Brien and Melissa Shani Brown
- Afterword
- Historicising and Globalising the Heritage Turn in China
- Carol Ludwig and Linda Walton
- Index
- List of Figures
- Figure 1.1 Chinese New Year procession led by local associations, Beicun Village, Huangling district, Shaanxi province, 2000
- Figure 1.2 View on Miaofengshan, near Beijing, May 1999
- Figure 1.3 Traditional association performance at Miaofengshan pilgrimage, May 2000
- Figure 1.4 Contemporary Yangge association performance at Miaofengshan, May 2000
- Figure 1.5 Renovation around the Drum Tower, September 2014
- Figure 1.6 Renovated Drum and Bell Towers Public Square, January 2017
- Figure 5.1 Map of Beamish Museum
- Figure 5.2 A costumed demonstrator as a bank clerk
- Figure 5.3 Coal works of the Mahogany drift mine
- Figure 5.4 The miners’ cottages relocated from Wearside
- Figure 5.5 The school building relocated from East Stanley
- Figure 5.6 Ravensworth Terrace from Bensham Bank, Gateshead
- Figure 5.7 The Masonic Hall in the background
- Figure 5.8 The Beamish Motor and Cycle Works
- Figure 5.9 The newspaper branch office
- Figure 5.10 The chemist and plate photographer
- Figure 5.11 Territory of Northern and Southern Song and location of their capital cities Kaifeng and Lin’an
- Figure 5.12 Part of the twelfth-century Song original and an eighteenth-century copy (depicting the City Gate)
- Figure 5.13 The Rainbow Bridge in the twelfth- and eighteenth-century paintings
- Figure 5.14 The Rainbow Bridge in Millennium City Park, Kaifeng
- Figure 5.15 The Rainbow Bridge in Songcheng, Hangzhou
- Figure 6.1 Mobile Museum of the Sichuan Provincial Museum, Chengdu
- Figure 6.2 Mobile Digital Museum of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Hohhot
- Figure 6.3 The Ordos Museum in Kangbashi, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region
- Figure 6.4 The Guangdong Provincial Museum, Guangzhou
- Figure 6.5 Touch Media Magic Cards allow visitors to interact with virtual replicas of famous cultural relics
- Figure 6.6 Popular Archaeology, Issue 03/2015
- Figure 7.1 Oriental Metropolitan Museum
- Figure 7.2 Remnant site of Jiankang City
- Figure 7.3 Exhibition hall, Oriental Metropolitan Museum
- Figure 7.4 Chicken-spouted vessels
- Figure 7.5 Chicken-spouted vessels, displayed in broken pieces
- Figure 7.6 Display of figurines
- Figure 7.7 Display of eave tiles
- Figure 7.8 Interior court, Oriental Metropolitan Museum
- Figure 11.1 Mural in the departure lounge of Lhasa Airport
- Figure 11.2 Mural in Urumqi Hotel
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