Contested Imaginaries: Politics of Heritage Tourism in Xi’an

• In Event: Access to the Past: Tourism, Heritage, and Historical Imagination in Contemporary China

Abstract

Yujie Zhu’s paper is based on his ethnographic research in Xi’an, a city that has been regarded as the imperial capital of thirteen dynasties in Chinese history and the cradle of Chinese civilization. The inner city of Xi’an traditionally with a high residential density is currently undergoing a systematic process of reconstruction aimed at transforming it into a functioning replica of the Tang-era Imperial City. Guided by the fifty-year governmental city plan, historic monuments were transformed into theme parks in the name of tradition. Antique markets and high-end residential houses were built to attract tourists and middle-class residents searching for the imagined past. The paper will explore two main questions: what kind of imaginaries are produced and negotiated by actors in place and self making, and how do these imaginaries shape different practices in heritage places? This paper will analyze the role of the main social actors in this dynamic process: how municipal government utilizes pasts and cultural traditions for commercialization and consumption; how tourists and immigrants inhabit invented urban spaces in search for traditional lifestyles and cosmopolitan identities; and how the original residents negotiate and manifest their collective identity through daily practices. The study will contribute to the panel by moving beyond the macro-perspectives of political economy and economic geography, to examine the contested nature of collective identity in the transition of urban landscape. The paper will engage with locality as an important ground for testing contestation and multiple meaning-making involving heritage places, imaginaries, and identity.

Author

• Yujie Zhu, Australian National University