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

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

Both China’s urban and rural landscapes are undergoing momentous change, as cities grow into megacities and towns are urbanized and integrated into larger regional social, political and economic units. Throughout the Reform-era, these transformations have been accompanied by conscious attempts to reconfigure local, regional, and national historical imagination and identity. With widely varying degrees of national or provincial government intervention or direction, a broad range of social agents across China in the 1980s, 90s, and into the 21st century have embraced a common strategy of restoring, rebuilding, and redesigning local cultural assets to encourage heritage tourism. The panel will critically investigate the current boom in historical and cultural tourism in China by examining a series of sites from different regions as case studies that reveal the complexity of the different motivations and dreams, the varied social agents and institutions, and the changing economic aspirations and political stakes involved, allowing for a nuanced and comprehensive exploration of this widespread phenomenon. Proceeding from different disciplinary perspectives, the papers will all describe how at these sites access to a romanticized and politicized past is conjured and consumed, and explore possible ways in which they may all be participating in common social discursive practices.
The panel is composed of four paper presenters and one discussant. To facilitate discussion, all presenters will share their papers with the discussant and one another well ahead of time. Presentations will be 15 minutes each, and time will be set aside for the discussant’s remarks and audience interaction.

Area of Study

• China and Inner Asia

Session Organizer

• Robin McNeal, Cornell University

Individual Presentations

• Time Machine: Producing Visitable Pasts in Rural China - Timothy Oakes, University of Colorado Boulder

• Contested Imaginaries: Politics of Heritage Tourism in Xi’an - Yujie Zhu, Australian National University

• The Mountain Resort at Chengde: National Cultural Heritage and the Renovation of History - Annetta Fotopoulos, Cornell University

• The Role of Scholarship in Heritage Tourism: Temples and Monuments to the Sage Kings Yao, Shun, and Yu - Robin McNeal, Cornell University

Discussant

• Nelson H. Graburn, University of California, Berkeley