'Value in Change': What do World Heritage Nominations Bring to Chinese World Heritage Sites?

Abstract

Two key research questions drive this research: does world heritage listing change the values and stakeholders' understandings of the sites, and if so how? and if values do change, What role does tourism play in the way the values may change at Chinese World Heritage sites? These questions derive from ongoing academic and public policy concerns that UNESCO World Heritage Listing results in increasing tourist interests at sites and that such interest has a negative impact on heritage. World Heritage listing aims to acknowledge and highlight the importance of national heritage sites. However, if, as Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1998) and Smith (2006) have argued, listing itself is in fact part of the production of heritage meanings and values, does World Heritage listing simply augment existing values or does it in fact change or otherwise rework and create new values and meanings of sites? Certainly, there has been some concern expressed by UNESCO and heritage commentators (Logan 2001, Askew 2010) that a significant change does occur with listing in so far as listing correlates with increased tourism at sites successfully enshrined on the WHL. Meskell et al. (2015) note that China was the most successful country in terms of increasing the number of World Heritage sites in recent years. Winter and Daly (2012) states that world heritage inscription has brought large-scale tourism in Asia, with particular China. A significant concern in this literature has been that tourism negatively changes or threatens the heritage values of world heritage sites and it is often assumed that increased tourism results in the commodification and simplification of heritage values and meanings (see for example, Lowenthal 1985, 1996; Hewison 1987; Ap and Crompton 1993; Harrison 1994; Hall and McArthur 1998; Leask and Yeoman 1999; McKercher and du Cros 2002; Pedersen 2002; Chen 2009; Kim et al. 2012). This thesis explores these assumptions by examining the ways in which listing may be seen to influence the ways in which the sites are given meaning by a range of stakeholder groups.

To explore these questions, two case studies were examined: West Lake Cultural Landscape of Hangzhou and the Ancient Villages of Southern Anhui – Xidi and Hongcun. At each site interviews were conducted with Chinese officials involved in their management and World Heritage nomination and listing, tourist operators, sites managers, tourists and local residents. Overall, the research reveals the interrelationship between heritage, tourism and local communities is more complex than is generally assumed both in Chinese and international heritage policy and practice. Four interconnected themes emerged in this research.

The first key theme centres on the observation that both the national and local Chinese governments are quite mindful, and perhaps even a little cynical, in that they clearly characterize the World Heritage listing process as a game they are playing, which at the moment has Eurocentric rules and terms. Further, values are often changed in the listing process in so far as Chinese heritage managers rework or interpret, quite consciously as part of the game they are playing, Chinese cultural and historical values into terms understandable within the Eurocentric Authorized Heritage Discourse and the UNESCO outstanding universal values it frames and that are required for World Heritage listing.

The second theme centres on the complex interactions between locals and tourists that suggest WH listing has not necessarily substantially nor negatively changed the values of the site, as many in the heritage literature fear. It instead offered opportunities for local-tourist dialogue that augments local and tourist heritage values. While there were some exceptions (particularly at West Lake where local residents were relocated prior to listing), the majority of locals interviewed at the two case studies tend to have very positive views about tourists visiting their sites. Overall, the world heritage listing and the presence of mass tourists had elicited a sense of pride in local residents. Locals wanted tourists to 'feel' their sites, and they hoped that the tourists' could invoke a sense of belonging or feelings for the site and communicate with locals. In return, tourists enjoyed communicating with locals. There is a strong sense of contentment that emerged when tourists felt that they had made a connection with locals. Third, the heritage tourists were very active during their visit; the values that they expressed about the sites they visited were often tightly linked to their personal identities. Tourists at heritage sites did not necessarily passively accept the authorised messages or governments' interpretations. They were actively working out, remembering and negotiating their own, often thoughtful and considered, cultural meanings. The fears of commodification and ‘dumbing down’ of culture and history often associated with mass tourism and associated changes to the value of WH sites (Lowenthal 1996; McCrone et al. 1995; Brett 1996; Handler and Gable 1997; Shackel 2013) was not supported by the interviews with tourists.

Fourth, my research also finds that the government controlled, or authorised tourism enterprise, was not as affective in facilitating meaningful cultural interaction between tourists and locals. These interactions, identified by those locals and tourists I interviewed as an important expression of heritage values, facilitated more effectively when local communities controlled and managed heritage tourism. Indeed, the case study of Xidi illustrates that the cultural interactions between tourists and locals were magnified if locals control tourism.

Overall, the thesis argues that, yes, WH listing does change the values afforded to Chinese sites. This is done, in large part, so that the sites and their associated Chinese cultural values will be understood within the requirements of the UNESCO listing process. Tourism also changes the values given to sites by locals, but only in so far that existing values are augmented as locals gain pride and self-esteem not simply through the listing processes, but more specifically and importantly, through a process of sharing and communicating the values of the sites to domestic tourists. This is particularly achieved when locals are in control of local tourism operations. Overall tourism, often devalued in the heritage management policy and practice as a negative problem at World Heritage sites (Ashworth 2009), is revealed as in integral and key value in and of itself to World Heritage sites. Tourists are revealed not as the main culprits in altering the values of heritage sites, but somewhat paradoxically, it is UNESCO itself and the frameworks provided by the OUV that results in the changes feared by those operating within the Authorized Heritage Discourse.