China Cultural Heritage Research Papers (original) (raw)
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The hundreds of houses built in their home villages by people who had migrated from Zhongshan County, China, to Australia between the mid-nineteenth century and the 1940s represent a remarkable record of transnational flows. Beginning as... more
The hundreds of houses built in their home villages by people who had migrated from Zhongshan County, China, to Australia between the mid-nineteenth century and the 1940s represent a remarkable record of transnational flows. Beginning as enlarged versions of vernacular houses, by the 1920s many of the houses were being built in a neoclassical style based on reinforced concrete frames. It is argued here that these houses drew inspiration not from Australia as a country but from a colonial architectural milieu in which Australia participated. The relation of the Zhongshan houses to Australian architecture was to a large degree one of simultaneity rather than a unilinear flow of influence. It is proposed that the houses represent a transnationally “distributed” form of heritage that provokes a rethinking of the conventional approach to migrant heritage in places like Australia where a unilinear, one-way narrative of migration has been imposed, a narrative which disregards the ongoing history of transnational mobility and belonging that is common to many or most peoples’ experience of migration.
Thirty years of “reform and openness” have brought great changes to the People’s Republic of China. On the positive side the living standards of a vast proportion of the population have dramatically improved and China has now realized the... more
Thirty years of “reform and openness” have brought great changes to the People’s Republic of China. On the positive side the living standards of a vast proportion of the population have dramatically improved and China has now realized the long cherished dream of the 20th Century to become “rich and powerful” (fuguo qiangbing 富国强兵). On the negative side China has experienced the same forms of environmental and cultural destruction that all nation-states undergo as they “modernize”. In terms of “cultural heritage” China has in recent decades lost a great deal of tangible heritage as the bulldozers of urbanization “destroy the old to make way for the new” (pojiu lixin 破旧立新). In terms of intangible cultural heritage, whilst there has been a major revival in some areas after the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), many traditional cultural practices have begun to disappear from everyday life and are in danger of becoming “museum relics” or vanishing altogether. This paper examines the possible role tourism may play in the cultural heritage preservation of China’s “Ancient Tea Horse Road” (chama gudao 茶马古道). It is argued that whilst tourism can play an important role in socioeconomic development and cultural heritage preservation it can also be a very destructive force in its own right.