World Heritage Craze in China by Haiming Yan

Author:Haiming Yan [Yan, Haiming]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785338045
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Berghahn Books, Incorporated
Published: 2018-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

Dissonance

As demonstrated by Di Giovine (2009: 142), once a site is designated as World Heritage, it no longer belongs exclusively to locals, and the truth of this is evident in the case of Fujian Tulou. Although the lands on which the Tulou sites are situated are legally owned by the peasant collectives (SACH 2008c: 97), since World Heritage designation, practical ownership and control have become issues of great contention. This is what Tunbridge and Ashworth (1996) would term a “dissonant heritage” and is largely associated with local politics and with power relations between the official discourse and the local community.

In Tianluokeng, most residents are now unhappy about heritage management. A villager in Tianluokeng insisted that the buildings, even the “inharmonious” ones, should be their own property:

But the government doesn’t think so. They think it is their property. They say that human lives are an integral part of the heritage. But we are treated just as objects, not as humans. Everyone has forgotten that these are our own properties. The culture and heritage are made by us, not them. Now they sell it to the world. And we have been forgotten.

In 1999, the year when Nanjing County decided to nominate Tianluokeng for World Heritage, the residents’ lives began to change. Their livelihood was heavily based on the cultivation of tea, but this was at stake because the formerly used tea processing buildings outside the Tulou buildings were seen to be “inharmonious” and were thus dismantled. The prohibition on raising domestic fowl further compounded difficulties. The originally rich fields have gradually deteriorated. As a result, dissent has become widespread: “They [the government] think we are resources,” says a respondent. “They just invest money and extract profits from us. But they never care about our lives and feelings!”

Before 2008, the local community would collect 20 percent of the ticket revenue, which they thought too little. In 2008, believing the buildings to be their own property, they organized themselves to make a claim for 70 percent of the ticket revenue from the county’s bureau of tourism (Chen 2008). After their claim was rejected by the government, as the quotation at the beginning of this chapter illustrates, some residents (supported by most residents) went to the official entrance of the village and charged tourists an additional entrance fee, refusing entry to those who failed to pay. Soon, eighteen villagers were arrested and charged with “disrupting social order.” Consequently, most families of the community have turned their backs on visitors. Although the eighteen arrested activists were eventually released, deeply anchored tensions remain. As a result, the locals do not follow any government orders, especially its requirements about commercial activities. In 2012, four years after the designation, Tianluokeng was still filled with disorganized commercial stands.

“The key point is not ticket share,” said a villager to me. “It’s about life.” Life is strictly regulated by the harmony discourse. For example, a resident and peddler at Tianluokeng complains that he and his family are required to live in their original residence, and his expansion of the house was forcibly dismantled by the government.

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