Tourism and heritage in the enhancement of Tianjin

Chauffert-Yvart, Bruno; Ged, Françoise; Yue, Lu; Mengin, Christine; Rousseau, Émilie

doi:10.1186/s43238-020-00009-3

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…This represented a pivotal moment for Tianjin: at the national level, the modern Western-style architecture within the former foreign concessions area was officially acknowledged as historical and cultural heritage as well as a distinctive feature of present-day Tianjin. Importantly, in the previous period, the same foreign-style buildings were deprecated as representative symbols of the 'century of humiliation' (Chauffert-Yvart et al 2020). At this point, numerous buildings were in a critical state of disrepair, which was also due to the impact of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake.…”

Section: The Initial Phase (1986-2002): the Conservation Of The 'Yigo...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Tianjin’s Italian-Style town: the conundrum between conservation practices and heritage value

Wang,

Marinelli

2024

Built Heritage

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The former Italian concession in Tianjin (1901–1945) has assumed symbolic significance for the modern urban redevelopment of this municipality through experimentation with distinctive practices of conservation management. In 1986, when the Historic Buildings Protection Area was defined, the former Italian concession was identified as a pilot urban conservation project. In 2002, the public company Haihe Construction and Development Investment Ltd. was put in charge of the design and implementation plan for the site, which progressively assumed the semblance of an ‘Italian-Style Town’. The distinctive transformation raised significant questions regarding the architectural restyling as well as its specific historical and cultural value. In August 2020, the management of the Italian-Style town was handed over to the Hebei District Government. This coincided with the emergence of a proposal for the creation of a ‘Larger Italian-Style Town’, that extended beyond the borders of the original Italian concession to include the former Austrian concession and the western section of the ex-Russian concession. The redevelopment strategy for this larger area aimed to create a service-oriented commercial area, presented as an ‘urban living room’, while showcasing Tianjin as an international metropolis.This article analyses the evolution of the conservation strategy as well as the relevant legislation, management, and practices during the redevelopment of the former Italian concession. The aim of this study is to address the conflict between heritage protection and commercialisation. Thus, this article offers a critique of the trend towards functional replacement and structural adaptation to cater to the tourism industry rather than to the value of the community’s livelihood as a living heritage.

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Section: The Initial Phase (1986-2002): the Conservation Of The 'Yigo...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Tianjin’s Italian-Style town: the conundrum between conservation practices and heritage value

Wang,

Marinelli

2024

Built Heritage

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“…However, influenced by large-scale heritage commodification and guided by local governments' pursuit of economic gains, many colonial heritage sites have ultimately and inevitably been used as tourist attractions (e.g., Chang 2017;H. Zhang 2018;Chauffert-Yvart et al 2020).…”

Section: Colonial Heritage Discourses In Postcolonial Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Currently, the AHD of the Chinese central government regarding colonial heritage is to maintain a mutually beneficial relationship between China and other countries. Therefore, colonial heritage is promoted as the witness of cultural exchanges between China and other countries, such as the former Italian concession in Tianjin, which celebrates the flourishing of Italian culture in China (Chauffert-Yvart et al 2020). In the meantime, the prevalence of consumerism offers a good opportunity for local governments to revitalise colonial heritage to fulfil tourists' nostalgic feelings and imaginations towards the 'mysterious' and 'colourful' colonial era in the major cities of China (Ifversen and Pozzi 2020).…”

Section: Colonial Heritage Discourses In Postcolonial Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

Is colonial heritage negative or not so much? Debating heritage discourses and selective interpretation of Kulangsu, China

Wei

Wang

2022

Built Heritage

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Heritage is in essence dissonant, especially colonial heritage in postcolonial nations. Via questionnaire surveys and interviews, this study investigates Kulangsu in Xiamen, China, a colonial heritage site mainly developed in the 19th and 20th centuries, to unveil the local government’s authorised heritage discourse (AHD) of the site and how tourists perceive the colonial past of Kulangsu and construct their own heritage discourse(s). Results show that, when considering the colonial history of the site, neither the AHD promoted by the authorities nor the tourists’ lay discourses are necessarily negative. However, tension implicitly arises between the tourists’ demand for comprehensive heritage information and the authorities’ selective interpretation of the site. Although the AHD affects lay discourses to some extent, most tourists expect the authorities to present more complete and neutral information about heritage so they can reflect and forge their own conception of colonial legacies. From a critical heritage studies perspective, this tension reflects the power imbalance between the authorities and the tourists and reminds the authorities and heritage experts to rethink heritage tourism and conservation in terms of heritage interpretation. This paper, therefore, calls for additional reflection on the legitimacy of selective interpretation, which implicates a complex process of intricate reasoning that is underpinned by the power imbalance between the authorities and the tourists, ultimately resulting in an AHD.

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“…It was originally the Italian Concession in the early 20th century with a complicated socio-political context and discourses on space and power [45,46]. With the establishment of the socialist country and the recovering of sovereignty, the buildings here have been preserved and developed in accordance with local conditions to make use of their unique historical and cultural resources [47]. In 1986, Tianjin's Urban Master Plan stipulated that the city center mainly developed commerce, foreign trade, and financial industry [48].…”

Section: Research Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Oriental Marco Polo Plaza Encounter: Choreographing Place and Placelessness from a Phenomenological Perspective

Gao

Zhou

2021

Sustainability

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The notion of place has raised great concern within weaving tourism studies in recent decades. Nevertheless, dialectical indigenous considerations of Edward Relph’s phenomenological concepts of place and placelessness are still insufficient, particularly in non-Western countries. Phenomenology, as an immersive approach, provides an open and descriptive examination of the diverse perceptions and constitutive meanings of a place. From a phenomenological perspective, this article aims to explore the dynamic grasping of place and placelessness in tourism experiences. Twenty-four tourists participated in the research in Marco Polo Plaza in Italian Style Town, a concession for a particular historical period, in Tianjin, China. The findings suggest that tourists’ experiences could be ordered into three themes: (1) encountering a place labelled recreation and entertainment, (2) encountering an exotic heterogeneous place, and (3) encountering a lived place in the lifeworld. These results emphasize that place and placelessness are intertwined paradoxically beyond the binary, and such a nonlinear, dialectical, and subtle dimension is the possible inspiration that the phenomenological perspective brings to tourism research. Drawing on the inevitability of tourists’ diverse perceptions, we advance that an open multi-sensuous engagement and inclusive geographic practices offer an insight into the understanding of sustainability.

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Tourism and heritage in the enhancement of Tianjin

Cited by 7 publications

References 7 publications

Tianjin’s Italian-Style town: the conundrum between conservation practices and heritage value

Tianjin’s Italian-Style town: the conundrum between conservation practices and heritage value

Is colonial heritage negative or not so much? Debating heritage discourses and selective interpretation of Kulangsu, China

Oriental Marco Polo Plaza Encounter: Choreographing Place and Placelessness from a Phenomenological Perspective

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