Old money: The UNESCO World Heritage List and and China's cultural heritage
China is keen to list as many sites on UNESCO’s heritage list as possible. But do these listings help or hinder cultural preservation?
No audio version for this newsletter I'm afraid, as I'm posting from Greece!
I recently published a podcast episode (also available on YouTube) discussing China's treatment of its cultural heritage sites and intangible cultural practices. The point of the episode was to demonstrate how China reconstructs sites and practices for profit – by no means a unique venture, but one they've managed to transform “with Chinese characteristics” if you will. Not only do these reconstructions pay little attention to the materials or methods used for the originals, they also more often than not focus on the purely financial aspects of tourism. Places lose all authenticity for fear of scaring off high-heeled tourists who want to take pictures in front of brightly lit pagodas and “ethnic minorities” in barely traditional clothing.
The episode sparked a lot of discussion, much of which touched on points I didn't have time to discuss (it was already 50 minutes long, that's quite enough). One of the questions asked was whether listing sites on UNESCO's world heritage list was a driving factor for revamping many of these cultural sites, and whether the list in itself was meaningful if many of the sites listed were gaudy reconstructions that bare no resemblance to the original.
This was a question I dealt with when teaching a course on cultural heritage back in 2017, and discussed in a paper by Frey and Steiner “World Heritage List: Does It Make Sense?” (2010). Though the paper itself is a little outdated, the questions and concepts discussed are still relevant today. And, as China's tourism levels reach new heights, some of those questions are perhaps more relevant than ever. Why would a country go through the process of listing their cultural heritage sites on UNESCO’s list? What do they stand to gain? And what harm could possibly come from holding one’s own history up to an arbitrary international standard?
The List
Historically speaking, the world heritage list is quite a new phenomenon, having only been ratified in 1977. Unsurprisingly, the country with the most listings is Italy, followed closely by China. By landmass alone, you would expect China to be in first place, but China only joined the convention in 1985, meaning they’ve had to play catch up.
Another reason that China has not overtaken Italy may be due to the selection criteria. The majority of listing are cultural sites, and while these are chosen in what's described in the article as an “ad hoc” manner by committee, there are 6 semi-formal criteria for selection:
to represent a masterpiece of human creative genius;
to exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design;
to bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared;
to be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history;
to be an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement, land-use, or sea-use which is representative of a culture (or cultures), or human interaction with the environment especially when it has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change;
to be directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance.
It could be argued that the selection criteria are biased towards certain cultures, “flawed by the fact that it privileges an idea originating in the West, which requires an attitude toward material culture that is distinctly European in origin.” The prestige that comes with a listing also means the list is susceptible to what academics have deemed ‘rent-seeking behaviour’:
“It has been highly politicized as many political and bureaucratic representatives of countries consider it a worthwhile goal from which they personally profit. As a consequence, the selection is subject to political pressures, and is not solely determined by the ten criteria listed above deemed to be “objective”. While the goal of the whole project is to protect Sites of central importance for humanity, not unexpectedly national interests dominate global interest. “The rhetoric is global: the practice is national”.”
But regardless of whether the criteria are fair or not, the question remains, what is the goal of having a site on UNESCO’s list? Yes, there is a certain prestige that comes with the listing, as well as attractiveness for tourists. It’s difficult to say whether the Forbidden City or Great Wall would be quite so popular if they didn’t make it into almost every ‘Top 10 prettiest/best/most spectacular World Heritage Sites You Have To Visit Before You Die’.
But while there are some obvious benefits to being listed, my cynical side can’t help but focus on the negatives. The active protection of sites both listed and unlisted, and the increase in public attention to these sites, can help their preservation, but also hinder it as governments seek to ‘conserve’ the site rather than ‘preserve’ it. And by that I mean creating carefully constructed visual aspects of the traditional landscape, while erasing any traces of physical or social history that may have a negative impact on tourist accessibility or enjoyment.
It should be noted too that countries have to apply to be listed, and as such there is an unequal distribution of listing both between countries and within countries. Governments choose sites that are most likely to benefit them - that are accessible, say, or pleasing to visit. For example:
“In Switzerland the old town of Berne is listed, but not the old towns of, say, Lucerne or Basel. The Benedictine Convent of St. John at Mustair and the monastery of St. Gallen are listed, but not the similarly important and ancient Benedictine monasteries of Engelberg and Einsiedeln.”
There are some places in China that one could argue have been chosen not for their historic significance, but for their attractiveness as tourist destinations. This is often in spite of what locals think and feel about the influx of tourists. In the case of the Tulou - traditional, circular housing native to the Hakka people in Fujian province - which were added to the UNESCO list in 2008, the convenience for the local population was completely overlooked in favour of the potential popularity of the sites, which had already been written about in English-language press and started garnering international attention. While some locals have managed to profit and prefer being a tourist destination over having a regular job, others are bothered that their way of life has been disturbed:
Sometimes there are so many people! Some would look at me curiously although I was just cooking dinner. They looked around and touched everything in the yard. So annoying.
I’m not optimistic. This scenic area will not last long. The government and entrepreneurs just want to make more money. The scenic area is a mess and the atmosphere is foul. They do not really put effort into long-term development.
I liked tulou. When I returned home during holidays, I felt peaceful. We are all relatives in the building. When I was young, I never sat still during dinner. I wandered from one house to another and had a taste of every family’s cooking. Now, things have changed a lot. Everyone is busy doing business. I don’t feel right about it anymore.
The comment about profit-seeking motives is particularly pertinent. Being listed doesn't come with any financial support from UNESCO, so countries have to pay to maintain and upkeep the sites themselves. But further, being listed means that more money has to be put into preservation as a prerequisite, meaning these sites get more money and attention from both official and private parties. For poorer countries with little cultural capital, this may mean that being listed may constitute a drawback, as any wear and tear from excessive tourism will have to be dealt with themselves. There's also the risk of comparison - a relatively authentic site with little renovation may not hold up as well in the eyes of the average tourist when compared to a completely done-up space that has no resemblance to what originally stood there.
Conversely, this plays well into the hands of countries like China, that have both huge sums to spend on reconstruction and preservation, and huge numbers of tourists looking for their next photo destination. China has only recently started earning enough to really pump cash into ‘restoration’ projects, which have caused no small amount of conflict between officials who stand to profit from these attractions, and locals who have to live with the work and constant stream of tourists.
But China's motivations for increasing the number of UNESCO listings does not begin and end with profit motives. Cultural heritage preservation and the promotion of tourism in general serves the government - and the party - by supporting national memory and myth-making carried out by those in power. The World Heritage list, by extension, is almost an international stamp of approval - this isn’t just something important in China, it’s important to the world, to all of mankind. This helps bolster its position as a bastion of global historical culture. As one article argues, the sites and artefacts being preserved by the Chinese government are not “so much sites of a “global cultural commons” as laboratories and mirrors of new cultural practices and ideologies that reflect… different historical traditions, views of development and the “good life,” structures of social order, and positions in the current global order… [reinforcing] the need to restore the nation, with its distinctive practices of culture and power and its particular position in post–cold‐war globalization.”
In this sense, cultural heritage is as much a nationalist exercise as it is one of preservation. This would not be so problematic, I think, if in this endeavour, the government also took strides to preserve sites as they are, rather than restoring them to a non-existent former glory, or even undertaking minor restorations to make them accessible to tourists. After all, this is the approach of groups like the National Trust, who do some renovation work, but strive to keep the original design and function of a place in mind. In China, UNESCO listed sites or 5A rated tourist destinations don't necessarily lead to preservation of, say, already ruined palaces or tombs that can only be viewed from a walkway, or trodden on with care. They are instead fitted with glass walkways, fully refurbished pagodas with elevators, and the option to take a ski lift to the top of the Great Wall.
As I noted in the original episode, Chinese tourists notoriously dislike anything too authentic (one commenter on the YouTube video ironically demonstrated this by stating blithely that anything that wasn't a gaudy reconstruction was just “a cockroach infested s-hole”, as if those are the only two options for your holiday), which would be fine if there was some variety in the places you could visit. In the UK, Tudor-style reconstructions and fake beams litter the land, but at least there’s a diverse range of architectural styles to nick from: Victorian, Arts and Crafts, Georgian, Gothic, Edwardian. The list goes on.
The most offensive thing about China’s range of tourist spots is that they're boring. Once you've visited one, you've visited them all. They all have the same curved, clay-tiled pagoda roofs, with red ‘wooden’ pillars, lattice-decorated fencing, and mini lion statues guarding gates with the same temple-style font type signifying that you’re at somewhere old(ish), that definitely wasn’t destroyed 50 or 100 or 1,000 years ago and studiously rebuilt to appeal to the modern understanding of ‘traditional’ culture. They are not places of learning or connection with the past. They’re sterile, bland, money-making endeavours.
It’s not that the World Heritage list is solely to blame for this phenomenon. It’s part of a large, complex set of reasons why China is keen to build shabby imitations of its past as quickly as possible: tourism revenue, national rejuvenation, soft power, to name a few. And again, these issues are not unique to China. Really being listed on the World Heritage List is more beneficial to countries with fewer resources, fewer tourists, and no political motivations. But these are exactly the types of countries that have very little motivation or ability to get their sites listed.
If you're looking for authentic experiences, they still exist, but are still few and far between. The end of the Great Wall in Dandong (next to North Korea) was well worn but quiet when I visited (over a decade ago), and even had a telescope so you could peer at North Korean soldiers. Small towns and villages in Guangdong still bear crumbling ancient walls, as well as communal halls and graffiti from the Mao era.
But as the quest to maximise consumerism marches ever onwards, the time for authenticity may well and truly be over. What's left is a hollow shell, and a curated list that at least lets us know “here stood something worth seeing”.