Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in China: A Critical Approach 9781845418649

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Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in China

TOURISM AND CULTURAL CHANGE Series Editors: Professor Mike Robinson, Nottingham Trent University, UK and Professor Alison Phipps, University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK Associate Editor: Dr Hongliang Yan, Oxford Brookes University, UK Understanding tourism’s relationships with culture(s) and vice versa, is of ever-increasing significance in a globalising world. TCC is a series of books that critically examine the complex and ever-changing relationship between tourism and culture(s). The series focuses on the ways that places, peoples, pasts, and ways of life are increasingly shaped/transformed/ created/packaged for touristic purposes. The series examines the ways tourism utilises/makes and re-makes cultural capital in its various guises (visual and performing arts, crafts, festivals, built heritage, cuisine etc.) and the multifarious political, economic, social and ethical issues that are raised as a consequence. Theoretical explorations, research-informed analyses, and detailed historical reviews from a variety of disciplinary perspectives are invited to consider such relationships. All books in this series are externally peer-reviewed. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.channelviewpublications.com, or by writing to Channel View Publications, St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol, BS1 2AW, UK.

TOURISM AND CULTURAL CHANGE: 63

Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in China A Critical Approach

Junjie Su

CHANNEL VIEW PUBLICATIONS Bristol • Jackson

DOI https://doi.org/10.21832/SU8632 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Names: Su, Junjie, author. Title: Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in China:   A Critical Approach/Junjie Su. Description: Bristol, UK; Jackson, TN: Channel View   Publications, 2023. | Series: Tourism and Cultural Change: 63 |   Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: ‘This book   examines the relationship between intangible cultural heritage (ICH) and   tourism, taking as a focus the ICH at the World Cultural Heritage site in   Lijiang, China. It explores the tensions between authenticity and   commodification and provides theoretical guidelines for developing a   sustainable ICH tourism from a people-based approach’ – Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2023002766 (print) | LCCN 2023002767 (ebook) |   ISBN 9781845418632 (hardback) | ISBN 9781845418649 (pdf) |   ISBN 9781845418656 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Cultural property – China – Lijiang Shi. | Sustainable   tourism – China – Lijiang Shi. | Lijiang Shi (China) Classification: LCC DS797.86.L54 S8 2023 (print) | LCC DS797.86.L54   (ebook) | DDC 363.6/9095135 – dc23/eng/20230208 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023002766 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023002767 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-84541-863-2 (hbk) Channel View Publications UK: St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol, BS1 2AW, UK. USA: Ingram, Jackson, TN, USA. Website: www.channelviewpublications.com Twitter: Channel_View Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/channelviewpublications Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com Copyright © 2023 Junjie Su. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Riverside Publishing Solutions.

Contents

Figures, Tables, Photos Acknowledgements Abbreviations

vii x xi

1 Introduction Issues in Lijiang The Movement of ICH in China The Notion of ICH from UNESCO to China

1 1 7 10

2 Critical Theorisation of ICH A Critical Approach to ICH Authenticity, Commodification and Integrity Continuity and the ICH-making Circle

17 17 21 32

3 ICH Protection and ICH Tourism in China The Development of ICH Safeguarding in China ICH Safeguarding in Yunnan Province ICH Tourism in China and Yunnan Province

37 37 43 46

4 ICH and Tourism in Lijiang The Naxi and Lijiang Heritage Management in Lijiang Heritage Tourism Development in Lijiang

52 52 57 63

5 Typical ICH Tourism Programmes in Lijiang Dongba Culture Traditional Music Handicrafts Culinary Skill

69 69 81 86 93

6 Value and Authenticity The Official Perspective The Expert Perspective The Practitioner Perspective

99 99 107 111

7 Commodification and Integrity The Official Perspective The Expert Perspective The Practitioner Perspective

126 126 135 138 v

vi  Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in China

8 Continuity and Transmission The Official Perspective The Expert Perspective The Practitioner Perspective

150 150 155 158

9 The Sustainable Development of ICH Tourism The Official Management of ICH The Practitioners’ ICH-making ICH Tourism with ICH Practitioners Future Research

179 180 183 188 192

References Index

195 210

Figures, Tables, Photos

Figures

2.1 The ICH-making circle

35

3.1 ICH administrative system in China 3.2 Total revenue from tourism and its rate of increase in Yunnan province (2010–2020)

42 50

4.1 Location of Yunnan province (top) and Lijiang municipality (bottom) 53 4.2 Statistics of tourism visits and revenue in Lijiang (1990–2020)66 9.1 Chinese ICH management under the influence of the AHD and the local community

182

Tables

5.1 Background of the Dongbas interviewed in Yushuizhai 5.2 Background of the Dongbas interviewed in Baidi Village 5.3 Background of the music players interviewed in Lijiang

74 80 87

6.1 Background of the governmental officials interviewed100 6.2 Background of non-local scholars interviewed 107 6.3 Background of local scholars interviewed 109 6.4 Synchronic values perceived by the practitioners interviewed112 6.5 Attitude of Naxi people towards ethnic values 117 6.6 Chinese words relating to authenticity 119 6.7 Aspects of authenticity indicated by the practitioners interviewed120 7.1 Attitude of local people surveyed towards the change of ICH 7.2 Changed aspects of the components indicated by the practitioners interviewed vii

138 139

viii  Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in China

7.3 Comparison/contrast of the diverse interpretations in the two situations, by the practitioners interviewed 8.1 Comparison of the values perceived by the Dongbas interviewed, between the community and the tourism situations 8.2 Willingness of Dongbas to continually practise and transmit their Dongba culture 8.3 Comparison of the values perceived by the players interviewed, between the community and the tourism situations 8.4 Attitude of music players surveyed towards being willing to practise their ICH 8.5 Comparison of the values perceived by the craftspeople interviewed, for the community and the tourism situations 8.6 Attitudes of craftspeople surveyed towards the influence of tourism on their ICH 8.7 Attitudes of craftspeople surveyed towards being willing to practise their ICH 8.8 Comparison of the values perceived by the cooks interviewed, for the community and the tourism situations 8.9 Attitudes of the food-makers surveyed towards being willing to practise their ICH

145

159 161 164 166 169 171 171 173 175

Photos

1.1 Local Naxi women and tourists dancing in the Old Town of Lijiang

2

3.1 A tourist ethnic performance at Yunnan Nationalities Village in Kunming City

45

4.1 The streetscape of Dayan Town in Lijiang

56

5.1 Dongbas at the annual Dongba Fahui in the Heheyuan, Yushuizhai 73 5.2 Dongba He Guojun performing in the Heheyuan, Yushuizhai76 5.3 Dongba He Yaowei performing at the Impression of Naxi77 5.4 Dongbas performing at the Yard of Sky Ground 78 5.5 Dongba apprentices attending class at Baidi School 80 5.6 He’s family troupe performing Baishaxiyue music in Guanyinxia 83

Figures, Tables, Photos  ix

5.7 The Dayan Naxi Ancient Music Association performance85 5.8 Wooden wishing bells made by Che Fumin 89 5.9 Coppersmith He Shanjun in his workshop in Baisha Village 90 5.10 Zhang Xiangfang making Lijiang baba in her shop in Dayan Town, Lijiang 95 7.1 Tourists in the newly opened food stalls in the Old Town of Lijiang 143

Acknowledgements

This book is a commemoration of my journey in the field of ICH tourism in the past decade. Though this journey is bittersweet, it is always rewarding. This book is largely based on my PhD research at the Cultural Heritage Centre for Asia and the Pacific, the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Australia. I wouldn’t have completed this intellectual journey if I hadn’t been inspired, supported and encouraged by my supervisors: Emeritus Prof William Logan, Prof Andrea Witcomb, Dr Fengqi Qian and Kristal Buckley AM. I owe great gratitude to them. Meanwhile, my special thanks should also be given to my colleagues at Deakin University, as well as the reviewers to this book, for their valuable comments. I would like to thank many ICH practitioners and local people in China who helped me with their kindness, generosity and traditional knowledge. At the same time, the fieldwork couldn’t have been completed without the assistance from officials and scholars in China. I would like to thank the funders in China. My recent research in China from 2019 to 2022 was funded by the China National Social Sciences Fund Project New Ideas and New Methods in the Protection and Uses of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Contemporary China (19BMZ069) and the Start-up Fund for the Introduced Talents at Yunnan University (C176220100051). Last but not least, I express my gratitude to my parents and wife for their continuous love, care and encouragement for me to travel and explore the wonderful world.

x

Abbreviations

AHD GDP ICH ICHC ICOMOS LICH LPMB OG SACH SDG UNDP UNEP UNESCO UNPFII UNWTO WIPO

Authorised Heritage Discourse Gross Domestic Product Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage The International Council on Monuments and Sites Law of the People’s Republic of China on Intangible Cultural Heritage The World Heritage Old Town of Lijiang Protection and Management Bureau Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention The State Administration of Cultural Heritage of China Sustainable Development Goals United Nations Development Programme United Nations Environment Programme United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues World Tourism Organisation (United Nations) World Intellectual Property Organisation

xi

1 Introduction

Issues in Lijiang

Yunnan province is a popular tourist destination located in the southwest of China. On the front page of the website of the internationally popular travel series published by Lonely Planet, Yunnan is described thus: Yunnan is the most diverse province in all China, both in its extraordinary mix of peoples and in the splendour of its landscapes. That combination of superlative sights and many different ethnic groups has made Yunnan the trendiest destination for China’s exploding domestic tourist industry.1

Tourism is regarded by the Yunnan provincial government as one of the ‘eight key industries’ and one of the ‘three trump cards’ for the socioeconomic development of Yunnan province.2 Undoubtedly, ethnic cultural heritage, and in particular ethnic intangible cultural heritage (abbreviated as ICH in the following), is a significant resource for the development of tourism in Yunnan. Among the popular tourist attractions in Yunnan, the city of Lijiang is one of the most outstanding, acclaimed as the only city in China with three UNESCO World Heritage designation: the Old Town of Lijiang,3 inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1997, the Three Parallel Rivers of the Yunnan Protected Areas, inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2003, and the Ancient Naxi Dongba Literature Manuscripts inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2003.4 As a picturesque wonderland, beautified by snow-capped mountains and characterised by the unique townscape and nourished by local Naxi ethnic culture (Photo 1.1), Lijiang attracts a wide range of tourists from both home and abroad. Prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in China in January 2020, the total number of visits in Lijiang in 2019 was 54,023,500.5 The 800-year-old Old Town of Lijiang, located in the northwest of Yunnan province, is well known for the traditional culture and folklore of the local Naxi people, for its vernacular architecture, picturesque 1

2  Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in China

Photo 1.1  Local Naxi women and tourists dancing in the Old Town of Lijiang (author photograph, 2014)

landscape and pleasant natural environment. The Naxi people are an indigenous ethnic minority living in Lijiang and they constitute 19.33% of the total population.6 Lijiang enjoyed a reputation as one of the ‘Chinese City Rankings – Top 10 Touristic Cities’ in 2010,7 as well as being listed among the Chinese International Ethnic Cultural Tourism Destinations in 2016.8 Fulsome praise has been expressed in news reports, exemplified by one article in the top national official newspaper People’s Daily:9 What makes Lijiang, an unknown little town in southwest of China’s frontier, develop into an internationally renowned world-class touristic cultural city where economy is developed, culture is prosperous, society is harmonious and the nationalities are united? The success is because: Lijiang targeted the advantageous characteristic economy that fits the local reality and tried every way possible to make the tourism industry bigger and stronger. Meanwhile, Lijiang highlights its culture, extends the Opening-up10 and enhances social harmony through the nationality unity.

Entwined with China’s ethnic solidarity building and political agenda, tourism has been regarded as a necessary and beneficial industry for the economic, cultural and social development of Lijiang. Even a so-called ‘Lijiang model’ has been boasted of in China. Former Lijiang mayor Yang Guoqing praises the Lijiang model as a dynamic in which a balance is reached between heritage protection and economic development so

Introduction 3

that it is possible to ‘promote the [economic] development through [cultural heritage] protection and realise the protection through development’ (G.Q. Yang, 2011: 239). In contrast to this, however, criticisms have been noted from different stakeholders, including the local government, with regard to the threats posed by tourism to the traditional culture of the local Naxi people (later called ICH). As early as 2000, the Lijiang government officially expressed their worries at an international meeting organised by UNESCO,11 pointing out that: The commercial culture and travel culture atmosphere is too strong and is attacking the traditional living culture. With the rise of modern culture and tourism, traditional customs of architecture, festivals, virtue, language, clothing, religions, traditional handicrafts and folk arts are disappearing and changing, making the Old Town face a cultural crisis. (Duan, 2000: 16)

Since the inscription of Lijiang as a World Heritage Centre in 1997, tourism has burgeoned. This phenomenon drew attention from the media: after 2003, the effects of over-commercialisation on ethnic and traditional culture in Lijiang were noticed by the domestic media, blog writers and by some tourists. They commented that booming tourism was harming the tranquillity and simplicity of Lijiang Old Town; that there were imported fake handicrafts disguised as authentic Naxi handicrafts; that gentrification processes were resulting in the large displacement of local Naxi residents and causing rents to soar in the Old Town; that a cultural acculturation process was occurring by which the native Naxi language, traditional performance culture and the traditional way of living were being negatively influenced; that there was misuse and abuse of Dongba culture;12 and that pseudo ethnic minority performances had emerged (e.g Chi, 2010; Fengchakou, 2009; Gui, 2007; Hu, 2010; Huang & Si, 2012; ifeng, 2009; Li & He, 2013; Lu, 2008; D.Q. Wang, 2009; J.H. Yang, 2010, 2011; X.M. Zeng, 2008; C. Zhang, 2009; F. Zhang, 2003; Y.Q. Zhang, 2006). At UNESCO’s 31st World Heritage session in 2007, the World Heritage Committee expressed its concerns about ‘uncontrolled tourism’ that ‘might have a negative impact on its [Lijiang’s] heritage values’ (UNESCO, 2007: 92). Subsequently, two mission trips led by UNESCO experts investigated Lijiang in 2008 and noted that uncontrolled tourismrelated business was having a significant impact on the heritage values of the town (Jing et al., 2009; Jing & Nishimura, 2008), to the extent that the commercial atmosphere tended to dominate, an impact that was also admitted by the local government (S.Y. He, 2008b). Both the Lijiang government (S.Y. He, 2008b, 2011) and UNESCO’s experts (Jing et al., 2009) agreed that ICH contributes to the Outstanding Universal Value of

4  Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in China

Lijiang, with attention being drawn to the negative influence of tourism on ICH in the UNESCO Mission Report: The commodification of ethnic minority cultures through cultural tourism can bring communities a short-term benefit in terms of revenue generation, but at the risk of the transformation of their culture and the loss of their cultural distinctiveness. (Jing et al., 2009: 11)

Though not emphasised, the term ICH, usually used interchangeably with ethnic traditional culture and folklore in China in the 2000s, appeared in the critiques for the protection and commercialisation of local ethnic and traditional cultures in during this period. These critics comprise a large number of Chinese scholars who have expressed their concerns about the change in and disappearance of ICH under the commodification in tourism by taking Lijiang as a typical case (e.g N.X. Chen, 2009; Guang, 2008; J. Li, 2009; Liao & Zhang, 2006; F.Q. Yang, 2007; S.Y. Yang & S.R. Yang, 2012; W.S. Yang, 2007). These criticisms intensified after China ratified UNESCO’s 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICHC) in August 2004 and quickly issued a series of domestic regulations and laws with special principles for its national ICH campaign. In addition to government officials, Chinese scholars and experts play an important role in the discussion of the notion and issues of ICH, as I will continue to illustrate later. It is clear here that the ICH of Lijiang is experiencing change as a result of tourism and that two divergent voices are heard regarding the relationship between ICH and tourism: the one acclaiming the benefits that tourism brings to ICH and, conversely, the other one condemning the negative effects of tourism on ICH. More importantly, it can also be noted that the above-mentioned commentaries are predominantly made up of voices from governments, professional organisations, scholars and tourists while the voice of the ICH practitioners13 is missing. Thus it is important to avoid making quick and simplistic judgements as to whether or not tourism, or the ‘changes’ derived from it, are advantageous or disadvantageous to the ICH concerned. In the first place, it is imperative and fundamental to examine these issues: • How should ICH and its values be understood? • From whose perspective is ICH influenced by tourism? • Which aspects of ICH are influenced by tourism? In order to address these issues, I will investigate how the notion of ICH, the key concepts in relation to ICH tourism, and finally, the complicated relationship between ICH and tourism, are understood from the perspective of the marginalised practitioners of ICH, as against other dominant perspectives of government officials and experts. This book will contextualise debates about ICH tourism in Lijiang, understood as an

Introduction 5

opposition between protection and commodification of ICH, by setting them in conversation with the tensions that also exist between national and international ICH discourses. This comparative work enables me to argue that the gaps that exist between ICH understanding at international and national levels, as well as between these official discourses and the ICH practices engaged in by the practitioners, necessitate a re-theorisation of the basic concepts of ICH. In particular, I propose that the concepts of authenticity and integrity, which are central to the official ICH discourse in China, should be re-thought and reconceptualised based on an ‘ICH practitioners discourse’ rather than on an ‘authorised discourse’. As a window on similar problems in China and the wider world, Lijiang provides a typical case for examining the issues of ICH tourism. On the one hand, ICH tourism development is mature and stable in Lijiang and the ICH management system in Lijiang is complete and typical in China. On the other hand, there is literature to provide a research background for further heritage tourism studies (e.g. Guang, 2012; X.B. Su & P. Teo, 2009; Xie, 2011; Y. Zhu, 2018; X.L. Zong, 2006), as well as for further ICH and ethnic cultural studies (e.g. Chao, 1995; Guang, 2012; McKhann, 1992; Rees, 1994; X.B. Su & P. Teo, 2009; Y. Zhu, 2012, 2018; X.L. Zong, 2006). Tourism studies were initiated by sociological (see MacCannell, 1973, 1976) and anthropological (see Dennison et al., 1981; Graburn, 1983; V.L. Smith, 1978) scholars in the West. In terms of the relationship between tourism and cultural change in the destination, as Zong Xiaolian (X.L. Zong, 2006) has argued, early anthropological tourism studies simplified the impact of tourism on local communities as either a negative or a positive result in which the agency of the local people was neglected. This can be seen, for example, in Greenwood (1978) in which he criticised the negative effect of commodification on the objective authenticity of local traditional festivals. On the other hand, since the 1980s scholars began using quantitative methods to measure the attitudes of the community towards the impact of tourism (see Lankford & Howard, 1994). And qualitative anthropological studies began examining cultural change from more comprehensive and holistic perspectives (see V.L. Smith, 1989). During this period, scholars also shifted their understandings of cultural commodification to a constructivist view. Thus a decade later, for example, Greenwood wrote: ‘some of what we see as destruction is construction (…)’ (Greenwood, 1989: 182). More interdisciplinary and critical studies on tourism appeared in the late 1990s. As noted in Hosts and Guests: ‘tourism is not the major element of cultural change in most societies’ (V.L. Smith, 1989: x); therefore scholars tried to situate tourism studies within the broader social context (Wall, 1996). Along with the introduction of multiple approaches from anthropology, sociology, politics and other disciplines from the 1960s to the 1980s

6  Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in China

(Bramwell & Lane, 2014), a ‘critical turn’ in the approach to tourism studies emerged in the 1990s, which challenges and critiques the existing positivist and managerial paradigms (Tribe, 2007), so as to reveal and understand the relationships among tourism, society and people. In particular, these critical studies on tourism concern the issues of ‘sources and consequences of inequality, the forces of domination, hegemony and alienation, the practices and particulars of lived experience, the values and beliefs of the marginalised and unrecognised, and the potential for emancipation’ (Bramwell & Lane, 2014: 1). In relation to emancipation, critical studies of tourism emphasise ‘unleashing human agency and autonomy’ (Tribe, 2008: 246). These critical studies of tourism have more recently converged to form a school of Critical Tourism Studies, both globally (Bramwell & Lane, 2014) as well as in China (J. Liu & P. Chen, 2019). The aim of Critical Tourism Studies, as argued by John Tribe, is to examine ‘ideology and power relations and particularly those that are well disguised and taken for granted’ (2008: 253). Therefore, ‘critical tourism aims for understanding, belonging, being, emancipation, and accommodation in and with the world’ (2008: 254). The analytical perspective of critical tourism studies, as concluded by Liu and Chen (2019), could be applied at two levels: the macro level, to reveal the dynamism and power relations in tourism, and the micro level, to reveal the exertion and accommodation of meanings, identities, and agencies of individuals in tourism. In this book, therefore, I will follow these propositions, firstly to reveal the unbalanced relations of power and ideology behind the making of ICH in Lijiang and China; and secondly, to reveal the meanings, identities and agencies of the local ICH practitioners in Lijiang, whose voices and behaviours have been neglected. To begin with a critical study of ICH tourism, it is necessary to recognise that the very concept of ICH is discursively produced and that the contexts in which this occurs have a bearing on how we understand them. This research, therefore, will take a critical approach to examine the discourse and practice of ICH in the context of tourism. In line with the more recent heritage studies approach – the Critical Heritage Studies approach – I regard ICH, and heritage in general, as a discourse (L. Smith, 2006), a ‘cultural practice’ (L. Smith, 2006: 11), and a ‘discursive practice’ (Hall, 2005: 25), but not a pre-existing ‘thing’. If we treat the official discourse of ICH in both UNESCO and the Chinese government as so-called ‘Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD)’ (L. Smith, 2006), and then privilege the alternative discourses and practice of the ICH practitioners in the community, what do we learn? Is there another way to understand what is going on in Lijiang and China and, if so, can that provide any alternative ways to understand the relationship between ICH and tourism?

Introduction 7

I will elaborate upon the Critical Heritage Studies approach in Chapter 2 and establish the ‘practitioners-based approach’ on which the concepts related to ICH in the context of tourism can be reconceptualised, such as authenticity and integrity. In the following, let us look at how the idea of ICH is developed in China. The Movement of ICH in China

China can be seen as an active player in the international movement of ICH and World Heritage. China is reported as having the largest number of elements inscribed in the UNESCO ICH lists of any nation in the world as of November 2022,14 with 43 elements on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Domestically, as of the latest national registration of ICH in May 2021, the total number of the national listed ICH elements was 3,610 while that of the national listed ICH representative inheritors was 3,068.15 While China has a history of protecting its ‘ethnic traditional culture and folklore’ from the early 20th century (Kang, 2011: 30), the ratification of the ICHC in 2004 has been driving the national campaign for safeguarding ICH in recent times (Kang, 2011: 3–9). This government-led movement was strengthened in 2005 when The Opinions of the General Office of the State Council on Strengthening the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage of China (the Opinions) was issued by the State Council of China. On 25 February 2011, the Law on Intangible Cultural Heritage of the People’s Republic of China (the LICH) was enacted, and this marks a milestone in the establishment of a national legal system of ICH administration. Under this powerful national ICH movement, local governments also began either to draft or revise their regional regulations in order to keep in line with this national ICH campaign. A good example is Yunnan province, which enacted the Protection Ordinance on Yunnan Intangible Cultural Heritage (the Yunnan Ordinance) in 2013, based on its pre-existing Protection Ordinance on Yunnan Ethnic Traditional Culture and Folklore16 issued in 2000. A decade after the birth of the ICHC, we can see that international ICH ideas have been introduced and accommodated into national and regional ICH legislative systems in an individual country like China. ICH is defined in China’s national ICH law as: Various traditional cultural expressions that are transmitted from generation to generation by all ethnic nationalities and recognised as part of their cultural heritage, as well as the material and places associated therewith. (Article 2, LICH, 2011)

Furthermore, the most significant issue in the Chinese ICH official discourse is that the concepts of authenticity (Zhenshi Xing) and

8  Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in China

integrity (Zhengti Xing) are upheld. However, these concepts are not seen in UNESCO’s ICHC, as we shall shortly see. These two key concepts are seen initially in the first pivotal ICH administrative documents, the 2005 Opinions, as guidelines, and are then stated in the national and regional ICH regulations as constituting the basic requirements of safeguarding: (…) treat the relationship between protection and use correctly and adhere to the authenticity and integrity in intangible cultural heritage safeguarding (…). (Item 2: Operational Directives, Opinions, 2005) Protection of intangible cultural heritage should: emphasise the authenticity, integrity and inheritability of it; strengthen the cultural identity of Chinese nationality; strengthen national unity and ethnic solidarity; promote a harmonious society and sustainable development. (Article 4, LICH, 2011) The safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage should adhere to (…), and emphasise authenticity, integrity and inheritability of it (ICH). (Article 4, Yunnan Intangible Cultural Heritage Ordinance, 2013)

Authenticity in the LICH is interpreted as ‘maintaining what it was like in the past when transmitting and disseminating this ICH, as well as respecting its historical original’, and, consequently, ‘variation and distortion to the historical original is detrimental to ICH’ (Xin & Huang, 2011: 14). Here, integrity implies two requirements (Xin & Huang, 2011: 15): the first is cultural integrity, which concerns protection of all the components of a given ICH; and the second is ecological integrity, which concerns protection of all ICH elements along with the ecological environment in a designated area, for instance a cultural ecological protection zone (Wenhua Shengtai Baohuqu).17 It is necessary to note here that these notions of authenticity and integrity in the above-mentioned official documents have been largely influenced by both domestic bureaucratic scholarly trends and international heritage ideas and theories. Domestically, the then Chinese Vice-Minister of Culture and an ICH bureaucratic expert18 Wang Wenzhang articulated in the ground-breaking theoretical guidelines, Introduction to the Intangible Cultural Heritage (W.Z. Wang, 2006b, 2008, 2013a), the concepts and theoretical implications of authenticity and integrity, which are very similar to the above-mentioned documents. The influence from UNESCO is also clearly shown in his work: though there are many difficulties in adhering to the principle of authenticity in protecting ICH in a changing social and cultural context, we still have to keep to it because ‘authenticity is one important principle applied by the World Heritage Committee for the World Cultural Heritage assessment’ (W.Z. Wang, 2008: 291; 2013a: 308).

Introduction 9

It seems that the issues observed in Lijiang lie in the tension between the protection of ICH, emphasising authenticity and integrity in the national ICH discourse, and the commodification of ICH for tourism. However, it is interesting to note that economic values are recognised and commodification is encouraged by the same national discourse and bureaucratic experts (W.Z. Wang, 2006b, 2008, 2013a). This is clear if one takes note of the point in these same documents that ICH practices are officially regarded as ‘important resources for cultural industries and tourism’ (Xin & Huang, 2011: 106). It is not surprising, therefore, that the LICH states: The nation encourages and supports using the special advantage of ICH as resources to rationally develop marketable cultural products and services with local and ethnic characteristics, on the basis that an effective protection is in place. (Article 37, LICH, 2011)

The ‘working guidelines’ of the 2005 Opinions begin with the 16-character directives that state: ‘Protection Prioritised, Rescue First, Rational Use and Transmission and Development’ with regard to ICH. Although protection is superior to the use of ICH, the economic aspect of ICH is emphasised and the government wants to deploy ICH for tourism and cultural industries so as to sustain the national macroeconomic goal (W.Z. Wang, 2008; Xin & Huang, 2011). Although tourism based on ICH has existed in China for a long time, national policy on the development of ICH tourism was not seen until 2009, when the Ministry of Culture and the National Tourism Administration jointly issued Guidance on the Joint Promotion of Culture and Tourism Development. It is stated clearly in the Guidance that: ‘it is required to maintain the original ecological culture (Yuanshengtai Wenhua, see Chapter 2) and authenticity (Benzhen Xing) of ICH and to promulgate and promote ICH to the outside world through tourism development’.19 Under this culture/economic dialectic agenda, complicated further by a political agenda, China also initiated the so-called productive protection20 method for the commodification and reproduction of marketable ICH such as handicraft and the performing arts (Kang et al., 2011). Thus the issues in Lijiang can also be described in another way: the tension between the protection in line with authenticity and the use in relation to commodification of ICH within the national official discourse. As mentioned, the Chinese official ICH discourse is influenced largely by international factors. Meanwhile, it is imperative to transcend this national discourse in order to fully examine the issues in Lijiang in a wider international context. Accordingly, I will deepen these Lijiang issues by reflecting in the next section on the definition and principles of ICH at the international level.

10  Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in China

The Notion of ICH from UNESCO to China

UNESCO’s endeavours, especially its ICHC, provide a new and forceful international ensemble of the understanding of cultural heritage. But we need to bear in mind that the terminology and theory of ICH comes later than the existence of ICH and the practice of what ICH refers to; and it should be noted that there are other international organisations21 in the world who do work concerning ICH or heritage in general. This book, however, will only follow the discussion of ICH in UNESCO and its agencies in China. As early as 1956, the intangible heritage values described as ‘feelings’ were ‘implicitly recognised’ (J. Blake, 2006: 23) by UNESCO in a tangible heritage recommendation.22 However, during the development of the ICHC, UNESCO was influenced by the established concepts of Intangible Cultural Property and Living Human Treasures23 in Japan and Korea, who were among the first countries in the world to conceptualise and protect ICH (Bamoqubumo, 2008; Schmitt, 2008; L. Smith & N. Akagawa, 2009; UNESCO, 2008). Also, during the period of the later 20th century, several regional and international documents referred to the intangible elements of heritage, such as the living nature of historic sites (1982) and the association and meaning attached to places of cultural significances (1999), as well as the intangible works of people (usually artists), such as language, rites and beliefs, etc. (UNESCO, 1982). However, the Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore, adopted by UNESCO in 1989, is without doubt the first international document that specifically focused on intangible heritage issues (Bedjaoui, 2004). Afterwards, through the Living Human Treasures program launched in 1993 (UNESCO, 2004a), which suggests a model of measures for ensuring the transmission of ICH nationally, and the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity program established in 1998 (UNESCO, 2001c), which provides the ‘basis for identifying the scope of intangible heritage’ (J. Blake, 2002: 44), the term ‘intangible heritage’ was proposed in UNESCO’s instruments. Thus, in 2003, a set of new terminology for the safeguarding of ICH was acknowledged internationally with the adoption of the ICHC. Although the term ICH is still criticised,24 it is defined as: […] the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith – that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity. (Article 2-Definition, ICHC, 2003)

Introduction 11

If we compare this definition with that offered by the Chinese government, several differences can be noted and they are central to the issues being examined in the Lijiang case. The first is that while UNESCO tries to grant the ultimate power of recognition to the ‘communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals’ (UNESCO, 2003: Article 2), the Chinese LICH reworded it into ‘all ethnic nationalities’. Notably, the self-recognition clause is omitted in the definition of ICH in the 2005 Opinions. From the texts, the purposes of the LICH are: ‘inheriting and promoting the splendid Chinese traditional culture, advancing the building of the socialist spiritual civilisation and enhancing the protection and preservation25 of intangible cultural heritage in China’ (Xin & Huang, 2011: 1); and the key purposes of the ICHC, among others, are to safeguard and respect the ICH of ‘the communities, groups and individuals concerned’, and ‘raise awareness’ and ‘ensure mutual appreciation thereof’ (UNESCO, 2003: Article 1). Thus, it is easy to see that the ICH elements and values should be recognised by the groups or individuals concerned in UNESCO’s ICHC but that in China these are recognised by the governments with their administrative power granted by the Chinese LICH administrative law (X. Gao, 2012). As stipulated in the 2005 Opinions, Chinese ICHsafeguarding is ‘government-led’ work (Kang et al., 2011: 23). The government has been the most powerful player in the management of cultural heritage in China since the late Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) (Ludwig & Walton, 2020). During the modernisation of China in the last century, in particular after the 1990s, when a ‘heritage turn’ emerged in China (Ludwig & Walton, 2020), cultural heritage has been gradually deployed by the state as a means of state authority and governmental governance (Ludwig et al., 2020; Maags & Svensson, 2018; Shepherd & Yu, 2013; Y. Zhu & C. Maags, 2020). Along with the intervention of governmental power in the national ICH movement in the 2000s, ICH has become a prominent part of the state’s governance (T. Lu, 2017; Ludwig et al., 2020; Maags & Svensson, 2018; Y. Zhu & C. Maags, 2020), with synergy from the professionals/experts (Maags & Holbig, 2016). Meanwhile, scholars have also observed that, along with this top-down heritage governance in China, opportunities are appearing for the participation of non-official players in heritage governance in a bottom-up manner (Ludwig & Walton, 2020; Svensson & Maags, 2018), in particular in the form of heritage tourism. The second discrepancy noticed between UNESCO and the Chinese ICH discourse lies in the different concepts and theories. While authenticity and integrity are highlighted in the LICH to avoid change or distortion, these words are not seen in the ICHC. However, the ICHC emphasises that ICH ‘must be relevant to its community, continuously recreated and transmitted from one generation to another’, and that the safeguarding measures are necessary for the ‘continuous evolution and

12  Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in China

interpretation’ of ICH so as to ‘safeguard without freezing’.26 In order to achieve these ends, a set of salient ideas and concepts is highlighted in the ICHC: ICH provides the practitioner(s) with a sense of identity and continuity, and the cornerstone of ICHC concerns human rights, cultural diversity and sustainable development. Human rights are a significant idea behind the endeavours of UNESCO and the UN. In the 1990s, human rights were recognised within World Heritage circles as an issue when UNESCO introduced the concepts of Cultural Landscape (Jokilehto, 2012), Oral and Intangible Heritage and Cultural Diversity (J. Blake, 2002; Langfield et al., 2010; Lenzerini, 2011; Lloyd, 2009; Logan, 2007, 2009). As argued in other scholars’ research (Jokilehto, 2012; Lenzerini, 2011; Y.M. Liu, 2006; Logan, 2012; Logan et al., 2010), the development of the ICH safeguarding campaign in UNESCO has a basis in the idea of human rights, especially cultural rights and the right to cultural diversity, which can been seen in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948), the International Covenant on Civic and Political Rights (United Nations, 1966a), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (United Nations, 1966b), the Mexico City Declaration on Cultural Policies (UNESCO, 1982), the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (UNESCO, 2001d), the ICHC, and the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (UNESCO, 2005). Human rights therefore are a guarantee of cultural diversity and free expression of identity, which are fundamental to the definition of ICH in the ICHC. ICH and sustainable development are closely related to each other in UNESCO’s discourses and programmes. On the one hand, sustainable development is a prerequisite of the definition of ICH, as it is stated in the ICHC that ‘… consideration will be given solely to such intangible cultural heritage as is compatible … with the requirements of … sustainable development’ (UNESCO, 2003). On the other hand, ICH is regarded as a means of sustainable development, as it is stated in the ICHC that ICH is ‘a guarantee of sustainable development’ (UNESCO, 2003). The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was published in 2015 and UNESCO stated in the 2030 Agenda that the notion of sustainability ‘echoes’ the concept of ‘living heritage’ in the ICHC so that ICH can be a ‘driver’ of many of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).27 UNESCO then quickly added the interdependence of ICH and sustainable development into the Operational Directives of the ICHC in 2016 with regard to the relationship between ICH and economic, social and environmental sustainability, as well as peacebuilding (UNESCO, 2020). In considering the relationship between ICH and sustainable development, a key notion bolstering this relationship is human development, which entails the notions of identity and human rights. The notion of

Introduction 13

human development was first formally defined in the United Nations Human Development Report 1990 as: a process of enlarging people’s choices. The most critical ones are to lead a long and healthy life, to be educated and to enjoy a decent standard of living. Additional choices include political freedom, guaranteed human rights and personal self-respect. (UNDP, 1990: 10)

It may be noted from this definition that human development requires guaranteed human rights. Furthermore, the UNDP released a Report in 2004, which elaborated that ‘people’s cultural identities must be recognised and accommodated by the state’, and that ‘cultural liberty is a human right and an important aspect of human development’ (UNDP, 2004: 6). Guaranteed human rights and the free expression of cultural identity are prerequisites of human development, which contributes to, as well as depends on, sustainable development (Meissner, 2021). Therefore, ICH can be understood as a ‘driver’ of sustainable social and economic development, as well as an ‘enabler’ of human development in regard to human rights and identity building (Meissner, 2021). I will return to these key concepts within the UNESCO ICH discourse later. Returning to the issues noted in Lijiang, after comparing the two basic authorised discourses of ICH it is clear that the Chinese discourse diverges from UNESCO’s during the localisation process. The difference may be seen in terms of the definition/recognition of ICH, as well as its values, and the concepts/principles for safeguarding ICH and its change/evolution. By locating the arguably oppositional relationship between protection and commodification of ICH in tourism in broader Chinese and international discourse contexts, the issues in Lijiang can be seen at two levels. The first is the problem between Chinese and international concepts/theories on ICH, especially authenticity, integrity and continuity: How are ICH and its safeguarding theories understood differently by practitioners, officials and experts in China? And the second concerns problems between the Chinese national ICH theoretical framework and ICH practices in Lijiang: how is change in/evolution of ICH practices, as well as the influence of tourism on ICH, understood differently by practitioners, officials and experts in China? Authenticity is a key word in both heritage and tourism studies. Thus, the crux of my research is whether authenticity is still a valid concept in the safeguarding of ICH in the context of tourism. On the one hand China upholds ‘keeping authenticity’ as a principle in its ICH discourse; and, inevitably, changes in ICH practices – largely in the form of commodification in tourism – are considered as harming the authenticity and/or the values of ICH. On the other hand, authenticity is still regarded as a controversial concept in the international ICH

14  Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in China

discourse. For instance, it is stated in UNESCO’s 2004 Yamato Declaration on Integrated Approaches for Safeguarding Tangible and Intangible Heritage that ‘ICH is constantly created, the term “authenticity” as applied to tangible cultural heritage is not relevant when identifying and safeguarding ICH’ (UNESCO, 2004b: Article 8). Later, in 2015, UNESCO articulated in its Ethical Principles for Safeguarding ICH that ‘authenticity and exclusivity should not constitute concerns and obstacles in the safeguarding of ICH’ (UNESCO, 2015a: Article 8). While the concept of authenticity used in the heritage field shifted to some extent to a ‘constructivist approach’ after the Nara Conference on Authenticity (WHC, 1994), it is still largely affected by the conventional objective approach, which adopts etic external judgements to assess the absolute and static value of the other’s heritage. At the same time, however, key words such as identity, continuity, sustainability and human rights are clearly written in UNESCO’s ICHC. China, nevertheless, diverges from this direction by emphasising nationalism and national unity rather than the individual subjectivities of the ICH practitioners. The discrepancy between Chinese and UNESCO discourses in ICH can be described as this: in China, authenticity is indisputably used by authorities to curb change to ICH with the result that the individual subjectivities of the practitioners are likely to be neglected; while in UNESCO, authenticity is disregarded and the subjectivities of the practitioners and communities are underscored, at least as seen in the ICHC. It should be clear, therefore, that different understandings of authenticity and subjectivities are pertinent to how one views resolution of the problem that commodification or transformation necessarily harms authenticity or the value of the ICH in Lijiang. Following the critical heritage studies approach, which advocates alternative and marginalised heritage discourses and practices, as well as the critical tourism studies propositions, which advocate autonomy, agencies and experiences of the host communities, and reflecting on the key ideas bolstering UNESCO’s ICHC, I will explore whether or not adopting the proposed ‘practitionersbased approach’ to reconceptualise the concepts of authenticity and integrity is a possible solution to the tensions that can be found in ICH tourism like the Lijiang case. Here, the perspective is crucial. On the one hand, I reveal any possible diverse or dissonant point of view of the officials and experts within the official Chinese ICH discourse to demonstrate the problems. On the other hand, and more importantly, I apply the ‘practitioners-based approach’ to reveal, privilege and theorise the personal understandings from the internal or insider point of view of the ICH practitioners within the Lijiang community. The primary data of this research were largely collected through semi-structured interviews from primary fieldwork from October 2013 to June 2014 for three major groups of interviewees: firstly, officials in ICH

Introduction 15

authorities at county, municipal, provincial and national levels; secondly, ICH practitioners in Lijiang; and thirdly, experts and scholars working with ICH in the cities of Lijiang, Kunming, Beijing and Guangzhou, China. At the same time, a questionnaire was used to complement the interview to produce a general picture of the practitioners’ and local communities’ attitude towards ICH safeguarding, commodification of ICH, and the implications of tourism. During October 2013 and June 2014, 500 copies of the questionnaire were sent out in Lijiang and 363 copies were received back as valid answers (response rate is 72.6%). In particular, the questionnaire was designed using some questions adapted from Zong’s previous survey (2006), which was conducted in 2001 and 2003 in Lijiang to measure the attitude of local Naxi residents towards the social and cultural influence of tourism. In addition, complementary fieldwork, in the form of interviews, was undertaken in August 2020, and from July to August in 2021, in Lijiang for ICH practitioners, governmental officials and tourists. Notes (1) See https://www.lonelyplanet.com/china/yunnan, retrieved 19 December, 2022. (2) See https://yn.yunnan.cn/system/2019/01/27/030188568.shtml, retrieved 19 December 2022. (3) The Old Town of Lijiang, including Dayan Old Town, Baisha housing cluster and Shuhe housing cluster, was listed as World Cultural Heritage Centre in 1997 based on the Criteria (ii), (iv) and (v). See details in Chapter 4. (4) See https://business.sohu.com/20080610/n257391626.shtml, retrieved 31 October 2021. (5) See the statistics at http://whlyj.lijiang.gov.cn/ljwlj/c100672/202004/9172e3b59f484bee93dbeed5628d88e0.shtml, retrieved 31 October 2021. (6) Lijiang municipality is comprised of five administrative regions and the total population was 1,244,769 as of 1 November 2010. Among these people, Han Chinese constitute 43.21% (population 537,893), with ethnic minority peoples forming the remainder. Of this remainder, the Yi people constitute 19.54%, and the Naxi people, the second largest ethnic minority, constitute 19.33% (240,614). See http://www.tjcn. org/rkpcgb/rkpcgb/201112/22683.html, retrieved 19 June 2019. (7) See http://chinesecity2010.cri.cn/, retrieved 6 December 2019. (8) See http://yndaily.yunnan.cn/html/2016-06/14, retrieved 6 December 2019. (9) Gaoyuan Mingzhu Zai Fang Yicai: Investigation on the economic social development in Lijiang, Yunnan, 1 December 2008, People’s Daily, see http://finance.people. com.cn/GB/8436771.html, retrieved 6 December 2019. (10) It was initiated in 1978, shortly after the Cultural Revolution. This policy shifted China’s national agenda from class struggle to an economy-centred socialist modernisation endeavour. (11) This report, Cultural Heritage Management and Tourism: Models for Cooperation among Stakeholders, was written for the UNESCO Cultural Heritage Management and Tourism Cooperation meeting by managers of nine World Heritage areas of Asia and the Pacific Regions in 2000 in Bhaktapur, Nepal. (12) See Chapter 5 for an introduction to Dongba culture. (13) The terms inheritors, practitioners, people, holders, bearers, masters, actors, creators, custodians, transmitters, performers, or carriers are used in different countries and, unless otherwise explained, they generally mean the individual or a group of

16  Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in China

people who practise, inherit and transmit their ICH. In China, ‘inheritor’ is usually used as a title granted by the government to the people who practise and transmit ICH in an officially recognised way. In order to avoid confusion, I will use the term practitioners mostly, but this choice does not exclude other terms. (14) See https://www.ihchina.cn/video_detail/26236.html, retrieved 1 December 2022. (15) See http://www.ihchina.cn/#page5, retrieved 1 November 2021. (16) This is officially recognised as the first regional ordinance on ICH protection in China. See http://www.mzb.com.cn/html/report/1605265988-1.htm, retrieved 6 December 2019. (17) A Cultural Ecological Protection Zone means an officially designated area where there are abundant characteristic indigenous ICH elements and they are continuously transmitted in the local communities. This is a Chinese approach to protect ICH and its context in situ. China has established 23 National Cultural Ecological Protection Zones as of 2022. (18) In China, academics are part of the government bureaucracy and the government itself has scholars among its public servants. In this book, I use ‘bureaucratic expert/ scholar’ to refer to those experts, scholars and researchers working in the institutes who are commissioned to serve the Committee of Experts on ICH at national, provincial, municipal and county levels for ICH policymaking, implementation and ICH identification and recognition. This government–expert system will be further detailed in Chapter 3. (19) Full guidance is available at http://www.gov.cn/zwgk/2009-09/15/content_1418269. htm, retrieved 6 December 2022. (20) Its implementation is detailed in Chapter 4. (21) For example, WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation) deals with tra ditional knowledge and its intellectual property issues; UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) deals with environmental issues and resources; UNPFII (United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues) deals with the indigenous issues that concern culture, environment and human rights. (22) The Recommendation on International Principles Applicable to Archaeological Excavations, New Delhi, 5 December 1956. (23) Similar programmes were also established in other countries during the late 20th century, such as in the Philippines, Thailand, France, Romania, the Czech Republic, Poland, China and the US. See the introduction to ‘Living Human Treasures’ at https://ich.unesco.org/en/living-human-treasures, retrieved 6 December 2022. (24) Critiques exist not only for the term ICH (J. Blake, 2006: 23; Kurin, 2004) but also for its predecessors such as folklore (J. Blake, 2006; Seitel, 2002; Van Zanten, 2004) and traditional culture (J. Blake, 2006: 22). (25) The difference between protection and preservation of ICH will be explained later. (26) See the document Safeguarding without Freezing at https://ich.unesco.org/en/safeguarding-00012, retrieved 6 December 2022. (27) See https://ich.unesco.org/en/sustainable-development-and-living-heritage, retrieved 6 December 2022.

2 Critical Theorisation of ICH

A Critical Approach to ICH

In Chapter 1, I showed that UNESCO’s understanding of ICH and the Chinese Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD) is produced discursively in texts. This is true not just for ICH but for all heritage, since the very concept of heritage, its values and the process of making it ‘heritage’ – heritagisation (Harrison, 2013; L. Smith, 2006) – can be understood and represented in diverse ways. Therefore, it is imperative to examine first of all how heritage is represented in the official texts, and to examine the ideologies and philosophies behind these representations. As asserted in the preliminary manifesto of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies Manifesto, ‘the study of heritage has historically been dominated by Western, predominantly European, experts in archaeology, history, architecture and art history’ who construct the AHD that ‘privileges old, grand, prestigious, expert approved’1 tangible ‘things.’ In this sense, it is imperative to develop alternative approaches and to reveal alternative and diverse perspectives to re-think heritage and related concepts. In the last three decades, it is noted in the early critical commentary of heritage, such as David Lowenthal’s (1985) The Past is a Foreign Country, that heritage is the representation and construction of the past in the present sociopolitical conditions (Hou & Wu, 2013). This is in the same vein as an emerging critical discourse approach to museum and heritage interpretation that developed in the West after the late 1980s. For instance, in the case of the Beamish Open Air Museum, Tony Bennett examined how working class heritage is interpreted from the perspective of the middle class through the ‘training of curators or the structures of museum control and management’ (Bennett, 1988: 83). In contrast to this, however, those advocating ‘history from below’, such as Raphael Samuel (1994), argued for the existence and value of popular discourses of heritage practices, outside what nowadays we would call the AHD. 17

18  Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in China

Following these discussions, a critical discourse approach was systematically articulated in critical heritage studies in Western contexts by Laurajane Smith (2006), Emma Waterton and others (Waterton, 2010; Waterton et al., 2006) and in non-Western contexts by Wu Zongjie and Hou Song (Hou & Wu, 2013) and others, to examine the construction and representation of the concept of heritage that we usually take for granted and the consequences of these heritage-making practices. In this perspective, heritage is not regarded automatically a ‘heritage’ with no preconceptions; rather, it is a set of values, meanings and identities that are recognised, constructed, engaged, negotiated, maintained and transmitted by present people and communities in the process of remembering/forgetting the past, as well as building a series of identities. Accordingly, there is no such thing as an intrinsic value that exists ively outside discourse and which is neutral or separate from the interrelation of political, cultural, historical ideas, values and ideologies (Hou & Wu, 2013). In other words, heritage is a verb, a process – not a thing (Harvey, 2001). These ideas are underpinned by two central theoretical concepts: discourse and power. As Stuart Hall (2001) outlined, the concept of discourse and the relationship between power and knowledge are two major themes in Michel Foucault’s works, in which ‘discourse is about the production of knowledge through language’ and, most importantly, ‘discourse is about language and practice’ (2001: 72). As a consequence, Hall argues, ‘meaning and meaningful practice is therefore constructed within discourse’ (2001: 73). In the context of heritage, Stuart Hall suggested that ‘we should think of the heritage as a discursive practice’ (2005: 25), an argument that Laurajane Smith pursued in her book by demonstrating the ‘discursive nature of heritage’ and arguing that ‘heritage is therefore ultimately a cultural practice, involved in the construction and regulation of a range of values and understandings’ (L. Smith, 2006: 11). Based on Foucault’s concept of discourse and the critical discourse analysis developed by Norman Fairclough and others (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999), Smith and other Western scholars (L. Smith, 2006; Waterton et al., 2006) introduced the critical discourse approach as a theoretical approach for analysing interrelated discourse and practice in heritage studies, arguing that there is a Western, professional dominated AHD that constructs heritage as ‘monumentality and grand scale, innate artefact/site significance tied to time depth, scientific/aesthetic expert judgement, consensus and nation building’ (Smith, 2006: 11) while other popular/community discourses and practices are marginalised. A critical discourse approach to heritage, as suggested, concerns examining research problems at two levels: one concerns how heritage is constructed and represented, and the other considers the consequences of the actions of power and ideology that underpin those constructions

Critical Theorisation of ICH   19

of heritage (Hou & Wu, 2013). This approach can be compared to the approach of critical tourism studies, which seeks to reveal the imbalanced relations of power and ideology at the macro level, as well as the individual agencies and experiences at the micro level (J. Liu & Chen, 2019). Therefore, I will first reveal the ideologies and values that construct the AHD of ICH within both UNESCO and China and I shall then establish the ‘practitioners-based approach’ for the examination of individual discourses and practices in the case of Lijiang. Though UNESCO dominates the AHD around the world and acts as one of the powerful ‘authorising institutions of heritage’ (L. Smith, 2006: 113), it may be observed that an aim of UNESCO’s ICH campaign is to compensate for the imbalanced and incomplete understanding of heritage within UNESCO, especially the concept of World Heritage (Beazley, 2006; Hafstein, 2004; Harrison, 2013; UNESCO, 1994, 2001a). In some ways, the ICHC can be seen as a ‘counterpoint’ (L. Smith & N. Akagawa, 2009: 1) to the existing philosophies behind the AHD in UNESCO. The idea of ICH in the UNESCO system has both internal and external origins. Internally, these factors could be seen in the inner crisis within UNESCO’s heritage programmes, such as the variance in value between the ‘universal canon’ and ‘local diversity’, the hegemony of politics between Europe–America and developing countries, and the imbalanced representation between cultural and natural heritage, as well as Western and non-Western countries’ heritage (Harrison, 2013; UNESCO, 2001a). External philosophies and ideas can be viewed from two dimensions. The first refers to the postmodern philosophical shift in Euro-American heritage fields from the ‘objective nature of material culture to the subjective experience of the human being’ (Ruggles & Silverman, 2009b: 11). The second is the claim that more consideration should be paid to the present and future of heritage rather than being concerned with just a static conception of the past in Western countries (Harrison, 2013; Harrison et al., 2020; Ruggles & Silverman, 2009b). These reconceptualisations of heritage reflect the critical theorisation of heritage in the past two decades (Harrison, 2013; Harrison et al., 2020; Howard, 2003; Lowenthal, 1998; Ruggles & Silverman, 2009b; L. Smith, 2006). In Chapter 1, I illustrated the divergence in ideas and theories/ concepts relating to the AHDs of ICH held by China and UNESCO, noting that while the Chinese government deploys ICH as a tool of governance for its national and international agendas (T. Lu, 2017; Ludwig et al., 2020; Maags & Svensson, 2018; Y. Zhu & C. Maags, 2020), UNESCO regards ICH as a means of both driving sustainable development and enabling human development (Meissner, 2021). Nevertheless, it is simplistic to argue that the Chinese AHD of ICH is a hegemonic, homogenic, and singular one as that noted in UNESCO or other countries. Recent studies indicate that the AHD in China needs

20  Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in China

more examination as the concept of AHD should be contextualised (Xia, 2020) and the Chinese AHD has its own characteristics (Blumenfield & Silverman, 2013; Ludwig & Walton, 2020; Svensson & Maags, 2018). There are several characteristics of the Chinese AHD. In the first place, the Chinese AHD can be described as an ‘assemblage’ of AHDs, which is featured with ‘a relatively high degree of variability and fluidity’ (Ludwig & Walton, 2020: 20). This is because, on the one hand, the Chinese AHD is a mixture of the international AHD and Chinese domestic discourses and concepts (Svensson & Maags, 2018), and on the other hand, the forming of the AHD in China involves ‘geographical scale and regional differences’ due to the geographical size and regional diversity of China (Ludwig & Walton, 2020: 20). Furthermore, there exists continuous interaction and negotiation between the discourses of individuals and communities and the AHD (Svensson & Maags, 2018; Xia, 2020). This feature reflects a trend not only in China but also globally: that, along with a growing range of players participating in heritagisation in various ways, the construction of the AHD assemblage is likely to be engaged in, or even challenged, by multiple players in a bottom-up manner (Ludwig & Walton, 2020). The key ideas and philosophies behind the concept of ICH in the ICHC, such as identity, continuity, human rights, cultural diversity and sustainable development, indicate that ICH is not just a new category of heritage but also a new perspective upon heritage and culture. The international movement for safeguarding ICH culminates in UNESCO’s ICHC, which leans heavily on valuing cultural processes of people rather than the end product (Aikawa, 2004), and emphasises the key roles of inheritors or local communities (Aikawa-Faure, 2009; Aikawa, 2004; Bedjaoui, 2004; J. Blake, 2009; Hafstein, 2007; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 2004; Lloyd, 2012; Van Zanten, 2004). Furthermore, the ICHC recognises that ICH concerns not only the inheritors, the practices, tangible objects and place but also the relationships among them (Seitel, 2002; Van Zanten, 2004). Among the inheritors, practices, tangible objects and place, the focus is on the inheritors/community and their cultural practice, which ‘depends wholly on the ability and willingness’ of the people concerned (J. Blake, 2009: 45). Therefore, the ICHC recognises that more authority should be given to the people to define, identify, recreate and therefore safeguard their ICH for their lives. Thus, ‘people are not only [the] object but also [the] subject’ of cultural preservation (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 2004: 58). Following the critical approach in both heritage studies and tourism studies, and adopting the positive proposition of the ICHC, I propose a ‘practitioners-based approach’ to reveal the subjective discourses and practices of ICH practitioners who perform their ICH in the context of tourism. Methodologically speaking, the practitioners-based approach is not only a critical approach but also an interpretative approach,

Critical Theorisation of ICH   21

which recognises social reality as ‘multiple’ subjectivities in order to ‘understand how individuals make meaning of their social world’, which is ‘reacted through social interactions of individuals with the world around them’ (Hesse-Biber, 2010: 104). The practitioners-based approach will critique the theoretical concepts related to ICH, in order to understand the practice of ICH practitioners in the commodification in tourism, and finally, to theorise the relationship between the making of ICH and the development of tourism. While the critical heritage studies approach will reveal the alternative and diverse discourses and practices of the officials and experts, the practitioners-based approach will further reveal the alternative and diverse discourses and practices of the ICH practitioners. To be specific, this approach will reveal two divergences in practice. One is the existence of diverse values recognised by practitioners and authorities or the externals within one form of ICH (H. Blake & G. Wall, 2001) and the other is the ramification of representations of one form of ICH element. As Georgina Lloyd noted: ‘a single form of ICH can have a diversity of different representations or modes that are equally legitimate and contain significance to the bearer’ (2012: 140). In regard to ICH in tourism, during the commodification of ICH one form of ICH element may evolve into differentiated representations or modes, which is a phenomenon that we see in the case of Lijiang. Authenticity, Commodification and Integrity Authenticity

Authenticity is used in the Chinese official ICH discourse ambiguously, as either an aim or a principle (Xin & Huang, 2011), and it is advocated by mainstream Chinese scholars for safeguarding ICH (C.Y. Han, 2011; K.L. Liu, 2010; W.Z. Wang, 2006b; X.B. Wang, 2012; Yin & Yu, 2008; N.X. Yuan, 2011; C.Y. Zhang, 2011). However, as I will argue and demonstrate in the case study, there has been confusion over this term and there is a danger in simply applying authenticity without further scrutinising its relevance to ICH, as well as to ICH tourism. Authenticity is a central concept to the discussion and theorisation of cultural heritage, including ICH, and tourism. Nevertheless, the concept of authenticity should be understood in a specific context because it is a ‘meddled amalgam of philosophical, psychological and spiritual concepts’ (Steiner & Reisinger, 2006: 299) which may ‘resist definition’ (Golomb, 1995: 7). The ambiguity of this concept not only exists in heritage studies (Stovel, 2007) but also in tourism studies (Reisinger & Steiner, 2006; N. Wang, 1999). Therefore, authenticity can be seen as a complicated concept in ICH tourism. In the following, I will first of all

22  Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in China

review authenticity in the heritage field and I shall then incorporate the discussion into the tourism field. Compared with ICH, there is an extensive literature on authenticity in tangible heritage (Cameron, 2008; Jerome, 2008; Jokilehto, 2007; Jones, 2009; Stovel, 2007; S.L. Xu, 2005) as well as in world heritage with intangible attributes (Labadi, 2012; Larsen, 1995; Lloyd, 2009). Authenticity is a key concept or issue in the heritage field, with its roots in Europe (Lowenthal, 1995). There are, however, many languages in other parts of the world that do not have an equivalent translation, such as Chinese2 and Japanese (Ito, 1995). Originally, the concept of authenticity derives from Greek and Latin terms as a key philosophic concept in the West meaning ‘authoritative’, ‘original’ (Lowenthal, 1995: 125), ‘made by hand’ (Bendix, 2006: 102) and emphasises historical material (S.L. Xu, 2005). Authenticity was widely acknowledged for the first time in the Venice Charter3 in 1964 and later became an important concept in UNESCO’s discourse as early as 1978.4 Focused on the intrinsic static material qualities of heritage, this notion of authenticity has been central to the AHD dominated by UNESCO’s and ICOMOS’s5 discourses (L. Smith, 2006). Beyond the UNESCO system, however, there is no unanimous definition of authenticity in the heritage field worldwide, although it was generally recognised as an essential qualifying factor concerning values at the Nara conference (WHC, 1994) and as a condition of inscription for World Heritage in the Operational Guidelines (OG) of UNESCO (UNESCO, 2015c: Article 79). As shown in Chapter 1, authenticity has been constructed as a crucial concept in the Chinese AHD of ICH, unique in the world. By comparison, acclamation of authenticity in ICH is found far more often in China than in international discourse. There are arguments as to why the concept of authenticity is quickly enshrined in the Chinese heritage discourse. The main reason is that this concept constitutes and represents a rational, scientific, systematic and well-theorised ‘discursive frame’ which has generated ‘powerful sensations’ (H.M. Yan, 2012: 69) in the recognition, protection and management of cultural heritage since the concepts of World Heritage and authenticity were introduced in China in the 1980s. With regard to ICH, there are a further two main reasons for the inappropriate use of authenticity: the first is the stereotypical domestic mindset of tangible heritage, which is used by many people in China to understand ICH; the second is ‘authenticity illusion’, a notion that influences many Chinese scholars/experts of folklore studies in their understanding of ICH. The first factor is the philosophy behind Chinese tangible heritage conservation. As stated previously, the implication of the notion of ‘historical original’ in authenticity is highly emphasised in both intangible and tangible national heritage laws and it is also supported

Critical Theorisation of ICH   23

by mainstream Chinese scholars, especially bureaucratic scholars (e.g. W.Z. Wang, 2013a; L. Yuan & J. Gu, 2013). Chinese scholars defend authenticity by claiming that, due to the globalisation and fast economic development in China, ICH will be either threatened or, alternatively, over-utilised, over-commodified, trinketised and thus distorted by commercial development such as tourism (J.Y. Huang, 2009; Jiang & Li, 2012; Lin & Li, 2007; K.L. Liu, 2004c; Ma, 2011; W.Z. Wang, 2006b; P. Zeng, 2011; Zhuo, 2012). These arguments are in line with the LICH and the official document which designates that ICH should be protected with the principle of authenticity. In this way, the government, assisted by these authenticity advocates, uses authenticity as a powerful discursive tool to identify, preserve and transmit the officially recognised ICH values. The second factor, as Liu Xiaochun (X.C. Liu, 2008) has pointed out correctly, is the tradition of romantic nationalism that searches for authenticity in folklore studies. In the West, Lowenthal (1995) has traced the historical connection between authenticity and folklorists’ views. Regina Bendix (2006) also revealed that authenticity, being an elusive concept, is a basic element, driving force and criterion in Western folklore studies. In China, Liu Xiaochun (X.C. Liu, 2008) and Gao Bingzhong (B.Z. Gao, 2007) have pointed out that the Chinese idea of the authenticity of ICH has a close relationship with the idea of ‘original ecology’, as well as ‘original ecological culture’, in Chinese folklore studies. This is a reasonable explanation with regard to China as most of the Chinese national ICH regulations are more or less based on existing counterparts of traditional and folk culture and folklores. ‘Original ecology’, which describes the ‘premodern’, ‘primitive’, ‘unpolished’ and ‘grassroots’ indigenous ethnic and traditional cultures in Guizhou and Yunnan provinces, was initially used by experts and the market generally in the early 2000s in China (Y. Luo, 2018b). The idea of ‘original ecology’ is similar to the authenticity of ICH in two ways. Firstly, ‘original ecology’ is pertinent to the historical authenticity of ICH (Y. Luo, 2018a), so it is advocated by Chinese folklore studies experts and academics for the protection of ICH. Secondly, ‘original ecology’ has been deployed by the market generally and some cultural elites for the promotion and commodification of ethnic and traditional singing and dancing performances in Yunnan and Guizhou provinces (H.X. Li, 2011). Along with the redefinition from ‘traditional ethnic culture and folklore’ to ICH in China, the idea of ‘original ecology’ has been gradually replaced by the concept of authenticity. Nevertheless, ‘original ecology’ or ‘original ecological culture’ still exists in the discourses of experts/academics and the tourism and cultural market. Authenticity is not recognised in the ICHC. When the initial concept of ICH was conceived in UNESCO’s Masterpieces in 1998, the concept of authenticity was removed in the draft of this programme

24  Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in China

at the same time (J. Blake, 2009; Schmitt, 2008). Consequently, as we can see, authenticity was disposed of or shunned (Hafstein, 2004) in the ICHC, and UNESCO explicitly articulates the inappropriateness of applying the concept of ‘authenticity’, as used in the 1972 World Heritage Convention, to ICH as defined in the ICHC in documents such as the Yamato Declaration (UNESCO, 2004b) and Ethical Principles for Safeguarding ICH (UNESCO, 2015a: Article 8). This means that authenticity is not applicable to ICH in the UNESCO discourse. Ahmed Skounti (2009) strongly argued that ICH does not have authenticity since ‘ICH changes, it is fluid, it is never performed identically’ (Skounti, 2009: 78). He concluded that during the process of heritage creation, different agents created the authentic illusion which, at its most extreme, is similar to what Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983) described as the ‘invented tradition’. Here, we can conclude that the existing concept of authenticity in the heritage field, as seen in both Chinese and UNESCO’s discourse, is inappropriate to ICH. In a review of authenticity in the heritage field, furthermore, two discrepancies are noted. The first is the dilemma over whether authenticity is a ‘value in its own right’ or whether it should be applied as ‘the ability of a property to convey its significance over time’ (Stovel, 2007: 21). The second discrepancy lies in the opposition between ‘materialist approaches which see it as inherent in the object’ and ‘constructivist approaches which see it as a cultural construct’ (Jones, 2009: 133). As Sophia Labadi argues, the materialist view focuses on the design, material, workmanship and setting of a tangible heritage, while the constructivist view sees authenticity as ‘an extrinsic process’ that ‘concerns the negotiations of values between individuals and a specific property’ (Labadi, 2012: 126). I agree with Herb Stovel’s view that authenticity in the heritage field should not be regarded as an intrinsic value or an absolute qualifier, but as an ability of a heritage to convey its value over time (Stovel, 2007). Stovel discriminated between the authenticity and value of heritage, arguing that ‘it is meaningless to state that such and such a property is undeniably authentic’ (Stovel, 2007: 30). Authenticity therefore should be understood as an ability with which the heritage values can be conveyed. Furthermore, authenticity should be a culturally relative and contextualised concept as the significant Nara Document on Authenticity argued,6 and it should concern a dynamic extrinsic process around the negotiations of heritage value between different stakeholders (Labadi, 2012). Reflecting upon authenticity in Chinese AHD, we can see clearly that it is based on the etic objective judgement of authorities (institutes or bureaucratic scholars) who narrate the heritage values in the AHD, in which the values from the practitioners’ understanding are not necessarily included. It is reasonable, then, to argue that the existing authenticity based on objective judgement is irrelevant to the essence of ICH. Rather, an emic/subjective approach, the ‘practitioners-based

Critical Theorisation of ICH   25

approach’, could reconceptualise a concept of authenticity relevant to ICH. Before reconceptualising the concept of authenticity that is relevant to ICH, I will critically discuss the concept of authenticity in the tourism field in the following. In this book, authenticity is a central concept connecting the fields of heritage and tourism. Therefore, it is important to consider how the concept of authenticity is understood in tourism studies. As a Western philosophical term, it is interesting to note that the concept of authenticity in tourism studies initially derives from museology, where professionals judge the value of objects (Trilling, 1972) according to a system based on connoisseurship, which is a similar etic perspective to that in the tangible heritage field. Dean MacCannell (1973, 1976) was the first sociologist to introduce authenticity in sociological tourism studies to explain the motivation and experiences of tourists who are alienated by modernity. For MacCannell, this alienation resulted in the recognition of authenticity as pertaining only to ‘the other’, who could only ever be found in an exotic destination. Since then, authenticity has become a key issue in tourism studies and four theoretical schools have been established (N. Wang, 1999), namely the objective approach, the constructivist approach, the postmodernist approach and the subjective approach. The objective approach is used by modernists/realists/objectivists (Reisinger & Steiner, 2006) such as Boorstin (1961) and MacCannell (1973, 1976), who regard object authenticity as the pre-existing, absolute, intrinsic and static attribute of the toured objects that can be tested or assessed by certain standards. In this sense, authenticity is perceived in a similar way to the heritage field, in which external professionals are actually ‘the most fitting prototypes of MacCannell’s tourist’ (Cohen, 1988: 375). Authenticity in the constructivist perspective (Bruner, 1994; Cohen, 1988; Hughes, 1995; Olsen, 2002) is constructed by stakeholders concerned with their different ‘points of view, beliefs, perspectives, or powers’ (N. Wang, 1999: 351). This view shifts the definition of authenticity from a solely object-related one to a more subject-related one that considers both the toured object and people’s projection onto it (Cohen, 2013). After the Nara conference in 1994, the focus of authenticity in the academic heritage discourse shifted from object authenticity to constructed authenticity, because this approach regards authenticity not as an inherent (Bruner, 1994) ‘real property or tangible asset, but instead is a judgement or value placed on the setting by the observer’ (Moscardo & Pearce, 1999: 418). Constructed authenticity is negotiable, relative (Cohen, 1988), and it depends on context (Salamone, 1997), time (Cohen, 1988) and ideology (Silver, 1993), which were major issues at the Nara conference (Larsen, 1995; WHC, 1994). However, this theoretical shift has not led to revised national AHDs internationally (Labadi, 2012). It is therefore possible to say that object authenticity still dominates most of the national AHDs since the appearance of the Venice Charter.

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While both objective authenticity and constructed authenticity are classified as object-related authenticity (N. Wang, 1999), the postmodernist approach, though not being a single, unified one, is characterised by the deconstructing of authenticity, which means that inauthenticity is not a problem and authenticity can have nothing to do with the toured object or place (Baudrillard, 1983; Eco, 1986). In both the objective and the postmodern approach, the so-called authenticity of original or the objective authenticity of the marginal ethnic culture is difficult to understand because it is mutable under the influence of globalisation (N. Wang, 1999). Generally, authenticity can be expressed in two senses: in the first sense one refers to the toured object, place or event, whether in heritage or tourism issues; the second sense concerns a ‘human attribute signifying being one’s true self or being true to one’s essential nature’ (Steiner & Reisinger, 2006: 299), which is only emphasised in tourism research. This seems to be the most dominant distinction between the two fields in that object-related authenticity is the focus in the heritage field while an activity-related one is more important in the tourism field. Tom Selwyn (1996) noted that the authentic experience of humans lurked in MacCannell’s statement but that only in the existential approach is this authenticity articulated clearly in tourism studies. Given the ambiguous definitions and usages of object authenticity, scholars have even suggested that we need to abandon this concept in tourism discourse (Reisinger & Steiner, 2006). However, it has been saved to some extent by the fourth school of thinking, which shifts the concept of authenticity towards the subjective approaches especially that of existential authenticity (Cohen, 2013). This concept was initially developed by existential philosophers such as Heidegger (1996) and Sartre (2003) before it was adopted in the tourism field by scholars in the 1980s (Turner & Manning, 1988). Existential authenticity in philosophy concerns ‘what it means to be human, what it means to be happy and what it means to be oneself’ (Steiner & Reisinger, 2006: 300). This philosophical tradition is used in the second sense of authenticity, to discuss experiential authenticity, to explain the individuals’ experience in which they ‘feel themselves to be in touch both with a “real world” and with their “real” selves’ (Handler & Saxton, 1988: 243). As an activityrelated approach it offers a better explanation of tourist experiences than object-related authenticity (N. Wang, 1999). Existential authenticity has been elucidated more clearly in scholarly papers since the 1990s (Bruner, 1994; Daniel, 1996; Hughes, 1995; Steiner & Reisinger, 2006; Taylor, 2001; N. Wang, 1999) to describe the experience of the tourist (Belhassen et al., 2008; L. Brown, 2013; Kim & Jamal, 2007; Richards, 2007; N. Wang, 1999), performers of toured events (Daniel, 1996), and the host community (Richards, 2007; Steiner & Reisinger, 2006). Recently, based on the concept of performative speech acts in language (Austin, 1975), scholars have illustrated how performative authenticity

Critical Theorisation of ICH   27

(Cohen & Cohen, 2012b) is a concept that can overcome the essentialism of objectivist and constructivist versions of authenticity as well as the relativism of existentialism (Knudsen & Waade, 2010). These scholars argue that the notion of performative authenticity can be introduced into tourism to illustrate the transformative process that occurs through the authentication experience through the ‘ongoing integration between individual agency and the external world’ (Y. Zhu, 2012: 1498). By comparison, authenticity in heritage studies stagnates between object and constructed authenticities while that in tourism studies develops from objective to subjective perspective towards human experiences. In a way, object authenticity in heritage studies becomes problematic because the realism (Reisinger & Steiner, 2006) or essentialism (X.B. Su, 2011; Knudsen & Waade, 2010) on which object authenticity rests, is challenged by relativism, postmodernism, poststructuralism and constructivism (Reisinger & Steiner, 2006) and because the essences of the notions of originality and genuineness are diminishing (Cohen, 2013) under modernity (Baudrillard, 1983). As ICH also concerns affiliated objects and places, I cannot say that objectrelated authenticity (objective and constructive) is totally irrelevant to ICH. However, it is clear that practitioners and their embodied practices are major components of ICH, suggesting that the question of objective authenticity should not be the focus. Thus, the subjective approach is conducive to understanding the experience and motivation of the ICH practitioners, since it concerns people’s agencies and well-being. The subjective approach to authenticity, in particular existential authenticity, could be theorised in ICH tourism in two senses. Firstly, it concerns people’s well-being (e.g. identity, creativity, pride, memory, feeling, belief, sociable needs, etc.) (Belhassen et al., 2008; Cole, 2007; Daniel, 1996; Kim & Jamal, 2007; N. Wang, 1999), free choice (Steiner & Reisinger, 2006; N. Wang, 1999) and the power in the heritage authentication process in the context of heritage tourism (Cohen & Cohen, 2012a). Steiner and Reisinger argue that ‘claiming and exercising that freedom is the ultimate expression of existential authenticity’ (2006: 312) and that, therefore, authenticity is always a kind of self-judgement and that this applies to changing traditional cultures in response to changing circumstances. Secondly, when ICH changes within a tourism context, the seemingly contradictory relationship between object authenticity and commodification can be transcended in the subjective approach, which may benefit the local community (Cole, 2007; Daniel, 1996; Steiner & Reisinger, 2006). This is because existential authenticity has ‘nothing to do with the issue of whether toured objects are real’ (N. Wang, 1999: 359). Furthermore, ‘it is no one’s business to decide what constitutes authenticity for a host community except the local residents’ (Steiner & Reisinger, 2006: 311). From the perspective of existential authenticity, the ICH authorities or tourism managers could encourage

28  Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in China

the ICH practitioners to ‘appreciate and embrace their own possibilities, to be authentic’ (Steiner & Reisinger, 2006: 308). Nevertheless, there are difficulties with a theoretical integration of existential authenticity into ICH tourism. Firstly, existential authenticity, which describes a state of being of people in tourism (Steiner & Reisinger, 2006; N. Wang, 1999), is used in the same way as other authenticities in tourism studies to describe the inner attributes of tourists or hosts. However, authenticity in heritage studies should be regarded as an ability of heritage to convey values and a condition of heritage protection. Secondly, existential authenticity is initially used to explain how tourists alienated by modernity seek their authentic selves in a touristic experience that is away from their everyday work and life (N. Wang, 1999). However, the purpose of safeguarding ICH is to maintain people and their culture living a normal life. And thirdly, the existential approach claims that ‘there is no enduring self like an object, so there cannot be any “real” self to aspire or attain’ (Steiner & Reisinger, 2006: 302). Consequently, ‘a person is not authentic or inauthentic all the time’ and ‘one can only momentarily be authentic in different situations’ (Steiner & Reisinger, 2006: 303). In line with the proposed practitioners-based approach, in this book I reconceptualise existential authenticity into ‘subjective authenticity’ as following. Firstly, subjective authenticity describes the ability of ICH practitioners in the conveyance of ICH values through their cultural practices. Secondly, since the ‘self’ of the practitioner is not always ‘real’ and existential authenticity is transient and not durable (Steiner & Reisinger, 2006), the practitioners may engage with, or transfer between, different representations/modes of practices in different situations in order to pursue the values and meanings that will make them more existentially authentic. As argued by Steiner and Reisinger, only the host community can decide their authenticity, and ‘all are free to define themselves, determine their own identity, discover their own meaning and respond to the world in their own way, not as others expect’ (2006: 312). Therefore, as long as the practitioners are able to exercise their abilities to engage with their ICH according to their free will, subjective authenticity could be retained and even improved. Although I emphasise the subjective approach to authenticity in this book, object-related authenticity is still pertinent to ICH to some extent, since the making of ICH concerns practitioners, places and objects and other tangible components. It should also be noted that in recent studies authenticity in the context of tourism concerns the interactive network of objects, people and places (Jones, 2009; Jones et al., 2017) and concerns the dialogue between place, belief, action and self (Belhassen et al., 2008). Again, it is necessary to de-centre objective authenticity and to propose subjective authenticity in ICH tourism, but it is not necessary to oppose objective and subjective authenticities.

Critical Theorisation of ICH   29

Commodification

It is easier to discern the mutability of ICH than the complicated relationship between authenticity and commodification. As Laurajane Smith (2006: 108) points out, one of the significant changes in the ICH discourse and the whole issue of ‘intangibility’ is the recognition of cultural change. There is almost no doubt in international academia that ICH is living, fluid, mutable, evolving, developing, changing (Aikawa, 2004; Aikawa-Faure, 2009; Bedjaoui, 2004; Lenzerini, 2011; Ruggles & Silverman, 2009a; Skounti, 2009; Van Zanten, 2004), recreated, as the ICHC defines it, and even reinvented (Alivizatou, 2012). Consequently, researchers emphasise the importance of living protection (Bedjaoui, 2004; Kurin, 2004) and the dynamic connection with its context. This characteristic of ICH is challenging conventional static and past-oriented heritage discourse, such as China’s AHD. The worry about the loss of authenticity of certain ICH7 due to commodification in tourism originates from the discussion of object authenticity, which refers to the pseudo-event (Boorstin, 1961) and to staged authenticity (MacCannell, 1973, 1976). With this etic and objective perspective, authenticity embedded in all tangible heritage or toured destinations will decrease with increasing tourism commodification. Thus, the influences of tourism commodification are seen as the external force that will destroy the original meaning of ICH and human relations (Greenwood, 1989; Tilley, 1997), deprive local people of their interests and benefits (Greenwood, 1978), homogenise, standardise (Steiner & Reisinger, 2006; Xie & Lane, 2006) and routinise cultural practice (Daniel, 1996) and alter traditional culture for tourists (Dyer et al., 2003; Hughes, 1995; Joseph & Kavoori, 2001). Tourism also entails a tension between cultural function for community and economic purpose for tourists (Bianchini & Parkinson, 1993; Halewood & Hannam, 2001). Within this framework, it is easy to see why authenticity is perceived as a losing battle when applying the objective approach to assess local people’s commodified ICH. Along with the emergence of the ‘critical turn’ in tourism studies, the view of the negative effects of commodification as an absolute external force acting on objective authenticity has been criticised with the emergence of the concepts of constructivist authenticity and existential authenticity (Cohen, 1988; Reisinger & Steiner, 2006; Steiner & Reisinger, 2006). The absolute and static effects of commodification are firstly challenged by the concept of emergent authenticity, which describes a socially constructed hot authentication process (Cohen & Cohen, 2012a) during which ‘any new-fangled gimmick’, under appropriate conditions, can become recognised as an ‘authentic manifestation of local culture’ (Cohen, 1988: 380). With this diachronic view, not just tangible objects and places such as Disneyland will be

30  Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in China

conceived of as an authentic tradition (Cohen, 1988) but, also, invented traditions (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983) or revived ICH such as the ethnic music in Lijiang (X.B. Su, 2011; P. Zeng, 2011). Thus, tourism, or touristification has blurred the boundary between host community and external tourists (Picard, 1997: 183) where, according to the situational perspective (Hitchcock, 1999), local communities ‘accommodate the needs of both visitors and the local people’ (Xie & Lane, 2006: 547). Since ICH, as a living culture, is always evolving, tourism should not be understood as ‘a force external to contemporary society’ (Picard & Wood, 1997: x) which necessarily harms the authenticity of ICH during commodification, but should, rather, be regarded as a complex adaptive system (Xie & Lane, 2006). Similarly, commodification should be seen as an ongoing process in tourism rather than the direct negative results of tourism (Cohen, 1988; X.B. Su, 2011). This processual perspective of commodification resonates with the critical heritage studies approach, which regards the commodification of ICH, when directed by ICH practitioners, as part of the ICH value-making processes. In line with the practitioners-based approach, it is important to look at the engagement of ICH practitioners in the process of tourism commodification. Past tourism studies show that tourism can provide local people/community with incentives and opportunities (Picard & Wood, 1997) for building ethnic and place identity, reclaiming heritage, counterbalancing the authoritative heritage and tourism forces (Oakes, 1997) and mediating transnational cultures and capitals (Franklin & Crang, 2001). Among these, on the one hand, scholars looked at local resistance and at the agency of local people, which are recognised as crucial powers in accepting, negotiating or resisting the exogenous changing dominant social structures in the cases of Lijiang and Guizhou provinces in China (Oakes, 1993; X.B. Su, 2007). On the other hand, as research in Yunnan shows, in the tourism context, local ICH practitioners are able to actively reconstruct the local culture on one hand, and determine the consumption boundary following the local knowledge system on the other hand (Shao & Wu, 2016). No matter whether passively or actively, past studies suggest that ICH practitioners in China are able to exert their agency in the commodification process in tourism. I will follow these arguments in order to scrutinise how practitioners’ agencies will act in the less- and more-commodified ICHmaking processes. Integrity

As stipulated in the Chinese AHD of ICH, integrity is another crucial concept for safeguarding ICH in China. Compared with authenticity, integrity is less discussed although this concept appears in the Venice Charter (Article 14) and the Operational Guidelines for World

Critical Theorisation of ICH   31

Natural Heritage after 1977. As Herb Stovel (2007) and Xu Songling (S.L. Xu, 2005) have noted, there exists confusion between authenticity and integrity, which evolve in different trajectories in cultural and natural heritage domains respectively; and even these two scholars ultimately hold distinct opinions: Stovel concludes that integrity is the ability of heritage to sustain or secure the heritage values, while Xu argues that the nature of these two concepts is the same. Initially integrity was mainly used in the natural heritage area (Jokilehto, 2006; S.L. Xu, 2005). However, confusion occurred in 1998 when UNESCO introduced integrity into the judgement criteria of World Cultural Heritage (Stovel, 2007). According to the 2015 Operational Guidelines, ‘integrity is a measure of the wholeness and intactness of the natural and/or cultural heritage and its attributes’ (UNESCO, 2015c: 18). Based on this concept, not just physical elements and size are considered, but also the ‘relationships and dynamic functions present in … or other living properties’ (UNESCO, 2015c: 18). Since we understand that integrity in tangible heritage refers to all components – tangible or intangible – that carry its value (the Outstanding Universal Value in World Heritage specifically), it is still unclear which elements should constitute an ICH – an issue that the ICHC fails to address (Logan, 2007). When the concept of integrity was initially introduced in China it was used for World Natural Heritage conservation (S.L. Xu, 2005: 103–124; C.Y. Zhang, 2003, 2004) and it was later considered as another criterion for ICH protection, which advocates comprehensive protection of cultural and natural environments (Kang, 2011: 32–36; K.L. Liu, 2004a; J.S. Wang, 2006; W.Z. Wang, 2006b: 326–330). Integrity was first officially used in the Project of Safeguarding Chinese Ethnic Culture and Folklore in 2004. At the same time, the concept of integrity was seen in articles by bureaucratic scholars (K.L. Liu, 2004a) and appeared for the first time in the 2005 ICH Opinions; and it is further explained in the so-called ‘dynamic integrated protection method’ in the LICH specifically for the protection of traditional ecocultural villages or areas (Xin & Huang, 2011: 196). In the LICH (Xin & Huang, 2011: 15) and in the articles by bureaucratic scholars (K.L. Liu, 2004a; W.Z. Wang, 2006b; L. Yuan & J. Gu, 2013), integrity concerns two dimensions: the spatial dimension, which consider the connection between all local ICH elements and the environment; and the temporal dimension, which considers all forms of a changing ICH element across time. Internationally, an expert meeting in UNESCO in 1993 underlined the risk of extracting ICH from the original context, which might lead to de-contextualisation and folklorisation (UNESCO, 1993) and this issue was also discussed in subsequent meetings such as for the ICHC (AikawaFaure, 2009). Although integrity is not commonly used in UNESCO to refer to ICH, international scholars emphasise that the survival of ICH

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basically lies in the sustainability of the connection between ICH and the communities, groups or individuals in which this ICH is practised and transmitted (Stefano et al., 2012). Therefore, international scholars (Aikawa-Faure, 2009; M.F. Brown, 2005; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 2006; Kurin, 2004) suggest a holistic approach, ‘where ICH is considered as one component of a large ecology of human experience’ (Stefano, 2012: 232). While it is necessary and reasonable to safeguard ICH in a context comprising the natural environment, tangible heritage and social connections with people, should we protect every attribute? Although a minority, there has been opposition among Chinese scholars (K.L. Liu, 2006; P. Zeng, 2011), who claim that it is unrealistic, idealistic and even impossible to protect the whole changing ecological environment or setting of ICH. ICH, with its meanings and functions, changes through the dynamic interaction between ICH practitioners and society, so if we adopt a practitioners-based approach to examine the dynamic process of commodification, the emergent values, relationships and functions may be perceived by the practitioners as necessary components in the heritagisation process. I adopt Stovel’s argument that integrity should be understood as the ability of a heritage to sustain or secure its heritage values (2007), and I regard ICH practitioners as the most crucial component of an ICH element. In line with the practitioners-based approach, I therefore argue that the integrity of ICH should be understood as the ability of the practitioners to recognise, inherit, create and even abandon some of the existing components of their ICH in order to establish an assemblage of relevant components to sustain the ICH values. Thus, the integrity of ICH should be reconceptualised as ‘subjective integrity’. Considering the subjectivity of the practitioners, I term the components of an ICH element, which are spontaneously selected, recognised and engaged with by the practitioners, as ‘active components’. Here, the active components are always in the dynamics of creation, recognition, abandonment and re-creation according to the practitioners’ subjective integrity. Therefore, the components of an ICH element, as well as the subjective integrity embodied in the practitioners, are subjective, dynamic and contingent, which is different from the conventional ‘objective integrity’ stipulated in the Chinese AHD. Continuity and the ICH-making Circle

When all the values and components of ICH are changing, we naturally care about the direction of this evolution. Therefore, we should look at this living cultural expression in a diachronic way, examining how authenticity and integrity are continuously embodied in practitioners in different stages, situations and generations. While the concepts of authenticity and integrity are not used in the ICHC, continuity is nevertheless emphasised in the ICHC as a key concept for the safeguarding of ICH.

Critical Theorisation of ICH   33

Continuity, along with change and truth, has a long history in the discussion of identity among Western philosophers and the most famous debate concerns the paradox of the Ship of Theseus8 (Jokilehto, 2006) in which the question was asked as to whether or not the authenticity of an object resided in the continuity of its fabric. Among the four most valued traits of the past – antiquity, continuity, termination and sequence – David Lowenthal writes that continuity ‘implies a living past bound up with the present, not exotically different or obsolete’ (1985: 62). Noticing the link between past and present, Lowenthal relates continuity both to present people and to the present, saying: ‘the accretive past is appreciated less for its own sake than because it has led to the present’ (1985: 61). This is the argument that critical heritage studies follows in that it, too, proposes that the meanings and values of heritage are made in and for the present. As an anthropological concept, continuity means the ‘process of uniting past, present and future—[which] is very different from conservation, preservation, or traditionalism’ (M.E. Smith, 1982: 127). Continuity is used in the ICHC to illustrate that ICH provides practitioners with a sense of identity and continuity. Nevertheless, this concept has not been well established in Chinese discourse of ICH. In the Chinese version of UNESCO’s ICHC, continuity is translated into a Chinese term, Chixu Gan, which is close to the meaning of continuity. However, this term can also be translated into another Chinese term, which means a sense of history or historicity (Lishi Gan), which is used not only in official documents (Xin & Huang, 2011) but is also dominant in Chinese academia. Sometimes, the term continuity is also translated as an adverb (continuously), or even omitted completely. Meanwhile, many Chinese scholars propose that it is necessary to pay attention to the connection that ICH embodies between the past and the present. For example, Song Junhua (J.H. Song, 2006) found a stable continuation of value existing in the transmission of ICH because the inheritance body (inheritors) and creation body (practitioners) are the same group of people, which is different from tangible heritage whose creation body is lost. This people-centred value judgement is very meaningful; however, what happens when two bodies, both of which are embedded in the same ICH, are inconsistent? Or if the ICH values generated by them conflict? Internationally, continuity is used in parallel with identity and meaning to refer to the attribute of culture (Jokilehto, 2006) and the intrinsic values of traditional culture (J. Blake, 2002: 3), to describe the attributes of living tradition (J. Blake, 2002: 44), and to refer to a continuation over an extended period from a pre-invasion or precolonial past to the present in regard to some factors (e.g. occupation, ancestry, culture in general, language and residence, etc.) in indigenous communities (United Nations, 2009: 4). Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett noted that continuity requires attention not just to artefacts but also to people and the ‘entire habitus and habitat, understood as their life

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space and social world’ (2004: 54). Although it does not use the term continuity, the UNESCO Turin Report states that ICH is continually shaped and continually evolving (UNESCO, 2001b). Since tradition and change are two major issues in anthropology, I tend to treat continuity as a mediation between the two extremes, as does M. Estellie Smith (M.E. Smith, 1982: 135), who concludes that ‘continuity is that synthesis within which tradition is persistent viability through adaptation and change is the novel manifestation of a durable identity’. Discussion of the relationships between continuity, authenticity and integrity has been rare in the field of ICH while there is a modest literature to be found in the field of World Heritage (Khalaf, 2021). Christoph Brumann pointed out the close relationship between continuity and objective (materialist) authenticity in UNESCO’s World Heritage discourse by saying that ‘what the World Heritage institutions really look for, it is in fact continuity over time, be it continuity of material, form, usage, or some other aspect mentioned in the Venice Charter or the Nara Document’ (Brumann, 2017: 285). Herb Stovel noted the connection between continuity and integrity and he proposed a framework of continuity of function and continuity of setting (Stovel, 2007). When the latter is used to describe the aspect of tangible integrity, he coined the term ‘continuity of function’ to assess the continuity of ‘intangible integrity’ over time (2007: 32). Roha Khalaf re-thought the relationship between authenticity and continuity and suggested that authenticity should be replaced with continuity in UNESCO’s system of World Heritage (2021). Such discussions drew attention to the intrinsic relationships between continuity and the values and attributes of World Heritage that are recognised by the AHD of UNESCO; nevertheless, only a critical approach can reveal the understandings from nonofficial stakeholders, in particular ICH practitioners, with regard to continuation and change in the values and attributes of ICH. Continuity is central to the sustainability of ICH. As ICH is a living and evolving heritage, the concept of continuity should describe the diachronic continuation and change in the values and components of ICH. Following the practitioners-based approach, I reconceptualise the concept of continuity to describe the continuation of the ICH values, which the practitioners convey (in relation to subjective authenticity), and the ICH components, which the practitioners engage with (in relation to subjective integrity) in the ICH-making processes. In this book, the commodification of ICH in tourism can be seen as one form of ICH heritagisation. Subjective abilities in ICH heritagisation, as theorised as subjective authenticity and subjective integrity, are crucial to the continuity of a culture, because ‘culture can only have continuity if people enjoy the conditions to produce and re-create it’ (Van Zanten, 2004: 37). Therefore, the concept of continuity is significant to the continuous making of ICH, which is based on practitioners’ abilities and agencies.

Critical Theorisation of ICH   35

Considering the close relationship between continuity, authenticity and integrity in ICH heritagisation, I propose that subjective authenticity, subjective integrity and continuity should act synergistically as three qualifying conditions for the sustainable transmission of ICH in the context of tourism. In order to illustrate the relationships between these three concepts, I devised a theoretical proposition to integrate them into the ICH-making circle (Figure 2.1). The first stage of ICH-making is recognition of the active components by the practitioners themselves. In this process, all existing components of ICH, whether in tangible or intangible forms, are selected, used, modified or even disregarded by the practitioners in order to sustain or secure the ICH values. The ability of the practitioner to do this is regarded as subjective integrity. In the second stage, these active components are engaged with by practitioners as the vehicle through which diverse values of ICH can be conveyed. By my definition, subjective authenticity concerns practitioners’ ability to convey the ICH values. ICH-making is an ongoing, dynamic and iterative process and transmission is the practice of ICH-making within one generation and from one generation to the next. The third stage therefore is the recreation process of ICH, which describes how the practitioners continuously convey their evolving and diverse values (in relation to subjective authenticity) by re-assembling and re-using the existing components and creating new ones (in relation to subjective integrity). In the third stage, continuity describes to what extent the circular chain can be sustained at present and in the future.

Figure 2.1  The ICH-making circle

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In general, the concepts of authenticity and integrity describe two specific aspects of the abilities/agencies that the ICH practitioners exert in the ICH-making process and the concept of continuity describes the continuation of these two abilities/agencies. Furthermore, with regard to the sustainability of the reiterative ICH-making process, these three concepts, as three qualifying conditions, apply simultaneously to the transmission of ICH. In the context of tourism, the commodification of ICH can be regarded as one form of the ICH-making process, so that the ICH-making circle can be applied to understand and reveal the making and sustainability of ICH in the context of tourism. Notes (1) See http://www.criticalheritagestudies.org/history/, retrieved 6 December 2022. (2) Authenticity is translated by different authors in Chinese as 原真性 (Yuanzhen Xing, which is used more in tangible heritage issues), 真实性 (Zhenshi Xing, which has been adopted by the ICH law and also is commonly used in tourism studies), 本真性 (Benzhen Xing, which is used both in the ICH field and folklore issues). (3) The first paragraph of the Venice Charter (ICOMOS, 1964) says: ‘it is our duty to hand them on in the full richness of their authenticity’. (4) Article 9 says: ‘In addition, the property should meet the test of authenticity in design, materials, workmanship and setting’ (UNESCO, 1978: 4). (5) ICOMOS, the International Council on Monuments and Sites, is a global nongovernmental organisation for the conservation and protection of cultural heritage. It is an Advisory Body of the World Heritage Committee for the implementation of the World Heritage Convention of UNESCO. See http://www.icomos.org/en/, retrieved 1 December 2022. (6) Article 11 says: ‘All judgements about values attributed to cultural properties as well as the credibility of related information sources may differ from culture to culture, and even within the same culture. It is thus not possible to base judgements of values and authenticity within fixed criteria’ (WHC, 1994). (7) Most of what we now call ICH was formerly referred to as traditional culture, folklore or host/local culture. In order to avoid confusion, unless indicated I will use ICH mostly. However, we should not treat ICH as an inclusive term. (8) This is a thought experiment that was recorded in the late first century by Plutarch (AD 46–c. AD 127). The paradox asks the question as to whether a wooden ship, after being continuously restored by replacing every part, remains the same. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) extended this paradox by asking that, if all the dismantled original parts were used to build another ship, which one would be the original Ship of Theseus.

3 ICH Protection and ICH Tourism in China1

The Development of ICH Safeguarding in China

Many Chinese scholars have stated that UNESCO’s concept of ICH was formally introduced into China in 2001 (Kang, 2011; Wei, 2010; S. Yang & Z.M. Zhang, 2010), but China’s initiatives in documenting its rich ‘ICH’ can be traced back as early as the Book of Poetry compiled during the Zhou Dynasty and the Spring and Autumn Period (from the 11th to BC 6th century BC),2 when folklore, mainly in the form of poem and ballad, was collected by officials for the ruling class to understand society (W.Z. Wang, 2013a). Documentation of various forms of ‘ICH’ was also carried out by literati and scholars in various fields in ancient China (W.Z. Wang, 2013a). A systematic documentation, study and preservation of ‘ICH’, however, was not seen until the early 20th century, when Chinese scholars at institutes and universities began studying traditional folk culture in the emerging discipline of folklore (B.Z. Gao, 2007; Kang, 2011; W.Z. Wang, 2013a). Indeed, the work in the early 20th century was mainly undertaken to document and study folklore (Kang, 2011) rather than to ‘safeguard’ ICH practitioners and their practices. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, under the regime of Mao Zedong, the Chinese government treated traditional Chinese culture, including tangible and intangible heritage, in an ambivalent and ambiguous way. On the one hand, traditional culture was regarded as ‘unscientific, feudal, antimodern and antisocialist’ (Sofield & Li, 1998: 367), and was thus regarded by the Communist Party of China as against its agenda of establishing a ‘new Chinese socialist culture’ (Sofield & Li, 1998: 364); on the other hand, Communist Party of China leader Mao Zedong held a critical attitude that ‘rejects the feudal dross and assimilates the domestic essence’ of traditional culture (Ai, 2012: 130). These guidelines were followed during the early phase of the Communist Party of China’s regime, from the 1950s to the early 1960s, when investigation of and documentation on traditional and ethnic cultures were undertaken. 37

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However, nearly all traditional Chinese culture was suppressed, and even ruthlessly destroyed, during the Cultural Revolution3 and comprehensive preservation and protection of traditional culture was only possible after 1978 with Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening-up policies. Since 1978, traditional culture, including tangible and intangible heritage, has been used by the Communist Party of China as a political and strategic tool through its ‘selecting the refined and discarding the dross’ value judgement inherited from Mao’s time (Ai, 2012). As argued by Sofield and Li (1998), the Communist Party of China incorporated many beneficial values – including the positive ones in cultural heritage – into its socialist ideology to build a cohesive national identity and to achieve economic modernisation through tourism. At this point, policies towards cultural heritage protection and tourism development converged, from which time the relationship between heritage and tourism in China has been imbued with political, cultural and economic tensions. After the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese government issued in 1982 the Chinese Law of Protection of Cultural Relics (revised in 2002, 2007 and 2017) to protect tangible heritage and initiated several government-led activities to protect ICH, such as the Arts and Crafts Masters programme in 1979, the Ten Anthologies of Chinese Traditional and Ethnic Literature and Arts in 1980s and the Project of Safeguarding Chinese Ethnic Culture and Folklore,4 which led to the draft Law on Protecting Chinese Ethnic Traditional Culture and Folklore in 2003. These projects began the process of the protection of both tangible and intangible heritage in an official and systematic way. Since the 1980s, the philosophy of conventional tangible heritage, or cultural relics (Wenwu)5 conservation, has gradually influenced the idea of safeguarding ICH in China. Generally, cultural heritage is seen as an imported Western term localised to gradually substitute for the existing Chinese term – cultural relics – in academic and official discourse. Significantly, ICH is nowadays defined largely in the same way as tangible heritage in that both are understood as a ‘witness of historical development of human society’ in national discourses (X.D. Li, 2002: 1; Xin & Huang, 2011: 193). Even bureaucratic scholars (L. Yuan & J. Gu, 2013) instructed in an official guidebook that the historical value6 is the most significant value, so that originality and rarity, among others, are conditions to assess the values of ICH. In order to justify and sustain Chinese AHD in both tangible and intangible heritage, which all serve the same ideological function, intertextuality is noticed here. Specifically, the concept of authenticity in the LICH can be traced back to the similar expression found in its counterpart ten years ago: Article 21 in the Chinese Law of Protection of Cultural Relics states that the principle of protection concerns maintaining the original status of cultural relics. These authoritative discourses of authenticity are also supported by

ICH Protection and ICH Tourism in China  39

some scholars as universally applicable for not only tangible but also intangible heritage (J. Luo & M. Zhang, 2010; W.Z. Wang, 2006b; S.L. Xu, 2005; C.Y. Zhang, 2011). The intertextuality between tangible and intangible heritage in the official discourse is also reflected in the definition of the value of heritage. While the Chinese Law of Protection of Cultural Relics emphasises the values of history, art and science, the LICH lists values in history, literature, art and science as the criteria for protection. Among these, the historical witness value is important in China’s AHD. Bureaucratic expert Li Xiaodong wrote in his theoretical book that the values of heritage, either in tangible or intangible forms, exist objectively, because ‘they are all congealed general human labour within the historical cultural relics and artefacts’ (X.D. Li, 2002: 18). Clearly this argument is reminiscent of Karl Marx’s remarks in Das Kapital (1867), sharing the same materialist conception of history that is deeply reflected in the tangible heritage AHD in China. Under this stereotypical Chinese static, past-oriented, materialist AHD are the salient political, ideological and economic agendas for nationalism and modernisation development. This becomes obvious from a critical heritage studies approach with its focus on revealing the ways in which heritage is deeply embedded in the relationship between politics, culture and economy (Hou & Wu, 2013; L. Smith, 2006; L. Smith et al., 2013). A growing number of studies (Ai, 2012; Blumenfield & Silverman, 2013; Ludwig et al., 2020; Maags & Svensson, 2018; Nyíri, 2006; Shepherd & Yu, 2013; X.B. Su, 2007; Winter, 2014; H.M. Yan, 2012; Y. Zhu & C. Maags, 2020) has pointed out that heritage in China has strong implications for national identity and unity, ethnic national solidarity, socialist civilisation, economic modernisation and international political and cultural agendas. Though these agendas are largely examined in the field of tangible heritage, they can be clearly seen in the field of ICH, such as in the preface of the LICH and the works of national bureaucratic scholars (W. Cai, 2011; W.Z. Wang, 2008; H.P. Zhou, 2006). To some extent, an ICH AHD emerged in China along with the ‘cultural heritage turn’ in the 1990s in China (Ludwig et al., 2020). Because of the above agendas, UNESCO’s ICH ideas are re-regulated or reframed in the construction of Chinese ICH AHD. Therefore, traditional culture or folklore can never be recognised by authorities as ‘heritage’ unless its values are judged in order to distinguish the ‘excellent’ or ‘positive’ ones, as the LICH defines them, from the ‘negative’ ones and protect and disseminate the former and only preserve the latter in documentary form. Most Chinese scholars (Q. Tian, 2006; N. Wang, 2011) and high-level officials (Dai, 2011) believe that the LICH gives a more positive appraisal to many previously suppressed traditional folk cultures but, however, that China could not and should not protect ‘negative’ or ‘superstitious’ ICH, such as the ‘shaman dance’ (Xin &

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Huang, 2011: 13). Thus, the Chinese government and a majority of scholars (Dai, 2011; F.R. Tian, 2011; L.T. Xu, 2006; P. Zeng, 2011; C. Zhou, 2012; B. Zhu, 2012) have claimed that it is imperative to judge the value of ICH in accordance with Chinese socialist ideology and Article 3 of the LICH, which states: ‘first, it embodies the excellent Chinese traditional culture and second, it is of historical, literary, artistic or scientific value’ (Xin & Huang, 2011: 10–13). This is also reflected in Ai’s argument that the disposition of Chinese traditional cultures is a ‘highly politicised and strategic effort’ (2012: 129) that reflects contemporary agendas, in line with Mao Zedong’s theory that it is important to ‘select the refined and discard the dross’ (2012: 132). Situated between the established Chinese AHD, with its political and ideological agendas, and the introduced UNESCO ICH discourse, China seeks to accommodate the UNESCO language for its own strategy, as has been shown in the World Heritage campaign (Blumenfield & Silverman, 2013; H.M. Yan, 2012). Several papers (Kang, 2012; X.A. Wu, 2012; C. Zhou, 2012) have traced the development of the LICH and concluded that it began in the 1990s and later developed into the draft Law on Protecting Chinese Ethnic Traditional Culture and Folklore in 2003 and finally the LICH in 2011. During this process, bureaucratic scholars (Kang, 2012; W.Z. Wang, 2006b) noted that the LICH incorporates terminology and some definitions from the ICHC but that its body still largely relies on the Law on Protecting Chinese Ethnic Traditional Culture and Folklore and other relevant regulations existing in China. For example, the word ‘protection’ has been deleted in the title of the LICH because of its implication (Dai, 2011; Kang, 2012). In Chinese, the word ‘protection’ is a verb meaning protecting actively, but, as I illustrated previously, China shouldn’t and couldn’t protect every ICH elements, so the word ‘protection’ was not used in the title of the LICH. Also because the English word safeguarding in the ICHC contains a serious intention to ensure the vitality of ICH, and China only safeguards the qualified ICH, ‘safeguarding’ is only used in a narrow sense in the Chinese context (F.R. Tian, 2011; B. Zhu, 2012; Zhuo, 2012). Based on these overarching ideas, a fundamental terminology has been adopted to bolster the Chinese ICH official discourse in theory, policy and guidelines. Therefore, certain concepts, such as authenticity and integrity, are used to identify and regulate the officially recognised values of the heritage. Scholars in China (Kang, 2011) usually regard 2001, the year when Chinese Kunqu Opera was inscribed on the UNESCO’s ICH representative list, as the starting point of China’s ICH movement. Before that year, most of the work safeguarding ICH was undertaken by scholars, nongovernmental associations, universities and bureaucratic experts in the name of traditional, ethnic or folk culture. The most influential programme among these was the Chinese Folk Cultural Heritage Rescue

ICH Protection and ICH Tourism in China  41

Project initiated by the bureaucratic scholar Feng Jicai,7 chairman of the civil association, the Chinese Folk Literature and Art Society in 2001. As early as 2003, the folk culture heritage protection campaign was transformed from an academia-led to a government-led era (Kang, 2011). This time can be seen as a crucial point in the establishment of the AHD of ICH at the national level. The Chinese National Centre for Safeguarding Ethnic Culture and Folklore was launched as part of the Chinese National Academy of Arts by the Ministry of Culture in 2003 to initiate the Project of Safeguarding Chinese Ethnic Culture and Folklore. With China’s ratification of UNESCO’s ICHC in 2004 and the government’s powerful intervention into ICH safeguarding in 2005 with the influential document, the 2005 Opinions, the establishment of the administrative system and institutions was accelerated. A decade later, after the 2005 Opinions was issued, China had established a well-structured working system based on its former cultural management system to implement its AHD into practice. This government-led administrative system (Figure 3.1) is sustained by four organs: the leading agency at the national level is the Joint Meeting of the Inter-ministerial Working Conference System; the managerial agency is the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and its subordinate cultural administrative agencies at four levels (i.e. national, provincial, municipal and county levels); the executing agency is the ICH Protection Centre, which is supported by the advisory agency; and the fourth organ is the Committee of Experts, at the according four levels (X.B. Han, 2011). In China, ICH is administrated vertically by the cultural bureaus from national to county level in a top-down manner. Horizontally, the cultural bureau administers the ICH centre which, under the governance of the cultural bureau, convenes the Committee of Experts for official recognition. It is clear that the committee acts as the external judge that assesses the value of the practitioners’ ICH and authenticates/recognises these forms of cultural heritage. As reflected in the transition of the Chinese ICH national movement from traditional and folk culture to ICH, the government gradually took the leadership from academia around 2005. However, as an influential player, academia, along with its professional institutes, is a crucial agency affiliated to the government. The professional discourse, characterised by the logical positivism (L. Smith, 2004, 2006), is described as a feature of the AHD. This is seen in the practice of Chinese experts, especially the bureaucratic scholars, who actually promote and implement the AHD in practice. In this book, I call experts/ scholars ‘bureaucratic experts/scholars’, who are directly involved in the authentication of ICH in the governmental ICH administrative system, especially in the Committees of Experts. I note that the government tries to regulate and naturalise national ICH elements into its AHD with the synergy of professional power/knowledge from the bureaucratic

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Figure 3.1  The ICH administrative system in China

experts. This close relationship is also described as the symbiotic government – scholar network (Maags & Holbig, 2016). Besides the bureaucratic experts/scholars who serve the committee, there are other experts/scholars who are not directly involved in the ICH management system but who influence the development of the ICH-safeguarding enterprise in China at their academic institutes, such as the Chinese National Academy of Arts (Chinese National ICH Protection Centre), the Chinese ICH Research Centre at Sun Yat-sen University (designated by the Ministry of Education), among others.

ICH Protection and ICH Tourism in China  43

It should be noted here that although the ICH discourse in China is largely influenced by tangible cultural heritage discourse, these two kinds of heritage are usually administrated by two parallel systems that sometimes overlap with each other. Under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (the SACH) is the agency to manage tangible cultural heritage in China. Following this structure, there are either Bureaus of Cultural Heritage/Cultural Relics or Divisions of Cultural Heritage/Cultural Relics established under the jurisdiction of the Department of Culture and Tourism at the Chinese provincial level. ICH Safeguarding in Yunnan Province

The administrative system of ICH in Yunnan province, where the Lijiang case is located, is part of the national system. As the most ethnically diverse province in China with a rich ethnic traditional culture and folklore owned by the Han Chinese (accounting for 66.88% as of 2021)8 and 25 other ethnic minorities, Yunnan is generally regarded as one of the first provinces in China to carry out ICH protection work and is the first province in China to protect ICH with a legal system.9 Official work on ICH, previously in the name of ethnic and folk culture, began in Yunnan during the 1950s to the 1960s when the local government (including the Department of Culture and the Ethnic Affairs Commission), academic institutes and the Federation of Literary and Art Circles embarked on investigation, documentation and publication (Q. Wang, 2005). At this stage, the policy on ethnic traditional culture was bound up with that of ethnic minorities both of which served the aim of enhancing ethnic equality and ethnic unity, improving local economy and developing social undertakings (Ying & Wang, 2009). One specific project involving work on ethnic traditional culture during that time was the ethnic identification project, from 1949 to 1979, which officially recognised 25 ethnic minorities (Shaoshu Minzu) in Yunnan. The ethnic minorities were identified according to the ‘extent of sociocultural distance from the Han Chinese’ (Oakes, 1997: 46), so that the result of the identification was not to help protect all of their cultures but to uplift the ethnic minorities and ‘bring them out of their state of relative backwardness and into the progressive socialist fold’ (Sofield & Li, 1998: 372). Nevertheless, the protection work – including investigation, documentation, translation and publication of the intangible heritage and the designation and preservation of the tangible heritage of the ethnic minorities – was carried out by the government from 1949 until 1957 (Ying & Wang, 2009). Specifically during the early 1960s in Lijiang, Dongba scriptures were investigated, translated and compiled, fieldwork and documentation of Baishaxiyue music were undertaken and folklore was also investigated and documented by professionals (F.Q. Yang, 2012a).

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Although these preservationist works resemble the pre-1949 folklore studies in China in which the practitioners and their transmission was not the focus, the results are valuable historical documents. After the Cultural Revolution, during the 1980s, Yunnan joined the national campaign of the Ten Anthologies of Chinese Traditional and Ethnic Literature and Arts, in which most domains of current ICH elements were investigated, documented and compiled. A prominent initiative in the 1990s in Yunnan was the recognition and listing of the practitioners (under the name of Folk Artists) in the field of ethnic and folk music, dance, arts and handicraft. This programme – initiated by bureaucratic experts in Yunnan, funded by the Ford Foundation and the US–China Arts Exchange Centre at Columbia University10 and supported by the Department of Culture from 1997 to 1998 (Zhao, 2014) – was the first in China to investigate and recognise practitioners in the local community (Q. Wang, 2005). It focused, unprecedentedly, on grass roots folk practitioners and promoted an academic research program into a social campaign which later drew attention from provincial officials to the legal status of the practitioners in the draft of the Yunnan Ordinance in 2000 (Zhao, 2014). The Yunnan government has attached increasing importance to ICH protection in its future work plans. Indeed, the importance of ethnic and traditional culture has been emphasised by the Yunnan provincial government since the late 1990s. In 1996 the Provincial Party Committee proposed the goal of building Yunnan into a ‘strong province with ethnic cultural characteristics’,11 and the Yunnan Ordinance was issued in 2000 as one of the results. In the 12th Five-year Plan (2011–2015) Outline of Yunnan (7): Advancing the Construction of the Strong Province of Ethnic Culture,12 promotion of ethnic culture and enhancement of cultural soft power are upheld as the theme under which ethnic culture, ICH and tangible heritage are required to be protected and used for cultural industry and tourism if possible. Recently, in the 14th Five-year Plan (2021-2025) and the Outline of the Vision for 2035 of Yunnan Province, protection and inheritance of ethnic culture, as well as systemic protection of ICH, are emphasised. In this document, ICH, along with other types of cultural heritage, are regarded as significant resources for Yunnan province to build itself a ‘strong province of culture’, as well as a ‘strong province of tourism’,13 among other goals. It can be seen by looking at the course of government documents published that the policies towards ICH protection and tourism development have converged since the 1990s. As amended into the Yunnan ICH Ordinance in 2013, from the previous Yunnan Ordinance, this new local regulation is regarded as important in promoting the standardisation and legislation of ICH protection in Yunnan, as well as for enhancing the scientification and institutionalisation of protection work in the future.14 Although the terms authenticity and integrity are not seen in the 2000 Yunnan

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Ordinance, the problem of keeping authenticity and allowing change was lurking, and this problem was exacerbated when it was emendated in line with the LICH in 2013. It is stipulated in Article 10 of the Yunnan Ordinance that ‘when engaging with the investigation and studies of the ethnic traditional culture and folklore, attention should be paid to the protection and rescue of the original status of these cultures, and these works should be accurate and scientific’.15 When the Yunnan ICH Ordinance appeared in 2013, the terms authenticity and integrity were highlighted, with the result that it is forbidden to ‘use ICH in any ways that may distort or belittle the form and connotation of ICH’ (Article 4). Both authenticity and integrity are explained in the same way as they are in the LICH. It is interesting, however, to note that while the ordinance wants to preserve the ‘original or authentic ICH’, change is simultaneously encouraged in practice. According to the government reports (Cai & Yang, 2009; J. Huang, 2009) on the achievements of the enforcement of the 2000 Yunnan Ordinance, the adaptation, recreation and commodification of the ICH elements, in the form of cultural products and tourism programmes, are praised and encouraged by the provincial government as best examples that achieved great social and economic benefits. A number of cases are praised in these reports, such as some commodified ICH: the famous commercial music and dance performance Dynamic Yunnan, the handicraft business of the black pottery in Shangri-La, and the Yunnan Nationalities Village theme park (Photo 3.1). These changing ICH practices, while

Photo 3.1  A tourist ethnic performance at Yunnan Nationalities Village in Kunming City (author photograph, 2013).

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acknowledged by government, are cases where divergences may be seen between authenticity, integrity and tourism, as well as policies and practices. ICH Tourism in China and Yunnan Province

Traditional culture, especially ethnic traditional culture, was long treated as an ‘impediment to modernisation’ (L. Yang et al., 2008: 761), and many of these cultures were destroyed ruthlessly in the Cultural Revolution, during which time tourism was also suppressed and was regarded as a ‘propaganda tool’ rather than a proper form of development (Sofield & Li, 1998: 370). The national policy on both traditional culture and tourism changed radically when the Cultural Revolution was over and the Reform and Opening-up was initiated by Deng Xiaoping, the then Chinese leader, in 1978, when China began to redefine itself as a ‘modern, multicultural nation’ (Walsh & Swain, 2004: 61). Since then, tourism has acted as a powerful driving force for China’s economic modernisation (Sofield & Li, 1998) and, likewise, ethnic minority culture has been regarded as beneficial to economic development and national identity. Ethnic tourism is therefore regarded by the state as an industry crucial to the development of the ethnic community (L. Yang et al., 2008). Although national policies on cultural heritage and tourism experienced different trajectories, the two policies converged after 1978 to protect traditional culture and promote tourism. Deng Xiaoping’s ‘five talks’ on tourism during the period 1978 to 1979 had a profound impact on national policy. Deng said explicitly that ‘there is much to do with tourism [so that we have to] develop it strongly and rapidly. Tourism makes lots of money and it’s fast, ….16 As concluded by the then vice premier Qian Qichen in 2000, these ‘five talks’ clarified the direction, goal and principle of tourism development in China. Tourism was regarded by Deng as not only an economic industry but also a vehicle for the cultivation of socialist spiritual civilisation, all of which are vital to the socialist modernisation in China.17 Directed by Deng’s talk, tourism policies and plans were formed in government agendas. For example, tourism was incorporated into the 7th Five-year Plan of the National Economic and Social Development (1986–1990)18 and tourism was privileged as the prime industry in the tertiary industries in the 9th Five-year Plan of the National Economic and Social Development and the Outline for the Long-term Goals for the Year 2010 in 1996.19 Since the concept of ICH was introduced into China in the early 2000s, ICH has been gradually used a concept not only to protect but also to commodify ethnic and traditional culture and folklore in tourism. The use of ICH as an important cultural resource in the cultural market was pointed out by the state in the 2005 Opinions and was stated later in the LICH in 2011. Guidance on the Joint Promotion of Culture

ICH Protection and ICH Tourism in China  47

and Tourism Development, issued in 2009, is the first national official document proclaiming the development of ICH-based tourism in China. Thus, development of ICH tourism in China has accelerated since the 2010s, especially after 2013 when Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke on the use of cultural heritage for the China of the present. Specifically, in 2013 President Xi proposed that it is important to revitalise cultural heritage (Rang Wenhuayichan Huoqilai) and the following year he pointed to the idea of ‘creative transformation and innovative development of traditional Chinese culture’. In the latest national five-year plan, issued in 2021,20 with regard to the protection of ICH, the development of the tourism industry, the development of culture and tourism, and the development of cultural industries, a better integrative development of ICH and tourism is emphasised, with the aim of achieving broader political, cultural, economic, social and ecological goals. These official discourses indicate that the use of Chinese cultural heritage, including ICH, is not restricted to economic development but applies to the greater cultural and political goal of building a strong socialist cultural country that was proclaimed in the reports of the 18th and 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, in 2012 and 2017 respectively. After the national official discourse on the creative and innovative use of ICH for the present and future, the idea of ‘ICH +’ (ICH plus) has become a popular concept since 2015. Considerable semantic combinations of ICH and other aspects of cultural consumption can be found in official documents, scholarly papers, webpages and new media – for example, ‘ICH + tourism’, ‘ICH + research tour’, ‘ICH + guest house’, ‘ICH + cultural creative industries’ and ‘ICH + performance’.21 At the same time, tourism programmes themed on ICH have been actively planned and operated across the country. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism has proclaimed as ‘good practice’ the integration of ICH and tourism since 2019, including various ICH-based tourism projects in 17 provinces and municipals and one internet ICH travel guide. These good practices concern some of the popular heritage tourism attractions while the local ICH elements are highlighted, such as tours of folklore and architecture in Beijing, tours of ethnic handicrafts and performances in Danzhai, Guizhou province, the experience of the Yi people’s torch festival in Liangshan, Sichuan province, tours of cultural and historic towns in Jinan, Shandong province and Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, and tours of Hakka Tulou World Heritage and ICH in Longyan, Fujian province.22 It can be clearly seen that ICH tourism is an idea that is broad enough to include most of the existing and current use of ICH in the market. In the past, cultural heritage protection and tourism management have been administrated by two segmented governmental organs, the Ministry of Culture and the National Tourism Administration. Since the integration

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of these two organs into the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 2018, the protection and use of ICH has converged at operational level. While this convergence caused an inner contradiction between authenticity and the commodification of ICH in tourism, as observed in the Lijiang case, it also opened possibilities for the inclusive protection and sustainable development of ICH, as well as a rethinking of the notions of ICH, authenticity and commodification. The term ‘ICH tourism’, however, was not seen in China until 2005, when scholars and experts began discussing the use of ICH for tourism development. As we know that the term ICH was constructed on the basis of the existing Chinese concept of ethnic traditional culture and folklore and the imported idea of ICH from UNESCO in early 2000, ICH tourism can be seen as a new idea of tourism that has evolved from existing cultural tourism in China. In fact, Chinese scholars and experts usually look at ICH tourism as a kind of cultural tourism in which ICH is commodified as the tourism resources and attractions (M. Zhang, 2021). Internationally, ‘ICH tourism’ is still a less-defined concept and most of the existing studies on ICH tourism tend to treat ICH tourism more or less the same as cultural tourism or heritage tourism (e.g. McKercher & du Cros, 2002; Timothy, 2021; UNWTO, 2012). Cultural tourism, which roughly covers ICH tourism and heritage tourism, is a term that is defined in various ways (McKercher & du Cros, 2002). This concept can describe those activities in which tourists experience the culture of a place, usually the living traditional culture, or ICH in most cases, as opposed to nature. While heritage tourism generally refers to the tourism of tangible heritage sites, and ethnic tourism generally refers to the tourism of exotic cultural experiences (L. Yang et al., 2008), cultural tourism will cover most of the cultural attractions tourists search for, so that both tangible and intangible heritage can be included. It is reasonable to define ICH tourism as a category of cultural tourism; nevertheless, from a critical approach, I will continue to illustrate in the book that the connotation of ICH tourism is more than a category of cultural tourism. Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, as areas with rich and unique ethnic cultures in China, have drawn attention from both Western scholars and Chinese scholars trained in the West since the 1990s. Swain (1990, 1993; Walsh & Swain, 2004) studied widely ethnic tourism issues in Yunnan based on case studies of the Sani Yi people, Bai people, Dai people, Naxi and Mosuo people in Lugu Lake, since the early 1990s. Oakes studied ethnic tourism related issues in Guizhou in the 1990s (Oakes, 1997, 1998). Ethnic tourism in Xishuangbanna, a Dai-populated area in the south of Yunnan, was investigated by Davis (1999), Cable (2006) and Yang (L. Yang, 2007; L. Yang et al., 2008) and others. Yunnan is a province with abundant and diverse cultural and natural resources. The rich cultural heritage of the ethnic minorities makes it

ICH Protection and ICH Tourism in China  49

outstanding in the tourism market in China. Compared with Tibet and Xinjiang, Yunnan has been granted more freedom to develop its own autonomous tourism policy because conflicts between Yunnan and the central authority have been rare (L. Yang et al., 2008). As described by the then Director of the Yunnan Provincial Tourism Administration Duan Yueqin (Y.Q. Duan, 2015), tourism development in Yunnan experienced five stages. Though tourism was initiated in Yunnan as early as 1978, when the Yunnan Provincial Tourism Affairs Bureau was established, tourism only functioned as a reception service during the first stage (1978–1988). From 1989 to 1995, tourism was privileged as an important economic industry by the provincial government. Directed by Deng Xiaoping’s South Tour Speech in 1992, which accelerated China’s Reform and Opening-up, the Yunnan government also accelerated its tourism development. Specifically, the Conference on Tourism Planning of the Northwest of Yunnan, chaired by the provincial government and held in 1994 in Dali and Lijiang, opened the door for tourism prosperity in Lijiang. In the third stage (1996– 2006), tourism was regarded by the provincial government as one of the four pillar industries in Yunnan, and tourism development, along with ethnic cultural industry, was underscored in a series of government plans. From the fourth (2005–2013) to the fifth (2013–2020) stages, the provincial government planned to upgrade Yunnan from a ‘big tourism province’ to a ‘strong tourism province’. This ambitious tourism policy again converges with ethnic cultural policy in that the government also plans to promote Yunnan from a ‘big ethnic cultural province’ to a ‘strong ethnic cultural province’, which is articulated in the Implementation Opinion on the Construction of the Strong Ethnic Cultural Province of Yunnan in 2008.23 National policies and guidelines have influenced governmental plans and goals at provincial levels to a great extent. Yunnan is no exception. Yunnan has to integrate its regional development into the overall plan of the country. When he visited Yunnan in 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed ‘three propositions’ for the development of Yunnan, one of which is to build Yunnan province as a ‘national demonstration zone for ethnic unity and progress’.24 Thus, cultural, political and social development are significant for ethnic areas in Yunnan where ethnic ICH tourism could serve as a beneficial approach. Later, in 2016, Yunnan Provincial Government listed tourism and cultural industries as one of ‘eight key industries’25 of Yunnan and enhanced support for the integrated development of ethnic culture and tourism. In the latest governmental documents, such as the 14th Five-Year Plan and the Vision for 2035 of Yunnan Province (2021), the development of tourism and cultural industries is highlighted and the goal for the general revenue from tourism and the cultural industries of Yunnan is 2 trillion RMB for 2025.26 Tourism in Yunnan has been growing steadily from the middle 1990s, and particularly in the last decade; nevertheless, industrial development has been greatly impeded by the COVID-19 pandemic since its outbreak

50  Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in China

12000 44.01%

10000 8000

46.46%

29.15% 30.94% 24.01% 26.26%23.11%

11035.2

22.73% 8991.44

6477.03

6000

20.00% 10.00%

-10.00%

4000

0

30.00%

0.00%

4726.25 3281.79 2665.74 2111.24 1702.54 2000 1300.29 1006.83

50.00% 40.00%

29.89%

6922.23

60.00%

-20.00% -41.31%

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

-30.00% -40.00% -50.00%

Total Revenue from Tourism in Yunnan Province (Unit: in 100 million RMB) Rate of Increase

Figure 3.2  Total revenue from tourism and its rate of increase in Yunnan province (2010–2020) (Source: http://www.yn.gov.cn/zwgk/zfxxgkpt/fdzdgknr/tjxx/tjsj/).

in early 2020 (Figure 3.2). In order to save the market, as well as to develop and innovate ICH tourism in Yunnan, Yunnan Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism announced ten ICH-themed tour routes in Yunnan, indicating, connecting and promoting the popular ethnic ICH elements in different areas of Yunnan province.27 Among these, most of the famous ICH elements in Lijiang are highlighted in the routes in the west of Yunnan, such as Naxi ethnic folklore, performances and handicrafts. Notes (1) Part of this chapter has been published in Su, Junjie (2019) Managing intangible cultural heritage in the context of tourism: Chinese officials’ perspectives. Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 18 (2), 164–186. (2) Also translated as Classic of Poetry, Shi Jing is the oldest collection of Chinese poetry. Comprised of 305 works, it is one of the ‘Five Classics’ of Confucianism. (3) This was a social–political movement (1966–1976) activated by then Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong to strengthen communist ideology by purging remnants of capitalist and many traditional Chinese cultures and tangible heritage, denouncing them as ‘bad cultures’. (4) Official illustration of this programme is available at http://www.chinesefolklore. org.cn/ChinaFolkloreSociety/xscz/040520-bhf.htm, retrieved 6 December 2022. (5) This term is still used in the Chinese Law of Protection of Cultural Relics (adopted in 1982 and revised in 2002 and 2007). In Chinese, ‘tangible cultural heritage is called cultural relics (Wenwu) in China’ (X.D. Li, 2002: 1). (6) Historical value is described as having three aspects: values in proving history, verifying history, and complementing history (L. Yuan & J. Gu, 2013: 44).

ICH Protection and ICH Tourism in China  51

(7) Feng Jicai is a writer, artist and social activist in China. He is chairman of the Chinese Folk Literature and Art Society and vice-chairman of the governmentsponsored China Federation of Literary and Art Circles. He is a member of the advisory body, the Counsellors’ Office of the State Council, as well as a member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Since the late 1990s, he has been actively involved in cultural heritage advocacy. He often openly criticises unsympathetic development decisions and projects. (8) See https://www.yn.gov.cn/yngk/gk/201904/t20190403_96251.html, retrieved 17 February 2023. (9) See http://www.whyn.gov.cn/doc/public/view.php?cata=art&id=504, retrieved 7 December 2019. (10) For more information see http://uschinaarts.org/yunnan-province/early-work-in yunnan, retrieved 7 December 2019. (11) See news report Chronicle of Big Cultural Events in Yunnan at http://culture. people.com.cn/GB/22219/16250674.html, retrieved 7 December 2019. (12) See http://yn.xinhuanet.com/gov/2011-07/18/c_13991788_4.htm, retrieved 7 December 2019. (13) See http://www.yn.gov.cn/ywdt/ynyw/202102/t20210210_217071.html, retrieved 20 January 2022. (14) See http://www.mzb.com.cn/zgmzb/html/2013-05/31/content_92244.htm, retrieved 8 December 2019. (15) See the full text at https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%BA%91%E5%8D%97%E7% 9C%81%E6%B0%91%E6%97%8F%E6%B0%91%E9%97%B4%E4%BC% A0%E7%BB%9F%E6%96%87%E5%8C%96%E4%BF%9D%E6%8A%A4%E6% 9D%A1%E4%BE%8B/1924021?fr=aladdin, retrieved 20 February 2023. (16) Deng Xiaoping on Tourism, see original talks in the Guangming Daily (31 March 2000) at http://www.gmw.cn/01gmrb/2000-03/31/GB/03%5E18376%5E0%5EGMA1307.htm, retrieved 8 December 2019. (17) Learn Deng Xiaoping’s Thoughts on the Tourism Development and Promote Chinese Tourism for a Bigger Development, See the original paper in People’s Daily (29 March 2000) at http://www.people.com.cn/GB/channel3/22/20000329/25060. html, retrieved 8 December 2019. (18) See http://www.npc.gov.cn/wxzl/gongbao/2000-12/26/content_5001764.htm, retrieved 8 December 2019. (19) See http://www.npc.gov.cn/wxzl/gongbao/2001-01/02/content_5003506.htm, retrieved 8 December 2019. (20) The 14th five-year plan is available at http://zwgk.mct.gov.cn/zfxxgkml/, retrieved 28 January 2022. (21) See https://www.ihchina.cn/news_1_details/22231.html, retrieved 26 January 2022. (22) See the list for 2020 at http://news.cnr.cn/native/city/20201228/t20201228_ 525376060.shtml; the list for 2019 is available at http://ent.cnr.cn/ylzt/feiyiri/ jujiao/20190609/t20190609_524643842.shtml, retrieved 28 May 2022. (23) See http://www.seac.gov.cn/art/2012/6/1/art_5567_156391.html, retrieved 8 December 2016. (24) See http://www.yn.gov.cn/ztgg/jdbyyzzsjzydfxfyqj/fxpl/202004/t20200413_202343.html, retrieved 28 January 2022. (25) See http://www.yn.gov.cn/ztgg/2020ynszfgzbg/, retrieved 28 January 2022. (26) See http://www.yn.gov.cn/ywdt/ynyw/202102/t20210210_217071.html, retrieved 29 January 2022. The exchange rate between Chinese RMB and British GBP was around 8.4:1 on 18 May 2022. (27) For information on the ten routes see http://dct.yn.gov.cn/xwjj/12965.jhtml, retrieved 29 January 2022.

4 ICH and Tourism in Lijiang

The Naxi and Lijiang

Lijiang municipality, including Gucheng district,1 Yulong Naxi autonomous county, Yongsheng county, Huaping county and Ninglang Yi autonomous county, is located in the northwest of China’s southwest Yunnan province (Figure 4.1). This administrative region borders Diqing Tibetan autonomous prefecture in the north, Nujiang Lisu autonomous prefecture in the west, Dali Bai autonomous prefecture in the south and Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture and Panzhihua City, Sichuan in the east (S.Y. He, 2008a: 2). This is a place with diverse ethnic minorities and the dominant population are the Yi and Naxi people. According to the 6th National Census in 2010, ethnic minorities (such as Yi, Naxi, Lisu, Bai, Pumi and Tibetan, etc.) constituted 56.79% of the total population in Lijiang municipality (1,244,769) and the Naxi ethnic minority, numbering 240,580, constituted 19.33% of the total population, the second biggest group after the Yi ethnic minority.2 Along with urbanisation and social development, this census also revealed that the urban population, which accounted for 27.8% of the total population, increased by 11.45% compared with the figure for the year 2000. Beyond Lijiang municipality, Naxi people also live in neighbouring regions, such as Sichuan province, Tibet, and Shangri-La county to the north of Lijiang. The Naxi people were formed by the fusion of two groups of people (J. Li, 2007): one called ‘Maoniu Yi’ (literally means yak Yi people), who initially lived a nomadic life in the area of the Yellow and Huangshui rivers in the northwest of China in the pre-Qin period (before 221 BC), the other called ‘Sou Ren’ (literally means old man), who lived in the current area of Lijiang. The Maoniu Yi migrated towards the south during the social changes of the pre-Qin period and mixed with the Sou Ren in the present Lijiang area. Nowadays, the different cultures are seen in different Naxi groups in terms of geography. For example, the majority of those people living in the west of the Yangtze River are named ‘Naxi’ while the people living in the east bank are generally called ‘Nari’, officially called ‘Mosuo’. Also, some Naxi people in the north of Lijiang or neighbouring areas prefer to be called ‘Ruanke’ or ‘Bangxi’. 52

ICH and Tourism in Lijiang  53

Figure 4.1  Location of Yunnan province (top) and Lijiang municipality (bottom) (source: http://yunnantravelguide.com/Travel/show.asp?id=2789 and http://www. chinamaps.org/china/citymaps/china-lijiang-map.html).

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In the ethnic identification project undertaken in 1954, most of these groups in Yunnan were officially named Naxi. Traces of human presence, such as human skulls and stone tools dating back to 50,000–100,000 years ago, are found in the area known as Lijiang today and one of these fossils is named ‘Lijiang Man’ (J. Li, 2007: 15). However, local Lijiang people didn’t change their nomadic lives until around AD 1100–1200, when the Lijiang area became an important place for regional agriculture and trade. Li Jie (J. Li, 2007) argued in his book that two factors lie behind Lijiang developing into a political, cultural and economic centre in the northwest of Yunnan. The first was the development of agriculture, which modified previous culture and cultivated advanced culture in Lijiang, and the second was the strategic location of Lijiang, which made it an important entrepot along the route from Han areas in Yunnan to Tibet. The trade in silk, salt and other handicrafts between China (Yunnan, Sichuan and Tibet, etc.) and neighbouring countries (Myanmar, India and Vietnam, etc.) developed during the formation of the Southwest Silk Road in the Western Han dynasty (202 BC–AD 9) (S.H. Song, 1996). Based on this development, the Tea-horse Route was formed between Yunnan and Tibet for the trade of tea produced in Pu’er in the south of Yunnan and horses bred in Tibet in the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) (B.Y. Chen, 2004). Beyond the transportation of daily necessities and trade, which made Lijiang into a crucial strategic location and business centre, the forming of the Tea-horse Route also led to a fusion in the Lijiang area between agricultural culture in Yunnan and the nomadic culture in Tibet. Indeed, this fusion is both an economic and a cultural phenomenon that can be seen in tangible aspects such as architecture and handicrafts as well as in intangible aspects, especially the idea of doing business, living habits and religion (such as Tibetan Buddhism and Bonism) (J. Li, 2007). These ‘hybrid advantages’ finally enabled ‘a new Naxi culture to evolve during the Ming [AD 1368–1644] and Qing [AD 1636–1912] Dynasties’ as part of the process which gradually ‘integrated different groups of people into a unified state’ (J. Li, 2007: 20). As argued in Li’s (2007) book, in addition to exchanges among the neighbouring ethnic minorities, the relationship between the Han culture in central China and the Naxi is another major factor behind the development of the Naxi culture. The Naxi community was generally regarded as a weaker power compared with its northern neighbour Tibet (the Tibetans) and its southern neighbour Dali (the Bai) during the Tang (AD 618–907) and Song (AD 960–1279) dynasties. The local Naxi governor at that time had to rely on the superior power – usually the central government – to enhance its governance of Lijiang. Therefore, the Lijiang governor surrendered to Kublai Khan3 in 1253 at which time Lijiang was subsumed into the territory of the Yuan dynasty (AD 1271– 1368). Meanwhile, the central government used the power of local Naxi

ICH and Tourism in Lijiang  55

leaders to counterbalance the aggressive power of Tibet. This political conspiracy was intensified during the Ming dynasty (AD 1368–1644) when the local Mu governor was heavily supported by the central government to restrict Tibet. The result of these political exchanges was cultural exchange between traditional Naxi culture and the Han culture, especially Confucianism. Li (J. Li, 2007) classified the social cultural transformation into two stages in Lijiang. The first occurred during the Yuan and Ming period, especially under the Ming dynasty when the Han culture was introduced in a top-down manner, and the second was during the Qing dynasty when the Han culture/Confucianism dominated Naxi culture in Lijiang with the result that the ‘real traditional Naxi culture retreated to the remote areas’ (2007: 73). The Qing dynasty was also the time when a large number of Han people, especially businessmen, emigrated to Lijiang (J. Li, 2007). Along with the economic, cultural and political development of Naxi society, Dayan Town, also known as the Old Town of Lijiang, in the Gucheng district, emerged during the Yuan and Ming period and thrived during the Qing dynasty (J. Li, 2007: 85). The Old Town of Lijiang, or the Dayan Old Town, is usually said4 to have been built in the late Song and the early Yuan dynasties (almost 800 years ago). Dayan Town initially evolved as a regional political centre, which was established by the local ruler as a governance centre in the late Song dynasty (J. Li, 2007). In AD 1276 Dayan Town was designated as the administrative centre by the Yuan central government, and it has been the political centre of Lijiang ever since (X.L. Zong, 2006). Given its strategic location, the distribution of ethnic people and the economic development of Naxi society (J. Li, 2007), especially trade and business along the Tea-horse Route, Dayan Town has enjoyed almost constant economic prosperity including during the period of the Second World War when the international logistic transportation line from central China to India passed Lijiang (X.L. Zong, 2006). Dayan Town covers 3.8 square kilometres and its population in 2016 was 25,000 people.5 The layout of Dayan Town is well adapted to the local geography, including location, landform, orientation, climate, water system and so on (X.L. Zong, 2006), so it is regarded as following the traditional principle of conforming to nature. The town, located in the centre of a basin, is embraced by mountains which make it look like a large ink stone. This metaphor can be seen in the good match of the town and the water, which is esteemed as the soul of the town. The Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, the highest point of Lijiang located 20 kilometres to the north of Dayan, and the Black Dragon Pond, a spring beside the Dayan Town, provide Lijiang with the water resources to support daily life as well as beautifying the townscape. Compared with other traditional ancient cities in China, such as Pingyao,6 Lijiang

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Photo 4.1  The streetscape of Dayan Town in Lijiang (author photograph, 2014).

is special not only because of these characteristics but also for other reasons. The first of these, according to the local government,7 is its rich fusion of the ethnic elements of Naxi, Han, Bai, Yi and Tibetan in the town planning, streetscape and individual architecture, which resulted in its listing as one of China’s National Famous Historic and Cultural Cities8 in 1986. The second is that Dayan does not conform to the rigorous Chinese traditional city planning regulations but was built with no city walls and no regular street layout (Photo 4.1). This combination of a well-proportionated townscape and ethnic hybrid architectural style is rarely seen in present-day China and this it is regarded as the achievement of the Naxi people with their understanding of the relationship between humans and nature. A third reason for Lijiang being regarded as special is the intangible cultural heritage of Naxi and other ethnic peoples, as manifested in the arts, literature and handicraft in the town, which adds to its uniqueness. In addition to Dayan Town, the Baisha and Shuhe clusters are components of the Old Town of Lijiang World Heritage Property. The Baisha buildings cluster is located 8 kilometres to the north of Dayan. It is the place where the power of the local Mu family emerged: they built Baisha into a political, economic and cultural centre during the Song and Yuan periods (10th–14th centuries AD) before moving their Mu governance into Dayan in the early Ming dynasty (S.Y. He, 2011). The Shuhe building cluster is situated 4 kilometres to the northwest of Dayan and it used to be a busy trading centre along the Tea-horse Route. Shuhe

ICH and Tourism in Lijiang  57

is larger than Baisha and smaller than Dayan. However, its layout is more like Dayan than Baisha. Heritage Management in Lijiang

Though formal management of the tangible heritage, mainly the Old Town of Lijiang, was undertaken by local administrative agencies, it is the village rules and religious belief system followed by the residents that maintained the infrastructure and environment of the area before 1912. Naxi people believe in the Dongba religion in which the ‘Shu’ god, who governs nature, is a half-blood brother of a human. Naxi people, then, regard humans and nature as having the same origin, so that there is a strong belief that humans should respect nature, and the living environment as well. The regulations didn’t necessarily concern the cultural aspect of the infrastructure until 1949, when the local county government made a decision to ‘use the Old Town, and develop a new town’ (S.Y. He, 2011: 106). Afterwards, the protection regulations on tangible heritage were dominated by the department of planning and construction, as in the first Overall Planning of Lijiang in which the principle of ‘preserve the Old Town, and develop the New Town’ was formally confirmed in 1958 (S.Y. He, 2011: 106). From 1982, the local government initiated application for National Famous Historic and Cultural City status, which was granted in 1986. This year is crucial for Lijiang’s future in that the then Yunnan governor, He Zhiqiang,9 who was a Naxi, realised the heritage value of Lijiang and issued a document to urge the Lijiang government to protect the Old Town. Thus, in 1987 the Conservation Planning of the Famous Historic Cultural City Lijiang was drafted, and the Interim Procedures for the Protection of the Lijiang Naxi Autonomous County Ancient City was enacted in 1988. At the Tourism Planning of the Northwest of Yunnan Conference held in 1994, Governor He Zhiqiang gave the instruction that the government should ‘accelerate the progress of applying Lijiang Old Town and the Three Parallel Rivers10 for World Heritage inscription’.11 Consequently, nomination was prepared in 1995. In this dossier, the government indicated its holistic protection of Lijiang, which included the architecture, roads, water, bridge, and other intangible heritages such as the ‘history and culture with Naxi characteristics, human landscape and Naxi customs and habits’ (S.Y. He, 2011: 108). However, a devastating magnitude 7.0 earthquake shook Lijiang on 3 February 1996 in which 20% of the houses in the Old Town and nearby areas were destroyed and 309 people died. This was a difficult time for Lijiang but, with great effort from the Chinese government, the local people and UNESCO, reconstruction works were undertaken very rapidly and finally Lijiang was nominated as a World Cultural Heritage Property on 3 December 1997 at the 21st meeting of the World Heritage

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Committee in Italy. Lijiang was inscribed on the basis of cultural criteria (ii), (iv) and (v)12 whereby UNESCO described Lijiang as:13 The Old Town of Lijiang, which is perfectly adapted to the uneven topography of this key commercial and strategic site, has retained a historic townscape of high quality and authenticity. Its architecture is noteworthy for the blending of elements from several cultures that have come together over many centuries. Lijiang also possesses an ancient water-supply system of great complexity and ingenuity that still functions effectively today.

It is clear here that the Old Town of Lijiang was recognised for its townscape, architecture and special land and water usage, while the intangible values, along with other ICH inherited by the community beyond the Old Town of Lijiang, are not equally recognised. This explains why the administrative system of Dayan is subject to the construction and cultural relics departments, while intangible matters are dealt with by another lineage, the Department of Culture and Tourism, as illustrated earlier. Before 2002 Dayan Town was administrated by segmented governmental agencies. For instance, the Construction Bureau was established in 1995 for the infrastructure while the Lijiang Cultural Bureau was responsible for the protected tangible heritage. In 1998, Gucheng (meaning Old Town) Management Station was set to administrate the environment, and the Old Town Protection Management Committee was launched in 2000 to coordinate the managerial issues within the Old Town. The administration of Dayan was unified by the establishment of the World Heritage Old Town of Lijiang Protection and Management Committee at the municipal level in 2002. This was later re-organised as the World Heritage Old Town of Lijiang Protection and Management Bureau (the LPMB) in 2005, which is now the direct administrator of the Old Town of Lijiang. The main duties of the LPMB are:14 (1) Management of the Old Town of Lijiang with the enforcement of the UNESCO’s Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (1972), Protection Ordinance on the Old Town of Lijiang of Yunnan Province (2006) and Administrative Measures on the World Cultural Heritage issued by the Ministry of Culture in 2006. (2) Communication with domestic (such as the SACH) and international (such as UNESCO) cultural heritage managerial agencies. (3) Undertaking academic studies and projects on the tangible and intangible heritage (such as the traditional culture) (4) Administration of tourism, business, investment and other infrastructural issues with the granted administrative powers within the Old Town of Lijiang.

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The LPMB mainly undertakes management of tangible heritage protection, whose aim is to ensure the ‘authenticity and integrity of the Outstanding Universal Value’ (S.Y. He, 2011: 112). This is the result of both the tangible heritage administration tradition in Lijiang and China generally and of the influence of UNESCO on China and the domestic heritage agency the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH). For example, in the World Heritage Committee Decisions (32 COM 7B.67),15 the Chinese government was requested, in 2008, to ‘strengthen the capacity of the LPMB to implement and coordinate more effectively these planning infinitives’. The Heritage Monitoring Centre was quickly established in the same year to liaise with the World Heritage Centre and implement and strengthen the monitoring and protection requested by the World Heritage Committee (S.Y. He, 2011: 113). However, the ICH located in the Old Town of Lijiang (Dayan, Shuhe and Baisha) is on the LPMB’s agenda. At the request of the World Heritage Committee Decisions (32 COM 7B.67) in 2008, Lijiang was required in the same year to prepare a draft Statement of Outstanding Universal Value which should include the ‘relationship and social significance between the tangible heritage and intangible heritage values’.16 Because of this, the LPMB carried out its Research on Outstanding Universal Value of World Cultural Heritage Old Town of Lijiang (S.Y. He, 2011) in which it was recognised that ‘tangible and intangible cultural heritage are two important components of the Outstanding Universal Value of the Lijiang Old Town’ (S.Y. He, 2011: 41). In the Retrospective Statement of Outstanding Universal Value, in terms of criterion (v) it is stated that ‘being an important and traditional home habitation of Naxi, the Old Town of Lijiang is a syntaxic city culture landscape that combines folk buildings, religious culture, traditional customs and residents life’; in terms of authenticity and integrity, ‘architectures and actual life style of residents in the Old Town have truly witnessed change and development of history, culture and society of Naxi and other ethnics’ (S.Y. He, 2011: 158). Restricted to its aim and duties, the LPMB does not fully administrate the ICH in Lijiang. ICH in Lijiang is generally administrated within the Lijiang Cultural Bureau, which is a local agency of the national ICH administration. Restrictions on staffing, however, means that there is no independent ICH office at the Lijiang municipal level. Instead, both ICH and tangible heritage are administrated by the Section of Cultural Heritage.17 Under the direction of this section, the Lijiang Municipal ICH Protection Centre (henceforth the Lijiang ICH Centre) was established in 2009 with major staff coming from the existing Lijiang Municipal Cultural Centre (the Lijiang Cultural Centre). In 2012, the ICH Protection Centre at county level was established in the Gucheng district and Yulong county, while ICH administration in other regions of Lijiang (Yongsheng, Huaping and Ninglang) was still managed by the staff in the county cultural bureau and its affiliated

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county cultural centre. Compared with other regions in China, the ICH administration in Gucheng and Yulong counties is complete in that these two counties have established the four-level ICH administrative agencies, namely national, provincial, municipal and county with an independent institution (the ICH Centre), designated staff and allocated funds. This is also the reason why Lijiang is regarded as a good case for study, because the ICH administrative system in Lijiang exemplifies the characteristics of the ICH system in China. The Lijiang ICH Protection Centre functions as the end of the national ICH administrative system, so it implements the ICH discourse at the local level. For example, the duties of the Lijiang ICH Protection Centre are to:18 Implement the national, provincial laws and regulations on ICH, plan the ICH protection in Lijiang, organise the investigation, application, assessment and listing of ICH elements, carry out studies and projects of ICH at municipal level, keep the documents of ICH and disseminate ICH to the public.

Also, restricted by tenuous staffing, administrative resources and funds, the ICH centres in Lijiang at the municipal and county levels largely rely on the staff and resources of the pre-existing cultural centres in Lijiang that were established in the 1960s. The ICH Centre is therefore administered by the same leadership of the Cultural Centre. For example, among four designated staff members working in the Lijiang ICH Protection Centre, two staff members are permanent workers in the Lijiang Cultural Centre and the other two were newly recruited in recent years. From my introduction to the staff and my interviews with them, I noticed that three of them are specialists in ‘arts and ethnic culture studies’, which is similar to the majority of the staff in the Lijiang Cultural Centre; the other member is a sociology graduate. A staff member in the Lijiang ICH Centre (interviewee X, 2014) told me that in the cultural centres in the counties – such as Huaping county, Lijiang, where the ICH Centre is not established – staff lack knowledge of ICH and so they are unable to write an accurate ICH document. Such a situation is common in China, firstly because China lacks professional ICH staff, especially at the local level, and secondly the ICH work is largely built on the existing ethnic culture or folklore work. This situation suggests that governmental agencies at the local level which implement the national AHD are immature and weak. Thus, one can see that in China the ICH safeguarding work is linked to ethnic traditional and folk culture protection work. In Lijiang, government protection of ICH dates back to the late 1990s when the US-funded folk artist programme was initiated across Yunnan. The ICH Centre at local county level has undertaken most of the investigation for

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the government. According to the statistics19 of the Lijiang ICH Centre, from 1998 to 2010, 1,547 investigators were sent out to interview as many as 4,014 people in 788 villages, on which the current ICH inventory and list was established. Lijiang has rich ICH elements. According to the latest investigation,20 as of April, 2022, there are 852 ICH elements listed at the national, provincial, municipal and county levels in Lijiang. Among these, there are 8 national listed elements21 (including Naxi Dongba painting, Naxi Remeicuo dance, Naxi Baishaxiyue music, Naxi Sanduo Festival, and Naxi Children’s Folk), 39 provincial listed elements (including Naxi Dongba dance, Naxi Dongba scriptwriting art, the Naxi traditional wedding custom, the Shu God worship custom, Naxi traditional costume, Naxi Baba pastrymaking craft, Naxi traditional paper-making craft, Naxi copper-making craft and Naxi Dongjing music), and a large number of municipal and county listed elements (including Naxi traditional silver-making craft, Naxi leather-making craft, Lijiang jidou bean jelly-making craft, Lijiang wood-carving craft, Dongba chanting, and Naxi heaven worship rite). The government regards the systematic investigation, documentation, recognition and listing of ICH at four levels as the symbol of the establishment of ‘planned, scientific and legal management’.22 In this way, the national ICH AHD has been implemented through its administrative agencies at the local level. Among these works, protection of the representative ICH inheritors is regarded as the ‘core of the ICH protection’.23 According to information from Lijiang ICH Protection Centre,24 the administration of inheritors includes investigation, bottom-up recommendation and application, review by the Committee of Experts, verification by the cultural and ethnic affairs agencies, and approval and nomination by the government. This process follows the basic procedures of recognition/authentication of both the ICH element and representative inheritors at the national level. However, one difference we might expect is a difference in recognition result between the local and higher levels. This is because the official players involved in these processes in Lijiang, including the governmental officials and bureaucratic experts, are generally part of the community (mainly the Naxi) while their counterparts at higher levels, such as in Kunming and Beijing, are not necessarily connected to the Naxi community. In practice, the Lijiang government enacted Interim Procedures of the Subsidy for the Lijiang Municipal Representative ICH Inheritors25 to subsidise the listed ICH inheritors at Lijiang municipal level, so that these inheritors can receive as much as RMB 2,400 per person per year. According to this interim procedure, this subsidy can only be used by the inheritor for transmission, training, literature studies, interpretation and academic exchange, and the inheritors are required to present their annual review of the transmission to secure the subsidy for the following

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year. It is also stipulated that those who ‘engage with business activities’ or do not transmit ICH because of physical or other reasons cannot be funded. Therefore, the government only subsidises those practices that are engaged with by the inheritors for the values that are recognised by the above-mentioned processes. The legal ICH protection in Lijiang is noticeable. As boasted in a news report,26 Lijiang is the first county in China to enact local legal regulations to manage its World Heritage site. Early regulations are titled to protect the ethnic traditional culture and folklore, such as the Protection Ordinance on Dongba Culture in Lijiang Naxi Autonomous Region of Yunnan Province in 2001, which was later revised as the Protection Ordinance on Naxi Dongba Culture of Yunnan Province in 2006 (revised in 2020), Protection and Management Measures on the Naxi Folk Music in Lijiang Gucheng District in 2004, and the Protection Ordinance on the Old Town of Lijiang of Yunnan Province in 2006. It can be seen that some forms of ICH in Lijiang, such as Dongba culture and Naxi folk music, are protected simultaneously by legal instruments at the international, national, provincial and local levels. Where the above-mentioned management of tangible and intangible heritage in Lijiang is concerned, it is worth pointing out a number of issues. The first is that tangible cultural heritage within the Old Town of Lijiang (i.e. Dayan, Shuhe and Baisha) is administrated by the LPMB according to the Protection Ordinance on the Old Town of Lijiang, while intangible heritage in Lijiang is generally administrated by the cultural bureaus at appropriate levels. The second issue is that there are tensions, noticeable in the national and provincial regulations, between safeguarding and economic uses of ICH, which also appear in the local regulations. For example, in the Protection Ordinance on Naxi Dongba Culture of Yunnan Province in 2006 and 2020, the ‘original form and connotation’ of Dongba culture is protected on the one hand while, on the other hand, Dongba culture is encouraged to develop cultural industry. In the Protection and Management Measures on the Naxi Folk Music in Lijiang Gucheng District, it is also noticed that when the expressions of authenticity and ‘original form of Naxi folk music’ occur, the use and development of the music for cultural industry is also encouraged. In a word, the tension between authentic protection and commodification of ICH still exists in the local ICH discourse. These issues will be discussed further in the case studies. If we compare the LPMB and the Lijiang ICH Protection Centre, we also notice that their administration focuses on different aspects of cultural heritage in Lijiang. In general, the LPMB, as a local government agency facilitated by SACH, the Lijiang government and UNESCO, manages the tangible heritage of the Old Town of Lijiang, which is central to the Outstanding Universal Value status. Lijiang ICH Centre, however, as a governmental agency at the lowest level

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directed by the Lijiang Culture and Tourism Bureau, manages the ICH of Lijiang municipality, based on its previous protection system of ethnic traditional culture and folklore. The segmentation of tangible and intangible is obvious in the administration of heritage in China, and officials from both the LPMB and the Lijiang ICH Centre complained that it is not good to divide the protection of heritage into tangible and intangible (interviewees officials J and X, 2014). Although the LPMB and the Lijiang Culture and Tourism Bureau are of the same administrative rank in Lijiang, their professionalism is regarded differently. For example, officials at the LPMB have complained that the ICH Centre is more bureaucratic and less professional. One possible reason is that the LPMB is working with the World Heritage Centre and their work is legitimated somehow by the international heritage standard. However, as staff (interviewee X, 2013) at the ICH Centre said, they do not have much knowledge about the international ICH safeguarding work and have no connection with international organisations such as UNESCO. Former Chinese Cultural Minister Cai Wu (Cai, 2011) claimed that the previous protection on ethnic, folk and traditional culture was internationalised a decade ago by placing these organisations into the ICH protection system. Whether or not this strategy was successful still needs to be examined, however, in order to understand to what extent the internationalisation of Chinese ICH management proceeds through the national system in a top-down manner. Heritage Tourism Development in Lijiang

At one stage, tourism in Lijiang lagged behind that in Xishuangbanna, Dali and Shilin (the Stone Forest in Kunming27) in Yunnan. However, in the 1980s tourism was initiated in Lijiang and by the late 1990s it had surpassed its rivals (G.Q. Yang, 2011). The interaction between heritage and tourism is at the centre of this successful heritage tourism development in Lijiang, so that the ‘win-win’ combination of cultural heritage protection and tourism development is popularly called the Lijiang Model by the national official media.28 The tourism miracle in Lijiang does not merely reflect an economic achievement, it also reflects the dramatic comprehensive transformation of a Chinese county from an ‘isolated, backward and impoverished’ periphery of China to a ‘famous world-class cultural tourism city’.29 At the early stage of China’s Reform and Opening-up, Lijiang was still an impoverished society with low economic development and living standards and it relied heavily on traditional agriculture and logging, which was not sufficient to fix the financial deficit (Na & Li, 2009). Meanwhile, many people struggled to achieve a living under the slashand-burn cultivation system. As described by Yang (G.Q. Yang, 2011), cultural protection preceded tourism development in Lijiang. Dongba

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culture studies resumed in 1979, and protection of the physical Old Town of Lijiang began in the 1980s. Once again, the synergy of experts and officials played a crucial role. At the beginning, destruction of the traditional townscape of the Old Town with new concrete buildings was criticised by Zhu Liangwen, a professor of architecture at Kunming University of Science and Technology and by delegates from Carnegie Mellon University in the US. This criticism caught the attention of then Yunnan governor He Zhiqiang, a Naxi, who asked the Lijiang government to provide strict protection for the town. Lijiang was opened to international tourists in 1985, from which time the local government realised the prosperous role of tourism. A milestone in the Lijiang tourism history was the Conference on Tourism Planning of the Northwest of Yunnan held in Dali and Lijiang in October 1994 when a blueprint for ‘Developing Dali, Exploiting Lijiang, Initiating Diqin and Mobilising Nujiang’ was proposed for tourism development in the northwest of Yunnan (G.Q. Yang, 2011: 146). The convenor, Naxi governor He Zhiqiang, encouraged Lijiang to bid for World Cultural Heritage status for Lijiang Old Town and World Natural Heritage status for the Three Parallel Rivers (part of which is in the Lijiang area); more measures for protection of the Old Town were also suggested. Later, in the 1990s, Vice Premier Zhu Rongji and President Jiang Zeming visited Lijiang to encourage the progress of cultural tourism. From the 1980s to the late 1990s, several cultural tourism products appeared and enjoyed increasing economic and social benefits, such as the performance by the Dayan Naxi Ancient Music Association, which began in 1987, and the Dongba Cultural and Artistic Festival held in 1999, which accompanied the World Horticultural Exposition in Kunming in the same year. From the beginning of the new millennium, Lijiang set its goal as building itself into a World Boutique Tourism Destination. Indeed, international recognition is greatly acknowledged by both Lijiang and China. Lijiang officials’ publications (S.Y. He, 2011; G.Q. Yang, 2011) acknowledge that the listing of Lijiang as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1997 promoted tourism noticeably and that Lijiang has progressed towards an international profile since 2000. Cultural reform progressed along with economic reform in Lijiang. Yang attributed part of the tourism success to the innovative awareness of the local officials, who realised in the 1990s that ‘culture is treasure’ and ‘culture is a practical productivity’ (G.Q. Yang, 2011: 37). This meant that culture came to be regarded as something that was not metaphysical but was as a tangible resource; one that the government, entrepreneurs and local people could engage with to generate practical economic and material benefits in the context of the market economy since China’s Open Policy. The first group of cultural products to appear on the market during the cultural reform comprised those initiated by private capital, such as the performance of the Dayan Naxi Ancient Music Association led by

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Naxi elite Xuan Ke in 1987 and many private handicraft businesses in the Old Town. In 2002, the first government-sponsored cultural product was initiated between Lijiang and Shenzhen City with the launch of the commercial music and dance performance Mountain River Show (Lishui Jinsha), which saved the almost bankrupt Lijiang Naxi Song and Dance Troupe.30 Li Changchun, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China, praised the cultural industry initiatives during his visit to Lijiang in 2003 and later Lijiang was nominated as one of the pilot areas for a national cultural system reform programme. In 2011, Lijiang was recognised by the central government as one of the 12 national advanced areas in terms of cultural system reform.31 Cultural reform is also seen in the governmental structure. For example, the Lijiang Old Town Management Company was established as a subordinate body of the LPMB in 2002. One organ within this company, the Ethnic Cultural Industry Company, is designated to operate the cultural tourism programmes in the Old Town. This means that the government can regulate and use cultural heritage for the best economic reward (Y.J. Zhu, 2013). Recently, this trend has also been noted from the tourism side. For instance, the Lijiang Tourism Bureau was reformed as Lijiang Tourism Development Committee in 2015,32 so as to overcome the difficulty in interorganisational coordination between different sectors, which is observed in the conventional administrative system in Lijiang (D. Wang & J. Ap, 2013). Lijiang provides a typical example of the implications of China’s Reform and Opening-up that began in 1978. Lijiang’s achievement can be examined from the perspective of economy, culture, politics and social life and how these sectors interact with each other under the influence of government, business, local people, scholars, UNESCO and tourists. The most noticeable success is the economic development, which can be seen from the statistics. For example, GDP in Lijiang increased dramatically – 50.1 times – from RMB 166 million in 1978 to 8.48 billion in 2007 at an annual rate of 14.0% (Na & Li, 2009: 12). Tourism is at the centre of this economy, accounting for more than 70% of the revenue. Tourism provided more than 100,000 jobs in 2007, effectively helping to adjust the economic structure of Lijiang, overcoming the decrease in primary industry (e.g. agriculture and logging) and anchoring the boom in tertiary industry (e.g. tourism and related cultural production) (Na & Li, 2009: 13). It can be clearly seen from the statistics (Figure 4.2) that mass tourism in Lijiang took off in 1995, shortly after the Conference on Tourism Planning of the Northwest of Yunnan held in Dali and Lijiang in 1994. After a steady development, tourism in Lijiang was affected by the SARS virus in 2003. Later, the tourism economy surged in Lijiang, in particular during the 2010s, until it was dramatically disrupted by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. Tourism not only powerfully boosts the local economy: it also transforms other aspects of the society. The improvement in local people’s

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Figure 4.2  Statistics of tourism visits and revenue in Lijiang (1990–2020) (Source: G.Q. Yang (2011: 69) and http://www.tjcn.org/tjgb/).

living conditions and social undertakings are identified as social achievements that are recognised by the local government (Na & Li, 2009). Specifically, compared with 1978, when most Lijiang urban residents lived in poverty, the year 2007 witnessed a dramatic drop in the Engel coefficient,33 from 70% to 51.4%, which means that the urban dwellers enjoyed better living conditions (Na & Li, 2009: 14). Medical care, education, public services, welfare and infrastructure also developed noticeably. Indeed, tourism plays a crucial role in the progress of modernisation through the elimination of poverty in China’s poor periphery such as Yunnan (L. Yang et al., 2008). Tourism development in ethnic minority areas, therefore, is encouraged by the government as a suitable measure, or one of the best measures, for comprehensive social development, as can be seen in the 14th Five-year Plan (2021-2025) and the Outline of the Vision for 2035 of Yunnan Province. Notes (1) Gucheng means old city. Gucheng district is the political, economic and cultural centre of Lijiang municipality and it is the location of the World Heritage Old Town of Lijiang. (2) See http://www.cnstats.org/rkpc/201112/ljs-2010-gpofa.html, retrieved 20 February 2023. (3) Kublai Khan (AD 1215–1294), Mongolian, founder of Yuan Dynasty (AD 1271– 1368) in China.

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(4) See http://www.ljgucheng.gov.cn/xljgcq/c101200/202109/9bf5ce256b92420797f937c9cf16c2aa.shtml, retrieved 20 February 2023., and the government document (S. Y. He, 2008a). (5) See http://www.ljgucheng.gov.cn/xljgcq/c101200/202109/9bf5ce256b92420797f937c9cf16c2aa.shtml, retrieved 20 February 2023. (6) The ancient city of Pingyao, founded in the 14th century in central Shanxi province, China, was inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1997 because of its representation of the Chinese Han people’s cities in the Ming and Qing dynasties. See http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/812, retrieved 8 December 2016. (7) See http://www.gov.cn/test/2006-03/28/content_238399.htm, retrieved18 February 2023. (8) According to the Chinese Law of Protection of Cultural Relics, a Famous Historic Cultural City means a city that preserves rich cultural heritage (cultural relics) and has significant historic, cultural and revolutionary values. There are 134 such cities as of 2023. See http://www.gov.cn/test/2006-03/28/content_238399.htm, retrieved 18 February 2023. (9) He Zhiqiang was born in Shuhe village, Lijiang, in 1934 and died in 2007. He was a geological engineer and worked in Yunnan provincial government from 1983 to 1998. (10) The Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Areas was inscribed as World Natural Heritage in 2003. (11) See http://www.wenlvnews.com/p/606544.html, retrieved 18 February 2023. (12) To be included on the World Heritage List, sites must be of Outstanding Universal Value and meet at least one of 10 selection criteria, which can be found at http:// whc.unesco.org/en/criteria/, retrieved 8 December 2016. (13) See http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/811/, retrieved 8 December 2016. (14) See the detailed duties at http://www.lijiang.gov.cn//ljsrmzf/c102586/202106/ 74a7389ed8e342659eab6c3168aa326b.shtml, retrieved 20 February 2023. (15) See http://whc.unesco.org/en/decisions/1674, retrieved 8 December 2016. (16) See http://whc.unesco.org/en/soc/847, retrieved 8 December 2016. (17) Before 2015 this section was called the Section of Cultural Relics Management. (18) Publicised post of the Lijiang ICH Protection Centre. (19) Unpublished official data. (20) See https://mzzj.yn.gov.cn/gzdt/dfdt/202204/t20220419_76121.html, retrieved 16 May 2022. (21) The English name ‘elements’ is translated literally by the author according to the official Chinese name. (22) Drawn from the publicised poster of the Lijiang ICH Protection Centre during fieldwork in April 2014. (23) Ibid. (24) Ibid. (25) Ibid. (26) See http://news.lijiang.gov.cn/news/article/2013-01/07/content_77830.htm, retrieved 8 December 2016. (27) The Stone Forest in Kunming, along with those in Guizhou, Guangxi and Chongqing, was listed on UNESCO’s World Natural Heritage in 2007. See http:// whc.unesco.org/en/list/1248, retrieved 8 December 2016. (28) Typical news reports include: Gaoyuan Mingzhu Zai Fang Yicai: Investigation on the economic social development in Lijiang, Yunnan, 1 December 2008; People’s Daily, see http://news.cctv.com/china/20081130/101533.shtml; Lijiang Model: Cultural brand aggregates the core competence of city, 27 February 2012; Guangming Daily, see https://epaper.gmw.cn/gmrb/html/2012-02/27/nw.D110000gmrb_20120227_1-04.htm, retrieved 18 February 2023. (29) Gaoyuan Mingzhu Zai Fang Yicai: Investigation on the economic social development in Lijiang, Yunnan, 1 December, 2008, People’s Daily, see http://news.cctv.com/ china/20081130/101533.shtml, retrieved 18 February 2023.

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(30) This is a state-sponsored organisation established in the 1950s under a slightly changed name until the 1990s. Diverse ethnic groups, Han Chinese and Western instruments were involved in organised performances to promote national identity and ethnic unity while recognising the diverse ethnic cultures in Lijiang. This troupe acted as a vehicle for government cultural propaganda (Rees, 1995). (31) News report at http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/dfpd/whtzgg/2010-08/11/content_ 11137771.htm, retrieved 18 February 2023. (32) See http://travel.cctv.com/2017/01/26/ARTIvHW7uEXFgwG7nbfKZUVW170126.shtml, retrieved 18 February 2023. (33) The Engel Coefficient is an index that indicates the proportion of the individual/ family income spent on food. As income increases, this proportion will decrease even if the actual food expenditure rises. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN, a figure of 59% or higher is a sign of poverty.

5 Typical ICH Tourism Programmes in Lijiang

The protection of traditional culture and the promotion of tourism have developed hand in hand in Lijiang since the late 1980s, providing a stable context within which ICH has evolved continuously since its revival after the Cultural Revolution. In order to examine the relationship between ICH safeguarding and tourism development from a critical approach, I shall examine two typical ICH practices: firstly, forms of ICH for which stakeholders hold diverse, evolving or even conflicting understandings in terms of value, authenticity, integrity and continuity; and secondly, forms of ICH that are practised and transmitted by the same practitioner (or a practising group) but in diverse and stable situations, preferably in contexts that have observably less commodified (usually in the community) and observably more commodified (usually in the tourism market) status. In other words, forms of ICH that experience stable and ongoing change both chronically and synchronically can best illustrate ICH-making in tourism. In line with these thresholds, four cases of ICH tourism in Lijiang – namely Dongba culture, Naxi folk music, handicraft and culinary skills – are specifically examined in this book. These four cases are usually regarded by the government as representative of Naxi ICH and they are also the most marketable cultural products in the tourism market. Furthermore, these cases have all experienced change both chronically and synchronically. Dongba Culture

Of the four cases, Dongba culture can be seen as the most representative one. The term Dongba can refer to two concepts nowadays, namely the traditional Naxi religion and the priests who perform the religious activities. In order to avoid misunderstanding, I use the terms Dongba(s) or Dongba priest to refer to a person who practises Dongba religious activities. In brief, the majority of the Naxi community took part in Dongba traditional religious practices before the early 20th century. Such practices declined dramatically after 1949 and were 69

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suppressed ruthlessly during the Cultural Revolution. They were only allowed to thrive after the 1980s with the new name Dongba culture. In this section, I will describe how Dongba culture is interpreted in various situations in Lijiang today, with cases of Dongba priests in tourism contexts and in non-tourism contexts. The traditional basis of Dongba religion is the belief that there is a multitude of immortal spirits residing in both nature and humans. The focus of the Dongba religion, therefore, is to regulate the relationship between these spirits in order to balance the relationship between humans and nature. Based on animism, Naxi people worship the gods of nature, ghosts and ancestors through various ritual practices that are related to almost every aspect of Naxi people’s life, such as sacrifices, marriage, funerals, festivals, divination, healing and so on (Naxizu Jianshi, 2008). Naxi people believe that humans and the nature god Shu, an embodiment of all spirits residing in nature, are brothers from the same mother but different fathers. Therefore, it is one of the characteristics of Naxi cosmology and philosophy that humans and nature have the same origin, so that humans should respect and live in harmony with nature (F.Q. Yang, 2012b). Though Dongba religious practices have existed for a long time, it is not regarded as an institutional religion because Dongba religion does not have an established organisation, temple, canon and full-time specialists (F.Q. Yang & Z.H. Yang, 2010). Naxi people believe there are good and bad spirits in the world. Thus, from time to time a ritual practice is performed to regulate these spirits and powers in order to benefit people. Dongbas, as the Naxi priests, are the protagonists of the Dongba religion who undertake the ritual mediation between humans and the spirits (Arcones, 2012). They also acquire a profound knowledge of Dongba ritual scripts which record many aspects of Naxi society, thus becoming well-rounded experts in literature, medicine, handicraft, farming, architecture, music and fine art. During their religious activities, Dongbas make ritualistic handicrafts, chant the Dongba scripts and sometimes dance. Dongba scripts are written in Dongba pictographic characters, which are renowned as the only living pictography in the world (Lijiang Prefectural Administration, 2002), and the Ancient Naxi Dongba Literature Manuscripts were inscribed in the Memory of the World Register in 2003 by UNESCO.1 Dongba priests are therefore regarded as important inheritors of Naxi traditional culture. However, except when being invited by people to engage in religious practices, Dongbas work as normal people like other Naxi. Dongba priests are all male, usually learning Dongba practices from their fathers. In order to direct Dongba rituals independently, traditionally the Dongbas must be conferred with the supernatural powers (rherq in Naxi and Weilin or Weili in Chinese) by senior Dongbas in the Zhizai (rherq zail in Naxi, meaning conferring

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the power) ceremony so as to be qualified (F.Q. Yang, 2011). After the Zhizai ceremony, the Dongba practitioners can be formally recognised as Dongba priests by both fellow Dongbas and the Naxi community. The Bureaucratisation of Native Officers, a political reform of the governance of ethnic areas of China which began in 1723 in the Qing Dynasty, intensified the Sinicization in the Lijiang basin with the result that Dongba religious practices were curbed by Han officials as they regarded them as barbarian customs (Q. Xu & L.J. Yang, 2014). The result was that these practices retreated to the countryside and hilly areas (J.H. Yang, 2012) where they continued to develop as late as the 1950s. However, since 1949, political and cultural policies as well as the popularisation of science and education have had a great impact on the Dongba religion (D.L. Guo, 2010). Destruction of the Dongba religion reached a pinnacle during the Cultural Revolution, because it was seen as being superstitious and concerned with ‘monsters and demons’. Dongbas were targeted as ‘anti-revolutionary, backward, and superstitious’, Dongba scripts and apparatus were confiscated and burnt and Naxi people were prohibited from participating in any rituals (F.Q. Yang, 2012a: 149). After China’s Reform and Opening-up began in 1978, Dongba religion experienced two dramatic changes. In the first instance, in the 1980s it was renamed – Dongba religion became Dongba culture. While national policy allowed Dongba religion to resume in the early 1980s, people were still very sensitive to the term ‘religion’. Therefore, Lijiang officials and scholars proposed to use the term Dongba culture to replace Dongba religion and this suggestion became manifest in the establishment of the Academy of Dongba Culture in Lijiang in 1981 (L.J. Zong, 2006). Redefined as the Naxi’s traditional culture, Dongba religion revived, in line with the national cultural protection policy. In 1983, the first Dongba symposium was attended by 61 Dongbas whose ‘cultural status’ was recognised by the government for the first time (D.L. Guo, 2010). The second change is mainly attributed to tourism. Incorporated in the tourism development in the 1990s, many aspects of Dongba culture, such as painting, pictography, handicrafts (wood and pottery-making) and certain religious practices were extracted from its comprehensive religious repertoire and were commodified in the tourism and cultural industry (Guang, 2012; D.L. Guo, 2010; J.H. Yang, 2012). Nowadays Dongba culture is defined by the Lijiang government as ‘the essence of Naxi culture’, which is an important ICH element (S.Y. He, 2008a: 20). Rather than ‘monsters and demons’, Dongba culture is re-imaged as ‘traditional, excellent, unique and mysterious’ (X.L. Zong, 2006: 109), which makes it a perfect object for a tourist attraction in the 21st century. Dongba religion used to be a syncretic practice. After the Cultural Revolution, however, certain aspects or values of Dongba religion were privileged or contested

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by artists, scholars, governments, businessmen and local Naxi people, including the Dongba themselves, for their interests. Yushuizhai Scenic Spot, or Yushuizhai Park, is a typical case of Dongba cultural protection and tourism in Lijiang. Yushuizhai in Chinese means a jade water village. It is a Chinese national 4A scenic spot2 invested in by Naxi businessman He Changhong in 1997. It is also a Dongba Cultural Transmission Base, so named by the Chinese Folk Literature and Art Society in 2006. Located on a grassed slope of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in Baisha Village, Yushuizhai boasts a combination of natural landscape and traditional Naxi culture. Specifically, Dongba culture is underscored as the key characteristic, and because of this, Yushuizhai calls itself ‘the holy land of Dongba’.3 There is a spring at the site of Yushuizhai where Baisha villagers have worshipped the nature god Shu for a long time. As a Baisha-born Naxi, He Changhong, the CEO and founder of Yushuizhai, realised the cultural importance of this place. Furthermore, motivated by the World Heritage inscription in 1997 and various successful tourism and cultural programmes in the middle 1990s, Mr He formed the idea in 1997 to turn the wilderness into a park that features Dongba and Naxi culture (G.Q. Yang, 2012). Mr He and his team, working with local government, scholars and cultural institutes, have undertaken several notable works that are essential to Dongba culture.4 Firstly, Yushuizhai invested huge funds in the construction of a Dongba landscape in the park. For instance, a new, tall gilt-bronze figure of the nature god Shu was erected at the spring, and a large-scale courtyard Heheyuan (meaning harmonious courtyard) was constructed for the practices, interpretation and transmission of Dongba culture. In addition to the Dongba museum, practice ground and furnace, a grand Dongba temple was built where statues of the founder of the Dongba religion (Dongbashiluo), the guardian god of the Naxi (Sanduo) and other important gods in Naxi history were erected for public worship for the first time. Secondly, Yushuizhai is active in cultivating and educating Dongba practitioners. With the exception of the Dongbas employed from outside, Yushuizhai had trained more than 50 young Dongbas in its Heheyuan as of 2020 (interviewee He Xuhui, 2023). This work is accompanied by a Dongba transmission school (the Yushuizhai School) funded by Yushuizhai in which eight young students are recruited to learn Dongba culture for five years. Thirdly, in 2003, assisted by the Lijiang government, scholars and cultural institutes, Yushuizhai initiated the Lijiang Naxi Dongba Cultural Transmission Association (the Dongba Association)5 to convene and manage all the Dongbas in Lijiang. Significantly, under the organisation of Yushuizhai, a Dongba Degree Evaluation programme was initiated in 2011 to evaluate the qualification of the Dongbas. Accordingly, Dongbas can be recognised by the Dongba Association as a Dongba Transmitter (Chuancheng Yuan), a Dongba Master (Fashi) or a Dongba Great Master (Da Fashi), based on a paper

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Photo 5.1  Dongbas at the annual Dongba Fahui in the Heheyuan, Yushuizhai (author photograph, 2014).

test and a practice-based interview conducted by a committee comprised of Naxi scholars, senior Dongbas and relevant government officials (D.L. Guo, 2012). In addition, an annual Dongba Fahui (meaning Dongba dharma assembly) was inaugurated by Yushuizhai in 2001 to convene the coming together of Dongbas and practice rituals (see Photo 5.1). Here, two forms of Dongba recognition ceremonies, the traditional Zhizai ceremony, as well as the new Dongba degree award ceremony, have been held in the Dongba Fahui since 2013. Yushuizhai is widely regarded as one of the most successful examples of cultural tourism in Lijiang in terms of its tourist reception, revenue generation and social impact (G.Q. Yang, 2011; J.H. Yang, 2012). Also, Yushuizhai is now the largest and most influential Dongba religious venue in Naxi-populated areas (J.H. Yang, 2012). Yushuizhai, as a representative of the emerging influential non-official player, actively engages with the authentication process of current Dongba culture in its interaction with official players and tourists. This process has a noticeable impact on Dongbas themselves, both as individuals and as a group. Noticeably, traditional Dongba practices are re-authenticated, family transmission gradually gives way to alternative transmissions in the tourism sector, and the Dongbas’ identity changes from that of part-time religious priests to funded ICH practitioners, Yushuizhai staff, Dongba cultural brokers and Dongba cultural researchers. These issues are analysed in later chapters. Table 5.1 provides a list of the Dongas involved in the case study.

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Table 5.1  Background of the Dongbas interviewed in Yushuizhai Name

Age Titles (in 2016)

Tourism involvement

Dongba engagement6

He Xuedong

30

County ICH inheritor (2009, by the Lijiang ICH Centre) and Dongba Master (2013, by the Dongba Association)

Worked in the Dongba Wangguo (Dongba Kingdom, a Dongba theme park7) from 2005 to 2007 and has worked in Yushuizhai since 2007.

Learnt Dongba practice from the Dongba Academy in 2005 and Yushuizhai since 2007. Now also teaches Dongba practice in the Yushuizhai School.

He Shunquan

20

n/a

n/a

Comes from a Dongba family and has studied Dongba in the Yushuizhai School since 2009.

Yang Lixin

22

n/a

n/a

Encouraged by his Dongba uncle to study in the Yushuizhai School since 2008.

Yang Xun

40

Dongba Transmitter (2013, by the Dongba Association)

Worked as Dongba in the Dongba gallery in the Heheyuan, where he interpreted Dongba culture to tourists as well as produced Dongba pictography and paintings for them.

Knew Dongba culture when he was young and has learnt Dongba culture systematically in Yushuizhai since 2006.

Yang Wenji

83

Lijiang municipal ICH inheritor (2010, by the Lijiang ICH Centre) and Great Dongba Master (2012, by the Dongba Association)

Yang is the most senior Dongba in Yushuizhai, so he acts as the leader for all Dongba practices there. In addition, he studies Dongba culture in a traditional Naxi cabin where tourists visit and where he introduces Dongba culture.

He is the 11th successor in his Dongba family. Yang learnt Dongba culture from his father when he was 6 and continued learning from other Dongbas after his father’s death. Yang passed the Zhizai ceremony when he was 16 (1949). He resumed Dongba practice after 1983 and was invited to work in Yushuizhai in 1999. Now he is one of the two living senior Dongbas who attended the Dongba Symposium in 1983. In Yushuizhai, he has accepted 32 Dongba apprentices, 5 of whom are now recognised Dongba.

He Xuewu

38

Dongba Master (2012, by the Dongba Association)

Employed in Yushuizhai since 2003.

He Xuewu is the grandson of senior Dongba Yang Wenji. He knew Dongba culture from his grandfather but only began learning systematically with his grandfather since 2003 in Yushuizhai.

Source: Author interview and the Dongba Association, website at http://dongba.lijiang.com/.

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Many Dongba-themed tourist programmes emerged in the 2000s but none of them can be seen to be as successful as Yushuizhai. This is also reflected in the Yushuizhai slogan: ‘See cultural heritage in the Old Town, see natural landscape in Jade Dragon Snow Mountain and see Dongba culture in Yushuizhai’. Dongba Gu, which means Dongba Valley, is another privately invested tourist attraction, launched in 2005 in a northern suburb of Lijiang. It is similar to Yushuizhai in that both of them combine a beautiful landscape, including the backdrop of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, with local ethnic cultures. Four Dongbas were working in the Naxi Dongba Shenyuan (holy courtyard) in Dongba Gu in 2014. This courtyard, as the first attraction encountered by the tourist, is constructed in traditional Naxi style and decorated with all sorts of Dongba cultural elements. Like most of the Dongbas in Yushuizhai, the Dongbas here in Dongba Gu also play two roles: first as tourism staff, who produce Dongba arts (such as pictography and Dongba painting) as tourist commodities and perform Dongba rituals on request for tourists; and second as a member of the Dongba community, to study Dongba scripts, teach other Dongba apprentices, and offer rituals to the Naxi community in the rural areas. Young Dongba He Guojun (born 1981) came to Dongba Gu with his father in 2006. He Guojun said he is the 11th successor in his Dongba family and was appointed by his father as Dongba successor at the age of 13. He has learnt widely from his father and from other senior Dongbas and was recognised as a Dongba in the Zhizai ceremony at the age of 23, when he became a working professional Dongba in the Naxi community with his father. He was later given the title of Dongba Master by the Dongba Association in 2013. Because of his ability and reputation, he is often invited to undertake rituals in his hometown in Ninglang county, Lijiang, and to participate in major Dongba activities in Yushuizhai (Photo 5.2), along with Dongba Gu. Many privately funded tourist performances in Lijiang arrange certain Dongba rituals, along with other Naxi traditional dances and music, into a staged repertoire for tourists. The Impression of Naxi (Naxi Yinxiang), funded by He Shoujiang, a young Naxi tourism businessman, is a typical case. Having worked in tourism for many years, Mr He realised the importance of operating a Naxi tourist performance that is ‘authentic, traditional, unique, local and ethnic’, in order to stand out and to enjoy a share of the tourism market that is dominated by nonlocal businessmen (interviewee He Shoujiang, 2013 and 2014). The Impression of Naxi made its debut in a traditional Naxi courtyard in the north of Baisha Village in 2011. This is a well decorated tourist attraction with all sorts of Naxi cultural elements where a Naxi dance and music show was performed by amateur ethnic actors from local and neighbouring counties. Among the actors, Dongba He Yaowei (Naxi, born in 1989), in addition to the participating in Mosuo dance

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Photo 5.2  Dongba He Guojun performing in the Heheyuan, Yushuizhai (author photograph, 2014).

and Naxi songs, performed the Dongba blessing and marriage rituals (Suzhu) for tourists (Photo 5.3). He was recognised by the Dongba Association as a Dongba transmitter in 2013 and nominated as the representative inheritor of Dongba culture at county level in 2018. He Yaowei is the 6th generational inheritor of the Dongba lineage in his family and he initially learnt Dongba culture at a very early age from his grandfather. At the age of 12 he was recommended by his home town (Longpan Village, Yulong county) to take an intensive Dongba training course at the Lijiang Museum in 2002. Subsequently, he worked as a Dongba practitioner in Yunnan Nationalities Village in Kunming, at the Chinese Ethnic Cultural Park in Jinan, Shandong province, and at the China Ethnic Museum in Beijing. After 2008, he returned to Lijiang where he both continued studying Dongba in the government-funded training classes and worked as a Dongba in several tourism programmes, including Impression of Naxi, the Lijiang Naxi Cultural Transmission

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Photo 5.3  Dongba He Yaowei performing at the Impression of Naxi (author photograph, 2014).

Association, the Yard of Sky Ground (Tiandi Yuan), Naxi Family (Naxi Renjia) and others. As well as performing on stage for three hours every day, he continued to learn Dongba knowledge from other Dongbas in various institutes and took other tourism-related part-time jobs in the Old Town. Beyond tourism engagement in Lijiang, he was also frequently invited by the Naxi community to undertake Dongba rituals in the countryside, especially in his home town. Competition in Dongba cultural tourism is fierce in Lijiang, and Impression of Naxi only survived until 2015 when the arrival of tourists declined dramatically, so that He Yaowei, and other ethnic players, had to find other jobs. At the same time, Yaowei had been working at Lijiang Naxi Cultural Transmission Association, teaching and performing Dongba and other Naxi culture to local people and tourists. Lijiang Naxi Cultural Transmission Association was founded by a member of the local Naxi elite, Professor He Xueguang, for the transmission and promotion of Naxi culture. Later, in 2016, the LPMB began to establish a series of ‘cultural yards’ (Wenhua Yuanluo) in the Old Town with the aim of protecting Naxi ICH and promoting ICH tourism for tourists in the Old Town. The Lijiang Naxi Cultural Transmission Association is located in a traditional Naxi courtyard in the centre of the Old Town and the association had been accepting visitors for a number of years. Then, in 2017, in a collaboration with the LPMB, the association transformed the courtyard into a cultural yard, namely the Yard of Sky Ground, for exhibiting and performing Naxi culture to tourists. He Yaowei had been working with the association for a few years so

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Photo 5.4  Dongbas performing at the Yard of Sky Ground (author photograph, 2020).

that he started his new contract here in the cultural yard as a Dongba practitioner, as well as a Naxi dance and music player (Photo 5.4). Dongbas in Yushuizhai, Dongba Gu and the Impression of Naxi represent the major Dongba community in Lijiang where Dongba culture is both protected and commodified by official and community players, including Dongbas themselves, in the context of tourism. In order to provide another example of the Dongba community in a non-tourism context, I selected Baidi Village as a case study. Baidi Village is in Shangri-La county, Diqing Tibetan autonomous region, Yunnan province, and is located about 75 km north of Lijiang City. It is a hilly area populated by Naxi, Han and Tibetan people. It is renowned for its rich Dongba cultural heritage. It is generally believed by Dongbas that Baidi is the birthplace of the Dongba religion because the patriarch of the Dongba religion, Dingbashiluo (also called Dongbashiluo), inaugurated the religion there. Thus, all Dongbas try to worship and pass their Zhizai ceremony here. Notably, there is an old saying goes among Dongbas that ‘one who fails to come to Baidi is not a real/great Dongba’. Furthermore, Dongbas refer to Baidi as the ‘holy land of Dongba religion’ (F.Q. Yang, 2012b). Baidi is a Yunnan provincial historic village and is the place where Baishui Tai (where Dingbashiluo preached) and Amingling Dong (a sacred place for the Zhizai ceremony) are located. However, prior to 2019 Baidi was classified as an ‘absolute poor village’.8 The majority of villagers lived on agriculture and most young people went to the cities to

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hunt for better jobs. It is therefore interesting to compare and contrast Yushuizhai and Baidi, both of which are referred to as the ‘holy land of Dongba’ yet which are characterised by two different environments. The former is a well-developed tourist attraction with a more commodified Dongba culture while the latter is in an impoverished countryside location with non-commodified Dongba culture. Dongba religion was practised by all Naxi people in Baidi, but was prohibited during the Cultural Revolution and then revived in 1978. Nowadays, Dongba culture in Baidi is regarded by the local villagers as ‘the most traditional and authentic’ (interviewee He Shurong, 2014). The fact that there were only three Dongbas alive in in Baidi in 1997 and the Dongba culture was declining urged He Shurong, former principal of Baidi Primary School, to establish a Dongba transmission school in Baidi Village. He, assisted by Dongba He Zhanyuan (who passed away in 2009), started the Diqing Prefectural Dongba Transmission School in 1998, a community school totally organised and funded by He Shurong and his fellows. In its initial stage, some villagers thought this school restored ‘backward’ culture and the government was not involved. Gradually, villagers began learning at the school and later, in 2009, the government at prefectural levels approved the school officially (S.R. He, 2013). As of 2014, He Shurong had established 13 branch schools across neighbouring areas and the main school, the Baidi School, provides one of the case studies in this book. According to an introduction to the Baidi School (S.R. He, 2013), 27 apprentices were registered. One of these was He Shukun (Naxi, born in 1984) who has acted as the master/teacher since 2004. He Shukun attended the Baidi School among the first group of apprentices in 1998. He also learnt from senior Dongba He Zhanyuan, who conducted the Zhizai ceremony for Shukun in 2001. He Shukun was regarded as the ‘youngest Dongba in the Naxi community’ (S.R. He, 2013: 5) in Diqing and was frequently invited by local people to direct Dongba rituals. He Shukun comes from a Dongba family. His grandfather was a Dongba, although this family tradition was interrupted during his father’s time because of the Cultural Revelation. Recently, his father also studied at the Baidi School along with Shukun, although the father did most of the farming so that his son would have more time to engage with Dongba practices in the community. During my fieldwork in Baidi in April 2014, He Shukun was registered as an ICH inheritor at county level in Shangri-La county and he was teaching seven apprentices every night from 9 pm to 10.30 pm. Information on these apprentices is listed in Table 5.2 (and see Photo 5.5). He was later nominated as a Dongba cultural ICH inheritor at Diqing prefectural level in 2018. It is evident from the description of the Dongbas in the tourism context in Lijiang and the community context in Baidi that the traditional transmission of Dongba religion is gradually being replaced by alternative

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Table 5.2  Background of the Dongbas interviewed in Baidi Village Name

Age (in 2016)

Title/Occupation

Dongba engagement

He Yongguang

38

Dongba Apprentice/ farmer

Knew Dongba knowledge from his Dongba grandfather but has only learnt Dongba systematically at Baidi School since 2006.

Yang Guangcai

32

Dongba Apprentice/ farmer

Began learning Dongba since 2011 in Baidi School.

Yang Jinyan

67

Dongba Apprentice/ farmer

His grandfather and father were Dongbas but he only began learning Dongba at Baidi School in 2013. He sometimes teaches his son about Dongba culture at home.

He Lishi

57

Dongba (passed the Zhizai ceremony)/ farmer

He comes from a Dongba family although his father who was interrupted by the Cultural Revolution. He began learning at Baidi School in 2008.

He Shuquan

62

Dongba (passed the Zhizai ceremony)/ farmer

He began learning at Baidi School in 2012.

Yang Jinzhi

62

Dongba (passed the Zhizai ceremony)/ farmer

Comes from a Dongba family and his father acted as Dongba until 1950. He began learning from at Baidi School in 2008.

Yang Hongjun

52

Dongba (passed the Zhizai ceremony)/ farmer

Has been learning Dongba at Baidi School since 2009.

Source: Author interview, 2014.

Photo 5.5  Dongba apprentices attending class at Baidi School (author photograph, 2014).

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measures, such as those facilitated by community and official players. Therefore, Dongba culture develops in diverse interpretations in reaction to the broader economic and social background in which tourism is a major force. Dongbas are not just religious practitioners. Nowadays, the identity of Dongbas is complicated. While they are authenticated as Dongbas by various non-official and official players, their multi-sourced Dongba knowledge is practised in diverse situations with different implications. Traditional Music

It is important to note that there are many genres of music in Lijiang (Rees, 1995) most of which can be classified as traditional, folk or ICH music. And there is a confusion of names between Baishaxiyue, Dongjing, Naxi Ancient Music (Naxi Guyue) and others from different heritage discourses of government, businessmen, local cultural elites, scholars and music players, all of whom contest these traditional forms of music according to their interests. Baishaxiyue is a form of repertoire that includes instrumental performance (such as flute, double-reed pipe and lute), singing and dancing that is related to farewell and funerals. Baishaxiyue is a mandarin name, which literally means refined music from Baisha (the Baisha Village); the Naxi name is Bengshixili.9 The historical origin of Baishaxiyue is disputed and there are three major arguments: (1) this music was brought into Lijiang by Kublai Khan in the early Yuan dynasty (Z.L. Yang, 2012c); (2) it was developed by Naxi people based on their tragic legends (X Su & Q. Xu, 2013); and (3) it was brought into Lijiang by Han Chinese immigrants during the Ming dynasty (Sun & Fang, 2009; X.Y. Wu, 2003). Though the historical origin of Baishaxiyue is not easily ascertained (Rees, 1995), it is relatively safe to presume that Baishaxiyue was present during the Ming dynasty in Lijiang and it experienced three stages of development from that time until the present (Sun & Fang, 2009; Z.L. Yang, 2012c). Initially, Baishaxiyue was played by musicians in the family of Mu, the ruler of Lijiang, as a ritual music for ceremonies, especially funerals because of its sad melody. In the Bureaucratisation of Native Officers political reform in 1723, the magistrate Mu family was demoted and Lijiang began to be governed by non-native officers appointed by the central government in Beijing. Because of this, the Baishaxiyue troupe was dismissed by the Mu family and the music was secularised in the Naxi community for the funerals of local people. From that time onwards Baishaxiyue declined and it was ‘already dying out in the first half of the twentieth century’ (Rees, 1995: 76). However, between 1956 and 1962 professionals began to give attention to the study and protection of Baishaxiyue (F.Q. Yang, 2012a) and an amateur troupe was created to learn this music for a folk festival held in Kunming in 1956. The performance of Baishaxiyue was interrupted during the Cultural Revolution and was resumed in the late 1970s by the Lijiang

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Song and Dance Troupe.10 The third stage of Baishaxiyue development is the result of the cultural tourism that has occurred since the late 1990s. According to official documents (Lijiang Gucheng District ICH Protection Centre, 2009) and the work of scholars such as Zong (X.L. Zong 2006), Baishaxiyue survived in the hands of a few elderly players in Lijiang before the Cultural Revolution. He Xidian (1906–1989), who lived in Changshui Village, was one of them. He Xidian then taught Baishaxiyue to his son He Shijun and to his fellow villager He Maogeng who then taught his son He Linyi. It is reported that He Maogeng was one of the few players who could perform the whole repertoire in the early 2000s (Sun & Fang, 2009; Z.L. Yang, 2012a). He Maogeng initiated his family troupe in the early 1990s (interviewee He Linyi, 2013) in Changshui Village, and his family troupe (He Maogeng and his sons He Linyi and He Juyi) later performed in Yushuizhai Park in the late 1990s. He’s family troupe was credentialed by the Gucheng District Cultural Bureau as the recognised transmission organisation of Baishaxiyue and He Maogeng was recognised as the only existing inheritor in 2004 (Lijiang Gucheng District ICH Protection Centre, 2009). After He Maogeng’s death in 2006, his sons and other He family members performed in the Yuhe Plaza in the Old Town for three years as buskers, before they were driven away by the government, who criticised He’s troupe as ‘stray artists who disgrace the image of Lijiang’ (interviewee He Linyi, 2013). Baishaxiyue music was inscribed on the national ICH list in 2010. He Linyi was nominated as the representative inheritor of Baishaxiyue at provincial level in 2010 and later at national level in 2018. His younger brother He Juyi was nominated as the representative inheritor of Baishaxiyue at county level in 2013. In 2013, with personal connections to local businessmen and officials in the Gucheng District ICH Centre, He’s troupe collaborated with the Guanyinxia tourist attraction,11 which provides a courtyard for his performance for free. In this way, He sustains his three-generation family troupe on tourist donations and CD sales (interview, 2013) (Photo 5.6). He Linyi and his brother He Juyi learnt Baishaxiyue from their father in the 1980s and both are major players of flute, which is a key instrument in Baishaxiyue. He’s family troupe is comprised of eight members, including He Linyi’s son (playing Huqin, the bowed lute), He Juyi’s son (host and playing instrument) and female family members, who were rarely seen in the past. The constitution of the troupe varies depending on the farming shift at home in Changshui Village, so the members don’t regard performance here as their only occupation. This is the same as in the past, when Baishaxiyue players were farmers who loved music but they only played music when the troupe was called up by the community for a funeral (Z.L. Yang, 2012a). I noted from the interviews with the He brothers in 2013 and 2014 that they were content with the income generated from tourism and the government subsidy from the Gucheng District ICH Centre.

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Photo 5.6  He’s family troupe performing Baishaxiyue music in Guanyinxia (author photograph, 2014).

Baishaxiyue is still practised and transmitted in He’s family but, clearly, they have changed the location, function, audience and arrangement of the music performance. However, the He brothers did not worry about the ‘authenticity’ and transmission of their Baishaxiyue music. Comparing the performance in their village, where audience and appreciation were declining, they regarded their performance in Guanyinxia in 2014 as ‘the best situation for the moment’ (interviewee He Linyi, 2013). Unfortunately, the He family troupe discontinued their collaboration with Guanyinxia in 2015, the main reason being that they did not receive sufficient remuneration from Guanyinxia as promised in their oral contract (interviewee He Linyi, 2021). Afterwards, they returned their home town in Changshui Village in the suburb of Lijiang City, where they began teaching local music lovers for free. In addition, he also performs for visitors in the village and is also invited, from time to time, to perform in the Old Town, in local hotels and other places in China. Nevertheless, he still wants to build a stage and restaurant at his home to operate his own family tourism programme (interviewee He Linyi, 2021). Dongjing music is another kind of traditional music which is widely seen in the local tourism market. It is largely defined as a Han Chinese religious ritual music played by the literati, who practise this music at religious ceremonies to honour the deities in the Taoist, Confucian and Buddhist religions. The name Dongjing is an abbreviation of the scripture Yuqingwujizongzhen Wenchang Dadongxianjing (Transcendent Scripture of the Great Grotto of Wenchang) in which the Wenchang, the patron of the literati, was worshiped. It is generally recognised by scholars and

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in official documents that Dongjing music was brought into Yunnan by the Han Chinese from central China during the Ming and Qing dynasties (Rees, 1995; X. Su & Q. Xu, 2013; Z.L. Yang, 2012b; X.L. Zong, 2006). Dongjing music is played not only by the Naxi people in areas of Lijiang with a high degree of Sinicisation, such as in Dayan Town (Rees, 1995), but it is also played by Han Chinese in Kunming, by the Bai ethnic minority in Dali, and even by overseas Chinese in Myanmar and Thailand (G.D. Wu, 1999; X.Y. Wu, 2003). Overall, major schools of Dongjing music were collectively nominated on the Yunnan provincial ICH list for 2013 and Naxi Dongjing music is one of them. Dongjing music experienced similar ups and downs as other forms of traditional culture, reflecting the transformations in the political, social and economic situation in the past 100 years. Scholars (J.H. Yang, 2012; Z.L. Yang, 2002; X.L. Zong, 2006) have generally delineated the trajectory of Dongjing music in Lijiang according to the following stages. During the first stage, Dongjing music was played by the local literati, from its appearance in Lijiang until the early years of the Republic of China (1912–1949); Dongjing was exclusive to the elites and literati who practised religious ceremonies to the deity (Z.L. Yang, 2002). As argued by Li (J. Li, 2007), Naxi people, particularly those living in the Old Town, developed a strong preference for Han culture during the Sinicisation process from the Ming to the Qing dynasties. As a result, Han culture overwhelmed local Naxi culture and Confucianism was regarded as a ‘norm’ in the Old Town (J. Li, 2007: 73). As a form of Han high culture, Dongjing music was widely played by Naxi well-to-do literati and elites, who despised Baishaxiyue music, which they regarded as vulgar grass-roots music (Z.L. Yang, 2002, 2012a). Playing Dongjing music, along with other Han cultural activities, therefore, represented high social status for Naxi males (J. Li, 2007). 1911 was a turning point for Dongjing music as it was banned by the Republican government as superstitious (Z.L. Yang, 2002). This was the starting point of the second stage. Though political revolution and cultural modernisation processes in China at that time destabilised the religious and ritual functions of Dongjing, this music and other Han culture were deeply embedded in the minds and hearts of the Naxi people. Therefore, while the secularisation of Dongjing music occurred during the Republican period (before 1949), both religious ritual practice (played only by the literati and elites) and recreational practice (music lovers from all classes) co-existed until the Cultural Revolution. The third stage of Dongjing music refers to its revival after 1978. Because of the Naxi people’s predilection for Dongjing music, people stealthily resumed Dongjing performance on a small scale. After 1979 it thrived as a recreational practice (X.L. Zong, 2006). When Lijiang opened up to foreign tourism in 1986, it triggered the commodification of Dongjing music in 1988 from which year both recreational and

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Photo 5.7  The Dayan Naxi Ancient Music Association performance (author photograph, 2013).

commodified Dongjing music have co-existed ever since (Z.L. Yang, 2002). The commodification of Dongjing music in Lijiang was marked by the first commercial performance of the Dayan Naxi Ancient Music Association (the Dayan Association) directed by Xuan Ke in July 1988 (see Photo 5.7). His use of older musicians, instruments and music within a traditional courtyard led to English-speaking foreigners, who were the largest group of tourists in Lijiang in the early 1990s, to praise these performances as ‘traditional, genuine, the real thing and frequently, authentic’ (Rees, 1998: 138). Xuan Ke, a former Naxi English teacher in Lijiang, is one of the key organisers of the commodification of Dongjing music. According to my observations during 2013 to 2014, the performance of the Dayan Association is popular among tourists due in part to Xuan Ke’s excellent English and his charming personality. Given the increasing economic and social benefits derived from commodification, Dongjing and Baishaxiyue music were contested by different people to reflect their own interests. The Dayan Association is an example. Around the year 1995, Xuan Ke coined the name ‘Naxi Guyue’ (which literally means Naxi ancient music) to promote the performance of the Dayan Association, which is an assemblage of both Dongjing and Baishaxiyue music. Xuan Ke even boasted that Naxi Ancient Music in Lijiang maintains the ‘authentic’ music from the Tang and Song dynasties which is only found in Lijiang (G.D. Wu, 1999; X.Y. Wu, 2003; Xuan, 2013; Zong & Bao, 2005). As the earliest and the most profitable form of ICH tourism in Lijiang, Dongjing music, as performed by the Dayan Association, still functions well in the Old Town. Xuan Ke prefers to recruit elderly players (half the troupe members are more than 80 years old and the oldest was 93 in 202312) with grey hair and long beards so as to constitute

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the ‘four olds’ (namely old musician, old music, old instrument and old town) of the concert, which can be understood as an attempt to produce an objective authenticity for tourists. In the performance I attended on 18 February 2013, there were two young Guzhen players (a young girl and a young boy) and two middle-aged female players among a total of 30 players. Most troupe members have other occupations during the daytime. Importantly, they belong to different local Dongjing troupes and are called upon to perform in the Dayan Association at 8 p.m. every night. Wang Liwei (born in 1971, Naxi) and his father Wang Yaojun (born in 1941, Naxi) are renowned players in this troupe and they usually practise music, including Baishaxiyue and Dongjing, in the Wenlin Village Troupe in the Old Town, which convenes local music lovers to practise regularly every month. Beyond the commodified performance on stage, there is a large number of local troupes where local amateur musicians practise together regularly for recreational purposes, which is a common situation since the secularisation that began in the 1910s. The troupes are usually found in the new town, which embraces the Old Town of Lijiang. In addition to the Dayan Association, many players in the local troupes also perform in other commercial shows, such as the Mountain River Show (Lishui Jinsha), Yushuizhai Park, Impression of Naxi (closed in 2015) and the Yard of Sky Ground. A brief background of typical music players whom I interviewed is provided in Table 5.3. Both Baishaxiyue and Dongjing music underwent changes of transmission, function, and audience during the last century. In the case of Baishaxiyue, initially the music was transmitted exclusively within the Mu family troupe and it was then transmitted within local families after 1723. Nowadays, with the assistance of government, the transmission of Baishaxiyue, along with Dongjing music, is encouraged among local troupes again. Although Baishaxiyue is still used on some occasions as funeral music, it is largely practised for tourism and recreational purposes. In the case of Dongjing music, although traditional organisational transmission within a troupe is well maintained, other forms such as family transmission and inter-troupe transmission are also apparent. Compared with its ritual function in the past, nowadays Dongjing music is practised for tourists and for players’ personal recreational enjoyment. Handicrafts

Wood-carving, leather-making, copperware and silverware are some of the characteristic handicrafts in Lijiang. These handicrafts thrived during the Ming and Qing dynasties for everyday use and inter-province trade, and many of these crafts now have been commodified for tourism. An important fact is that nowadays most of the handicrafts are done by non-local craftspeople in Lijiang or the articles are simply made by

41

64

49

44

50–60

77

45

75

Chang Hong

Yang Yinxian (female)

He Linyi

He Juyi

He Shiwei

Yang Zenglie

Wang Liwei

Wang Yaojun

n/a

Municipal ICH inheritor (2014)

County ICH inheritor (2013); Provincial ICH inheritor (2019)

n/a

County ICH inheritor (2013); Municipal ICH inheritor (2014)

Provincial ICH inheritor (2010); National ICH inheritor (2018)

n/a

n/a

County ICH Inheritor (2006)

Title

Source: Author interviews in 2013 and 2014.

86

Age (in 2016)

Xuan Ke

Name

Wenlin Village troupe

Wenlin Village troupe

Co-founder of the Dayan Association, Independent scholar

Wenlin Village troupe (as instructor)

Family troupe

Family troupe (as leader)

Qinghegong Troupe, Zhaihou Village

Qinghegong Troupe, Zhaihou Village

Dayan Association, Old Town (as leader)

Troupe

Table 5.3  Background of the music players interviewed in Lijiang

Dongjing

Dongjing

Dongjing and Baishaxiyue

Dongjing

Baishaxiyue

Baishaxiyue

Dongjing

Dongjing

Dongjing

Music genre

The Dayan Association

The Dayan Association

Affiliate with the Dayan Association and Dongbagong performance

n/a

Guanyinxia Scenic Spot

Guanyinxia Scenic Spot

Mountain River Show since 2008

Mountain River Show since 2012

In Dayan Association since 1978

Tourism performance

Learnt Dongjing from his father and local Dongjing troupes in 1989 and worked in Dongbagong (1997–2011).

Learnt Dongjing from local Dongjing troupes and his father in 1989 and worked in Dongbagong in the early 2000s.

Worked in Lijiang Music and Dance Troupe (1956–1985), Dayan Association (1987–1999) and Dongbagong (1999–2011).

Learnt traditional music from Lijiang Music and Dance Troupe and worked as composer in the Dongbagong music performance programme (1998–2011).

Learnt from his father (He Maogeng) in the 1980s.

Learnt from his father (He Maogeng) in the 1980s.

Learnt from senior players in the troupe since 2003.

Learnt from senior players in the troupe since 2005.

Learnt Dongjing music from local senior players since 1978.

Music engagement

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machine. An official (interviewee YXC, 2014) in charge of tourism business in Lijiang Old Town said that there were 70–80 handicrafts shops run by Naxi in the 1990s and that this number has decreased dramatically to just a few in recent years. In this book, therefore, I look only at those cases in which the local Naxi craftspeople make the handicrafts to serve the local community and tourists. In 2007 the LPMB implemented a special business development plan in the Old Town whereby Wuyi Street was designated as an area to showcase ethnic traditional Lijiang culture (LPMB, 2013). Thus, most of the Naxi handicraft premises are located in Wuyi Street and they are registered by the LPMB with the title Lijiang Ancient City Licensed Shop for Minority Featured Goods (the Licensed Shop) to indicate that these shops are run by the Naxi people who produce authentic Naxi goods (usually handicrafts and food). As a result, these licensed shops are assisted by the LPMB in many ways, which includes a rental concession policy. As late as during the Ming dynasty (AD 1368 – AD1644), craftspeople from central China were invited by the Mu family to work in Lijiang. Handicrafts later thrived in the Naxi community during the Qing dynasty (AD 1636 – AD 1912), when they developed as a major industry in the Old Town, which became a handicraft centre in Lijiang. The handicraft industry boomed during the 1940s (D.L. Guo, 2010; X.L. Zong, 2006). However, after 1949 the making of handicrafts underwent a dramatic transformation from individual workshops to collective farms during the Collectivisation period. Consequently, most self-owned family handicraft businesses were forced to merge into the state-owned factories or collective farms, the free handicraft market was suppressed and some unique Naxi handicrafts declined (Naxizu Jianshi, 2008). Regulated by the collectivisation reform, some handicrafts were standardised, mechanised and incorporated into state-owned factories, while some others experienced ups and downs and later thrived in the tourism market. Che Fumin, a Naxi born in 1972, is an ICH inheritor of traditional handicraft listed at Lijiang municipal level in 2010. His father embarked on woodcraft when he was 17 and then worked in a collective factory where he used a lathe to carve wooden utensils for daily use, such as the beads used in saddles, handles and other round-shaped architectural parts. Che Fumin developed his interest in wood-carving from his father, who worked in the factory in the 1980s. During the 1980s, Che’s father also opened a family workshop in the current location in Wuyi Street and Che became an apprentice. Their family business for making wooden utensils for daily use declined as the social demand decreased. However, thanks to the tourism boom, Che and his father and brother began using their lathe skills to make round-shaped tourist art, such wooden wishing bells, which is now the flagship product of Che’s shop (see Photo 5.8). In addition, Che also learnt Dongba arts, which he applies to the bells and to other hand-carved wooden tourist articles.

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Photo 5.8  Wooden wishing bells made by Che Fumin (author photograph, 2013).

In the last 20 years, a trend has been observed in wood handicrafts in the tourism market in Lijiang. Some early Naxi artists embarked on woodcarving for economic reasons in the 1990s (Yamamura, 2005). Later, when the market gradually became dominated by non-local businessmen with their cheap copies, many Naxi artists moved out of the Old Town to pursue a purer art space. He Jinping, a Naxi wood artist born in 1978, is one of these. He is regarded as the ‘first engraver in the Old Town’13 and was listed as ICH inheritor of traditional wood-carving at county level in 2011. He had a strong interest in carving and learnt widely, but not only, from art works in Yunnan and China at an early age. In addition, he also learnt from the tourist art displayed in the Old Town and the contemporary Dongba arts in the early 1990s. Later, in 1998, he opened his own shop to engage with contemporary Naxi tourist arts for tourists. Rather than copying the latest work of others to earn money, however, he always tried to create his own style to set a model for the market. He felt sad, however, that the wood art market was ‘terrible’ nowadays in Lijiang (interview, 2013), so he moved to his own studio to the New Town to pursue his aesthetic arts while his wife looks after his shop in the Old Town. During my interview in 2013, He Jinping said he didn’t care about the title of ICH inheritor, neither did he think his wood art could be called ICH, which, according to his understanding, meant traditional culture. He described his wood-carving as a fusion between ethnic and international. Interestingly, in 2021, he was listed as the ICH inheritor of wood-carving at Lijiang municipal level. Copper is a plentiful resource in Lijiang (D.L. Guo, 2010). During the Ming dynasty, the Mu family invited the Yang family of copper craftspeople

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from Sichuan to work in Lijiang and this stimulated the copper-smithing in Lijiang. Copperwares are treasured not only by Naxi people, who use them as domestic utensils, but also by Tibetan people, who use them at religious sites. Baisha Village has long been regarded as the historical centre for copper-smithing (D.L. Guo, 2010). However, this was interrupted by the national industry policies of the 1950s and the Cultural Revolution. Coppersmithing revived in the 1970s but only a few craftspeople existed in the 1980s. He Jikuan was one of them (X.L. Zong, 2006). He Jikuan learnt his copper smithing craft at the workshop run by the successors of the Yang family when he was age 14. When national policy allowed individuals to operate handicraft business in the 1980s, He Jikuan convened existing local craftspeople to revive coppersmithing. He Jikuan was named the Folk Artist of Yunnan in 1999. After his death, in 2005, his sons He Shanjun and He Shanyi inherited this family tradition. Now He Shanjun runs the family workshop in Baisha Village while his older brother He Shanyi continues with the licensed copper shop in the Old Town. In 2013, the Naxi copper-smithing craft was listed as a Yunnan provincial ICH element. He Shanjun, a Naxi born in 1970, learnt from his father at the age of 17. He claims himself to be the 6th successor to copper-smithing in He’s family and now is the ‘last copper smith’ in Lijiang (S.J. He, 2013). As a handicraft ICH inheritor at the Lijiang municipal level in 2010, he operates his workshop to sustain his family in Baisha Village (Photo 5.9).

Photo 5.9  Coppersmith He Shanjun in his workshop in Baisha Village (author photograph, 2014).

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His business thrives along with tourism development in Baisha and he acquired a large mansion in Baisha in January 2014, to expand his business. Generally speaking he makes copperwares for Naxi people, who purchase daily utensils such as hot pots and fire baskets, but also for tourists who prefer portable and fancy copperware, such as teapots and censers. Nowadays, increasing demand from both visiting tourists and remote buyers for contemporary Naxi style copperware forms a larger share of the market than the needs of local Naxi people. His older brother He Shanyi, a Naxi born in 1962, learnt coppersmithing in the 1990s and worked for copper shops in Baisha, Shuhe before he was invited by the LPMB to open a licensed shop in Wuyi Street in the Old Town in 2004. He was listed as a handicraft ICH inheritor at county level in 2006. Shanyi remembered that his family shop in Baisha served mainly local Naxi people from 1988 to 1993. Demand from tourists overtook that of locals in 1996. Shanyi told me that the tourists accounted for as much as 70% of his products since he moved into the Old Town (interview, 2014). The two brothers make similar copperware in two separate shops. They enjoy good business and their family skill is maintained and developed in their hands. The craft of silverware was listed as the Lijiang municipal ICH element in 2013. It thrived in the Ming dynasty, leading to a lane in the Old Town being named Silversmith Lane (Yunnan CPPCC, 2010). Before 1949, the silverware made in Lijiang included both secular and religious items of Naxi, Tibetan, Bai and other ethnic minority styles (X.L. Zong, 2006). Although silver-smithing, like other handicrafts, went through various ups and downs after 1949, it enjoys comparatively better support nowadays in the Old Town (X.L. Zong, 2006). Nowadays there are only a few Naxi-run silver workshops in Lijiang. The most famous is Zhu Xing’s. Zhu Xing, a Naxi born in 1969, is a successful silversmith who enjoys several titles, including handicraft ICH inheritor at county level in 2013 and at municipal level in 2014, Metallic Craft Master of Yunnan in 2013, among others. It was interesting to note during my fieldwork that Zhu Xing learnt his silver-smithing crafts not from his family but from a silversmith from Fujian province who worked in Kunming. As a young farmer in the suburb of Lijiang, Zhu wanted to change his poor life by learning the silver-smithing craft for the tourism market in Lijiang in 1996. However, the silversmiths in Lijiang would not teach him as they wished to retain a monopoly on their expertise. Therefore, Zhu travelled to Kunming and learnt from Fujian craftspeople and then returned to Lijiang to initiate his business in 1996. Zhu’s silverware, which combines his personal craft with Naxi and Donga cultural elements, has won him a huge reputation in Lijiang.14 It was interesting to note that although Zhu Xing regarded his craft as a traditional craft and an ICH element, he did not claim his craft as a Naxi traditional

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craft (interview, 2013) because he thought that the silver-smithing craft is not restricted to the Naxi community. Compared with the silver-smithing crafts that can be found in many other areas in China as Zhu Xing said (interview, 2013), the leathermaking craft is a characteristic Naxi craft. It forms part of the Naxi costume-making craft, which was listed as the Yunnan provincial ICH element in 2009. Early Naxi people wore leather cloth in their nomadic life and many can sew. Since the Yuan and Ming dynasties, Dayan Town and Shuhe Village in Lijiang have been leather-making centres where many Naxi worked with leather as their occupation (Yunnan CPPCC, 2010). After the political reform of 1723, Naxi costume gradually changed as a result of influence from Han and other neighbouring ethnic minorities, leading to the formation of two major styles. Naxi women’s costume is characterised by the sheepskin Qixing (seven stars) shawl. It is patterned with seven round patches, which represent the Big Dipper constellation. As for men, they usually wear a sheepskin vest. Since the Qing dynasty there has been a long tradition that women in Naxi families undertake most of the labour – both domestic chores and outside the home – while men learn the Han culture at home. The Big Dipper pattern symbolises the industrious quality of Naxi women (X. Su & Q. Xu, 2013). Leather-making used to be a major industry in Shuhe Village but, with industrialisation and mechanisation after the 1950s in China, traditional leather handicraft declined dramatically. Nowadays, it is said that no Naxi leather-making by hand still exists in Shuhe (interviewee Li Renjiang, 2013) and most of the leather-making workshops, though very small in number, can only be found in Dayan Town. Broadly speaking, the leather workshops in Dayan Town are of two types. The first are those shops that serve local Naxi with their daily costumes and tourists with stylish leather and fur products. These shops are the better-off ones. The second type, those which cater only for the needs of local Naxi people, still struggle. Li Jinfeng (Naxi, born in 1941) is representative of leatherworkers in Lijiang. His ancestors are said to have been royal leatherworkers from central China who came to Shuhe to continue their leather-making in the early Ming dynasty (X. Su & Q. Xu, 2013). Li Jinfeng learnt his craft from masters in Judian, Lijiang and Dali where he also learnt from a Shanghai master. Later, Li opened his leather workshop in Wuyi Street in Dayan Town. His family participated with him in the production of traditional Naxi sheepskin costumes in the 1980s. Li Jinfeng was listed as handicraft ICH inheritor at Lijiang municipal level in 2010 and at provincial level in 2019; however, because of his weakening eyesight, their family shop is now managed by his son, Li Renjiang and his daughter Li Runliang. In the early years, their shop mainly served Naxi people with both traditional leather products and contemporary fur clothing. In the late 1990s, tourists became the major buyers. They wanted fashionable fur scarves, leather hats, gloves and bags, and they account for more than 60% of sales (interviewee

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Li Renjiang, 2013). Li Runliang and Li Renjiang, both in their forties, learnt the craft from their father in the shop in the 1980s. Their shop is now licensed and protected by the LPMB so that a part of the high rental is covered and their business can be sustained. Compared with the successful business of Li’s shop, the shops run by local female leatherworkers Xie Pinzhen and Li Runlan present a different picture. Xie Pinzhen, a Han born in Lijiang in 1954, learnt leather-making at the age of 15 from a master at a collective workshop for 15 years before she opened the current shop in Dayan Town with her colleagues to raise her family. Xie has been making traditional Naxi leather costumes for local Naxi people for 30 years and is highly regarded by local people. However, she has faced the pressure of rising rents, particularly given that although the majority of her time is spent in producing traditional leather goods for the limited needs of the locals, while it is the sale of the imported commodities for tourists that actually sustains her shop economically. The same picture is seen in the case of Li Runlan, a Naxi female leatherworker, born in 1949, who was listed as handicraft ICH inheritor at Lijiang municipal level in 2010. As most female Naxi, she learnt the craft from her mother and had worked in her family workshop in Wuyi Street since the 1980s. Her shop was highly regarded by local people and she had a group of regular customers who valued her quality traditional Naxi leather clothes. However, she was seldom involved in the tourism business. Because of her meagre income, soaring rental prices, the labour-consuming work and the decreasing local needs, her shop in the Old Town was closed in 2015 and she moved to the new town where she continued leather-making for local people. As this description of the handicrafts in Lijiang shows, the source of knowledge of handicraft-making is complicated. In some cases, the skill is transmitted within a family as the family business; in other cases, the practitioners learnt their skills from other sources for their own benefit. It is also found, in these latter cases, that practitioners find it difficult to decide whether their cultural practices are traditional/authentic or not. They tend to describe the value of making handicrafts, and the value of the products they make, in different ways and these understandings change over time. When a handicraft is considered a consumable product, the sustainability of the consumption becomes crucial for the survival of the skill. Culinary Skill

The literature (H.C. He et al., 2010; Naxizu Jianshi, 2008) on Naxi customs documents that the eating habits of the Naxi changed along with socioeconomic conditions. The Naxi people’s nomadic eating habits shifted during the Yuan and Ming dynasties, when Naxi society experienced a change from husbandry to agriculture. This was intensified during the Ming and Qing dynasties with the increasing influence of Han

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food production and Han recipes. The difference between the recipes of the Naxi people in the Lijiang Old Town area and the Han people is very small, with the exception of the traditional food prepared during Naxi festivals (Naxizu Jianshi, 2008). Compared with Dongba religion, ethnic music and handicraft, Naxi traditional food has not been influenced by political disturbances but, rather, by broad socioeconomic and cultural factors. For example, I observed in my fieldwork and reported in the interviews that farming land in Lijiang basin is declining while land for real estate, tourism and infrastructure is expanding. As a result traditional food production is limited, such as the growth of jidou beans for making jidou bean jelly. Although many of the examples I describe in the following pages are nominated as ICH elements by government, it is not easy to appoint the representative inheritor. Therefore, my interviewees were chosen according to the recommendations of the locals. Lijiang baba is a popular snack in Lijiang. It is a kind of wheaten pastry that can be made with either a savoury or a sweet taste. Traditionally, it is consumed by Naxi people as one of their staple foods, for breakfast and lunch (H.C. He et al., 2010). The word baba in the Yunnan Han dialect means a round pastry. Because Lijiang baba is made from rich lard, sugar and ham, it easy to store for long periods and was widely carried as a provision on the Tea-horse Route. With the decline in horse transport, the diversification of Naxi people’s diet and a greater awareness of health issues – Lijiang baba is rich in oil and sugar – local people don’t eat it very often now. Conversely, tourists privilege Lijiang baba as a ‘must eat’. The skill of making Lijiang baba was listed as a Lijiang municipal ICH in 2013 and a Yunnan provincial ICH in 2017. There are many kinds of Lijiang baba sold in Lijiang and most tourists cannot tell the difference. However, guided by local Naxi people, I know that ‘authentic’ or ‘traditional’ Lijiang baba usually refers to those pastries that are made using a complicated traditional method by an experienced Naxi cook who has done this for many years. I therefore tracked down three family workshops that still make the traditional Lijiang baba for the tourist market. Bainian Laodian Lijiang Baba Shop (a 100-year-old Lijiang baba shop) is sited in a prime location in the Old Town, where Chang Qing and her mother Lyu Guijin worked from the 1990s until 2010. They moved to the New Town in 2010 to continue their Lijiang baba business. This workshop (i.e. both making and selling the food) was a major provider for more than 60 retailers in the Old Town, where the pastry was usually bought by tourists in 2013 and 2014. Lyu Guijin initially learnt the skill from her mother and relatives in her early years, and her daughter, Chang Qing, learnt this skill from Lyu about 15 years ago. The Lijiang baba they make is widely regarded by local people as traditional or ‘Zhengzong’, which means authentic. They tried to innovate with new ingredients and modern efficient cooking methods such as electric baking pans, but the taste was not to the liking of the locals so they returned to the traditional firewood frying method.

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Zhang Xiangfang, a female Naxi born in 1972, ran a Naxi restaurant – Naxi Baba – in the Old Town, where she cooked many traditional Naxi foods, including Lijiang baba, jidou bean jelly among others. She developed her culinary skills through learning from her parents at the age of 12. With her sister, she began making Lijiang baba to support her family in 2003 in a Lijiang food company and then rented the current shop in 2007 to operate her family business (Photo 5.10). She promoted her cooking method, in which the pastry was baked on a stone in a fire, as the ‘only traditional firing cooking method in the Old Town’ (interviewee Zhang Xiangfang, 2014). Her shop, tended by her husband and daughter, was visited largely by local Naxi people and by tourists, who flock in peak seasons. However, restricted by the fire code of the Old Town and pressured by increasing rental costs, the business, according to my observations, was not as successful as that of Chang Qing’s workshop. Li Dongling, a Naxi in his forties, cooked traditional firewood frying Lijiang baba in Wuyi Street with his wife. Li learnt his skill in 1984 from his mother, who made pastry in a state-owned Lijiang food company. Li, his wife and his mother started their family business in the centre of the Old Town in 1984 to serve local people. However, rental prices surged along with tourism so they moved their shop in 2002, trying several places in the Old Town before they finally settled in their house in Wuyi Street. Stimulated by real estate development and tourism projects in the Wuyi Street–Wenlin Village area, most local residents have rented out their houses. Li’s house was also rented out and, like many other local

Photo 5.10  Zhang Xiangfang making Lijiang baba in her shop in Dayan Town, Lijiang (author photograph, 2014).

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landlords, they received a very decent rental income. However, they chose to keep one room as a shop to continue making Lijiang baba and selling them to both tourists and locals. The business just broke even. In addition to Lijiang baba, jidou bean jelly is another popular local snack. It looks like tofu and is made from jidou, a chickpea that is a widely grown in Lijiang. Turning beans into a jelly is a skill developed by the Han (X. Su & G. Xu, 2013). In the past, jidou was a common wild plant in the Lijiang basin. However, the decline in the availability of farm land has meant that jidou is now usually bought from other, remote places such as Yongsheng county (interviewee Asanshu, 2014). Compared with Lijiang baba, jidou bean jelly is popularly consumed by both locals and tourists because it is cheap, healthy and can be cooked in various ways. For example, it can be made into soup, salad, stir-fried, deep-fried and made into a dried jelly (X. Su & G. Xu, 2013). Before 1949, most Naxi women possessed the culinary skill to make jidou bean jelly – it was a common skill (X. Su & G. Xu, 2013) – but nowadays, most housewives prefer to buy it in the market even though many of them can still make it themselves. The skill associated with making jidou bean jelly was listed as a Lijiang municipal ICH element in 2013. Compared with Lijiang baba, jidou bean jelly stalls are much more common in Lijiang. Since many vendors in the tourism market just cook, but do not necessarily make, the bean jelly, I interviewed two family workshops that have continuously made, cooked and sold jidou bean jelly over many years. 88 Restaurant, run by a Naxi family since the early 1980s in Wuyi Street, is advertised as ‘the only restaurant managed by Naxi in the Old Town at present’, as written on its menu. It is a successful Naxi catering business and their economic, social and cultural benefits have been reported in the Chinese media.15 This restaurant was started by Hedama and her husband Asanshu after they were laid off. Initially, they sold jidou bean jelly and rice noodles to locals and later also served other home-style dishes. When tourists gradually overtook local guests and the rental prices kept rising, 88 Restaurant was a licensed shop protected by the LPMB, which gave assistance with rising rents. Since it takes more than three hours to make jidou bean jelly, in order to serve the guests on time Asanshu had to make the jidou bean jelly before dawn every day. The process, as noted in my fieldwork from 2013 to 2014, was traditional, or ‘Zhengzong’ in the local language. However, making and selling this basic bean jelly could not sustain the restaurant. So He’s son, He Zhiming, began experimenting with new cooking methods using the traditionally made bean jelly as his basic material. Nowadays, the restaurant serves more than ten new versions of jidou bean jelly, most of which are welcomed by both tourists and locals. Amayi is another, similar family restaurant in the Old Town. It also began as a food stall and then developed into a famous restaurant after several generations. Xiao Jun named himself as the 4th successor of this

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family business, which was initiated by his great grandmother. It is interesting to note that Xiao’s great grandmother came to Lijiang from Sichuan province, and Xiao said that Lijiang home-style dishes were influenced greatly by the Sichuan cuisine (interview, 2013). Xiao’s Amayi restaurant now serves all kinds of local foods, including jidou bean jelly. In addition, he has also created new Naxi dishes to cater for the increasing tourist market. Therefore, his family culinary tradition has to adapt to new and diverse appetites of both tourists and local people, which seems difficult for him. Another side of the jidou bean jelly business is reflected in those unknown food stalls spreading across Lijiang. The itinerant vendor Aunt He is one of them. Fuhui Market is a big farmers’ market in the New Town where I was told by the locals that Aunt He’s jidou bean jelly is the most Zhengzong (authentic). Like many Naxi women, Aunt He learned her culinary skills from her parents at the age of 15 in order to be a good housewife. Her former home, which was located near to Fuhui Market, was demolished for real estate development. Thus, she gave up agricultural work at home and became a full-time food vendor in Fuhui Market to sustain her family. She made bean jelly using a traditional process and cooked it in basic styles that were consumed by regular local guests. Aunt He seemed content with her small business, which was quite laborious and not as profitable as the cases mentioned above. These examples demonstrate how the skills associated with the craft of food-making in Lijiang used to family transmitted skills common to the Naxi community, especially for Naxi women, either for sustaining a family or running a family business. Nowadays, the making of traditional Naxi food in the Naxi household is decreasing although traditional family transmission remains a key factor for those who do food business. Due to changes in people’s eating habits and the arrival of tourists with their diverse appetites, some food-making crafts have had to adapt and create new styles. In the process, the question of authenticity and integrity has become complicated. This chapter has set the context for the practitioners-based approach by situating the practice of each ICH tourism case in the social context of the practitioners themselves. Since ICH practice is, in part, closely embodied in personal, economic, cultural, religious and everyday life, every practice changes, along with the practitioner and the relationship between them and the society. The practitioner, as the community player, interacts with other community players and the official players in the heritagisation process, leading to changes in the practitioner and, consequently, the embodied ICH interpretations. In general, the cases are largely influenced by, but not limited to, the development of tourism in Lijiang since the 1980s. The four cases, each in two situations (more commodified and less commodified), have been described in their personal/family contexts so as to differentiate between diverse transmissions, engagements and

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interpretations of ICH. It can be seen that prior to 1949, the transmission of ICH mainly relied on family (in the case of the Dongba, handicrafts and food) and organisations (in the case of music). Furthermore, ICH served specific personal or community functions. Nowadays, however, ICH, along with the traditional knowledge and crafts transmitted from the past, is actively re-constructed by the practitioners, due to evolving personal values in the interaction with other community and official players. These changes will definitely lead to the issues with regard to authenticity, integrity and continuity. In the next chapter, I will analyse how issues of authenticity, integrity, continuity and commodification play out in the above-mentioned cases from different perspectives. Notes (1) See https://en.unesco.org/memoryoftheworld/registry/224, retrieved 26 February 2022. (2) Defined by the China National Tourism Administration, a Chinese scenic spot can be assessed by national standards as (from the lowest to the highest) A, AA, AAA, AAAA, or AAAAA. (3) See the introduction to Yushuizhai on its official website at http://www.yushuizhai. com, retrieved 9 December 2016. (4) Except for the citation, this section is largely drawn from Yushuizhai’s internal edited book (Yushuizhai Company, 2012) and its official website. (5) More details are available on its official website at http://dongba.lijiang.com/, retrieved 9 December 2016. (6) Personal information was obtained both from interviews and from the official website of the Dongba Association, http://dongba.lijiang.com/, retrieved 9 December 2016. (7) Dongba Wangguo is another Dongba-themed park, which is close to Yushuizhai. It is not as popular as Yushuizhai and its business is sustained mainly by group tourism. An introduction is available at http://baike.baidu.com/link?url= IiULmmC8IuMRRJPdahy8Y85-6v69FQl3UZXAyrDpJDDyfvqiCUa2_9X_9AOULOFB_pIU1HY30dDzCxby3-YTK, retrieved 9 December 2016. (8) Basic information about Baidi is available at http://ylxf.1237125.cn/NewsView.aspx? NewsID=75272, retrieved 5 March 2022. (9) Bengshi means the funeral site in Baisha. Xili is an onomatopoeic resembling the instrument. (10) Drawn from the publicised poster of the Lijiang ICH Protection Centre in April 2014. (11) This is a newly developed tourist attraction that boasts the combination of beautiful natural scenery and cultural elements, such as the reconstructed Naxi folk village, sections of the Tea-horse Route, Dongba culture and the Baishaxiyue. (12) See https://yndaily.yunnan.cn/content/202302/11/content_120384.html, retrieved 19 February 2023. (13) See http://ccwb.yunnan.cn/html/2013-05/20/content_705533.htm?div=-1, retrieved 9 December 2016. (14) For a local news report on Zhu Xing see https://www.sohu.com/a/242209210_ 225061, retrieved 19 February 2023. (15) 88 Restaurant used to have its own website at http://www.88eat.com/ but it is not accessible as of 9 December 2016.

6 Value and Authenticity1

This chapter analyses the ICH tourism cases in Lijiang to reveal the diversity of understandings regarding the value and authenticity of ICH in the heritagisation process. In particular, I reveal these understandings from the perspectives of government officials, experts and ICH practitioners. While the government officials and experts are usually regarded as major players of the AHD, with the proposed practitionersbased approach this privilege is given to the practitioners. There are three major sections to this chapter. Officials play the most influential role in the AHD in China and I investigate their perspective first. Accordingly, the first section reveals the understanding of officials across the hierarchical Chinese ICH administrative system. The perspective of representative experts and scholars at local (Lijiang and Kunming, Yunnan) and non-local levels is examined in the second section. In the third section, I explore the understanding of practitioners and other community members. The chapter reveals, firstly, that the distinction between official players and ICH practitioners is a complex rather than simple one, and secondly, the diversity and complexity of the Chinese ICH AHD at the local level in China. The Official Perspective

As depicted in Chapter 3, the Chinese ICH administration is a rigorous hierarchical system. Nevertheless, it is simplistic to argue that the Chinese AHD of ICH is a standardised and homogenous one that is implemented rigorously in a top-down manner, because the Chinese AHD exhibits variability and fluidity when various players, including official and non-official ones, take part in the heritagisation process (Ludwig & Walton, 2020). In this book, I regard the governmental officials within the ICH administrative system as individual players who shape and influence the national system of ICH administration in which the subsystems of Yunnan and Lijiang are situated. I will adopt a hierarchical/vertical approach to study the governmental officials from national level to local levels (Table 6.1) so as to demonstrate the uniformity and heterogeneity of this system, as well as the AHD of ICH. 99

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Table 6.1  Background of the governmental officials interviewed Name (anonymous)

Governmental Agency

Position

Governmental Level

Official A

Department of ICH, Ministry of Culture and Tourism of China

High-ranking official

National

Official H

ICH Division, Yunnan Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism

Head

Provincial

Official L

ICH Division, Yunnan Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism

Vice-Head

Provincial

Official Y

Yunnan ICH Protection Centre

Director

Provincial

Official J

The World Heritage Old Town of Lijiang Protection and Management Bureau

Official

Municipal

Official Q

Lijiang ICH Protection Centre

Director

Municipal

Official X

Lijiang ICH Protection Centre

Official

Municipal

Official D

Gucheng County ICH Protection Centre

Director

County

Official G

Gucheng County ICH Protection Centre

Official

County

Source: Author interview.

This hierarchical/vertical study began with officials at the national level. Although it is very difficult to interview high-ranking officials working within China’s highly bureaucratic system, I did manage to interview official A, who worked for the Ministry of Culture in Beijing in 2014. In general, official A was cautious in expressing his personal view, saying that his understandings of the value of ICH and the concepts of authenticity, integrity and others are in line with the national laws and documents, such as the LICH and the State Opinions on ICH in 2005, as well as the mainstream publications by the former Chinese Vice-Minister of Culture Wang Wenzhang and national scholars such as Liu Kiuli and Wu Bing’an. These bureaucratic experts were vice-director members of the National Committee of Experts. And, as official A said: ‘Wang Wenzhang’s book is a half official document’ (interview, 2014). Thus, it can be seen from his way of answering that the national official discourse on ICH in China is bolstered by standardised official documents and certain bureaucratic scholars’ work while personal alternative understandings are excluded. The values of ICH are perceived differently from ICHC’s and Chinese LICH’s perspectives, as Chinese official ICH discourse applies a dualistic value judgement to recognise, assess and protect the ICH elements. According to Article 3 of the LICH, a recognised value should meet two criteria: ‘first, it embodies the excellent Chinese traditional culture and second, it is of historical, literary, artistic or scientific value’ (Xin & Huang, 2011: 10–3). Therefore, only the positive four values (historical, literary, artistic and scientific) can be officially recognised by the government. On the other hand, ICH practices are officially regarded as ‘important resources for cultural industries and tourism’ (Xin &

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Huang, 2011: 106) so that the economic value is emphasised implicitly in the LICH as well. Wang Wenzhang’s argument is built on the argument of some key bureaucratic scholars. Wang categorises eight values of ICH into three categories: • diachronic values (historical, cultural and spiritual values); • synchronic values (scientific, social and aesthetic values); and • contemporary values (educational and economic values). Diachronic values are described as the ‘most basic, universal, deep and central values’ (Wang, 2008: 70) of ICH, which underscore the intrinsic and past-oriented historical value. This is a materialist conception of history based on Karl Marx’s philosophy, which is deeply reflected in the AHD of tangible heritage in China. Actually, this conception, along with a strong political agenda with regard to national identity, national solidarity and cultural sovereignty, dominates the understanding and explanation of all the eight values. Typically, the spiritual and social values can be seen as a discourse that the state uses to socialise people into the mainstream socialist value system, in which the alternative meanings that the individual and community associate with ICH are not mentioned. Therefore, the social value is used as a synonym for the harmony value, which resonates well with the current political agenda of the Communist Party of China on the construction of a harmonious society.2 Here, Wang tends to use diachronic values to articulate the continuity of the excellent Chinese traditional culture, synchronic values to accommodate the current political and cultural agendas and, finally, contemporary values to legitimate the current use of ICH for dissemination and commodification so as to cultivate a receptive audience for the diachronic and synchronic values. However, those values are articulated in the perspective of the state for its national agendas, while the current, alternative, dynamic community/personal values are not mentioned. Reflecting on the definition of authenticity of ICH in Wang’s work (2006b, 2008, 2013a) and the LICH (Xin & Huang, 2011), authenticity is understood in the objective perspective so as to protect the officially recognised values, namely the four values, against any distortion or transformation. As seen from official A’s interview, the conventional authenticity definition bolstered by bureaucratic scholars and stipulated in the LICH is authoritative, so official A would not comment on it. However, this AHD is the place from whence the inappropriateness of authenticity originates. The resulting tension between theory and implementation will be further revealed at the lower governmental levels. At the provincial level, I interviewed official H, the head, and L, the vice-head, of the ICH Division at the Department of Culture and

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Tourism, Yunnan province, and Y, the director of the Yunnan ICH Protection Centre. The interviews with the provincial officials confirmed that the official ICH discourse in Yunnan has largely been regulated by the national ICH discourse. L said: ‘the 2013 Yunnan ICH Ordinance is actually a revised version of the previous version in 2000, which was revised a lot, because the previous one didn’t mesh well with the LICH, it didn’t meet the current requirements for ICH safeguarding’ (interview, 2014). This revision was a top-down assimilation process of Yunnan’s ICH discourse involving the training of staff at provincial and lower government levels and the ICH centres who then imparted the policy of ICH to the local practitioners. Officials thought that ‘the local practitioners have very little understanding of the concept of ICH’ so that they have to be told the definition and values of ICH, which the practitioners ‘find very difficult to articulate themselves’ (interviewee Y, 2014). This individual official understanding clearly demonstrates that the concept of ICH is framed within the national ICH AHD and that other interpretations are not considered the correct definition of ICH. Although the interviewed officials did not specify what should be regarded as the ‘correct’ values of ICH in their official discourse, it is, however, possible for me to know these values from the application form they prepare for the nomination of the representative ICH elements. According to the government notice on the nomination of the Yunnan provincial ICH elements, the very first prerequisite of the nominees is that the ICH elements should ‘have outstanding historical, literary, artistic and scientific values’ (Department of Culture of Yunnan Province, 2016: 1). Clearly, this definition of ICH values repeats the four values that the national AHD underscores. In line with these official definitions of ICH values, it is undoubtably the case that the government would predominantly recognise the four values of the nominated ICH elements. For example, in the nomination application form of Baishaxiyue music, the government concludes in the section on ‘major values’ that ‘Baishaxiyue music became an ethnic “living fossil” of the Naxi nationality because of its antiquity (Gulao Xing) and its artistic rarity’ (Lijiang Gucheng District ICH Protection Centre, 2009: 11). This official value statement clearly highlights the historical (antiquity) and artistic values of Baishaxiyue music from the official perspective. While observing the influence of the national AHD on provincial officials’ discourse, I would specifically point to the dissonant personal understanding of the interviewed officials. Through the interviews, I identified the following characteristics in the Yunnan provincial official ICH discourse in relation to the values of ICH. The first is that ICH in Yunnan is regarded as important for the identity of the Yunnan people as a whole. ICH is described as ‘something traditional and unique that has been inherited from the past and something that signals our unique identity’ (interviewee Y, 2014). Y pointed out that, in contrast with the

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Han ICH in central China, ICH in Yunnan mainly referred to the ethnic minorities’ traditional culture, which, she argued, brought pride and confidence to the Yunnan people. The second value in Y’s interview considered the value for community members. For example, Y said that ‘ICH is not only meaningful for the ethnic minority, but also for the individuals, such as the Dongbas in Lijiang, whose prestige in the community is restored now’ (interviewee Y, 2014). This means that the individual connection with ICH is considered in the official discourse at the provincial level. The complexity and problem of the concept of authenticity, and its synonym ‘original ecological culture’, emerge at the provincial level. Unsurprisingly, all officials answer that authenticity is a crucial issue of ICH, and it is vaguely regarded as either the intrinsic attribute of ICH or the principle of safeguarding in the conventional etic/objective perspective in line with the national discourse. For example, L says: ‘the judgement of authenticity is mainly undertaken by experts with administrative power where community is rarely involved’ (interviewee L, 2014). Inevitably, authenticity is generally understood as object authenticity: it concerns the element’s genealogy and its history (greater than 100 years3), locality, venue, ethnicity, and the way it was in the past (interviewee L, 2014), and it means to ‘authentically protect the authentic culture with no adaptation’ (interviewee Y, 2014). Because of this conventional perspective, the conflict between keeping authenticity and allowing change becomes an unanswered question for the officials. As L admitted, it is difficult to keep the principle of authenticity while allowing community members to pursue modern lives. L was tolerant of the fact that the former function of an ICH element is extended to a tourism-related function; however, L was not sure whether authenticity still exists when He Linyi’s family Baishaxiyue troupe was only performing in the Guanyinxia tourist attraction (see Chapter 5). Consequently, L realised that ‘it is not easy to identify whether He Linyi’s staged performance for tourists is “ICH” or not. This is a confusion, a new situation, and a new problem’ (interview, 2014). Here, we can see that the seemingly unquestionable national official discourse of authenticity encounters practical problems in the implementation at the provincial level. While provincial officials were struggling with the implementation of objective authenticity in reality, nevertheless, new understandings of authenticity from subjective and constructivist perspectives are possible to identify. For example, consideration of the subjective feelings of the practitioners was pointed out. Noticeably, Y thought that the judgement of authenticity by the experts was not as good as the self-judgement by the practitioners themselves. By assessing the feelings, location, measures and functions, the practitioners themselves can use their own criteria to decide whether their practices are authentic or not (interviewee Y, 2014). Similarly, head H (interview, 2014) said that, in regard to changing ICH,

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attention should be paid to the sense of belonging, identity and inner happiness of the inheritors. On the other hand, Y said that the judgement of a practice by experts was based on a certain temporal situation of the practitioner during his life. However, ‘changing cultural practices can also be recognised gradually by the community as authentic’ (interview, 2014). Y’s remark can be seen as a good example of both the emergent authenticity concept (Cohen, 1988) and the hot authentication process (Cohen & Cohen, 2012a) in the constructivist perspective on authenticity. Speaking from the subjective approach, a sympathy of the officials for the local practitioners appeared at the provincial level. Diverse understandings of the value of ICH and the difficulties of authenticity are noticed at the provincial level and these issues are manifested more clearly at the municipal and county levels in Lijiang. Interviewed officials in Lijiang include director Q and official X at the Lijiang Municipal ICH Protection Centre, director D and official G at the Gucheng County ICH Protection Centre, and official J at the LPMB. The value of ICH is understood among Lijiang officials in diverse ways in which both the national official discourse and the alternative discourses are apparent. Rather than upholding the value of national solidarity in China, officials in Lijiang underscored the value of ICH for the whole Naxi community. As members of the local community, officials expressed their ethnic awareness and pride in their ICH discourses. For example, director D, and officials G and X, relate Naxi ethnicity closely to ICH. Specifically, D said: ‘ICH decides the life and death of the Naxi community’ (interview, 2014) and official X stressed that ‘ICH differentiates one ethnic group from the other’ (interview, 2014). In addition, several of the four values were mentioned, such as historical value, which ‘records the trajectory of the ethnic history and cultural change’ (interviewee X, 2014) and ‘enables the future generations to understand the Naxi history’ (interviewee G, 2014). It is noticeable that director Q pointed out a gap between government and community understandings of ICH value. Governmental understanding of current value articulation, Q argued, was ‘superficial’, it ‘talks more about the ethnic values’. By comparison, ‘the community’s understanding is simple and it concerns the values from the point of practicality, use, personal values, and ethnic pride’ (interviewee Q, 2014). The value for the individual was articulated in the clearest way in official J’s argument that ‘ICH embodies the humanity, the inner pure feelings of humankind and it is concerned more with the intimacy, spiritual satisfaction and memory of a person’s experiences’ (interview, 2014). We can see here that, from the national to the local levels, the local officials in Lijiang were able to share their sympathetic understandings with the Naxi community and ICH practitioners. While the subjective feelings and values of the practitioners are recognised by the officials, they also consider how the national ICH

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theory can better describe these realities. In his interview, director Q noted the need to bridge several gaps in the localisation of the concept of ICH from national to local level. Q said that although the concept of ICH was introduced into China in the early 2000s, it was still regarded as a new concept that needed more study. To be specific, Q thought that the value of ICH still had room for argument, and he pointed out that the theory needed to be developed and tested in practice so that the local communities’ understanding of value can be guided and theorised. Similar to understanding value, understanding of the concept of authenticity, as well as original ecological culture, reveals diversity at the local level in Lijiang. Although officials and staff welcomed authenticity in the safeguarding of ICH, they were actually trying to mediate the conventional definition of authenticity in the national discourse with their personal understanding from practical implementation. It is noticeable therefore to observe that although objective authenticity still exists, alternative perspectives on authenticity are articulated by these officials at the local level. Since all interviewed officials agreed that ICH is changing in Lijiang, it was difficult, if not impossible, for them to keep ICH as ‘it was like in the past’, as the Chinese LICH stipulates (Xin & Huang, 2011: 14). Many officials regarded authenticity in a pro-constructivist perspective. In the context of tourism, for example, a cultural practice was not judged as either authentic or inauthentic but as authentic to some degree (interviewee Q, 2014). With regard to the form of ICH, authenticity was more concerned with the spiritual aspect of a practice, such as the Dongba rites, and less so to the product-oriented practices, such as handicraft skills (interviewees Q, X and G, 2014). This means that, even though authenticity is seen as an attribute of a cultural practice, it can be seen as a relative quality in a synchronic way to describe which forms of ICH are ‘more traditional’ than others (interviewee G, 2014). Also, it can be seen as a relative quality in a diachronic way to describe the decrease of authenticity in ICH, because ‘it is only possible to maintain authenticity during a period of time’ (interviewee Q, 2014). It is interesting to realise that, since authenticity can be read as an evolving concept, the concept of ‘original ecology’, however, explicitly implies the meaning of the static original, so that some officials doubted whether ‘original ecological culture’ really exists (interviewees Q, G and official J, 2014). Alongside the constructivist perspective, the subjective perspective on authenticity also emerged in what these officials had to say. Since ‘all ICH concerns the state of mind (Xinjing) of the practitioners’ (interviewee X, 2014), many local officials argued that the authenticity of Dongba ritual will be harmed once it is staged for tourists because the state of mind, or the feelings of the Dongbas, will change along with the change of location, function and audience. However, the subjective feelings of the handicraft practitioners were not, according to them, as

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vulnerable to commodification through tourism and so the authenticity of handicraft practices would remain relatively constant (interviewees Q, X and G, 2014). These subjectivities that underpin authenticity, according to these officials, are related closely to the function, aim or purpose of ICH, so that a change in the use, function or purpose of ICH will necessarily harm the state of mind of the practitioners with the result that the ICH is harmed. These official remarks, while shedding light on the new understanding of authenticity in a constructivist and existential perspective, simultaneously ignored the agencies of the practitioners, who do not necessarily notice the distortion or change of the state of mind, or their personal feelings. These will be further exemplified in the section of the practitioner perspective. Another positive point the officials make is that they realise it is authoritative and simplistic to recognise an ICH element by the Committee of Experts according to the description in the nomination dossier, rather than through an investigation of the actual practice in the field (interviewee X, 2014). Therefore, official J said that while locals can easily tell the traditional from the modern, some experts simply do not understand that culture. That is why official X asked for better official recognition, one that mainly considers the subjective feelings of the practitioners. We can see from this section that the officials’ understanding of value and the concept of authenticity reveals diversity and complexity across the hierarchy. Generally speaking, the higher the administrative level of the official, the more likely they are to be constrained by the national official ICH discourse. In terms of the value of ICH, national officials tend to articulate a macro-level of the collective values, such as national identity, nationality, solidarity and cultural sovereignty, with the result that the community groups’ and individuals’ values are ignored. At the provincial level, on the one hand the middle level of the collective values, such as the cultural identity of all Yunnan nationalities, is emphasised. On the other hand, officials show their sympathetic understanding of the values for the Lijiang community. This trend is manifested most clearly at the local level in Lijiang, where officials highlight the value for the local Naxi and Lijiang community. Meanwhile, subjective feelings and the value for the individual practitioners are personally acknowledged by the officials. With regard to the concept of authenticity, national officials’ understanding is in line with the textual AHD that is objectified in the LICH. The derivative state of this is noticed at provincial and local levels, where officials have noted the difficulty in applying authenticity in practice. On the one hand, therefore, they are constrained by the national discourse on authenticity; on the other hand, their personal understanding is adjusted by the practical implementation, so that they are mediating the gap between policy and practice. Specifically,

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constructivist and subjective perspectives on authenticity emerged in Yunnan and Lijiang officials’ understanding of this concept. The Expert Perspective

Some experts and scholars play an important role in the construction of the AHD in two ways: firstly, their knowledge is selectively adopted by the government for policymaking; and secondly, they personally participate in the Committee of Experts to execute the policy. I refer to these experts and scholars who contribute to the AHD as bureaucratic scholars. In this section, I investigate the personal understandings of the interviewed experts at two levels: non-local and local experts. Local experts are those Naxi people who work locally or have a close affiliation with the Naxi community in Lijiang. The remaining scholars are therefore grouped as non-local. Understanding of non-local experts is drawn from two sources: firstly, from the literature, part of which has been reviewed in previous chapters; and secondly, interviews conducted with scholars/experts working in national institutes (Table 6.2). It can be clearly noted from Wang Wenzhang’s work (2006b, 2008, 2013a) that his argument underpins the majority of official positions on ICH. As official A said: ‘Wang’s work is half-official and half-academic’ (interview, 2014). My argument –that the Chinese ICH AHD is constructed by the bureaucratic scholars and officials – is also confirmed by scholar N, who observed from reality that the national policy and documents were drafted by certain scholars under arrangement with the government. Generally, scholar N concluded that the Chinese ICH research circle was relatively closed, with little communication with the outside world (interview, 2014). This description illustrates again a symbiotic government–scholar network (Maags & Holbig, 2016). In the discussion of ICH value among scholars’ work, in additional to Wang’s (2006b, 2008, 2013a) contribution, a distinction between the universal and the unique value of ICH is identified by other scholars Table 6.2  Background of non-local scholars interviewed Name

Institute

Scholar W (anonymous)

National ICH (anonymous)

non-Naxi

Scholar N (anonymous)

National ICH (anonymous)

non-Naxi

Scholar C (anonymous)

National ICH (anonymous)

non-Naxi

Scholar B (anonymous)

National ICH (anonymous)

non-Naxi

Song Junhua

China ICH Research Centre, Sun Yat-sen University

non-Naxi

He Ming

National Research Centre for the Studies of the Ethnic Minorities of China’s South-western Borderland, Yunnan University

non-Naxi

Source: Author interview.

Notes

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(J.H. Song & K.T. Wang, 2013; Xiang, 2013). In the discourse of these scholars, universal value refers to historical, artistic, social and national identity values. It is with this concept that Chinese scholars and officials again borrowed from and accommodated the UNESCO World Heritage discourse on the Outstanding Universal Value. There are no items concerning the criterion of value in the ICHC; however, many mainstream scholars argued, surprisingly, that UNESCO defines ICH from values in history, aesthetics, literature, anthropology and so on (K.L. Liu, 2004a; Xiang, 2013: 42). This international justification is incorporated into the Chinese national value building process, which can be seen in the harmony value in Wang’s (2006b, 2008, 2013a) argument and, for example, in the augment for the social value of ICH in Yuan and Gu’s (2013: 50) work published for ICH bureaucrats: Firstly, ICH is a nation’s symbolic culture; secondly, it is the result of the national collective identity; thirdly, it maintains the social order and establishes the public morality and finally, it is an important source of moral construction in contemporary China.

Nevertheless, an argument for unique value and the value for local community and individuals is expressed by some scholars. For example, He Ming (interview, 2014) thought that the value of ICH lay in the uniqueness inherent in the wisdom, knowledge and crafts of an ethnic group in a certain area, as well as in the understanding, creativity and spiritual experience of a person. Song and Wang (2013: 89) appropriately argued that UNESCO and the national and regional governments use universal value to justify their ICH work, while the unique value felt by the inheritors, is the inner driving force for them to actively transmit and create their ICH. The emphasis on the so-called unique value, or the diverse values felt by the individual and the community, is still weak in non-local scholars’ arguments, and this situation influences their understanding of authenticity. As discussed in previous chapters, authenticity is advocated in both mainstream scholarly and officials’ work as a result of influence from the conventional heritage philosophy and folklore studies mindset. However, alternative perspectives on authenticity are also noted. Scholars C, B and Song Junhua, for example, thought that authenticity should not be understood as a static concept since cultural practices always change (interview, 2014). Although some national bureaucratic scholars still stuck to the official explanation of authenticity as ‘keeping ICH as it was in the past’ (interviewee W, 2014), most scholars interviewed understood authenticity from a constructivist perspective. This is because ‘authenticity is a dynamic concept’ (interviewee C, 2014), it is a continuum (interviewee He Ming, 2014), it is contextualised (interviewee B, 2014), and ‘it should be looked at in relation to time and place’

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(interviewee Song Junhua, 2014). For these reasons, the concept of original ecological culture is considered a problematic concept that is in conflict with the dynamic nature of ICH. In a similar way to some local officials in Yunnan, a number of scholars have argued that the authenticity of ICH should be understood from the perspective of the practitioners. For example, scholar C held the same view as official A in that ‘the key point in assessing authenticity is whether the locals acknowledge it or not. Something is authentic when the locals think so’ (interview, 2014). Nevertheless, scholars could not agree on the proposition of ‘subjective authenticity’, which is totally articulated by the practitioners themselves, because ‘it is too causal’, so that ‘authenticity should be ascertained by the community with the assistance of the experts’, otherwise ‘the community may despise their ICH’ (interviewee Song Junhua, 2014). It should be noted here that the scholars still need the concept of authenticity and regard it as their theoretical advantage. The view of experts and scholars is complicated by the fact that in most cases they are also community members in Lijiang. However, as I shall argue, this situation also enables diverse understandings to emerge. I categorise those Naxi experts who were closely affiliated to the institutes in Kunming and Lijiang as local experts (Table 6.3). The traits of mainstream local scholars’ arguments are reflected among these Naxi scholars in that they prioritise the so-called universal values of ICH, which are acknowledged in the forms of historical, cultural, philosophical and aesthetic values (interviewees He Limin and He Pinzheng, 2014). On the other hand, local experts regarded the value for the Naxi or Lijiang community as an important unique value. This phenomenon is similar to the local officials who justified the ICH value more in relation to their community, rather than the whole country. Many Dongba culture experts in Lijiang articulated the important value of Dongba culture for the whole Naxi community. Specifically, the value of Dongba culture is described as equal to the value of the Naxi community (interviewee He Pinzheng, 2014), because the ‘value of ICH is important in forming a nation or community’s value, belief, Table 6.3  Background of local scholars interviewed Name

Institute

Notes

Yang Fuquan

Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences

Naxi scholar

He Pinzheng

Lijiang Dongba Cultural Academy

Naxi scholar and an artist

He Limin

Lijiang Dongba Cultural Academy

Naxi scholar and a Dongba

Yang Guoqing

Naxi Culture Research Association

Naxi scholar and a retired leader of the Lijiang government

Mu Chen

Lijiang Museum

Naxi scholar and a Dongba

Source: Author interview.

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spirit, ethnicity, character and so on’ (interviewee Yang Fuquan, 2014). Furthermore, the value of Naxi culture is also praised as not only significant to Lijiang but also to the world, because ‘the essence of Naxi culture, the Dongba culture, promotes a universal value which promotes the harmony between peoples, as well as between people and nature’ (interviewee Yang Guoqing, 2014). In addition to the community value, importantly, the personal values of ICH are noticed in He Limin’s interview when he argued that ‘the value of Dongba culture should be articulated from the heart of the individual, as well as from the reality, rather than from the official document’ (interview, 2014). Being a Dongba, he related his understanding of Dongba culture to his spiritual practice. This was also the case for other local experts who are also cultural practitioners engaging with ICH. Contemporary Dongba artist He Pinzheng emphasised the growing contemporary value of Dongba culture, saying that ‘contemporary Dongba culture serves contemporary society’. For him, ‘real/authentic Dongba culture, which mainly served religion, is dead. All Dongba culture practised by contemporary people is new, and it serves the contemporary life’ (interview, 2014). In regard to the understanding of authenticity, local scholars are not generally knowledgeable about the theory of authenticity to the same level as non-local scholars, with the exception of those scholars who are affiliated to the government. Examples can be found in the interview with Yang Fuquan, a high-profile Naxi scholar in China who worked with the Yunnan Provincial Government, and scholar Mu Chen who worked with the Lijiang ICH Centre. Yang regarded authenticity as a measure to control and regulate the change in ICH due to commodification so that ‘the authenticity of ICH couldn’t be changed by people optionally’ (interview, 2014). Mu Chen’s voice also resonated with official perspectives that ‘the government should pay attention to authenticity in the transmission of ICH’ (interview, 2014). All the interviewed local scholars, regardless of whether the word authenticity was used or not, tend to understand authenticity from a pro-constructivist perspective, rather than the conventional objective one. Yang Guoqing, for example, argued that ‘it is extremely hard to preserve Naxi culture in an original ecological way. In fact, Naxi culture should evolve along with time and shouldn’t stay in the Yuanzhiyuanwei4 status’ (interview, 2014). Yang further argued that although the forms of Naxi culture are changing, the essence of Naxi culture, which refers to the key philosophy and ideas such as harmony between humans and nature, remains Yuanzhiyuanwei (interview, 2014). This understanding is also noted in He Pinzheng’s argument that ‘contemporary Dongba culture is not Yuanzhiyuanwei, or traditional, but it is not fake either, because it still connects with the traditional Dongba culture as its root’ (interview, 2014). These considerations reveal that the notion of

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authenticity is not a useful one for local scholars to describe the cultural practices they observe and engage with, so they also face the ambiguity of authenticity. In this sense, these scholars are in the same position as ICH practitioners. This section has investigated the understandings of both local and non-local scholars of the value and authenticity of ICH. In general, their understandings are dependent on their affiliation to institutes, their social and academic status and educational background, and, importantly, their personal association with ICH practice, or the practising community concerned. Both local and non-local scholars argue for the so-called universal values which concern the canonical intrinsic values such as historical, artistic and cultural values. However, this is more common among non-local scholars. As for the local scholars, they are inclined to regard value for the Naxi or Lijiang community as a unique value. Moreover, it is more common to observe that local scholars mention unique value, or the diverse values felt by individuals and the local community. Their understanding of authenticity also showed diversity and most of them argue for a pro-constructivist perspective of authenticity. Compared with non-local scholars, who are familiar with authenticity theoretically, local scholars conceive authenticity from their own understandings, personal observation and engagement with ICH in practice. Local scholars tend to be more tolerant of the contemporary use of ICH and they realised the inappropriateness of the conventional objective authenticity. The Practitioner Perspective

Understanding practitioner ICH is central to the issues of ICH tourism. The practitioner here mainly concerns cultural practitioners, as well as the ICH inheritors listed at various levels, who were introduced in the ICH tourism cases examined in Chapter 5. Other community members are also considered but although they are community members they are not officially recognised as ICH inheritors by the government. It is not easy for the government to recognise all the relevant community members as ICH inheritors, such as in the case of traditional Naxi food-making, because many community members can do this. Values, as well as meanings, understandings and identities, are crucial to the understanding of heritage. I used the terms value, significance, meaning and importance in my fieldwork with the ICH practitioners but, in order to present a concise narrative, I will use the term value more frequently. In the following pages, I use the term ‘synchronic values’ to describe all current values articulated by the interviewees across all situations in the four cases. I will use the term ‘diachronic values’ to describe the changing values with time within a specific case. Ten major aspects of synchronic values are described by the interviewed practitioners in

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Table 6.4  Synchronic values perceived by the practitioners interviewed Embodiment of the values

Intrapersonal: inside the practitioners themselves

Aspects of the values

Dongba case

Music case

Handicrafts case

Personal actualisation

Y

Y

Y

Personal spiritual needs

Y

Y

Y

Y

Economic value

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Creativity

Food case

Interpersonal: between the practitioners and their families

Family values

Y

Y

Y

Y

Interpersonal: between the practitioners and their audiences

Acceptance, appreciation and trust

Y

Y

Y

Y

Cultural dissemination

Y

Y

Y

Y

Interpersonal: between the practitioners and the community

Ethnic values

Y

Y

Y

Y

Intrinsic: inside ICH practice and/or products

Historical values Artistic values

Y Y

Source: Author interview data, 2013–2014.

related cases. I have categorised these aspects into five types according to the ways in which a certain aspect of the value is embodied between the practitioners and other people in their personal lives (Table 6.4). In Table 6.4 ‘Y’ indicates yes, meaning that the value is claimed by at least one of the practitioners in that case. The synchronic values indicated in Table 6.4 are a manifestation of the spread or diversity of the personal understanding of the values of ICH the interviewed practitioners are engaging with. The differences between less and more commodified practices are not emphasised here but will be described in the following chapter. Since some of these synchronic values are related to commodification in tourism, I will illustrate how they are affected by tourism when necessary. In line with the practitioners-based approach, maximum latitude was given to the interviewees during my interviews so that they could freely tell me any values, or the significances, meanings and reasons, they thought important to their ICH practices. In general, it can be clearly seen that the spectrum of ICH values described by the local practitioners is much wider and more complex than the four categorical intrinsic values, namely the historical, literary, artistic and scientific values that are upheld in the Chinese ICH AHD. Specifically, the values of ICH are perceived by the practitioners in three ways: firstly, their intrapersonal significances; secondly, the interpersonal significances that are embodied between themselves and their families, the audiences (either locals or outside tourists), and the community; and thirdly, the intrinsic significances residing inside the ICH practice and/or

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products that are frequently recognised by the AHD. In comparing these with the official and expert interviewees, we can see that the majority of the values are subjectively attributed to the ICH practitioners and their associations with the family, audience and community, whereas only two aspects (historical, artistic) of the officially recognised intrinsic values are noticed by the ICH practitioner. These synchronic values are the lens through which I interrogate and re-think the notions of ICH and authenticity from the perspective of the practitioners according to the practitioners-based approach. As I argued in Chapter 2, subjective authenticity of ICH concerns the practitioners’ abilities to convey the values (significances) through either interpersonal and/or intrapersonal ways. My fieldwork in Lijiang reveals clearly here that the practitioners do demonstrate substantial subjective values in both intrapersonal and interpersonal ways. By comparison, the intrinsic/ objective values (i.e. historical and artistic values), which are central to objective authenticity, represent a more minor part of their account. Table 6.4 illustrates how the values are described by the practitioners. Firstly, the intrapersonal values embodied in the practitioners themselves constitute a major part of the ICH values. As described in Chapter 5, practitioners in Lijiang tried to make the best of tourism in order to improve their living conditions. This is commonly observed in all commodified situations for all four cases. In the case of Dongba culture and traditional music, economic value is a new synchronic value that emerged along with the development of tourism and the related cultural tourism industry in the 1990s (see Chapter 5). With regard to the Dongba case, Dongbas working in Yushuizhai Park (interviewees He Xuewu and Yang Wenji, 2014), the Impression of Naxi (interviewee He Yaowei, 2014) and Dongba Gu Park (interviewee He Guojun, 2014) believed firmly that tourism provides economic support for both the transmission of Dongba culture and for their personal practices. Economic value not only meant a good income for a Dongba (interviewee He Guojun, 2014) but it also meant a sound career opportunity for many young Dongba students (interviewees He Shunquan and Yang Lixin, 2014). In the case of traditional music, Baishaxiyue practitioners He Linyi and He Juyi and Dongjing music player He Shiwei all agreed that the Naxi music performance in Lijiang has to be sustained because of the economic benefits it generates through tourism, and many young learners now can make a living with a stable income (interview, 2013). As for the product-related cases, such as handicrafts and food-making skills, the economic benefit is always important and commodification is always essential, because the practices provide a means of livelihood that sustains their families (interviewees He Ayi, Zhang Xiangfang, Chang Qing, He Dama and Li Dongling, 2014). For some artisans, the economic benefit generated from the tourism market not only subsidised them in their early career years (interviewee He Jinping, 2014) but also

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guaranteed the livelihoods of most craftspeople, who would otherwise withdraw their practices (interviewee Che Fumin, 2014). Furthermore, opportunities in the tourism market attract young people who would like to develop careers in craftsmanship (interviewee He Shanjun, 2014). While the economic benefit is triggered and maintained in the tourism context, it should be noted that other intrapersonal values – such as personal actualisation, personal spiritual needs and creativity – are expressed more frequently. I found through these interviews that, since the majority of the practitioners learnt their practices from their parents or teachers at an early age, they embarked on these practices initially out of personal interest and talent, not out of economic interest. These reasons are commonly found in the music, handicraft and Dongba cases in which the young practitioners developed their artistic and creative talents and abilities along with their learning of ICH. Therefore, the majority of practitioners articulated that their personal values, interest, talents and abilities in a certain field are actualised through continuous ICH practice. Specifically, these spiritual rewards are diversely described as ethics, morality, worldview and personal virtue in the case of Dongbas (interviewees Yang Lixin, He Lishi, Yang Jinzhi and He Guojun, 2014), as happiness, enrichment, fulfilment, amusement and joyfulness in the case of music (interviewees He Shiwei, Wang Liwei, Yang Yinxian and Wang Yaojun, 2014), as being gratified, acknowledged and happy in the case of handicrafts (interviewees He Shanyi and He Shanjun, 2013–2014), and as being proud, happy and satisfied in the case of food-making (interviewee He Dama, 2014). Although described in various words, these practitioners could realise their diverse spiritual requirements on which they could build their personal identities as a Dongba, a musician, an artisan or a cook. With regard to handicrafts and food-making, value in the aspect of creativity is described as an emergent value with the development of tourism. Craftspeople claimed that their creativity was enhanced by touristic engagement, in particular in the case of copperware making (interviewees He Shanjun and He Shanyi, 2014). In the case of foodmaking, the creation of new dishes appeared before the arrival of tourists. As Xiao Jun remembered: ‘the development of Naxi food is a continuous process of creation from past to present’ (interview, 2013). However, as exemplified in the invention of new jidou bean jelly dishes in 88 Restaurant and the new Lijiang baba dish in Lyu Guijin’s Bainian Laodian shop, the tourism market is the best arena for the cook to explore their new ideas. Moving to the second category of value in Table 6.4, i.e. interpersonal values embodied between the practitioners and their family members, especially their parents, these are commonly found in all four cases. In general, ICH is regarded as a family treasure inherited across the generations. Notably, this is claimed in the Dongba case because the lineage of a Dongba family usually legitimates the continuation of the

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Dongba practice. So, engaging with Dongba practice is important to Dongba families (interviewees Yang Wenji, He Yaowei, He Yongguang and He Shukun, 2014). I noted in all four cases that engaging with ICH is a way for practitioners to connect, recall and commemorate their now deceased elderly family members who had taught them ICH. Therefore, practising ICH is a way for those practitioners to enhance their family identity. For example, He Linyi said, sentimentally: ‘whenever I play this (Baishaxiyue) music, or hear this music, very often, my brother and I will think of our father’ (interview, 2014). However, in some cases where the practitioner did not learn from their family member, this family connection was not mentioned, as in the case of Zhu Xing’s silversmithing and He Jinping’s wood-carving. Beyond the family, the interpersonal values are also embodied in the aspect of, firstly, acceptance, appreciation and trust, and secondly, cultural dissemination in the embodiment between the practitioners and the audiences. The values of ‘acceptance, appreciation and trust’ are established in two scenarios. In the first scenario, the audiences have to be local people in order to understand, accept and appreciate the practices. This is revealed clearly by comparing the commodified and non-commodified situations in the Dongba case. For instance, Dongba He Yaowei said: ‘villagers will understand my ritual practices in the community. However, the tourists don’t understand, even though I am performing the traditional rituals on the stage. No resonation’ (interview, 2014). In the second scenario, the audience can be either locals or tourists. This is found commonly in the product-oriented case, namely handicrafts and food-making, in which both locals and tourists are regarded as important consumers (interviewees Xie Pinzhen, Zhang Xiangfang and He Dama, 2014). Interestingly this scenario is also found in the case of music. As described in Chapter 5, secularised Naxi music is usually played by the practitioners themselves for their recreational purposes, so that the audiences are not strictly restricted to local people; or, in the situation of non-commodified playing, one player could be seen as an audience for other players. That’s why Baishaxiyue player He Juyi said: ‘as long as our troupe members are playing together, we have the same “feel”, the joy’ (interview, 2014). Furthermore, when investigating practitioners who engaged with both non-commodified and commodified performances, practitioners of music and handicrafts positively articulated that the presence of tourists was likely to generate values of acceptance, appreciation, trust and happiness. In the case of musical performance, when compared with performance only for self-entertainment in the local band, players in the tourism context articulated new values in terms of ‘acceptance, appreciation and trust’ and ‘cultural dissemination’. Taking the Baishaxiyue band led by the He brothers as an example, they noticed that their ethnic identity and pride, their personal pride and cultural

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confidence, were boosted as well as their cultural awareness of the profound Naxi culture when their music was enjoyed and appreciated by tourists; thus, they felt accepted and heard by the audiences (interview, 2013). Also, in the case of Dongjing music, the players observed that they felt a sense of achievement when performing for tourists (interviewees Li Yueshou and Wang Yaojun, 2014). With regard to handicrafts, in addition to feelings of ‘being trusted, needed and acknowledged’ when serving the locals (interviewees Che Fumin, Xie Pinzhen, Ii Runlan, Li Renjiang and He Shan Jun, 2014), craftspeople experienced an extra feeling of being acknowledged and happy in their interaction with tourists (interviewees He Shanyi and He Shanjun, 2014). With regard to ‘culture dissemination’, the value between the practitioners and their audiences was predominately reported in all four cases in the context of tourism commodification; the realisation of this value is also linked to some aspects of intrapersonal values. In the case of Dongba culture, most of the Dongbas interviewed in the tourism industry claimed that tourism helped to disseminate their Dongba culture to the outside world (interviewees Yang Xun, Yang Wenji, He Yaowei and He Guojun, 2014), which then stimulated the sustainability of Dongba culture (interviewees Yang Xun and He Guojun, 2014). In the case of music performance, music was regarded as a medium for intercultural exchange between the Naxi and other outside tourists. In performing Baishaxiyue music, He Linyi and He Juyi reported that their minds were broadened, their musical skills enhanced, and their musical understanding was developed as well (interview, 2013). Also in their performance of Dongjing music, Wang Liwei and Yang Yinxian agreed that their playing abilities were maintained or improved with audience listening (interview, 2013). According to the answers given by the interviewees, the outcome was firstly the result of the interaction between the players and their audiences in their touristic performance when the players had to play more carefully and more frequently (interviewees Yang Yinxian, Wang Liwei and He Juyi, 2013). The second reason given was that the interaction and collaboration among different players enabled them to learn from each other when they were performing together on stage (interviewees Yang Zenlie and Wang Liwei, 2013). In the case of handicrafts, artisans believed that interaction with tourists promoted pride (interviewee Xie Pinzhen, 2014), passion and an interest in continuing the practice (Interviewee He Shanjun, 2014), and it also broadened their minds and improved their thinking and learning with regard to craftsmanship (interviewees He Shanyi and Li Renjiang, 2014). In the case of food-making, along with the increased interaction between food makers and tourists, cultural dissemination was established, with food as the vehicle. Xiao Jun’s Amayi and He Zhiming’s 88 Restaurant, as two licensed restaurants in Wuyi Street in the Old Town, were quite popular among not only tourists but also local

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Table 6.5  Attitude of Naxi people towards ethnic values Statements

Attitude

The traditional Naxi culture belongs to the Chinese excellent traditional culture.

74.93% ‘absolutely agree’ and ‘agree’

Intensity of attitude6 3.56 (positive)

I feel proud to be a local person when I practice the traditional Naxi culture.

72.45.43% of ‘absolutely agree’ and ‘agree’

3.46 (positive)

Source: Author’s survey questionnaire, 2013–2014.

people. Both Xiao and He regarded ‘authentic’ Naxi food as the local specialty that could promote and deliver Naxi culture to the outside world via tourists tasting, enjoying and promoting through word-ofmouth and new media (interview, 2014). The values embodied in ethnic identity are obviously demonstrated by the local officials and scholars, and these are also described by the individual practitioners from their subjective perspectives. According to the results of the survey questionnaire in Lijiang (Table 6.5), Naxi people5 regarded their traditional Naxi culture, including Dongba culture, as important for both their national and Naxi ethnic identity. In the interviews, however, it is interesting to note that Naxi ethnic identity is foregrounded while national identity is eclipsed. In all four cases, many interviewees actively associated the values of their cultural practices with the whole Naxi community. Most obviously, for example, Dongba He Guojun proudly expressed that ‘Dongba culture is the soul of the Naxi, and it is the symbol of the Naxi identity’ (interview, 2014). Therefore, practitioners thought their cultural practices were contributing to the benefit of the whole Naxi community. This perception is noted in all four cases, even in the context of commodified practices. Interestingly, in the case of food making, some cooks claimed that it was more likely to be so in the context of tourism, where they could experience a sense of ethnic pride and identity. Asanshu and Hedama, He Zhiming’s parents in 88 Restaurant, which was very popular among tourists, regarded Naxi food as ‘the soul of Lijiang and the spirit of the Naxi people’ making it a feature of the Lijiang culture. Therefore, they were proud that they were protecting traditional Naxi culture by continuously making Naxi food and serving it to their customers, regardless of where their customers came from (interview, 2014). In addition to intrapersonal and interpersonal values, Table 6.4 also includes objective values, such as historical and artistic values, described by interviewees as intrinsic to ICH practice per se and/or the products. As discussed in previous chapters, the so-called four values (historical, artistic, literary and scientific) are stipulated as central values of ICH in the AHD, and they are also used as criteria to select the candidate ICH element in the official heritagisation. Notably here, only two of these four values were articulated by the ICH practitioners, and they constitute a comparatively small proportion of the spectrum of synchronic values.

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Significantly, the values articulated by the practitioners in the category ‘inside ICH practice and/or products’ can be contrasted sharply with the four values highlighted in the AHD. Interviewees in the cases of Dongba culture and food-making crafts did not articulate any aspects of the four values. Nevertheless, historical value is, for example, emphasised in the official introduction to the Shu god worship rite in Dongba culture. The introduction describes this rite as teaching Naxi people to ‘love life, protect nature, protect the environment, therefore, the continuous Naxi Shu god worship rite continues a historical value, practical value and an eternal ideology’.7 Thus, the practical value is explained as the ethic aspect, which ‘effectively restricts human’s acts of the destruction of nature’.8 Furthermore, this document also praises the artistic values embodied in Dongba culture, pointing out that ‘Dongba painting is the most characteristic Naxi artistic heritage’ and that ‘it maintains many writing features of the pictography so that Dongba painting is a “living fossil” for studying the primitive human art of drawing’.9 In the official introduction to the Lijiang baba pastry-making craft, the historical value is described as the only value of the craft. There is, therefore, an obvious contrast here in that when the interviewed cooks articulated seven aspects of the ICH values (Table 6.4), the government discourse encapsulated and condensed the values in one simple sentence: ‘Lijiang Baba is a unique snack which has a long history.’10 As noted in the fieldwork, in the cases of music and handicrafts practitioners talked about the values inside the ICH practice and/or the products. One possible reason why historic value is only mentioned in the music case is that historic value is an issue of traditional music in Lijiang. Considering that there has been heated debate on the history and authenticity of ‘Naxi Ancient Music’ in Lijiang since 2003 (see Chapter 5), the notion of historic value among the players can be seen as a consequence of that debate. This consequence was clearly noted in the interview with Xuan Ke and Yang Zenlie, who hold different views on the origin and authenticity of Dongjing music. While Xuan Ke regarded Dongjing Music as maintaining the ‘authenticity’ of the music during the Tang and Song dynasties, Yang Zenlie argued that this music was introduced into Lijiang by Han Chinese during the Ming dynasty (interview, 2013–2014). In the latest fieldwork, in 2020 and 2021, historic value and objective authenticity are still claimed and advertised for traditional Naxi music, as well as other Naxi ICH in the tourism market. For instance, on the welcoming information board at the entrance of the Yard of Sky Ground, the music of Dongjing and Baishaxiyue is described as ‘ancient music’, ‘the oldest multi-voice symphony’ and ‘the classics from an agrarian age’. Artistic value is obviously described by the artisans in the case of handicrafts. Che Fumin, who used the traditional wood-carving techniques to make tourist souvenirs with patterns and Dongba script

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decoration, emphasised the new evolving artistic value he put into the products he made for the tourism market (interview, 2014). And woodcarving artist He Jinping reflected that, compared with his early works which were simple and rough, he had gradually developed his personal iconic style, which created an artefact that is more aesthetic, exquisite and technical in the context of tourism (interview, 2013). Even though the artistic value is described as inside the product itself, it is not the value that pre-exists there but, rather, the value that the practitioners produce and attribute to the product. Ultimately, the value lies between the producer and the product. In general, when ICH values are designated in the national official discourse as categorical, selective and nationalistic, practitioners on the ground, as found in the practitioners-based approach, view the values in relation to their personal lives and social relations. This result shows that ICH is understood as diverse ‘heritages’ to different people. Furthermore, not only is the engagement of ICH in the community a part of the heritagisation process, but so also is the use and reuse of ICH in the context of tourism. Most new values emerge because of the positive effects of tourism development. Discussion of the implications of tourism on different aspects of ICH are explored in subsequent chapters. Having examined practitioner understandings of the values of their ICH, we are able to analyse their understanding of the concept of authenticity. In the first place, I noted in the fieldwork that the concept of authenticity is a theoretical and professional concept of which the general public did not necessarily have an equivalent understanding. Therefore, interviewed practitioners usually used a set of colloquial words to express their thoughts (Table 6.6). In the following discussion, whenever necessary, I will use their original colloquial words to describe different aspects of authenticity. The fieldwork reveals that it is not always essential for the practitioners to use the concept of authenticity to differentiate diverse interpretations of their ICH as either authentic or inauthentic, unless they have to justify the values of their own ICH. Therefore, I did not Table 6.6  Chinese words relating to authenticity Chinese word

Equivalence/Implications

Case

Yuanzhiyuanwei

It means authentic (in a pro-objective perspective) or original ecological.

Dongba and Music

Chuantong

It can be translated as traditional.

Handicraft

Minjian

It means folk, civilian, and community based.

Dongba

Zhengzong

It means orthodox and authentic, similar to Yuanzhiyuanwei.

Food

Zhen

It means real and true.

Dongba

Yuanshengtai

It can be translated as original ecological.

Dongba and Music

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use the term authenticity in the interviews and questionnaire unless the respondents initially used authenticity or other words to argue their understandings. Accordingly, Table 6.6 reflects the fact that some practitioners do use the term authenticity while others use other words. Furthermore, they perceive authenticity differently from other aspects of the ICH. In general, authenticity was understood by the interviewed practitioners from diverse aspects of the ICH (Table 6.7) and the term authenticity was understood ambiguously. Even within specific kinds of case, different practitioners described the authenticity of their ICH from different perspectives. A ‘Y’ (yes) in Table 6.7 indicates that this information is claimed by at least one respondent in that case. In what follows, I will illustrate how authenticity is articulated by ICH practitioners case by case. It can be seen from Table 6.7 that, in the case of Dongba culture, authenticity concerns a majority of the aspects. During the interviews, when discussing different interpretations of Dongba culture, the Dongbas interviewed usually raised the issue of authenticity. Contestation of authenticity is clearly seen in a comparison between the Dongbas in Baidi Village, who worked in a non-commodified context, and other Dongbas working in the tourism context of Lijiang, such as Yushuizhai, Dongba Gu and the Impression of Naxi. For instance, He Shurong, the head of the Baidi Dongba School, proudly announced Table 6.7  Aspects of authenticity indicated by the practitioners interviewed Aspects of authenticity Objects Locality Practices

Knowledge

Audience/ Function

Interpretation

Practitioner

Points Instruments and costume

Dongba

Music

Ingredients/tools

Y Y

Procedures/processes/techniques

Y

Learning method

Y

Y

Width of knowledge

Y

For local needs

Y

For religious purpose

Y

Local acceptance of the ICH

Y

Less adaptation

Y

Flavour (Yunwei)/personal style

Transmission of the ICH

Y

Y

Source of knowledge

Source: Author interview.

Y

Y Y

Y

Y

Y Y

Ethnicity Continuity

Food

Y

Association between the ICH and the place

Credentials, experiences and/or social recognition

Handicraft

Y Y

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that the Dongba culture in Baidi is ‘the most traditional and authentic’ form, and that Baidi is ‘the real holy land of Dongba culture’ because they abided by the classic Dongba manuscript, followed the ancestral procedures and used traditional instruments and costumes (interview, 2014). As a famous Dongba in Baidi, He Shukun was critical of the Dongba practices in Yushuizhai, saying: ‘they are for tourists, are adapted by cultural boss, are just performance, are selling the soul, are without belief, so they are “tourist Dongba” who are “not real Dongba”’ (interview, 2014). By comparison, interpersonal value is highly esteemed in Baidi, so that the Dongbas in Baidi are concerned with the relationship between Dongba practitioners, their practice, audience, function and community acceptance, all of which are regarded as important. For example, when talking about Dongba transmission in Yushuizhai, He Shukun said: ‘No, no, tourist attractions cannot do that. Dongba culture should be practised in the village for the villagers, rather than for the tourists. If it is served for tourists, it is not real Dongba culture’ (interview, 2014). On the other hand, however, Dongbas in Yushuizhai thought that they were engaging with the ‘authentic’ Dongba culture (interviewees Yang Xun, He Xuewu and Yang Wenji, 2014). In general, Dongba culture practised in Yushuizhai was praised as ‘very good’, because it was not focused on performance (interviewees Yang Xun, He Xuedong, He Xuewu, Yang Wenji, 2014). Although tourists were welcomed to observe the Dongba practices, the Dongba in Yushuizhai did not have to perform deliberately for the tourists (interviewee Yang Wenji, 2014). Notably, Yushuizhai was regarded by senior Dongba Yang Wenji as ‘the place where Dongba culture transmission is protected to the best in the world’ (interview, 2014). Even Dongba He Guojun from Dongba Gu Park praised Yushuizhai Park because ‘it is a traditional Dongba religious place which has higher status than Baidi Village’ (interview, 2014). Another salient issue in the Dongba case is the understanding of the authenticity of a Dongba – the identity of a Dongba practitioner. I found in the fieldwork that credentials or personal experience are assessed by fellow Dongbas to judge whether or not another Dongba is real. As described in Chapter 5, traditionally the identity of a Dongba is authenticated during the Zhizai ceremony and then can be accepted by fellow Dongbas and the community. The Dongbas in Baidi still follow these procedures. However, in Yushuizhai, Dongba Gu, and other Dongba cultural tourism places, the Dongba Degree Evaluation conducted by the Dongba Association is gradually becoming regarded by Dongbas as more important, more reputable and better than the Zhizai ceremony (interviewees He Guojun and He Rui, 2014; Mu Yao, 2021). It is also significant to note in this aspect that the authenticity of a Dongba practitioner can be detached from the authenticity of the Dongba practice. I found this clearly to be so in the case of Dongba He

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Yaowei. In an interview in 2014, He Yaowei said: ‘I am a Dongba as long as I wear my Dongba costume and hold my instruments, even though I am performing on the stage for the tourists’. When I interviewed him again in August 2021, he still confidently said: ‘once I wear Dongba costume and hold Dongba instruments, I am a Dongba, no matter I am acting for tourists or working in tourism market [these situations] will not affect the fact that I am a Dongba’. These claims not only complicate the recognition of authenticity but also trigger the issue of the integrity of ICH, which I will discuss later. Comparing the two conflicting views on the authenticity of Dongba culture, I would conclude that the Dongbas in Baidi held a pro-objective perspective on Dongba culture, while the Dongbas in the commodified cases in Lijiang adopted a proconstructivist perspective (e.g. He Guojun case, see Chapter 5) or an existential perspective (e.g. He Yaowei case, see Chapter 5). Understanding the authenticity of Naxi music is also attributed to the commodification of the music performance in tourism. The Dayan Association (see Chapter 5), led by Xuan Ke, boasted the objective authenticity of old musician (practitioner), old music (knowledge), old instrument (object) and old town (locality), the ‘four olds’, to stimulate its business during tourism development. However, He Linyi’s Baishaxiyue family troupe, which was performing for tourists regularly, boasted its authenticity from aspects of practice (learning method), continuity, locality and interpretation (flavour). He Linyi said: ‘the earliest and most authentic [Zhengzong in the original] transmission [of Baishaxiyue music] is through the traditional oral teaching learning method between father and sons. This method is the most traditional and authentic [Zhengzong in the original]’ (interview, 2013). Furthermore, He Linyi said: ‘this music is closely connected to this land in terms of soul and blood and this connection is an inherited lineage’ (interview, 2013). Flavour (Yunwei) is another important aspect of authenticity and is only seen in the music case. According to Yang Zenlie, a musician and scholar, flavour concerns traditional learning methods based on the traditional Gongchepu notation,11 which gives the players enough space for personal comprehension and artistic expression (interview, 2013). Therefore, by learning the Gongchepu from their father, He Linyi’s family troupe formed their own flavour, which enabled them to defend their own authenticity. Specifically, He Juyi, He Linyi’s son, argued that ‘authenticity concerns the flavour’ (interview, 2013). He Linyi criticised the Baishaxiyue played in Xuan Ke’s Dayan Association as ‘distorted, because they concentrate on skills, on modern style, and they are academism’ (interview, 2013). This explains why He Juyi thought the Baishaxiyue played in Xuan Ke’s troupe ‘doesn’t have flavour, the Naxi folk flavour’ (interview, 2013). Thus, Xuan Ke’s objective authenticity is challenged by He Linyi and He Juyi’s pro-constructivist and existential perspectives.

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Compared with the cases of Dongba culture and music, which are process-based ICH practices, handicrafts and food-making are productbased practices. Thus, the relationship between the tangible, the end products, the intangible, and the practice of making, becomes interesting when considering authenticity from the practitioners’ perspective. I note in this research that practitioners have different understandings of the authenticity of end-products-based ICH depending on the aspects of the objects, practice and knowledge (Table 6.7). In the cases of handicrafts and food-making, the authenticity of the making processes isn’t necessarily the same as the authenticity of the products. In the case of Che Fumin’s wood-carving, for example, he justified his handicraft as an ICH element by saying: ‘the ICH is mainly embodied in the carving techniques. The carving technique is more important, it is traditional’ (interview, 2013). By comparison, he described the products as ‘creative’ rather than ‘traditional’. A similar description was noted in the case of He Jinping, who thought the craft of wood-carving was itself traditional but that his art work was personal and even international, which meant ‘expressing the Naxi culture in a personal and international way’ (interview, 2013). In the case of handicrafts, some of the issues around authenticity are also noticed in food-making, especially the relationship between the objects (the ingredients and quality of the food), the practice (making processes), the audience (local acceptance) and the practitioner (ethnicity) (Table 6.7). In general, most cooks assessed the authenticity of their cooking from these three aspects. With regard to the objects, they prioritised taste (interviewees He Dama, Li Dongling, 2014), ingredients (interviewee Chang Qing, He Ayi, 2014) and texture (interviewee Li Dongling, 2014) as important qualities in describing the authenticity of the food. They realised the quality of the food is decided by the making processes, so that authenticity is also attributed to the traditional cooking processes, such as the firewood firing method in the making of Lijiang baba (interviewees Zhang Xiangfang, Li Dongling, 2014) and the sophisticated cooking method used in jidou bean jelly making (interviewees He Dama, He Ayi, 2014). In addition to object and practice, it is interesting to find in the food case that the participation of local people also contributes to authenticity. Firstly, this is because the identity of the cook decides the authenticity of the food in terms of the practitioner. As Xiao Jun said: ‘in order to be called traditional Naxi cuisine, at least the cook has to be a local person’ (interview, 2013). Secondly, local consumers’ acceptance of the food is crucial. It is interesting to realise that although nearly all the cooks interviewed served tourists, some of them still held that only the local people, especially the elderly, can tell whether the food is authentic (Zhengzong) or not (interviewees Chang Qing and Xiao Jun, 2013–2014), even though local people’s eating habits are changing.

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An investigation from the practitioner perspective revealed diverse understandings of the values and authenticity of ICH. In general, both values and authenticity are understood diversely and subjectively. Practitioners mainly describe the values of their ICH practices from intrapersonal and interpersonal aspects and these subjective values are the basis on which they then justify their ICH with a set of synonymous words for authenticity. These results indicate that ICH practice can be understood as different ‘heritages’ to different people. This chapter has described the understanding of values and the concept of authenticity from the perspectives of the officials, experts and practitioners. As argued in previous chapters, a national official ICH discourse exists in the Chinese administration system as an AHD (L. Smith, 2006), which is established by officials and bureaucratic scholars. By investigating the actual understandings of the officials and experts at various levels, I found that these players don’t always understand the value and authenticity as standardised and articulated in the national ICH AHD. Instead, the closer the officials and experts are to the ICH practitioners in Lijiang, the more likely it is that they express a sympathetic understanding that is closer to that of the local ICH practitioners. In general, with the exception of the national officials, alternative understandings are identified in other officials, experts and, of course, the practitioners’ perspectives. This research therefore not only reveals the deviation in the ICH values and authenticity between the policymaking and the implementation of the AHD, but it also reveals the diversity and complexity of the AHD itself at the local level. These results demonstrate that although the AHD is well established at the higher level, it is not a monolithic discourse across the whole national hierarchy, as stratification is revealed at the middle and local levels in practice. Among the three players in the heritagisation of ICH in Lijiang, the practitioners are relatively free from the constraint of the AHD in relation to the categorical values or authenticity, so that they understand their ICH as a ‘cultural practice’ (L. Smith, 2006: 11) situated in their everyday personal and social relations. Therefore, the values, or the meanings of ICH, produced and described by the practitioners are more diverse and complex than those stipulated in the official and expert perspectives. Meanwhile, some of the values emerge along with the development of tourism and therefore tourism is involved in the heritagisation process. Authenticity is found to be an ambiguous and polemical concept for them, and it is only useful when their ICH values are contested or questioned, especially in the commodification in tourism. Reflecting on the theoretical discussion in Chapter 2 and considering the results in this chapter, it is evident that the perspective with which the official players define and authenticate the ICH element is challenged in practice. In order to resolve this problem, it is better for the official players to make space for the practitioners-based perspective, which favours the

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practitioners’ subjective understandings. I revealed that the diverse and dynamic intrapersonal and interpersonal values perceived subjectively by the practitioners constitute the majority of ICH values. While I claim that these ICH values should be recognised equally and with no discrimination, I further argue that we should safeguard the ability with which practitioners can generate and convey these values according to their self-determination. This ability is therefore understood as the subjective authenticity of the practitioners. In the next chapter, I will describe the changing diachronic values and the contingent components of ICH by analysing the issues around commodification and integrity. Notes (1) Part of this chapter was published in Junjie Su (2018) Conceptualising the subjective authenticity of intangible cultural heritage. International Journal of Heritage Studies (24) 9, 919–937. (2) The construction of a socialist harmonious society was first proposed at the 16th Central Committee of the Fourth Plenary Session of the CCP. See details in the People’s Daily, 27 September 2004, http://www.gov.cn/test/2008-08/20/content_ 1075279.htm, retrieved 9 December 2016. (3) The official Chinese theory book or guidelines for those bureaucrats working in the ICH bureaucracy, Intangible Cultural Heritage Safeguarding Cadres Reader, states that ICH should be older than 100 years (Yuan & Gu, 2013: 4). (4) In Chinese Yuanzhiyuanwei literally means ‘original juice and original flavour’ and this word is commonly used by the general public to describe something that is authentic (in a pro-objective perspective) or original. (5) In Table 6.5, I only analysed the responses of 278 Naxi respondents out of a total of 363 respondents. (6) With regard to each ‘statement’ in the survey, five different answers are scored as 5 points (absolutely agree), 4 points (agree), 3 points (neutral), 2 points (disagree) and 1 point (absolutely disagree). The average point score for the answers to each statement is called the ‘intensity of attitude’. Based on the point assessment, an intensity score of above 3 indicates a ’positive answer’; the higher the point score, the stronger the positive attitude is. Similarly, an intensity score of below 3 indicates a ‘negative answer’; the lower the point score, the stronger the negative attitude is. Point 3, thus indicates a ‘neutral answer’. (7) See the introduction by the Lijiang ICH Protection Centre athttp://lijiangfyw. wenlvlijiang.com/index.php/p.html?p=44, retrieved 17 February 2023. (8) Ibid. (9) See the introduction provided by the Lijiang ICH Protection Centre at http://lijiangfyw.wenlvlijiang.com/index.php/p.html?p=31, retrieved 20 February 2023. (10) See the introduction provided the Lijiang ICH Protection Centre at http://www.ichlj. org/Article/ShowArticle.asp?ArticleID=201, retrieved 22 January 2017. (11) This is a traditional musical notation method that uses Chinese characters to represent the musical notes. It was widely used in China in the past. According to the author’s fieldwork in Lijiang, Gongchepu is rarely used now and most traditional music is taught with numbered musical notation (jianpu).

7 Commodification and Integrity1

Following the issues around value and authenticity, this chapter will continue to describe and analyse the understanding of commodification and its implications on ICH in the context of tourism and how commodification, as a way of heritagisation, affects the integrity of ICH. Previously I have conceptualised integrity as the ability of ICH practitioners to recognise, create, recreate and even abandon the components of their ICH in order to sustain the values they want to convey. Since most ICH practitioners are not familiar with the term integrity, I will reveal the diversity of the changes to ICH, as well as how the more commodified and the less commodified forms of ICH are perceived from the perspective of the ICH practitioners. Continuing on the discussion in Chapter 6, I will discuss my findings that there is an actual discrepancy of the understanding of commodification and integrity between the theory/policy and the implementation of the Chinese ICH AHD. This chapter will gradually show that, firstly, the understandings in the perspectives of officials, experts and practitioners are complicated and contextualised; secondly, the diversity and complexity of the Chinese ICH AHD are manifested again at the local levels in China. The Official Perspective

Official A at the Ministry of Culture and Tourism is a key national official interviewed in this research. In contrast to his cautious and limited expression of the value of ICH and concepts of authenticity and integrity, official A spontaneously talked more about the issues around commodification and ICH protection in the context of tourism. In line with the national policy, official A underscored in the first place that the ‘protection of ICH is more important to tourism development. No matter what the protection or development measures are, we have to assess whether the outcome is beneficial for ICH protection or not’ (interview, 2014). Under this precondition, tourism 126

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itself is not regarded as either good or bad. Instead, ‘we have to discuss tourism in a certain context to see whether the outcome is good or bad’ (interviewee official A, 2014). With this approach, official A, like many other mainstream commentators in China, divides the effects of tourism into good and bad ones. Regarding the former, official A thought ‘tourism could be one of the protection measures and it is a use of the cultural resources’ (interview, 2014). For the latter, official A pointed out that Lijiang is among the cases to experience the long-term drawbacks of tourism. Like many critiques demonstrated in Chapter 1, official A criticised tourism development and related processes of commodification of ICH in Lijiang because ‘local people’s lives are substantially influenced by the impact of the outside culture and the local culture is homogenised’ (interview, 2014). Because of this, he questioned the benefits of the so-called Lijiang Model, saying: ‘the initial outcome of the Lijiang Model may be good, but the results in the long term may not be’ (interview, 2014). According to him, the outcome not only harmed the local culture but also lessened the attraction of Lijiang for future tourism development. Official A’s argument here reflects the two contradictory mainstream arguments in China, that tourism development, or commodification of ICH, does not always fit well with ICH protection, so that the government’s expectations of both economic development and cultural protection may not be achieved at the same time. Like the concept of authenticity, integrity is a concept that official A thought should be understood with reference to the mainstream official and bureaucratic scholars’ work. It is, then, unsurprising to find that the understanding of integrity is as unified and standardised in the LICH and other national policy documents as is the concept of authenticity. However, diversity in the meaning of integrity is noted in the work of both national officials and bureaucratic scholars. On one hand, it is obvious that the same explanation of the concept of integrity is found in both the national policy, such as the LICH and its illustration and national officials’ work (such as W.Z. Wang, 2008) and in the work of bureaucratic scholars (such as K.L. Liu, 2004a). In particular, integrity is advocated as a principle for maintaining all the components of a certain ICH element and the whole ecological environment where ICH and its practitioners exist (K.L. Liu, 2004a, 2004b; W.Z. Wang, 2008; Xin & Huang, 2011: 15; L. Yuan & J. Gu, 2013). These arguments tend to emphasise the large-scale protection of all the components of cultural heritage, including tangible and intangible ones and the natural environment, in an ‘authentic’ way, for ‘Chinese culture as a whole’ (W.Z. Wang, 2008: 311). On the other hand, I also note divergences within the arguments made in national official Wang Wenzhang’s and other national bureaucratic scholars’ work. Liu Kuili, a national bureaucratic scholar,

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for instance, questioned the possibility of protecting all components of ICH, especially the ecological environment (K.L. Liu, 2006). It is interesting that, in making this argument, national official Wang also quoted many of Liu’s arguments in his semi-official document (W.Z. Wang, 2008). Wang argues: ‘ICH lives in past, present and future and it lives in ever-lasting regeneration and creation’ (W.Z. Wang, 2008: 293). Therefore, both Liu and Wang agree that ‘we should accept the development and change of ICH, rather than fossilising ICH’ (W.Z. Wang, 2008: 293). The consequence, however, is a tension between preserving the components of ICH in an authentic way and accepting changes to various components and their contexts in the present, a consequence that is present in Wang’s book (2008). This tension exists, then, not only in the difference in understanding of integrity between the national policy and the official players, but also in the understandings of integrity among the official players. These dilemmas are further revealed at lower levels of government where the policy is implemented in the administration process. At the provincial level (see Chapter 6), I conducted interviews with officials in the ICH Division at the Department of Culture, Yunnan and the Yunnan ICH Protection Centre. The economic value of ICH, referred to as the ‘commercial aspect’, or the ‘tourism aspect of ICH’ (interviewee H, 2013), was recognised by officials as acceptable in ICH management. Like official A in Beijing, provincial officials did not presume tourism and commodification as either good or bad: instead, they considered that ‘tourism and ICH protection are mutually correlated; mutually interactive, and they follow the so-called Law of Unity of Opposites’ (interviewee L, 2014). Therefore, the officials tried to balance the positive and negative effects of tourism. As the Head of the ICH Division H said: ‘we don’t oppose tourism development, we don’t advocate over-use of ICH for tourism development, and we don’t advocate zoo-like protection either’ (interview, 2013). A harmonious relationship between tourism and ICH protection is the optimal goal for the government. The positive benefits of ICH tourism for society are equally emphasised by both national official A and provincial officials. For instance, vice-head L said: ‘tourism development brings attention, capital, visits and opportunities which are good for the dissemination of ICH’, and she pointed out the Dongba culture transmission in Yushuizhai Park as a good example (interview, 2014). Head H said: ‘with suitable tourism, some ICH elements could be revitalised and even become good cultural industries, generating values and uses for the society’ (interview, 2014). What is significant in the view of provincial officials is that, in addition to these social benefits, they are also concerned with the benefits of tourism for ICH practitioners. For example, H underscored that ‘ICH holders should be rewarded with the largest benefit of tourism’ (interview, 2013). Also, director Y

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appraised the new values generated by tourism for the individual, saying: ‘tourism brings the increase of self-identity, pride, stable income and the realisation of personal values’ (interview, 2014). Nevertheless, officials are aware of the negative effects of tourism on ICH. Theoretically, as L summarised: ‘tourism and ICH protection are at odds, because tourism pursues the [economic] profits to the maximum, it turns resources into capital. However, ICH protection is for the public good and it pursues social benefit’ (interview, 2014). Therefore, over-use or uncontrolled commodification will distort and even destroy ICH (interviewee H, 2013). Both L and H used the overdevelopment of tourism in Lijiang as an example of these dangers. Generally, these criticisms concern the negative impact on local people’s living environment, the replacement of local inhabitants with non-locals, the destruction of the cultural environment and the unfairly distributed economic benefits among the local people (interviewees H and L, 2013–2014). These remarks reflect the similar criticism demonstrated in Chapter 1: that the commodification brought by tourism is harming ICH in Lijiang. Although these provincial officials reiterate that the principles of authenticity, integrity and inheritability act as guidelines for the administration, they feel it is not easy to implement them in practice. In particular, they have difficulty with the implementation of integrity in Yunnan. In terms of the different interpretations of cultural integrity, director Y in the Yunnan ICH Centre expressed her confusion that ‘compared with the non-tourism form of ICH, it is hard to define the commodified form of ICH. If you ask me whether the latter is still an ICH or not, I would say yes and no’ (interview, 2014). In terms of ecological integrity, L expressed her confusion: We have to abide by the principles of authenticity, integrity and inheritability in the LICH in the traditional cultural protection zone. However, along with the change of time, local people will have expectations for the modern life. If we ask them to stay unchanged in the way they used to live and work, it is a contradiction, it is a practical problem. (interview, 2014)

These practical problems demonstrate my argument in Chapter 1: that, to some extent, the current concept of integrity is inappropriate in practice. This is mainly because provincial officials understand the definition of integrity in line with the national discourse, which shows the gap between theory and practice. The interview showed that the term integrity is understood in the same way as national policy and as embodied in the LICH. In particular, officials realised that the ‘integrity of ICH concerns the inherited living and working patterns and that ICH is embodied in local people’s everyday lives’, and ‘integrity concerns the

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cultural space, the surrounding environment, such as the Ethnic Cultural Protection Zone’ (interviewee L, 2014). However, while recognising that ICH is closely embodied in local people’s lives and the environment, provincial officials admitted that ICH changes along with local people’s idea of their living environment (interviewee L, 2014) because ‘all living things in people’s lives change’ (interviewee Y, 2014). Therefore, the crux of the inappropriateness of integrity is that it is difficult to preserve all components of ICH and the whole environment in a dynamic context, as the LICH would envisage. In order to accommodate the gap between the concept of integrity and the actual administration, officials have to rely on their experience of what works in practice. As L herself admitted: ‘there are no standards as certain as for the tangible heritage’, so that ‘it is important to find the balance in the commodification in tourism and this requires experience, expertise, comprehension of the local culture and the affiliation of the viewer to the local community’ (interview, 2014). It is in this encounter between national policy and practical implementation that the difference between different components of an ICH element is seen. The most obvious difference is that provincial officials tend to recognise the noncommodified interpretation as ICH that requires protection while they are not so sure as to the commodified, or somewhat commodified interpretation of that ICH. This vacillation around whether or not commodified ICH is a candidate for protection can be seen in officials’ engagement with tourism. While the Yunnan officials do not restrict the practitioners’ participation in tourism, they still have a sense of what is traditional and therefore authentic. Y said: ‘we don’t have any restriction on the correlation between ICH practice and tourism’, and that ‘the listed inheritors can engage with the commodified forms of ICH if they wish, as long as they still engage with the traditional form of ICH by which they still transmit this traditional form to apprentices’ (interview, 2014). Passing on traditional practices, then, rather than commodified ones is key, reflecting that ‘the recognition of ICH concerns both the practitioner and the practice per se’ (interviewee L, 2014). Therefore, during the official authentication process, the ‘Committee of Experts tend to recognise the traditional and authentic (Yuanzhiyuanwei) form as an ICH element, rather than the commodified form’ (interviewee Y, 2014). While the form of commodified ICH is acknowledged as inevitable and sometimes positive, if it meets the government agenda, usually only the non-commodified form of ICH is likely to be recognised and listed as official ICH. With regard to the local level (see Chapter 6), I interviewed local officials at the Lijiang Municipal ICH Protection Centre, the Gucheng County ICH Protection Centre and the LPMB. It is widely acknowledged by these local officials that all ICH elements experience

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change in some way over time. This change is attributed to both the macro socioeconomic environment and the agency of the practitioners. For instance, director Q said: ‘ICH changes with the livelihood and development of the Naxi so as to adapt to people’s life’ (interview, 2014). Official X also stressed that ‘the biggest trait of ICH is its practicality, which is closely related to the economic, cultural and spiritual needs of the Naxi people’ (interview, 2014). It is therefore not surprising to note that director D is an advocate for the ‘positive active change’ that is initiated by the practitioners who would like to express their personal ICH in order to adapt to the social change going on around them (interview, 2014). Compared with non-local officials, Lijiang local officials inevitably contextualise changes in ICH as a response to the local tourism development. In general, local officials are more optimistic about the influence of the touristic commodification of ICH than non-local officials are. They stated several reasons for this. Firstly, ‘tourism can promote the development and transmission of ICH, because some previous natural transmission becomes difficult in a changing social environment’ (interviewee Q, 2014). In this process, many young people are attracted to participate in the transmission (interviewee Q, 2014). Secondly, they observed that certain aspects of the value of ICH are enhanced by tourism. In this regard, two situations are noted. The first, as also articulated by practitioners in Chapter 6, is that some forms of ICH are commercial practices, such as handicrafts and food-making, so that ‘these ICH need both the recognition of the government and the market’ (interviewee Q, 2014). The second is that ‘most ICH can realise the economic and social values in tourism development, and the commodification brings benefits to local people’ (director D, 2014). Indeed, new emerging values from the commodification of ICH are recognised positively by local officials (interviewee director D and official J, 2014). For example, director D said: ‘the historical value is seen in the folk transmission in the community, while the social value and economic values are seen in the commodification in the market, and both of these two forms of values are very important’ (interview, 2014). In the view of local officials, commodification is also an important approach for disseminating local ICH to the outside world. Because of this, director D told me that he planned to ‘adapt and commodify the whole Naxi classical music, including Baishaxiyue, into a symphony so as to integrate with the world [Yu Guoji Jiegui in the original]’ (interview, 2014). Unfortunately, this international symphony was not seen during my recent visit to Lijiang in August 2021. Nevertheless, director D’s ambition indicates local officials’ attitude towards the use and promotion of ICH. If we look back to how local ICH practitioners regarded tourism as benefiting their ICH in terms of the values in Chapter 6, we immediately realise that the above-mentioned reasons are

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also held by the practitioners. Therefore, this again reveals the sympathy of local officials for local ICH practitioners. On the other hand, local officials admitted that there are negative effects of tourism commodification. Some of their concerns reflect the mainstream criticisms seen in previous chapters and in the comments of national officials, such as the cultural homogenisation of the Naxi customs and language (interviewees D and G, 2014). Some other concerns reflect their conventional understanding of authenticity and commodification. For instance, director Q worried that ‘along with the commodification, people will have to change their ICH for the market, and thus a purposeful alteration happens. If the extent of this alteration is too large, ICH may change into another thing and this is harmful’ (interview, 2014). However, the opposite opinion is also heard. Official J argued: ‘the negative effect from tourism on ICH is not huge, and ICH is generally safeguarded well in Lijiang. Though some ICH is changed in terms of the forms, its essence is still unchanged’ (interview, 2014). In fact, the implications of tourism commodification are not as simple as positive and negative. Local officials commented on the complicated relationship between tourism and ICH and perceived tourism development as a ‘double-edged sword’ (interviewees Q and X, 2014). The implication depended on ‘the perspective the issue is examined from’ (interviewee official X, 2014) and the case needed to be analysed in a specific context (interviewee G, 2014). In addition, positive benefits may evolve into negative consequences in the long term. For instance, official X worried that, although Yushuizhai worked positively for the Dongba culture transmission nowadays, ‘in the long term it is not good to raise the Dongbas in Yushuizhai as pandas in the zoo, and it’s better to send them back to the community’ (interview, 2014). Thus, it seems that local officials are able to assess the implications of commodification on a form of ICH in a specific context rather than simply describing the relationship between tourism and ICH protection in either negative or positive terms. These interviews clearly show that local officials distinguished between the commodification of ICH into two situations: one the one hand, spiritual or religious ICH practices, such as Dongba cultural practices, should not be commodified (interviewee G, 2014); on the other hand, secular practices such as handicrafts and food-making can be commodified without any harm to their integrity (interviewees officials G and J, 2014). Furthermore, the commodification of traditional Naxi music, which has been gradually secularised during the 20th century (see Chapter 5), was advocated by officials as a necessary and positive complement to the non-commodified performance in the villages (director D and official G, 2014). The above opinions reveal that officials are able to examine the commodification of a specific form of ICH in a specific context and they

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are able to recognise diverse interpretations of ICH in tourism contexts. Consequently, these opinions affect the way they recognise different components of ICH and the concept of integrity. The concept of integrity, however, is largely understood in line with the national ICH discourse. Officials at municipal and county levels agreed with the concept of ecological integrity – that all ICH elements should be protected as a whole in a certain place (interviewee director D, official J and official X, 2014) – as well as the concept of cultural integrity – that all related ICH practices should be protected as one ICH element, such as the Dongba culture (interviewee official X, 2014). This similarity – that officials at both municipal and county levels agree with the concept of integrity in line with the national ICH discourse – does not, however, extend to the ways in which the concepts of cultural and ecological integrity are implemented by local officials. One reason for this is that the administration requires a segmentation of the ICH element. This means that one ICH practice may be separated into several ICH elements and that these can be listed as official ICH in different categories. This method, ironically, challenges the initial concept of cultural integrity in the AHD. For example, though official X advocated protecting all Dongba cultural practices as one Dongba ICH element, he admitted that it was difficult to achieve this in practice: We initially nominated Dongba culture as one ICH element, but this was declined, because of the academic dispute that Dongba culture is too broad and vague to be ascertained. When segmented, Dongba culture can be better assessed and managed. Also, segmentation allows individual sub-elements to be reviewed case by case by the right experts and community members. (interview, 2014)

Another reason is that the concept of integrity held by the local officials is challenged when an ICH element is interpreted through diverse forms in the context of tourism. This issue is best seen through understanding of the role of the practitioner and the practice per se, both of which are components of an ICH element. In the first place, local officials hold similar views to provincial officials in that they allow the ICH inheritors to participate in tourism with no restrictions. As director Q said: ‘inheritors’ behaviours are diverse, so we couldn’t divide a person into two parts, one part is authentic and the other is inauthentic. Instead, we recognise the ICH inheritors according to their contribution to the transmission in the community’ (interview, 2014). In the implementation, however, as seen at the provincial level, officials are confused about whether the commodified practice can still be recognised as ICH and, consequently, whether the practitioner is still qualified. This issue can be seen in the case of Dongba practitioners reported by official X (interview, 2014). Yang Wenji (working in Yushuizhai Park)

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and He Shixian (working in Lijiang Dongba Museum) are two wellacknowledged senior Dongba masters in Lijiang. ‘Though they are similarly knowledgeable of Dongba culture, it is controversial for us to nominate both of them as the representative ICH inheritors, because one [Yang] is working in the tourism industry while the other [He] is working in the community’, official X told me (interview, 2014). According to my observations, however, He Shixian has been working in the Dongba Museum for several years, and his work is similar to the work that the Dongbas do in other Dongba-themed tourism attractions, such as Yushuizhai Park. Interestingly, Yang and He were finally listed as Lijiang municipal ICH representative inheritors in 2010 and 2012, respectively. This means that the local officials tend to consider that the knowledge and experience of the practitioner are more important than the practices per se in the process of authentication. Thus, compared with officials at higher levels, most local officials express a greater acceptance of the commodified form of ICH practice. It was clear through their interviews that local officials regard both the commodified form of ICH in tourism and the non-commodified form in the community as equally important (director D, G and J, 2014). In particular, director D argued: ‘the commodified form is less authentic, but both the commodified and non-commodified forms are seen as ICH elements. ICH needs to be used and developed, so both forms are necessary’ (interview, 2014). Official X explained: ‘whether an ICH element is still an ICH element depends on the ICH element itself, rather than whether the ICH is served for tourism’ (interview, 2014). The components constituting an ICH element, according to official X, depended on ‘the key making procedures in the handicraft case; the timing, purpose, procedures and audience in the Dongba rite case and the melody in the music case’ (interview, 2014). In order to accommodate diverse interpretations of ICH, official X’s description did not follow the canonical definition of integrity in the LICH, which tries to preserve all the components. Still, the agency of the practitioners to subjectively recognise and practice the components is not emphasised here and this issue will be discussed later. This section has demonstrated that the officials’ understandings of commodification, tourism and the concept of integrity could be different from the AHD. Tourism and the accompanying commodification of ICH are not seen as simply good or bad. While higher-level officials tend to assess the implication of commodification at the macro level in terms of the socioeconomic environment, local officials are more likely to contextualise the commodified ICH and make comments case-bycase. Furthermore, local officials are more accepting of the process of commodification and regard it as an indispensable measure for ICH transmission. In terms of the concept of integrity, local officials do not always follow the national official discourse and they may regard some commodified forms of ICH in some situations as acceptable.

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The Expert Perspective

In Chapter 2, I discussed that ICH is widely regarded by scholars in China and abroad as a living and changing cultural heritage, so that a dynamic protection is needed. While this mutability is not stated in the LICH, many national bureaucratic scholars argue for the changing nature of ICH and argue for dynamic and diachronic perspectives (K.L. Liu, 2004b; W.Z. Wang, 2006b, 2008). This position is also clearly found among the experts interviewed. For example, scholar B argued: ‘ICH is closely related to people’s lives so that when people’s lives change, ICH changes accordingly’ (interview, 2014). The issue of change in ICH is not as important as the issue of how and why ICH changes. Thus, Song Junhua thought that ‘whether the change happens because of internal or external influences is of importance’ (interview, 2014). This remark reveals that non-local experts realise that when the change is inevitable, it is more significant to analyse the dynamics of the change as well as who the main agencies of the change are. Changes to ICH are highlighted in the commodification of ICH in tourism. In general, the commodification of ICH is not regarded as either good or bad, and all scholars interviewed held comparatively positive perceptions of the commodification of ICH (interviewees scholar W, Song Junhua, scholar B and He Ming, 2014). However, experts have their own understandings of how the commodification is applicable to the specific ICH element. Two distinct opinions are noted. The first is that some interviewed non-local experts hold similar views to national bureaucratic scholars (L. Yuan & J. Gu, 2013): that spiritual and religious ICH elements should not be commodified in tourism (interviewees scholar W, scholar C, scholar B and He Ming, 2014). This is because the spiritual component is the essence of the ICH and this ICH will be secularised when its function is changed, such as in the case of staged Dongba practice (interviewees scholar B and He Ming, 2014). Therefore, scholars propose ‘three principles’ separating the commodification from the transmission of ICH, which means that ICH practitioners are not encouraged to engage with the commodified practice directly (L. Yuan & J. Gu, 2013: 304). However, the second opinion is that some scholars would allow more autonomy of ICH practitioners in their engagement with commodification. This view is represented by Song Junhua, who described various interpretations of an ICH element into Benshengtai (the original state) and Yanshengtai (the derivative state) (J.H. Song & K.T. Wang, 2013: 110–112). This is what Song has to say on the commodification of Dongba culture in Lijiang: The practice in the community is Benshengtai and that in the tourism is Yanshengtai, but both of them are reasonable at this moment. In the future, under the influence of the outside culture, the former

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could evolve into the latter, so that Yanshengtai becomes Benshengtai. Therefore, I never regard these two states as opposite to each other in ICH. (interview, 2014)

What is significant in his comments is that he prioritises the agency of the practitioners in the transformation of these two states. Song continued: What matters is whether the derivative state is initiated willingly by the practitioner or not. If a Dongba would like to do this for the sake of the tourists, this is his choice. This choice may not be seen as good today, but it may be regarded as a workable choice in the long term. Who directs the choice is the key. (interview, 2014)

This remark demonstrates that non-local scholars can realise the importance of agency and subjective feelings of the ICH practitioners, who, they recognise, should be privileged in commodification. The concept of integrity understood by the non-local experts is largely similar to that illustrated in Chapter 2 and described in the section on the national officials in this chapter. The key issue is how the role of the practitioner and his/her diverse cultural practices are understood. During the interviews, non-local experts formed two distinct views towards the engagement of the practitioners in commodification. The first view, largely constituting the national ICH discourse, tends to discourage and regulate the commercial practice of the ICH; the second view allows a pro-practitioner and constructivist perspective on the practice of commodification. In Table 6.3 I analyse the understandings of five interviewed local Naxi experts. As with their counterparts, changes to ICH are widely accepted as inevitable and reasonable by Naxi experts. At the macro level, Yang Fuquan stated: ‘the [rate of] change in ICH is huge in the context of modernisation so that changes to ICH should be situated in the transformation of the whole society’ (interview, 2014). At the local level, Dongba scholar He Liming, taking Dongba culture as an example, observed that the belief and sacredness of Dongba religion was decreasing, as well as the social demand for Dongba rites (interview, 2014). However, most local experts interviewed held positive perceptions on the change of ICH in Lijiang. In particular, bureaucratic scholar Yang Guoqing reflected on the change of ICH in a positive way. He said: The essence of traditional Naxi culture, the Dongba culture, remains today. From past to present, the system and idea of Dongba culture is the same, though the practice or the interpretation may be different. The present Naxi culture therefore is still a ‘traditional culture’, because its essence is the same, though its form is changed. (interview, 2014)

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Their understandings of change are further manifested in the relationship between commodification and the protection of ICH in Lijiang. In general, local Naxi experts are optimistic about the impact of tourism development on ICH. They reported that tourism is beneficial to ICH protection because, firstly, social awareness and enthusiasm are aroused and this helps the transmission (interviewees Yang Fuquan, Mu Chen, He Pinzheng and He Liming, 2014). Secondly, local people benefit from tourism, particularly from the economic rewards (interviewees Yang Fuquan, Mu Chen and He Pinzheng, 2014). Thirdly, previously suppressed values associated with these forms of ICH are now recognised (interviewees Yang Fuquan, He Pinzheng and He Liming, 2014). In addition to these benefits, new values of ICH are realised, especially in the cultural industries (interviewees He Pinzheng and Yang Guoqing, 2014) and funds, techniques, policies and programmes on ICH are brought out by tourism (interviewee Yang Guoqing, 2014). On the other hand, Yang Fuquan worried that commodification will make spiritual practices staged and secularised (interview, 2014). Similarly, Mu Chen and He Liming were concerned that Dongba culture may be misused and mis-interpreted in the market (interview, 2014). While Naxi experts hold relatively positive views towards commodification of ICH in tourism development, the interview also reveals that they differentiate between contexts. On the one hand, Naxi experts are open to the commodification of secular ICH elements, such as Dongjing music performed in Xuan Ke’s concert, and the handicrafts produced in the tourism market. For example, the commodification of Naxi music for a wider audience through staged musical performances can popularise this form of ICH (interviewee Yang Fuquan, 2014). The handicrafts, which are also regarded as part of traditional Naxi culture, or ICH, are also not regarded as being harmed by commodification (interviewee Yang Guoqing, 2014). On the other hand, commodified Dongba culture is regarded as possessing different values from that which is performed within the community context. For example, Yang Fuquan commented: ‘the staged Dongba cultural practice is a form of dissemination, it is embodied with some aspects of the ICH but it has no religious function’ (interview, 2014). Yang Guoqing argued: ‘staged Dongba culture is a cultural symbol and an artistic creation’ (interview, 2014). While these two different forms of practice are regarded differently, staged Dongba practice is regarded as neither harmful nor negative for the whole Dongba culture and these two states of Dongba cultural expression are seen as connected to each other. It is meaningful to note that, in the interview, Yang Guoqing applied what I would call a constructivist perspective to look at the emerging commodified form of Dongba culture. He said: ‘tradition is comparative, so maybe 100 years later, the staged form of Dongba culture will become traditional’ (interview, 2014).

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This section has demonstrated that both non-local and local experts unreservedly agree that ICH is changing along with the whole society and they hold comparatively positive and sympathetic views towards tourism development of ICH in Lijiang. The interviews show that Naxi experts hold positive perceptions of the commodification of ICH in tourism while they also make distinctions between spiritual/religious and secular ICH elements. Furthermore, many local scholars connect the commodified ICH in the market with the transmission of traditional Naxi culture in the community, which indicates that the concept of integrity can be understood in relation to the concept of continuity. The Practitioner Perspective

As I theorised in Chapter 2, practitioners engage with the existing components of ICH dynamically, so as to recognise and sustain some of these components as the active components, and I regard the ability with which the practitioners do this as subjective integrity. In order to observe and analyse the active components in the case, I propose that the active components of an ICH element can be detected from the changed/ changing components in two dimensions: the diachronic dimension from the past to the present, and the synchronic dimension between the lessand more-commodified forms of the same ICH element. This is because, firstly, practitioners are likely to spontaneously note the changed/changing components that are meaningful to them, and secondly, the ability to engage and deal with the active components (in the sense of subjective integrity) is likely to be embodied in the changed/changing components. Accordingly, the understandings of components, integrity, and the implications of commodification on different aspects of the components, are described and analysed from these two dimensions in the following sections. According to the survey conducted in Lijiang (Table 7.1), diachronic changes in ICH are widely recognised by the local community, who largely held positive attitudes towards these changes which bring beneficial values to the ICH elements. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note simultaneously that these respondents also anticipated that ICH should remain unchanged in some ways from the past. Table 7.1  Attitude of local people surveyed towards the change of ICH Statements

Attitude

Traditional Naxi culture is always changing with time.

63.36% ‘absolutely agree’ and ‘agree’

3.61 (positive)

Changes to traditional Naxi culture result in beneficial content and positive meaning.

73.28% ‘absolutely agree’ and ‘agree’

3.91 (positive)

Traditional Naxi culture should be like it was in the past.

73.28% ‘absolutely agree’ and ‘agree’

3.99 (positive)

Source: Author’s survey questionnaire, 2013–2014.

Intensity of attitude

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This result implies that there exist diverse understandings of different aspects of the diachronic change of ICH and that each aspect is not regarded as equally the same by every practitioner. Table 7.2 illustrates the spread in the changed aspects of the components the interviewed practitioners considered as important for their ICH across four cases in the diachronic dimension. I will illustrate the seven changed components later in this chapter. Meanwhile, implications of commodification in relation to the aspects of the changed components are described according to the understandings of the interviewed practitioners. In Table 7.2, ‘Y’ indicates that a specific change of that aspect of the component has been spontaneously articulated by at least one interviewed practitioner in that case. As indicated in Table 7.2, the first component is the practitioners themselves. Three changed aspects are observed by the interviewed practitioners. The most obvious issue is that some practitioners changed their personal attitudes or expectations in their ICH practice over time. For instance, Dongjing music player Wang Liwei said: ‘players used to hold solemn and serious attitudes during the performance in the past, but nowadays people play music as a self-amusement’ (interview, 2014). As we saw in Chapter 5, both Dongjing and Baishaxiyue music underwent dramatic transformations in relation to their functions. Table 7.2  Changed aspects of the components indicated by the practitioners interviewed Components

Changed aspects Change from part-time voluntary work to full-time paid work

Practitioner

Dongba case

Change of personal attitude or expectation

Y

Change of spirituality

Y

Y

Change of tool, instrument and notation (music case)

Y

Change of physical characteristics of the products and dishes (food case) Change of place Change of social environment

Consumer

Change of consumer

Function

Change of original function

Source: Author interview, 2013–2014.

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Change of learning method

Context

Y

Y

Change of procedures, content, processes and ingredient (food case)

Place

Food case

Y

Change of personal expression

Object

Handicraft case

Y

Change of age

Practice

Music case

Y Y

Y

Y

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Therefore, except for spiritual rewards from playing music as spiritual edification and amusement, musicians also expected to gain economic benefit from the tourism market (interviewee He Linyi, 2014). The change in personal attitudes or expectations, which emerges from the subjectivity of the practitioners, leads to other changed aspects in the identity of the practitioners in terms of occupation and age. Dongbas in Yushuizhai Park noted that they have gradually transformed from unpaid part-time religious practitioners into the full-time employed staff in the park. For example, Dongba Yang Xun in Yushuizhai said: ‘most Dongbas in Lijiang are paid for their work’ (interview, 2014). Dongbas, therefore, and other practitioners, develop diversified identities when their engagement with the community is extended and diversified in tourism. In addition to the change of occupation, the age of the practitioners changes when many young interested learners participate in ICH tourism. This issue is noted by players in the music case. Players of Naxi music grew from senior elites to general music enthusiasts and then, more recently, to tourism practitioners (interviewee Yang Zenlie, 2014). Nowadays, young players usually perform better and they value economic reward, while the elderly players perform for personal enjoyment (interviewee He Shiwei, 2014). The second changed component noted by some practitioners concerns practice per se. With regard to this component, changes in interpretations are widely observed, such as procedures, content and processes in Dongba rites, handicrafts and food-making, and the change in ingredients in the case of food. For example, Dongba practitioner and scholar He Limin noted that nowadays ‘the time consuming and complicated procedures need to be shortened and simplified so as to suit current Naxi people’s life in Lijiang’, and ‘new content in Dongba culture, such as the worship for the God of Wealth and the ceremony of housewarming, needs to be adapted and invented to suit modern society’ (interview, 2014). As reported by craftspeople, most handicraft products produced in pretourism times were focused on practicality (interviewees Che Fumin and He Shanjun, 2013–2014). Along with tourism development in the late 1990s, handicrafts developed new artistic values (interviewees Che Fumin, He Pinzheng, He Shanyi, Li Renjiang and He Shanjun, 2013–2014), diverse interpretations (interviewees Che Fumin, He Shanyi and Li Renjiang, 2013–2014) and became miniaturised and fancy to suit the tourism market (interviewees He Shanjun, 2014). In the case of food-making, He Zhiming from 88 Restaurant said that he created new flavours of jidou jelly not only for tourists but also for local Naxi people (interview, 2014). Lijiang baba cook Zhang Xiangfang explained that the traditional recipe needed to be modified in order to meet a healthier diet with less sugar and fat (interview, 2014). Because of changed materials and techniques in these crafts, the end-product is also changed in terms of the physical characteristics, as reported by craftspeople and cooks in the component ‘object’ in Table 7.2.

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The second changed aspect in the component ‘practice’ concerns the ways in which Dongbas perceive the spiritual value of Dongba practice. Dongbas working in the Dongba Academy and Dongba themed parks in Lijiang city (such as Yushuizhai and Dongba Gu) observed that the popularity of Dongba religion has been decreasing, as well as the sacredness and solemnity of Dongba practice (interviewees He Limin, He Guojun and He Xuedong, 2014). The music case provides an example for the final two changed aspects of this component: personal expression and new learning method. Yang Zenlie, a Naxi musician and scholar, believed that ‘change is absolute and stability is relative’ (interview, 2013) when he described the personal and nuanced performance by different folk musicians. Also, as Yang concluded, one of the major characteristics of traditional Naxi music is that the players have to embellish or improvise (Jiahua in Chinese) their music according to the basic melody. Traditionally, the music was learnt through oral teaching and learning methods based on the Gongchepu notation. Nowadays, the traditional learning methods, which usually took decades for a student to master, have given way to the standardised numbered musical notation method (jianpu), only costing a young learner a few years (interviewee Wang Liwei, 2014). The third changed component concerns ‘object’, or the materials either used or produced in ICH practice. There are two changed aspects relating to this component, which can be exemplified in three cases. In the case of handicrafts, it is widely reported that the materials and equipment have to a certain extent gradually changed (interviewees Xie Pinzhen, Li Renjiang and Che Fumin, 2013–2014). For example, Che replaced the traditional manual lathe with an electronic one. In the case of Lijiang baba pastry-making, the cooking method changed from the traditional stone and firewood firing methods to gas firing or electronic pan baking, especially for those living in the Old Town where the fire code is strict and efficiency of production important (interviewees Chang Qing and Lyu Guijin, 2014). In the case of music, standardised numbered notation has widely replaced the traditional Gongchepu notation, as reported by the music players (interviewees He Juyi, He Shiwei, Yang Zenlie, Wang Liwei and Wang Yaojun, 2014). While practitioner, practice and object, are components directly pertinent to ICH per se, other components which facilitate the making of ICH are also noted by the practitioners interviewed, namely the place, the context and the consumer. It is in these three components that display the implications of tourism commodification most widely observed by the practitioners. Change of place is directly related to the displacement of the practitioners. According to previous investigations (Xiaobo Su, 2012; X.L. Zong, 2006), news reports in China2 and my observations in the fieldwork, most indigenous local residents have moved out of the Old

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Town.3 According to Chen Shijie, secretary of Dayan Community Office of the Lijiang Government, they have done so usually for the following reasons (interview, 2013). Firstly, by letting their house to businessmen, indigenous residents can earn a high rental income with which they can improve their living standards. Secondly, the Old Town is filled with tourists who not only make lots of noise but also make the neighbourhood feel strange or uncomfortable for the residents. Thirdly, strict tangible heritage protection regulations restrict the everyday life of residents inside the Old Town. However, change of place, or the locality of the practice, is only raised as an issue by some food practitioners. For example, Lijiang baba makers Lyu Guijin, Li Dongling and Zhang Xiangfang complained about the soaring rentals in the Old Town, which would gradually drive them out (interview, 2014). During my recent fieldwork in August 2020 and August 2021, I was unable to find these three interviewees in the Old Town as their shops had been transferred to other business. Context, the social environment, is used by the practitioner to describe the complicated economic, cultural, political and social relations between their ICH practices and the society. Change of context is acknowledged by practitioners in all four cases. The most frequent complaint in terms of the context is the cultural impact on the local Naxi culture, which can be related to the negative effect of commodification in Lijiang. In general, the degradation of the context is described at the macro level. Interviewees in the case of Dongba culture, Naxi music and food-making explicitly claimed that it was because of the outside culture brought in by the tourists that their indigenous Naxi culture, especially the ICH they are engaging with, was affected (interviewees Yang Xun, He Guojun, Wang Liwei, He Linyi and Xiao Jun, 2013–2014). As discussed in Chapter 4, however, the Naxi culture has been influenced by Han culture since the time of the Ming dynasty so that the cultural impact can be intensified by, but not solely attributed to, the development of tourism. Dongba culture is a case where tourism is not the only cause. Dongbas themselves noticed that the popularity of Dongba religion had been decreasing in the wider society (interviewees He Guojun, He Limin and He Xuedong, 2014). By comparison, Dongba He Xuedong pointed out: ‘nowadays, most people in Lijiang municipal area dislike Dongba religion, because they still treat it as a superstition’ (interview, 2014). Change of consumer is related to change of context. In the cases of Dongba culture and music, it is noticeable that the consumer is not regarded by the practitioners as changed. Meanwhile in the productoriented handicrafts and food-making cases, change of consumer is of great importance. As observed by craftspeople, local people used to be the major consumers of handicrafts prior to the middle of the 1990s, but later, tourists gradually became the predominant consumers (interviewees Che Fumin, Li Runlan, Zhu Xing, He Shanyi,

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He Shanjun and Li Renjiang, 2014). The impact of this change can be clearly seen in, for example, Che Fumin’s wood-carving and He Shanjun’s copper smithing cases (see Chapter 5). Naxi food is consumed by both local people and tourists. As admitted by restaurant managers (interviewees Chen Jie, He Dama and Xiao Jun, 2014), local restaurants consider the appetites of the tourists more than that of the local people, so the arrival of tourists matters (Photo 7.1). He Dama’s 88 Restaurant has been experimenting with new jidou bean jelly recipes since the early 2010s and she created more than 20 new styles of jidou bean jelly in 2019. Nevertheless, the impact of the COVID19 pandemic in 2020 meant that she removed some of the dishes from the menu accordingly. During my visit in August 2021, He Dama was happy to update her menu to increase the choices available for jidou bean jelly as the domestic tourism market was recovering. In addition to the tourist appetite, the eating habits of the local people have also changed. This change is evident from the survey result: 77.69% of respondents said that their eating habits have changed (intensity of the attitude 3.88, which means positive). All the above-mentioned changes to the components lead inevitably to the conclusion that the original function of the ICH elements changes. Although usually the change in function is criticised as a negative effect of commodification, the data from the interviews indicate that the change in original function is only explicitly claimed in the case of music performance. It is also noticeable that there is no report from Dongbas that the original religious function of Dongba culture has changed.

Photo 7.1  Tourists in the newly opened food stalls in the Old Town of Lijiang (author photograph, 2013).

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In the Dongjing music, for example, players articulated that the function has changed from the original religious and educative purposes of the past to the current personal enjoyment (in non-commodified situations) and tourist performance (in commodified situations) (interviewees He Shiwei, Yang Zenlie and Wang Liwei, 2013). As I illustrated in Chapters 4 and 5, the spirituality of the music had already declined before the development of tourism, indicating that this change has compensated for the decrease in the original function of the music performance. The players observed that the social environment in which the music was played for religious functions has been replaced by a tourism economy that is now sustaining most of the music performances (interviewees He Shiwei, Yang Zenlie and Wang Liwei, 2013). In the case of handicrafts and food-making, practitioners consider the consumption of either local people or tourists the same, so that they do not necessarily differentiate the customers. Significantly, the decline in the original function of handicrafts is compensated by the rise in tourist consumption. Artisans observed that while the market among Naxi people shrinks, increasing tourist purchases sustain the production of traditional handicrafts (interviewees Che Fumin, Xie Pinzhen, Zhu Xing, He Shanyi, He Shanjun and Li Renjiang, 2014). This is also recognised by restaurant managers, who benefit from the enlarged opportunities and extended market brought about by tourism (interviewee Xiao Jun, 2013). The practitioners’ personal feelings about and experiences of the diversified practices of the ICH elements are important to their perceptions of commodification and integrity. Methodologically, two situations – the more commodified and the less commodified – are differentiated in this book so as to ascertain different understandings of the influence of tourism on ICH, as well as the constituent components of an ICH element. The previous section showed the diachronic change in the ICH elements. In the following section, I will compare and contrast different interpretations of the two situations in order to examine the relationship between commodification and the change in the ICH components, this time for synchronic change. Practitioners who engage with both community-based and tourismrelated practices in Lijiang were interviewed for their personal observations and understandings of the similarities and differences between the diverse interpretations of their ICH practices in the two situations. The results are summarised in Table 7.3. Answers referring to whether they thought the ICH practices remained similar or different are abbreviated as ‘S’ and ‘D’, respectively. We can see from Table 7.3 that the results drawn from the Dongba case are more complicated than the others in that the Dongbas tend to indicate more differences and ambiguity in the two situations. I will therefore analyse the Dongba case first, with two typical figures Dongba He Yaowei and Dongba He Guojun, who both perform in tourism and serve the Naxi community as introduced in Chapter 5.

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Table 7.3  Comparison/contrast of the diverse interpretations in the two situations, by the practitioners interviewed Components

Aspects

Comparison/contrast in the two situations for each ICH case Dongba

Attitude Practitioner

Practice

Product Consumer Function

Feelings or Experiences

Music

Handicrafts

Food

S

S

S

S

S

S

D S/D

Identity

S

Procedures, content, processes and ingredient (food case)

D

Spirituality Importance

S

S

Quality

D

D

Quality Mutual understanding

S

S

S

D

Importance The original function

S

S/D

Source: Author’s interview data, 2013–2014.

With regard to the attitude of a Dongba practising in the two situations, He Yaowei clearly differentiated his practices: ‘in the village, I am doing the rite and I am communicating with the people, the gods and the ghosts. On the stage (in the Impression of Naxi), however, I am doing a performance’ (interview, 2014). During my continuous interviews with He Yaowei, from 2013 to 2021, I noticed that his perception of the differentiated situations became more clear as his engagement with Dongba culture in various contexts in Lijiang continued. It Is clear that Dongbas experience different personal feelings when practising their Dongba rites in the two situations. The first issue is that whether or not Dongba practice performed on the stage for the tourists affects the feelings and experiences of the Dongba practitioner. He Yaowei reflected: ‘In the village, there are sacred, solemn and serious feelings in my heart, and my whole heart is given to the gods. On the stage, I feel less of these feelings and there is something different’ (interview, 2014). He Guojun said: ‘in the village, my heart was thinking about the gods who can help me. My heart is sincere and I have the faith which is the most important. On the stage, however, these feelings are faint’ (interview, 2014). However, there are exceptions. It is noticeable that, under some circumstances, a Dongba is unable to differentiate his feelings or experiences in some rites between the two situations as long as the rites, although practised in the tourist park, are not particularly staged for the tourists. I found this interesting result in He Guojun’s interview. When asked about the differences between the community and the Dongba Gu theme park for the seasonal worship for gods, He Guojun

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said: ‘there is no difference for me because I have belief and my inner feelings are the same. Wherever I do the worship for god, it is the same’ (interview, 2014). Furthermore, he added: ‘maybe my practice is seen as a performance in other people’s eyes [in the tourist park], but my heart is sincere [in the practice]’ (interview, 2014). Similar comments were also made by Dongbas working in Yushuizhai Park, who believed they were engaging with authentic Dongba culture as opposed to other Dongbas at other tourism industry sites (interviewees Yang Xun, Yang Wenji and He Xuewu, 2014). For the staged Dongba practices on the other hand, Dongbas can differentiate the extent to which their personal feelings fluctuate. He Yaowei described how ‘on the stage, I feel like doing a performance and it is less sacred, solemn and serious. Doing rites is different from doing performance and the feeling is different in my heart’ (interview, 2014). Nevertheless, He Yaowei explained that the fluctuation in these feelings is dependent on the nature and the function of the rite. There are two types of rite that He Yaowei practised on the stage of Impression of Naxi: namely, the Suzhu ceremony for the new couple, and the blessing ceremony for all the tourists. He Yaowei said: ‘the property or the connotation of the Suzhu ceremony, which is to appeal for the blessing from the god and send it to the new couple, is the same in both the village and in the Impression of Naxi show’ (interview, 2014). However, because of the presence of tourists who lack mutual understanding of the Naxi language and culture, as well as the simplification and adaptation of the Suzhu ceremony procedures for the repertoire, He Yaowei noted that ‘the original function or effect of the Suzhu ceremony is reduced, and the nature of the ceremony decreases to some extent, so that the ceremony is less traditional and less authentic [Yuanzhiyuanwei in the original] and it is just a simplified Dongba rite’ (interview, 2014). In comparison with the Suzhu ceremony, He Yaowei thought that the decrease in personal feelings in the blessing ceremony was greater, because ‘the blessing ceremony is a concluding part of another complicated Dongba rite in the village, and it is not practised alone as one ceremony as I do in the Impression of Naxi. In this sense, the connotation of the blessing ceremony is the same but its nature is different’ (interview, 2014). In addition to the different attitude and feelings in the two situations, it is also significant to find that Dongbas reported they perceived some areas of similarity. He Yaowei proudly claimed: ‘I am a Dongba as long as I wear my Dongba costume and hold my instruments, even though I am performing on the stage for the tourists’ (interview, 2014). His personal identity as an ‘authentic’ Dongba was becoming stronger and clearer along with his continued performance in the contexts of tourism and community synchronically. He Yaowei concluded: ‘there are two ways of interpreting my identity as a Dongba’, and elaborated that one

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is working for villagers in the community and the other is performing for tourists in tourism programmes, including Impression of Naxi, Yard of Sky Ground, Naxi Family, and others (interview, 2021). I therefore note that Dongbas’ personal identity of being an ‘authentic’ Dongba practitioner can be detached from other components of the ICH, such as practice, place, function and consumer. Furthermore, the notion of ‘authentic self’ in the sense of existential authenticity emerges as important for the Dongba practitioner. I can conclude from the above discussion that commodification can affect the components of Dongba practice in many ways but the implications are diverse and they are contingent upon the practitioner and the situation. This means that it is better to investigate different components of an ICH element rather than the ICH element as a whole in the commodification process. Excluding the Dongba case, most similarities are seen in the other three cases. I will now analyse these remaining three cases in Table 7.3. With regard to the ‘practitioner’ component, no interviewees in the case of music, handicraft and food-making differentiated between their attitudes and identities in the two situations. In terms of the feelings and experiences, although interviewees explicitly considered their practices in the two situations as the same or unchanged. For instance, in the case of music, most players regarded music-playing as a recreational activity so they said that their personal feelings in practice, either in the community band or in a staged performance, remained the same (interviewees Chang Hong, He Linyi, He Juyi, Yang Zenlie, Yang Yinxian, Li Yueshou and Wang Liwei, 2013–2014). This is the same in the case of foodmaking, where cooks claimed that there were no different feelings in serving Naxi people in the community and serving tourists (interviewees Zhang Xiangfang and He Dama, 2014). In the case of handicrafts, craftspeople expressed that their interests, motivation and experiences in the practice of making their goods in the two situations were the same (interviewees Che Fumin, He Shanyi and He Shanjun, 2014). With regard to the component ‘practice’, the most widely acknowledged issue is that all interviewed practitioners in the cases of music, handicraft and food consider their practices in the two situations as equally important for them. The music players Wang Liwei and Wang Yaojun said that their playing on stage in Xuan Ke’s music band and in the community in Wenlin Village were equally important for them (interview, 2013). Similar reflections are commonly heard among the craftspeople (interviewees Che Fumin, He Shanyi and Li Renjiang, 2014) and from cooks serving both the community and tourists (interviewees Zhang Xiangfang and He Dama, 2014). Related to these understandings is another finding: that the artisans and music players do not differentiate between the consumers, so that both local people and tourists are crucial to sustaining their product-making process.

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Another notable issue in the ‘practice’ component is that music players and artisans find that the quality of their ICH skills is different in the two situations: they notice in a positive way that quality is actually improved in the context of tourism. In the case of music, for instance, because players have to practise regularly, seriously and carefully (interviewees Yang Yinxian, Wang Liwei and Wang Yaojun, 2013) and they have more time to play than in the village (interviewee He Juyi, 2013), their ability to practise may be enhanced (interviewees He Juyi, Yang Yinxian and Wang Liwei, 2013). In the case of handicraft-making, Che Fumin and Li Renjiang agreed that the tourism market requires high-quality products, so they had to improve their skills (interview, 2013). Although the constitution of consumers in the case of handicrafts and food changed along with the arrival of tourists, artisans and cooks did not differentiate between the quality of the product and the importance of the consumer. Artisans sold the same quality products to both the local people and the tourists (interviewees Che Fumin, He Shanjun and Li Renjiang, 2013) and cooks claimed that they prepare the same traditional food for all customers (interviewees He Ayi, He Dama, Chang Qing and Li Dongling, 2014). This section has investigated the perceptions and attitudes of the ICH practitioners towards the components and related attributes of their ICH in terms of the changes and the diversified interpretations in the two situations, namely the more commodified and the less commodified contexts. In general, most practitioners hold positive attitudes towards the commodification of ICH in the context of tourism, but their understandings of the changed and unchanged components and related attributes of the ICH are diverse. Importantly, I identified seven components which the interviewees regard as significant (Table 7.2). At any particular time, nevertheless, only some of these seven components will be prioritised by the practitioners as the active components of ICH. This chapter has demonstrated and analysed understandings of the concepts of integrity and commodification and how commodification of ICH affects integrity from the perspectives of officials, experts and local practitioners in Lijiang. With regard to commodification, in general most interviewed officials and experts held the perception that spiritual or religious ICH elements, such as the Dongba culture in Lijiang, should not be commodified for tourists, while the secular ICH elements could be commodified in tourism. This mainstream opinion is also reflected in the perspectives of the ICH practitioners. However, I found that Dongba practitioners hold more complicated and contingent personal understandings of their diversified practices, both diachronically (from past to present) and synchronically (between commodified and non-commodified). In relation to integrity – a key concept in the AHD – difficulty was clearly noted both in the understanding and the implementation of

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the concept by officials and experts. The crux of the problem lies in the dissonant views on the involvement of ICH practitioners in the commodification process, and in how the components of ICH, especially practitioner, practice and function, should be understood. With regard to the local discourse, practitioners described a large spread of subjective aspects of the components of their ICH, such as identities, feelings and experiences, which, unfortunately, are overlooked in the perspectives of officials and experts. Based on the theoretical discussion in Chapter 2, the results of ICH value and authenticity in Chapter 6, and the findings in this chapter, we can see that practitioners would dynamically recognise and engage with different components diachronically (from past to present) and synchronically (between less commodified and more commodified situations) according to their desire and expectations. While the notion of objective integrity in the AHD is challenged in practice, this research suggests that we need to pay attention to the active components that are regarded as significant to the practitioner. The fieldwork demonstrated that practitioners are able to recognise and engage with the active components. Therefore, we can see that the concept of integrity should be reconceptualised as an ability of the practitioners to spontaneously recognise and engage with the active components to sustain the ICH values at a certain time. For those cases where practitioners articulated that most components of the ICH element are maintained or even enhanced, as in the cases of Naxi music, handicrafts and food-making skills in the two situations, subjective integrity was retained at a relatively high level. In the next chapter, I will examine how the values and the components of ICH are sustained in relation to the concept of continuity. Notes (1) Part of this chapter has been published in Su, J. (2019) Understanding the changing intangible cultural heritage in tourism commodification: The music players’ perspective from Lijiang, China. Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 17 (3), 247–268. (2) The data on indigenous residents in the Old Town have yet to be investigated. However, relevant reports can be found, for example, at http://news.cnr.cn/ native/gd/20151009/t20151009_520086172.shtml and https://news.ifeng.com/a/20170309/ 50763780_0.shtml, retrieved on 20February 2023. (3) A staff member at the LPMB told me in August 2021 that the actual number is not available but it is estimated that around 80% of the indigenous population have moved out the Old Town.

8 Continuity and Transmission

This chapter will analyse the understandings of the officials, experts and ICH practitioners of the concept of continuity, the transmission of ICH, and the relationship between these two notions and tourism. Importantly, the focus of this chapter is to reveal whether the values and components of ICH that are subjectively perceived by the practitioners can be continuously sustained and transmitted in the context of tourism and, if so, what process of tourism commodification does to the continuity of ICH in the transmission process. Again, the emphasis of the analysis in this chapter is on the ICH practitioners’ understandings. I illustrated in Chapter 5 that, as for each of the four cases, one form of ICH practice can be engaged in by the same practitioner in two different situations, namely the less commodified and more commodified context. In Chapter 6, I then revealed that there are diverse values residing in both interpretations in the two situations and, as I continued to demonstrate in Chapter 7, there are similarities and differences between the two interpretations in terms of the different components of ICH. Following this thread, in this chapter, I will analyse the understanding of continuity and transmission from the perspective of the ICH practitioners at two stages. Firstly, whether or not the continuity of the values and components described by the practitioners can be maintained in the less-commodified and morecommodified interpretations and what tourism commodification does to continuity. Secondly, I investigate what forms of transmission exist in ICH tourism and what the problems are. The Official Perspective

This section, which is based on both interviews and literature studies, analyses the understanding of continuity and transmission and the influence of tourism on the safeguarding of ICH from the perspective of officials at national, provincial and local levels. The concept of continuity is not commonly talked about by either officials or scholars 150

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in China; therefore, I will not specifically use the term continuity to ascertain their understandings unless the interviewees articulate it first. At the national level, official A directed his understanding of continuity, as with the concepts of authenticity and integrity, to the discourse of the key national figures who are crucial in drafting the national ICH documents. The data therefore were mainly drawn from the national ICH law (LICH) and the publications edited by Wang Wenzhang, the former Vice-Minister of Culture in China. As discussed in Chapter 2, the term continuity in the ICHC is, on the one hand, translated as ‘a sense of history’ or ‘historicity’ (Lishi Gan) in Chinese official documents (Xin & Huang, 2011), and on the other hand, translated as an adverb (continuously) or even omitted completely. Although no explanation or discussion of continuity is observed in the officials’ discourse in China, there is discussion of ‘understandability’ (Kejiedu Xing). This concept concerns the connection and maintenance of ICH from the past to the present and is thus the nearest available term to continuity. Understandability, as Wang Wenzhang illustrates (2013a: 311), means that ‘we can discern and understand the historical information, the rule of change, and especially the inner spiritual implications of the cultural heritage left in history’. It can be noted from this statement that firstly, heritage is regarded as an existing entity embodied with intrinsic historical and spiritual values formed in the past, and secondly, that understandability means that these existing values should be recognised and safeguarded for the present purpose. The connection and correlation between the past and the present is seen in another of Wang’s statements: ‘we have to protect ICH and investigate and study the inner spiritual implications seriously and scientifically so as to ascertain the elements which connect to our present lifestyles, thinking patterns and emotion and have important continuous values and effects at present’ (2013b: 46). These statements in Wang’s narrative are an important principle for the safeguarding of ICH, pointing out the importance of safeguarding the continuity of certain values (in terms of spiritual implications) from past to present; however, these values are confined to the officially recognised values in the national documents. For example, Wang Wenzhang explains that ‘spiritual implications’ refers to the ‘original status of the cultural identity, the primitive lifestyles and ethics and the thinking patterns, philosophies and values of a nationality’ (2013a: 311). What is important here is the maintenance of the officially recognised values from the past to the present in line with the concepts of authenticity and integrity in the Chinese AHD. Undoubtedly, the government would like to maintain the recognised values from the past to the future, so that transmission is important. Transmission is defined in the LICH as a series of measures in which ‘the government subsidises the inheritors to teach disciples, transmit the skills, carry out the exchange and cultivate the future practitioners’

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(Xin & Huang, 2011: 12). It is stipulated in the LICH that transmission and dissemination are regarded as measures of safeguarding ICH. While transmission is usually regarded as a governmental measure to ensure the continuity of ICH with political and financial assistance, the use of ICH is regarded as dissemination, which concerns ‘media dissemination, school education, and utilisation and development’ (Xin & Huang, 2011: 77). As reviewed in Chapters 1 and 2, protection and utilisation of ICH are equally emphasised in the official ICH discourse. Since transmission is crucial to the safeguarding of ICH, reconciliation of protection and utilisation is seen here. For example, Wang Wenzhang argues that ‘two important rules of transmission are “constancy” and “living change”’ (W.Z. Wang, 2013b: 9). Wang further argues for the so-called ‘positive safeguarding principle’, which means that ‘on the premise that the inner natural evolving process is not altered and the future developing direction is not affected [we should] try the best way to facilitate a positive interaction between the productive protection and tourism development’ (W.Z. Wang, 2013a: 23). These official discourses permit the commodification of ICH in the sense of safeguarding. However, because the official discourse upholds the authenticity and integrity of the officially recognised values, the commodified ICH practices may be seen as different from the non-commodified ones in the official perspective, and this is where the research questions derive from. The Yunnan provincial officials interviewed, like their counterparts at the national level, were not familiar with the term continuity. For instance, both vice-head L at the ICH Division and director Y at the ICH Centre clearly said that they do not understand this concept. Nevertheless, they are knowledgeable about the notion of transmission. They know that transmission is stipulated as one of the three principles1 concerning the safeguarding of ICH in the LICH, as well as one of the four working guidelines2 in the 2005 state Opinions. They also understand transmission from practical aspects based in lived reality, which is not seen in the national document. The first aspect is that transmission concerns whether or not an ICH element has reached an appropriate temporal threshold for nomination. Since it is easier to date tangible heritage than intangible heritage, the duration of transmission is considered a measure to date an ICH practice. Vice-head L explained: ‘ICH needs to be transmitted by people and there must be predecessors and successors, the transmission duration should be at least three generations which equals 100 years’ (interview, 2014). This understanding means that the officials use transmission as a criterion to authenticate an ICH element and this criterion is also clearly stated and implemented at the Lijiang local level. The second aspect of transmission, according to director Y, concerns how ICH should be safeguarded. Y said that transmission concerns two practical measures. The first is the ‘strong governmental behaviour,

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which includes training classes and transmission funds allocation’ and the second is the ‘inheritors’ self-awareness, which requires the inheritors to have strong responsibility in transmission’ (interview, 2014). For ICH inheritors, in particular the listed ones, Y emphasised that they must take disciples and they should cooperate with the government. It can be seen from these remarks that transmission, in the sense of practical implementation, has more to do with the dictates of the government than the agency of the inheritors. On the other hand, however, realising that the inheritors should be considered more seriously, Y emphasised that ‘we need to consider the living environment, living condition, remuneration, pride and confidence of the inheritors. We need to care for the inheritors materially and mentally’ (interview, 2014). Similar remarks are also heard in her understanding of authenticity; therefore, I can see that consideration of the agencies and willingness of ICH practitioners emerges at the provincial level, and provincial officials show their sympathetic understanding with local practitioners. At the local level in Lijiang, I found there are two distinct perspectives in local officials’ expression of their understandings of continuity. The first perspective, as articulated by official G at the county ICH centre, resonates well with the practitioners-based perspective： During the ICH practising process, the practitioner could understand the living status, spiritual status, material culture status and the environment of the time when their predecessors lived. During this process, the practitioner could understand the spiritual status, and even the thinking of the predecessors in making the same handicraft and singing the same song. The practitioner will understand why [the predecessor did this]. This interprets continuity and it is a communication between the present people and the people in the past. (interview, 2014)

Official G’s remarks indicate clearly that local officials can develop an understanding of the subjective feelings that ICH practitioners have for their connection to their predecessors, indicating that they can develop an emic perspective. However, D, director at the county ICH centre, explained continuity from another perspective as ‘maintaining and transmitting the authenticity of ICH’ (interview, 2014). By comparison, D’s understanding of continuity maintains the conventional understanding of authenticity, which means maintaining what ICH was like before. This can be seen as one of the implications of the AHD of authenticity and integrity for local officials. Transmission is a notion that is affected by personal knowledge and experience. As far as the form of transmission is concerned, D indicates that three forms exist in Lijiang. The first is ‘authentic (Yuanzhiyuanwei) transmission in the community’, and the second is the ‘commodified ICH, which is creative, adapted and this ICH is made pleasant for the tourists

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to watch and listen, such as Xuan Ke’s Naxi music and the Impression of Naxi show’ (interview, 2014). The third form, according to D, refers to an even more commodified form of ICH targeting the international cultural market. D proposed adapting Baishaxiyue music into an internationalised symphony that could ‘connect to the world’ (interview, 2014). D argued that ICH can be transmitted in all three forms because the commodified form of ICH [in the second or third form] is still an ICH, because its authenticity still exists in the community [in the first form]. ICH needs to be used and developed so all three forms are acceptable and they are beneficial to the protection, dissemination and use of ICH. (interview, 2014)

The notion that transmission can exist in the commodified form of ICH practice is also articulated in the remarks of official J from the LPMB, who claimed: ‘transmission is not just about masters teaching the disciples, it can also be done by market, schools and the institutes’ (interview, 2014). Director Q from the Lijiang Municipal ICH Protection Centre explained: It is undoubted that tourism can foster the development and transmission of ICH. This is because the natural transmission becomes difficult when the society develops, the modern living patterns evolve and the whole social environment changes. However, traditional culture can be promoted and protected in tourism and the inheritors can be rewarded. Therefore, ICH can be transmitted in tourism. (interview, 2014)

These comments indicate that local officials hold the opinion that ICH transmission can exist in tourism commodification of ICH and the positive effects of tourism commodification are acknowledged by local officials. Nevertheless, it is inevitable for them to encounter a dilemma, which is similar to the issue of authenticity and integrity, because of the restrictions imposed by the national AHD. For example, G admitted that ‘intense contradiction exists between maintaining authenticity and commodification’, because ‘on one hand we should try the best to transmit ICH, on the other hand, the original function, aim and interpretations of ICH should be protected and continued to the best’ (interview, 2014). As for governmental assistance, Q commented: ‘identification of an ICH element only depends on the contribution the practitioner makes to the transmission in the community. We do not oppose the commodification; however, we should not assist or fund the commodified forms of ICH’ (interview, 2014). These comments, then, indicate a similar problem to that seen in the understandings of authenticity and integrity in previous chapters. Local officials experienced a tension between the restrictive understandings of the national ICH AHD on the notions of continuity and transmission and

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their own more liberal understanding based on their insight into the local practitioners’ perspectives. In this section I have analysed understandings of the concepts of continuity and transmission among the officials at different levels in the government. Compared with the concepts of authenticity and integrity, continuity is an unfamiliar theoretical notion to officials at all levels; however, they are able to argue for the idea that continuity should be manifested in the form of transmission. Research in this section demonstrated that the government would like to maintain the continuity of the officially recognised values of ICH in line with the notion of authenticity and integrity that they are already familiar with. In this sense, the AHD of authenticity and integrity constitutes an impediment to their free understanding of continuity and transmission. As we may expect, officials allow space for tourism commodification and the commodified form of ICH is seen as one of the measures of transmission, especially at the local levels. Nevertheless, the dilemma of natural transmission in the community and transmission in the commodified form of ICH in tourism is unavoidable from the officials’ perspective and this problem is entwined with the existing problems of authenticity and integrity. The Expert Perspective

The understanding of non-local experts is drawn firstly from the literature and secondly from interviews conducted with scholars working in the national institutes (Table 6.2). The comments of Wang Wenzhang have been analysed in the previous section on the perspective of national officials. In this section, I will examine the perspective of other experts. The concept of continuity in ICH has not been discussed in the Chinese ICH literature. However, the experts interviewed were able to articulate their personal understandings of continuity. Song Junhua at Sun Yat-Sen University described his understanding as follows: Continuity relates to the concept of Benshengtai [original state]. In the process of transmission, we have to figure out what to transmit, so we have to ascertain the quality of ICH. As for this, the unchanged things, stable things, or the less-changed things mean continuity. Continuity stipulates the existence of the quality of ICH. The less changed things within an ICH element are something I call Benshengtai. Among many components that constitute an ICH element, the stable things can best stipulate the quality of an ICH element, and these things are related to Benshengtai. (interview, 2014)

The term continuity in Chinese documents is sometimes translated as historicity (Li Shi Gan) (Xin & Huang, 2011). Historicity was understood by Song Junhua as ‘something maintained and inherited from the ancestors’ (interview, 2014). Once again, Song emphasised that ‘the

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priority in ICH protection is to know what to protect, and what we need to protect is something relatively unchanged’ (interview, 2014). Song Junhua’s understanding demonstrates that the concept of continuity is closely related to the concepts of authenticity and integrity. To a large extent, Song holds the same understanding as the notion found in the Chinese AHD – that continuity concerns the unchanged values and components, in line with the objective perspective of authenticity and integrity. However, the experts interviewed also argued that the changing aspects of ICH should also be allowed, in order to understand continuity, as long as the unchanged aspect is maintained well. For instance, scholar B claimed: ‘continuity concerns the inheritance and development of the history, it means continuation, and it also means change. Continuity relates to a living transmission’ (interview, 2014). The understanding of transmission demonstrates how the continuity of ICH should be maintained. On the one hand, as shown above, experts associate continuity with the idea that the objective authenticity and integrity of ICH should be maintained. This understanding is also reflected in, for example, the guidebook for ICH bureaucrats, which claims that ‘the aim [of ICH protection] is to establish a gene pool of the traditional culture in order to preserve ICH with original characteristics in the form of living status before the coming of grand development’ (L. Yuan & J. Gu, 2013: 112). Furthermore, Yuan and Gu argue that one of the criteria for recognising the ICH inheritor is to see ‘whether the ICH practised by the practitioner is authentic [Yuanzhiyuanwei] or not, and whether enough traditional cultural genes are maintained’ (2013: 129). Different forms of transmission are acknowledged by experts. For example, Liu Xicheng listed group transmission, family transmission, social transmission and God-given (Shen Shou) transmission (in W.Z. Wang, 2006a: 35). With regard to the case of Lijiang, He Ming pointed out that ‘nowadays the protection or transmission is largely connected to tourism which becomes a major channel for transmission’ (interview, 2014). In addition, the importance of the practitioners and their willingness for transmission is emphasised. Scholar B noted: It is crucial to protect the inheritor because they are the subject of transmission. I think protection of the inheritors means that they should have the awareness of transmission and they know how to transmit. They should not only have the skills, but also have the willingness of transmitting the skills to the next generation. (interview, 2014)

Unlike non-local experts, five local Naxi experts interviewed (Table 6.3) did not express much theoretical understanding of continuity. Nevertheless, their understandings could be seen from their comments on the specific case in Lijiang. These understandings are noticeably reflected in their views on the relationship between tourism and Dongba culture.

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While no one denies that all ICH elements are changing to some extent, local experts believe that some aspects of ICH remain constant across generations. For example, Naxi scholar and artist He Pinzheng claimed that ‘contemporary Dongba culture is not authentic (Yuanzhiyuanwei), or traditional, but it is not fake either, because it still connects with the traditional Dongba culture at its root’ (interview, 2014). This indicates that He Pinzheng does not care for the concept of authenticity but emphasises the notion of continuity, which concerns the unchanged components of Dongba culture. The connection between contemporary and traditional Dongba culture relies in the fact that ‘both of these cultures are based on the same thing’ (interviewee He Pinzheng, 2014). This is further explained in Naxi scholar Yang Guoqing’s argument that ‘as the essence of Naxi culture, Dongba culture still remains, because its system and ideas remain the same’, and he believed that ‘present Naxi culture is still a “traditional” culture, because the essence is the same though its interpretation may change’ (interview, 2014). These understandings of the unchanged essence of the Naxi and Dongba culture demonstrate that local experts hold a relatively positive opinion on the continuity of ICH in Lijiang. These positive understandings lead to a wide acceptance of different forms of transmission. Considering that ‘there is no such thing as a universal pattern of protecting and developing all kinds of ICH’, Yang Fuquan thought that ‘multiple measures should be taken to protect ICH’ (interview, 2014). In addition to governmental protection measures, Yang believed that company protection in Yushuizhai Park, civil protection in the Impression of Naxi performance, and family protection should be encouraged (interview, 2014). As I have argued in previous chapters, ICH protection in Lijiang is characterised by the participation of the tourism industry and it is known as the Lijiang Model. It is not surprising, therefore, that the positive effects of tourism on ICH transmission are widely observed in the interviews. Yang Guoqing, a former high-level official of Lijiang, is a salient advocator for transmission through tourism. Yang praised the Lijiang Model, in which culture is combined with tourism, as a ‘successful model’ because ‘on one hand, the culture and ecology are protected; on the other hand, the tourism economy is activated. So Lijiang is a good example of sustainable and scientific development’ (interview, 2014). Nevertheless, no current forms of transmission escape criticism. With regard to the commodified form of transmission, for example, Dongba He Limin made the point that by promoting and funding Dongba transmission, Yushuizhai Park has an ambition to monopolise Dongba resources, indicating that this would reduce the function of Dongba culture to Yushuizhai’s tourism purpose. A further problem, according to He Limin, is that because a diverse Dongba culture exists in the rural areas, a monopoly of Yushuizhai’s Dongba training could restrict this cultural diversity (interview, 2014).

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It would be wrong, however, to conclude that transmission through tourism is hopeless in the long term and that it should be undertaken in a non-commodified way, because local scholars also criticise the way in which the government funds the transmission of Dongba culture at the Dongba Academy in downtown Lijiang and at a Dongba training base in a rural area. Both He Pinzheng and He Limin criticise the Dongba Academy. He Limin, a Dongba scholar at the Dongba Academy, complained that ‘the Dongbas working in the Dongba Academy do not transmit Dongba culture properly’ (interview, 2014). This is because the Dongba Academy is a research institute not a transmission body, so that the administrators are not concerned with transmission. Since not all Dongbas have a permanent position in the academy and they live on meagre stipends funded by non-governmental organisations and by the government, they cannot transmit Dongba culture well (interviewees He Pinzheng and He Limin, 2014). These problems are also noted by He Pinzheng (interview, 2014) in relation to a community-based Dongba cultural transmission base in a rural area, funded by the Lijiang Municipal ICH Centre. Owing to the fact that, firstly, the base is not sufficiently funded by the ICH Centre and, secondly, most young learners would like to work and live in Lijiang City rather than study at the base, this base encounters difficulty in sustaining its transmission. We can see from the opinions of local experts that the current forms of transmission are not perfect, whether operated by the government or private business. This section shows that all experts interviewed agree that continuity concerns something that remains constant, stable or less changed across transmission. By comparison, non-local experts easily relate continuity to unchanged values and components, in line with the objective perspective of authenticity and integrity, while local experts attribute the continuity of Naxi culture to the unchanged philosophy and ideology of Dongba culture, which is the essence of Naxi culture. In terms of transmission, a wide acceptance of different forms of transmission is observed in the understandings of all experts. Specifically, a majority of them regards tourism commodification as an acceptable or even indispensable means of transmitting ICH in Lijiang. It is significant to note in the comments of local experts that neither government-led nor tourism company-led ICH transmission is perfect in Lijiang. Thus, multiple forms of transmission are needed to support the differing abilities and agencies of the practitioners in different situations. The Practitioner Perspective

Since the term continuity is not familiar to the practitioners, their understandings of continuity may be ascertained from their understandings of different aspects of an ICH element, especially values,

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meanings and personal identities (in relation to the concepts of value and authenticity in Chapter 6) and components (in relation to integrity in Chapter 7) of ICH. Therefore, the following analysis of continuity is generally built on the data and analyses in Chapters 6 and 7. Discussion of the understanding of the practitioners will be contextualised in the four ICH tourism cases in Lijiang, namely Dongba culture, Naxi music, handicrafts, and culinary skills. Among the four cases, Dongba culture is the most characteristic one. In Chapter 6, I revealed how diverse values, meanings, or significances are generated in the engagement of Dongba cultural practices. Table 6.4 provided a detailed spread of these values as articulated by Dongbas who engage with both community-based and tourism-related Dongba culture, as well as Dongbas who only practise in the community context (see Chapter 5). Based on Table 6.4, further analysis of the data, as revealed in Table 8.1, shows that among eight aspects of the value articulated by the interviewed Dongbas, six are shared by the Dongba practitioners in both community and tourism situations while two aspects are described as unique in only one situation. In Table 8.1, ‘both’ means this aspect of value exists in both tourism and community situations. In the category ‘Interpersonal: between the Dongbas and the audiences’, the value embodied in the aspect ‘acceptance, appreciation and trust’ is only found in the less-commodified situation, namely the community situation, as exemplified in the Baidi Village case. For example, Dongbas felt that they were accepted and acknowledged when they were practising Dongba rites for the local people, and they referred to this as ‘serving the community’ (interviewees He Shukun, He Yongguang, Yang Guangcai and others, 2014). Conversely, the value embodied in the aspect ‘cultural dissemination’ is articulated only in the more commodified situation, Table 8.1  Comparison of the values perceived by the Dongbas interviewed, between the community and the tourism situations Embodiment of the values

Aspects of the values

Situations

Personal actualisation (artistic talents)

Both

Personal spiritual needs (pride, spiritual and moral edification, spiritual reward and Naxi cultural learning)

Both

Economic value

Both

Interpersonal: between the Dongbas and their families

Family value

Both

Interpersonal: between the Dongbas and the audiences

Acceptance, appreciation and trust

Interpersonal: between the Dongbas and the community

Ethnic value (ethnic identity)

Both

Intrinsic: inside the ICH per se

Artistic and philosophical values

Both

Intrapersonal: inside the Dongbas themselves

Source: Author interview, 2014.

Cultural dissemination

Community Tourism

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namely the tourist attraction, such as in the Yushuizhai Park case. Chapter 6 has revealed the advantageous benefits of tourism on the promotion of Dongba culture to non-Naxi people. Consequently, the willingness of the Dongbas to continue engaging with their practices is stimulated (interviewees Yang Xun and He Guojun, 2014). These results therefore reveal that, with the exception of the value embodied between the Dongbas and the audiences, continuity in the value of Dongba culture exists in most aspects in both the community and tourism situations. In Chapter 7, Table 7.3 illustrated the differences and similarities of Dongba cultural practice in the two situations. Table 7.3 shows that continuity can also exist in terms of the practitioner (e.g. feelings or experiences and identity) and the function in the two situations. In relation to the ‘practitioner’, the most significant finding is that the interviewed Dongbas regarded their identities of being a Dongba the same in both situations, regardless of the commodification of the cultural practice for tourists. Continuity of personal identity as an ‘authentic’ Dongba is exemplified in the case of He Yaowei, who engaged with both touristic performance and community service. Another finding in terms of the feelings or experiences is that some interviewed Dongbas claimed that their subjective feelings and experiences were similar in the two situations. As analysed in the case of He Guojun, he did not see any experiential differences as long as his Dongba practices were not performed specifically for the tourists. With regard to the ‘function’ of their ICH practice, some interviewed Dongbas regarded the religious and spiritual functions of Dongba practices as remaining the same in both situations. The most obvious case is in Yushuizhai Park where the majority of Dongbas agreed that they were practising ‘authentic’ Dongba culture that was not necessarily for the tourists (interviewees Yang Xun, Yang Wenji and He Xuewu, 2014). The description of the function remaining the same is also seen in Dongba He Guojun’s remarks about his seasonal worship for gods in the Dongba Gu Park. He claimed that it is because of the same personal belief and feelings in both situations that he regarded the function as identical (interview, 2014). I can therefore conclude from these findings that, firstly, continuity in the identity of being a Dongba remains in both community and tourism situations. Secondly, continuity of a Dongba’s feelings and experiences, as well as continuity of the function of the Dongba rites, can remain in both situations, as long as tourists are not the major audience. Drawing from the results in Chapters 6 and 7 in above-mentioned section, I argue that provided that tourists are not the major audience for the Dongba cultural practices, continuity of Dongba cultural practices exists in both less-commercialised and more-commercialised situations. In particular, continuity is manifested in terms of the subjectively perceived values, feelings or experiences, in the identity of being a Dongba, and the functions of Dongba practices. I will now reveal how

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Table 8.2  Willingness of Dongbas to continually practise and transmit their Dongba culture Statements

Attitude

Intensity of attitude

I can engage with the traditional Naxi culture3 freely.

80.95% ‘absolutely agree’ and ‘agree’ all Dongbas

3.81 (positive)

It is important for me to engage with the traditional Naxi culture.

85.71% ‘absolutely agree’ and ‘agree’ all Dongbas

4.24 (very positive)

I feel content when I engage with the traditional Naxi culture.

85.71% ‘absolutely agree’ and ‘agree’ all Dongbas

4.14 (very positive)

Source: Author’s survey questionnaire, 2013–2014.

Dongbas understand the transmission of Dongba culture, especially in the context of tourism. Transmission concerns the short-term and long-term continuation of the cultural practice. While the former means continuous learning and practising of ICH during one generation, the latter concerns this continuation in future generations. The willingness of Dongbas to continuously practise and transmit their Dongba culture during the current generation is indicated in Table 8.2. The attitudes of the Dongba respondents towards the three statements in Table 8.2 are generally very positive. It is shown from the first statement that in recent years Dongba practitioners enjoy greater freedom in their religious practice, which was severely suppressed before the 1980s. The response indicates that Dongba practitioners have engaged with either community-based or tourism-oriented Dongba cultural practices with little restriction, a fact that has also been noted by local officials. The second statement reveals that the engagement with Dongba culture generates values, meanings or significances to their personal needs and, according to the third statement, these personal needs are generally sufficient because the Dongba feels content. These three statements also echo the analysis in Chapter 6 that the subjectively perceived personal values can be sustained in either less- or more- commodified situations. Long-term or cross-generation transmission can be examined from both the willingness of the Dongba practitioners who transmit their ICH and the willingness of young Dongba apprentices who learn Dongba practice. The survey shows that 100% of the Dongbas interviewed agreed that Dongba culture, along with other Naxi culture, should be handed down to young people. Intensity of attitude for this statement is 4.57, which is dramatically positive. This situation differs markedly from that during the Cultural Revolution when all Dongba cultural transmission was banned. While agreeing that Dongba culture needs transmission to the next generation, Dongbas hold two distinctive opinions as to whether transmission can be sustained in the tourism context. Dongba practitioners, in particular those who engage with both tourism-based and community-based practice, claimed that transmission

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in the tourism context is feasible. According to the survey, 80.95% of the Dongbas working and studying in Yushuizhai Park answered that tourism was beneficial to Dongba culture; the intensity of attitude for this answer was 3.9, which means their opinions are positive. Furthermore, except for Yang Wenji, the oldest ‘senior Dongba’ in Lijiang (born 1933), the average age of the twelve Dongbas surveyed in Yushuizhai was 42 and the youngest was just 26 (in 2014). This figure indicates that young Dongbas constitute a majority of the Dongba population in the tourism industry. Several reasons are given to support their positive opinions of tourism. The most frequently mentioned reason is that Dongbas working for tourism companies can concentrate on the learning, studying and practice of Dongba culture without economic burden (interviewees Yang Xun, He Xuewu, Yang Wenji, He Guojun, He Yaowei, He Xuedong, 2014). As previously indicated in Chapter 7, in the past Dongbas were part-time priests. When they are employed by a company, they become full-time practitioners or researchers of Dongba culture (interviewees Yang Xun, He Yaowei, He Guojun and He Xuedong, 2014). Indeed, employment matters for the Dongba practitioners. Local expert He Pinzheng (interview, 2014) pointed out that economic deficiency and lack of employment resulted in a failure of the governmental transmission programme in rural areas. In the context of tourism, however, these problems are solved. ‘Dongbas only do things Dongba should do and they are not asked to do things they should not do’ (interview, 2014), said He Wensong, a staff member in the Yushuizhai Dongba Association.4 Employed Dongbas had to interact with tourists in Yushuizhai before 2014; however, these Dongbas no longer have to do business with tourists (interviewee He Wensong, 2014). The change in this regulation affected a large population of Dongbas in Lijiang. He Rui, the secretary of the Yushuizhai Dongba Association, estimated that around 70% of Dongbas in the Lijiang area were employed in tourism, among which Yushuizhai was the biggest employer (interview, 2014). Furthermore, Yushuizhai pays attention to Dongba transmission in the long term. A Dongba training class was initiated in Yushuizhai as early as 1997 and a Dongba transmission school was established by Yushuizhai in 2009 with eight teenagers enrolled in this school for the five-year full-time learning programme (see Chapter 5). Nevertheless, tourism as an approach to transmission is criticised by Dongbas in Baidi Village, which is less commodified than Yushuizhai. As revealed in Chapter 6, Dongba He Shukun and He Shurong, the head of Baidi Dongba Transmission School, strongly condemned the transmission models used in Yushuizhai and Dongba Gu parks. The crux of the problem, as pointed out by He Shukun, is that ‘Dongba culture can only serve Naxi people but not the tourists, so the practice and transmission should be in the village’ (interview, 2014). Reflecting

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on the characteristics of the continuity of Dongba culture as revealed in previous sections, the opinions of Baidi Dongbas make sense. The practice of Dongba culture in Baidi Village is only performed for the local community and therefore transmission, as exemplified in the Baidi Dongba School, is only for their successive inheritors (Table 5.3). Hence, transmission of the continuity of values of Dongba culture in Baidi Village could be harmed if non-Naxi tourists substitute Naxi people as the main audience. However, the reality is not as black and white as this. As He Yaowei and He Guojun, two Dongbas who practise in both commodified and noncommodified situations, argued, both the ‘traditional transmission mode’ in the village and the ‘new transmission in tourism’ are needed. It is a fact that Dongbas in the Lijiang area are more likely to engage with relatively simplified Dongba cultural practices in the tourism-related transmission (interviewee He Yaowei, 2014), while Dongbas living in rural areas, such as in Baidi Village, are more likely to transmit their Dongba culture in a more traditional way (interviewee He Guojun, 2014). When tourism is seen as a promising platform for the transmission of Dongba culture, I believe an advantageous tourism context is needed to protect Dongbas’ cultural and economic rights as well as a willingness to engage with tourism. Many Dongbas interviewed for this project complained that tourism had disadvantageous implications for their engagements. Specifically, since Dongba culture is regarded as a flag in heritage tourism in Lijiang, the appropriation of Dongba culture is a common problem. Some companies or businessmen use inappropriately, misuse or abuse Dongba culture to make money so that the real cultural custodians feel disadvantaged. For example, Dongba He Guojun complained: ‘many fake Dongbas in Lijiang misuse the Dongba scripts; they just invent the scripts in their mind. Also, there are some nonNaxi people who use the name Dongba to do advertisements for hotel, tobacco and even dog meat! It’s very bad’ (interview, 2014). That is why many Dongbas are concerned that the misuse of Dongba culture by the outside businessmen will mislead tourists and blacken the image of Dongbas (interviewees Yang Wenji, He Guojun and He Xuedong, 2014). Undoubtedly, the transmission of Dongba culture entails the multiple participation of different players, especially the government (interviewees Yang Xun, Yang Wenji, He Yaowei and He Xuedong, 2014). Encouraged by the economic and cultural benefits generated by the commodification of Dongba culture in tourism, the government pays increasing attention to the protection and use of Dongba culture in the Lijiang Model approach. The Protection Ordinance on Naxi Dongba Culture of Yunnan Province,5 which was initially issued in 2005, was revised in March 2020 to enhance the protection and promotion of Dongba culture in Yunnan. The promotion and commodification of Dongba culture has been strengthened by this ordinance. The government encourages various

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non-official players to participate in the transmission of Dongba culture, including the establishment of Dongba cultural transmission schools and Dongba-themed museums, Dongba inheritors’ personal participation in Dongba cultural performance, artistic creation and dissemination, and the development of Dongba cultural industries using non-governmental capital. Penalties will be applied to ‘any arbitrary alteration, distortion and detriment to the originality and connotation of the Dongba culture of Naxi people, as well as any irregular use of the term Dongba’. This regulation should reduce unfair competition in the commodification of Dongba culture by non-Naxi marketeers; nevertheless, it again invites the inevitable issue of ‘objective authenticity’, from which this research began. The second case for analysis is traditional music. Music players articulate diverse values, meanings or significances in the two situations. Among the 8 aspects of the values described by the interviewed players (see Table 6.4), 3 of them are described as unique to the tourism situation while the remaining 5 aspects are not clearly differentiated between the two situations. Based on Table 6.4, these results are displayed in Table 8.3. The most apparent aspect of the value generated in the tourism situation is that of interpersonal value between the players and their audiences. Players in the tourism situation articulated new values in terms of ‘acceptance, appreciation and trust’ and ‘cultural dissemination’, which can be seen in the case of the Baishaxiyue band led by the He Linyi and He Juyi brothers, who claimed their ethnic identity and pride, personal pride and cultural confidence was boosted. It is interesting to note here that the aspect of value ‘acceptance, appreciation and trust’ in the music case can only be sustained in the tourism situation while this same aspect of value in the other three cases is usually sustained in the community situation. Music players in the tourism situation also frequently articulated this value in terms Table 8.3  Comparison of the values perceived by the players interviewed, between the community and the tourism situations Embodiment of the values

Intrapersonal: inside the players themselves

Aspects of the values

Situations

Personal actualisation (interests, edification, etc.)

Both

Personal spiritual needs (positive feelings, longevity and personal virtues, etc.)

Both

Economic value

Tourism

Interpersonal: between the players and their families

Family value (identity and pride)

Interpersonal: between the players and their audiences

Acceptance, appreciation and trust

Tourism

Cultural dissemination

Tourism

Interpersonal: between the players and the community

Ethnic value (identity and pride)

Both

Intrinsic: inside the ICH per se

Historical value

Both

Source: Author interview, 2014.

Both

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of ‘cultural dissemination’, while music is regarded as a medium for intercultural exchange. Furthermore, music players, such as He Linyi and He Juyi in the Baishaxiyue case and Wang Liwei in the Dongjing music case, reported that their minds had been broadened, their musical skills enhanced and their musical comprehension ability also developed. The third aspect of the value that is more commonly reported in the tourism context is economic value. Although economic value is not necessary for most music players, who play only for recreational purposes, it sustains those players who work the tourism market. The latter can be seen clearly in the cases of He Linyi’s family band in Guanyinxia Park and the Dayan Ancient Music Association led by Xuan Ke (see Chapter 5). Understandably, many young learners make their living by playing the music on stage for a regular income (interviewee He Shiwei, 2014). The music case reveals that, while tourism triggers and sustains the emergent value ‘between the players and the audiences’ and the ‘economic value’, continuity of the remaining five aspects of the ICH values is maintained in the two situations. Furthermore, tourism sustains the continuity of the emergent values embodied between the music players and the audiences, as well as among the players themselves (in terms of the economic value), and these values actually benefit the continuity of other aspects of the ICH values. Table 7.3 illustrated the differences and similarities of the music playing in the two situations. As analysed in Chapter 7, most music players do not differentiate the two forms of practice clearly, although they point out that continuity could exist in terms of ‘feelings or experiences’ and the ‘importance’ of the practice to them (Table 7.3). Because the spiritual function of Naxi music has declined, the music having become secularised, the players all experienced feelings of happiness, enrichment, fulfilment, amusement and joyfulness, regardless of the playing situations (interviewees Chang Hong, He Linyi, He Juyi, Yang Yinxian, Li Yueshou and Wang Liwei, 2013). In particular, for He Linyi and He Juyi the continuity of the mental connection between the music-playing and the memory of their dead father was well maintained wherever and whenever they played Baishaxiyue music (interview, 2013). In terms of the ‘importance’ of the cultural practice, music players held the opinion that performance in both community and tourism contexts is equally important to them (interviewees Wang Liwei and Wang Yaojun, 2013). Based on the analyses in Chapters 6 and 7 and the comparison in this section, we can see that, except for the economic benefits, continuity in terms of subjectively perceived values and components is generally maintained in the two situations. Furthermore, the presence of tourists enhances some aspects of the continuity of the values, such as the emergent values generated between the players and the audiences. I will now analyse further how tourism influences the continuation of music practice in both the short and long term.

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Table 8.4  Attitude of music players surveyed towards being willing to practise their ICH Statements

Attitude

Intensity of attitude

I can engage with the traditional Naxi culture freely.

81.13% ‘absolutely agree’ and ‘agree’ all music players

4.09 (positive)

It is important for me to engage with the Traditional Naxi Culture.

94.34% ‘absolutely agree’ and ‘agree’ all music players

4.38 (very positive)

I feel content when I engage with the Traditional Naxi Culture.

92.45% ‘absolutely agree’ and ‘agree’ all music players

4.36 (very positive)

Source: Author’s survey questionnaire, 2013–2014.

The willingness of the music players to continuously engage with their music at present was investigated by questionnaire and the results are demonstrated in Table 8.4. The results indicate that the willingness of the players to continue playing their music, either for recreational performance or for tourists, is quite positive. The interviews show that the emergent values residing between the players and the audiences could be enhanced. The three statements, along with the analysis of subjective authenticity in Chapter 6, all suggest that the subjectively perceived values can be actualised and sustained in either less- or more-commodified situations. Cross-generational transmission concerns both the willingness of current players to transmit and that of young players to learn. In response to the statement ‘the traditional Naxi culture, including the Naxi musical heritage, should be handed down to the younger generation’ in the survey, 94.34% of all music players surveyed provided positive answers. A high value of 4.51 for Intensity of Attitude was obtained for this opinion, which clearly shows that their expectations are very positive. Thanks to the development of Naxi music tourism projects in Lijiang after the 1980s and the national ICH protection movement after the 2000s, music enthusiasts and players’ willingness to practise and transmit their musical heritage has been enhanced, which is contrary to the situation during the Cultural Revolution. Table 7.2 indicated a ‘change of age’ in the music players. Player and scholar Yang Zenlie concluded that the players have changed from elites in the past to music enthusiasts and tourism practitioners at present (interview, 2013). Among these latter two groups, according to music player He Shiwei’s observation, the elderly dominated music performance and they mainly performed for personal amusement in either local bands or on the stage (interview, 2014). According to my questionnaire survey of 51 music players in Lijiang from 2013 to 2014, the average age was 65.71 years. Furthermore, only six players were aged below 50 and the youngest was aged 37, which means that 88.2% of the players surveyed in the fieldwork were older than 50. The shortage of young music players is a potential problem for transmission in the long term.

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I interviewed several typical music players under 50 years of age, such as Baishaxiyue music players He Linyi (48) and He Juyi (43), and Dongjing music players Wang Liwei (44) and Chang Hong (40). The He Linyi and He Juyi brothers learnt the music because of the influence of their father, as did Wang Liwei who developed his interest in music thanks to his father and grandfather. Chang Hong, however, was not born into a musical family and regarded his personal interest in music as the major reason for learning (interview, 2013). No one explicitly claimed that they learnt the music because they would like to participate in tourism. Chang Hong and Wang Liwei did not earn their livings through performance and therefore did not play for money. However, tourism significantly sustained brother He’s family band economically. He Linyi told me that one of the main reasons that the brother He’s band returned to their home town after 2015 was because of the cut in financial aid from the Guanyinxia company. Although their music transmission is now funded by the government, He still expects to initiate his own family music tourist show (interview, 2021). Tourism is generally regarded by the local people as a positive factor in the transmission of music. In addition to the previous analysis, this understanding can also be seen in the survey results: 88.68% of the music players surveyed responded that the development of tourism was beneficial to traditional Naxi music, with an Intensity of Attitude of 4.26, which is quite positive. The reasons for this become clear when we analyse the interview data. As pointed out by young players Chang Hong, Wang Liwei and He Linyi, young people nowadays are generally not interested in Naxi music per se (interview, 2013). Therefore, most music players believe that more young people can be attracted, recruited and trained in tourism-related performances (interviewees He Shiwei, Yang Zenlie, Wang Liwei and Li Yueshou, 2013). However, the music players interviewed also complained about the disadvantageous effects of commodification on their musical practice. The most obvious issue is the fierce competition from other non-Naxi music performances, in which the Naxi music practitioners are discriminated against. In order to capture the limited market, local cultural elites and businessman believe it is crucial that the local Lijiang people take the initiative in the commodification. The best example is Xuan Ke’s Dayan Ancient Music Association, which is usually regarded as the most successful Naxi music performance fully operated by local people in Lijiang. In the case of the commercial show Impression of Naxi, Naxi director He Shoujiang was confident that his show was the most ‘authentic’ in Lijiang and that it would win the market sooner or later, because this show was funded, arranged, directed and performed entirely by local people (interview, 2013). As introduced in Chapter 5, Dongjing music can be regarded as the first successfully commercialised ICH tourism programme in Lijiang.

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However, not many young people are involved on the stage. In the Dayan Ancient Music Association, for instance, as Wang Liwei noted, young players were not placed on stage as Xuan Ke wanted to keep the band as old as possible in order to maintain the objective authenticity of the show. Wang Liwei and He Linyi all agreed that folk music should be learnt at a young age and that it becomes difficult for an adult. I observed that there are two typical transmission cases targeting young people in the case of Dongjing music. The first is a training class initiated by Xuan Ke in his Dayan Ancient Music Association in the year 2007. This is a free intensive workshop held for one month during the summer vacation for local interested primary and junior middle school students. Usually, the class size is between 40 and 200 students (interviewee Xuan Ke, 2013). The second one, which is held in Wenlin Village in Dayan Town, is also in the form of a short-term summer class for local young students. The Wenlin class began in 2013 and it usually takes roughly 20 students each time (interviewee Wang Fuxing, 2013). These two transmission workshops are organised and funded by non-official Dongjing bands and the main aim is to simulate and cultivate local children’s interest in Naxi music. If local young people develop their interest in the music, some may become either music players or local audiences in the future. Compared with Dongjing music, Baishaxiyue music does not enjoy a prosperous tourism market. As the only representative of Baishaxiyue music, He Linyi’s family band struggles with economic sustainability. During my fieldwork from 2013 to 2014, although the brothers He regarded playing in Guanyinxia Park as better than in their local community – because of the economic benefits, tourists’ resonation, and wide intercultural communication opportunities, etc. – they still considered returning to their village in the future as a better place for transmission. They envisaged that an advantageous environment should be established in their home town to transmit their music to the future generation, provided that the funding, resources and preferential policy were all guaranteed (interviewees He Linyi and He Juyi, 2013). Later, in 2015, He Linyi and his family band returned to their home town in Changshui Village in the suburb of Lijiang. He Linyi finally established his own Baishaxiyue transmission spot at home; however, he still complained about the limited government financial support. During my interview in August 2021, He Linyi still held complicated feelings. On the one hand, he would like to operate his own Baishaxiyue music spot for transmission and for tourists in the home town, as he said that the root of his music and culture is there; on the other hand, he would like to have a ‘bigger platform’ to promote his music, including tourism performance, new media dissemination, and the creation of Baishaxiyuethemed cultural products (interview, 2021). After experiencing the ups and downs of the tourism market in Lijiang, He Linyi is trying to develop his own personal skills and abilities to learn, transmit and promote his

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musical culture to a wider audience. In my continuing observations, he has been developing his subjective authenticity in the transmission. At the same time, he has gradually realised the limit of his power, so that he expects a beneficial and fair collocation with other social powers. Collaboration between ICH practitioners, community, the government, tourism companies and other parties is definitely central to sustainable transmission. However, such cooperation is yet to be well established. Having examined the process-centred cases, I will now analyse product-centred cases: namely, handicrafts and culinary skills. Based on the results in Table 6.4, I will further analyse the perceived values in terms of the community and tourism situations for the case of handicrafts (see Table 8.5). Traditional handicrafts, such as copperware, leather and wood products, have been traded as commodities along the Tea-horse Route for a long time. Therefore, commodification is essential to the workmanship. As shown in Table 8.5, with regard to intrapersonal values ‘inside the craftspeople themselves’, on the one hand the craftspeople interviewed do not differentiate between the values ‘actualisation of personal talents’ and ‘personal spiritual edification’ for the two situations. Furthermore, economic value is regarded as an important source of income for many craftspeople in the two situations – especially the young – for starting, continuing and sustaining their handcraft business. On the other hand, craftspeople claim that their creativity, pride, passion, interests and knowledge of the practice are enhanced in the tourism situation. These enhancements can be seen in copper smithing, in the cases of He Table 8.5  Comparison of the values perceived by the craftspeople interviewed, for the community and tourism situations Embodiment of the values

Intrapersonal: inside the craftspeople themselves

Aspects of the values Actualisation of personal talents

Both

Personal spiritual edification

Both

Economic value

Both

Creativity, pride, passion, interests and knowledge Interpersonal: between the craftspeople and their families

Family pride and identity Acceptance, appreciation and trust by the local people

Interpersonal: between the craftspeople and their audiences

Situations

Tourism Both Community

Acknowledgement and happiness

Tourism

Cultural dissemination

Tourism

Serve the customers

Both

Interpersonal: between the craftspeople and the community

Ethnic pride and ethnicity-making

Both

Intrinsic: inside the ICH practice and/or products

Artistic value

Source: Author interview, 2014.

Tourism

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Shanjun and He Shanyi, and leather-making in the case of Li Renjiang (see Chapter 5). In addition, the ‘artistic value’ of the handicrafts is also highlighted in the tourism situation, which is exemplified in the woodcarving of Che Fumin and He Jinping and the copper smithing of He Shanjun and He Shanyi (interviews, 2014). In terms of the interpersonal values ‘between the craftspeople and their audiences’, generally craftspeople do not experience any different feelings when serving local customers as opposed to non-local tourists. For instance, carpenter Che Fumin, coppersmith He Shanjun and leather-maker Li Renjiang, do not discern the origin of their customers when they sell their products or introduce their ICH. However, a subtle difference is noticed because some artisans felt acknowledged and happy in their interaction with tourists and it is only in the tourism context that the cultural dissemination of handicrafts can be realised (interviewees He Shanyi and He Shanjun, 2014). On the other hand, the feelings of being accepted, appreciated and trusted were only experienced when the craftspeople were serving the local people, especially regular customers (interviewees Che Fumin, Xie Pinzhen, Li Runlan, Li Renjiang, He Shanjun, 2014). As demonstrated in Table 8.5, among the 11 aspects of the values articulated by the craftspeople, the continuity of 6 aspects of the values can be sustained in both community-based and tourism-based situations. Notably, 4 out of the 11 aspects of the values, such as creativity (and pride, passion, interests and knowledge), acknowledgement, cultural dissemination and the artistic skills, can only be realised and sustained in the tourism situation. Compared with the process-centred ICH cases, namely Dongba culture and music performance, it is clear that commodification in tourism is more important to the continuity of the subjective articulated values in the product-centred ICH cases, such as handicrafts and food-making. The continuity of the constituent components in the handicraft case in the sense of integrity was indicated in Table 7.3. I showed in Chapter 7 that no obvious differences are clearly indicated by the craftspeople in the two situations. Nevertheless, they articulated that the emerging tourism market not only requires that they improve their making skills, but that it also compensates for the declining local market. The new touristic consumption, then, can sustain the development of their handicrafts (interviewees Che Fumin, Xie Pinzhen, He Shanjun and Li Renjiang, 2014). Therefore, I note that the continuity of the components of the handicraft is maintained in the two situations while the shrinking local consumption of the handicrafts is compensated by the expanding tourism market. The tourism market positively influences continuity in relation to the value and the components of the handicraft ICH. In general, the attitude of craftspeople towards tourism and its influence on the sustainability of their handicraft is indicated in Table 8.6. The above three statements, supported by very positive attitudes of the craftspeople, echo the interview results that tourism is beneficial

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Table 8.6  Attitudes of craftspeople surveyed towards the influence of tourism on their ICH Statements

Attitude

Intensity of attitude

The development of tourism is beneficial to the traditional Naxi culture.

83.33% ‘absolutely agree’ and ‘agree’ of all craftspeople

4.22 (very positive)

It is a positive utilisation to use Dongba scripts and painting for making touristic artworks.

83.33% ‘absolutely agree’ and ‘agree’ all craftspeople

4.19 (very positive)

It is beneficial to the development of the crafts of traditional Naxi pottery-making, wood-carving, copper smithing and leathermaking when these crafts are used for making touristic artworks.

86.11% ‘absolutely agree’ and ‘agree’ all craftspeople

4.31 (very positive)

Source: Author’s survey questionnaire, 2013–2014.

to the sustainability of handicrafts. Table 8.7 reveals how strong the willingness is among the makers to continuously engage with their craftmaking at present. The data in Table 8.7 show a positive trend that the artisans surveyed are willing to continue with their craftsmanship at present for either local people or for outside tourists. During the investigation in 2014, 34 of the investigated 36 craftspeople gave their age and the average age was 37.8 years. Compared with the average age of 65.71 years in the music case, the craftspeople population is relatively young. This means that young practitioners form the backbone for learning and transmitting skills. Furthermore, according to the questionnaire, 86.11% of the craftspeople surveyed answered that ‘the traditional Naxi culture should be handed down to the young generation’, with an Intensity of Attitude of 4.3, which suggests quite positive. These results, therefore, indicate that when young people are engaging with the crafts in both the community and the tourism market, they are also actively willing to transmit it to the younger or next generation. However, many craftspeople were still worried about the lack of young practitioners because of the harsh working environment, the time-consuming and toilsome working requirements (interviewees Che Fumin, Li Runlan, Zhu Xing and He Shanjun, 2014). Table 8.7  Attitudes of craftspeople surveyed towards being willing to practise their ICH Statements

Attitude

I can engage with the traditional Naxi culture freely.

75% ‘absolutely agree’ and ‘agree’ all craftspeople

3.95 (positive)

It is important for me to engage with the Traditional Naxi Culture.

55.56% ‘absolutely agree’ and ‘agree’ all craftspeople

3.72 (positive)

I feel content when I engage with the Traditional Naxi Culture.

77.78% ‘absolutely agree’ and ‘agree’ all craftspeople

4.08 (positive)

Source: Author’s survey questionnaire, 2013–2014.

Intensity of attitude

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The craftspeople studied here are more or less involved in tourism in Lijiang, especially those who run their own shops in Wuyi Street in Dayan Old Town (see Chapter 5). Transmission in tourism is regarded as feasible for handicrafts, so craftspeople would like to make the best of tourism development to enhance the creativity of the products so as to diversity the functions of their handicrafts in contemporary society (interviewees Che Fumin, Zhu Xing, He Shanyi, He Shanjun and Li Renjiang, 2014). Nevertheless, craftspeople also expressed their great concern about the disadvantageous implications that tourism development has on them. Since Naxi handicraft is very popular among tourists, the handicraft market is extremely competitive. The most direct pressure on the craftspeople comes from the popularity of machine-made pseudo Naxi artefacts and fake handicrafts imported from other provinces, because of the low price and fashionable appearance (interviewees Zhu Xing and He Pinzheng, 2014). As explained by the craftspeople themselves, the main reason behind this phenomenon is the ‘low taste’ of the large number of domestic tourists, who want to buy cheap souvenirs. A second factor is the presence of a large number of dishonest non-local businessmen who are good at marketing (interviewees He Jinping and He Pinzheng, 2014). Since genuine hand-made artefacts can hardly compete with the machine-made fake handicrafts in terms of the price – except those under the shelter of the licensed shop in Wuyi Street – most craftspeople have been driven out of the Old Town by market forces. Therefore, craftspeople ask for a better and fair business context where their cultural rights, economic rights and willingness to practise are safeguarded. Some artisans who have benefited economically and culturally from tourism also expect to leave the competitive commercial environment in the Old Town and take the initiative to establish their own cultural tourism programmes according to their own personal desires. He Shanjun, the coppersmith working in Baisha Village, told me in 2014 that he was planning to renovate his old courtyard into a copper smithing exhibition hall where he could showcase his craft live, display the copperware culture in Baisha, teach young disciples and exhibit the history of his father, the deceased famous coppersmith He Jikuan. According to He Shanjun: ‘the connection of the exhibition of the traditional copper smithing craft and the customers’ order in reality means the transmission of the copperware culture’ (interview, 2014). Later, in 2016, He Shanjun began to work on his idea. During my fieldwork in August 2020, his former shop on the main street of Baisha Village had been renovated to become a demonstration shop where tourists could visit a simple exhibition of the history of copper smithing in the He family, as well as buy copperware products. Furthermore, He Shanjun had turned his old courtyard in the backstreet into a place for teaching and experiencing copper smithing, for both apprentices and tourists. He held the idea that a better way of transmitting his copper smithing is to

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teach more apprentices, including non-local apprentices and tourists. He Shanjun believed that ‘the more people know the copper smithing, the safer the transmission of the skills will be’ (interview, 2020). Therefore, he did not keep his family-inherited skills a secret and he tried to recruit and teach many non-local students and tourists. Interestingly, He Shanjun regarded tourist engagement and tourist experience in his copper smithing class, in various forms, as a way of transmitting the handicraft ICH: firstly, because some of them would become his apprentices one day, secondly, because the tourist interest promotes alternative measures of transmission, and thirdly, because tourists will finally contribute to the meaning-making of the handicrafts. Culinary skill is the final case for analysis in this chapter. While traditional food-making is similar to the case of handicrafts, as a productcentred ICH, it is characteristic in a way that food is consumed by not only tourists but also by local people. Thus, two kinds of commodification can be distinguished: namely, production and trade for local people, and production and trade for the tourists, respectively. Based on Table 6.4 and further analysis of the interview data, a comparison of the values perceived in the two situations is provided in Table 8.8. Table 8.8 shows that the continuity of values in the categories ‘creativity’, ‘cultural dissemination’ and ‘ethnic identity’ are indicated more often in the tourism market situation while the continuity of values in the category “trust” is more likely in the community trade situation of. With the exception of these four aspects, the continuity of other aspects of the value perceived is regarded as more or less the same for the two situations. Most of the cooks interviewed articulated that they did not differentiate between their subjective feelings or experiences in making the food for local people or for tourists, a fact that is similar to the case of handicrafts (see Table 7.3). Table 8.8  Comparison of the values perceived by the cooks interviewed, for the community and tourism situations Embodiment of the values

Intrapersonal: inside the cooks themselves

Aspects of the values Personal spiritual needs (meaning of life, attachment to the work and psychological comfort) Economic value/livelihood/family enterprise Creativity

Interpersonal: between the cooks and their families Interpersonal: between the cooks and the consumers of the food Interpersonal: between the cooks and the community

Family pride, identity, responsibility and morality Pride, happiness and satisfaction Trust

Situations Both Both Tourism Both Both Community

Cultural dissemination

Tourism

Ethnic identity

Tourism

Source: Author interview, 2014.

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Tourism is acknowledged as advantageous to the creativity of the food-making crafts. Xiao Jun, owner of Amayi Restaurant and He Zhiming, young boss of 88 Restaurant, both mentioned the importance of creating new dishes based on traditional ingredients and recipes. The tourism market, therefore, is regarded by the owners of many local-run restaurants as the best arena for cooks to explore new ideas. Because of the cultural dissemination established in the interaction between Naxi cooks and tourists, the ethnic identity of food makers and restaurant owners is enhanced and they feel proud that they are contributing to the promotion and protection of traditional Naxi culture. By comparison, the food-making craft case is similar to handicrafts in that commodification in tourism triggers and sustains some of the intrapersonal values (e.g. creativity), and not just the interpersonal values between the practitioners and the consumers (e.g. cultural dissemination). On the other hand, some values are more likely to be observed in the community trade. Li Dongling, a Lijiang baba maker in Wuyi Street, for example, said that, compared with serving tourists, he would like to serve the local people, who can appreciate the traditional food more deeply, and then he can then feel a sense of being trusted in the service (interview, 2014). Some cooks also thought that food processed in the traditional way can only be recognised by the local people, while the food specifically made for tourists could be prepared in an ‘inauthentic’ way (interviewee Lyu Guijin, 2014). In general, 3 out of the 8 aspects of the values perceived by the cooks are triggered and sustained in the tourism situation. While this percentage (37.5%) is similar to that in the cases of music performance (37.5%) and handicrafts (36.4%), it is higher than that for the case of Dongba culture (12.5%). This comparison again demonstrates that the secular ICH cases, namely music performance, handicrafts and foodmaking skills, have been more commodified than spiritual ICH practice in Lijiang. In other words, tourism is involved more closely in the actualisation of the ICH values in the secular ICH cases. Characteristics of the continuity of the components of the food-making practice may be seen in Table 7.3. Among all aspects of the components of food-making practice, the cooks interviewed did not report any obvious difference between the two situations, only indicating that more similarities are noticed in terms of ‘feelings or experiences’, ‘processes and ingredient’, ‘importance’ of the practice, ‘quality’ of the product and the ‘importance’ of the consumer. This result shows that, generally, culinary practitioners treat their food-making and products the same in the two situations. Tourism is widely regarded as beneficial to the culinary skills. Statistically, the survey shows that 79.06% of the food practitioners agree that the development of tourism is beneficial to traditional Naxi food-making crafts, with an Intensity of Attitude of 4.06, which is positive. In addition to the positive effects of tourism on the continuity

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Table 8.9  Attitudes of the food-makers surveyed towards being willing to practise their ICH Statements

Attitude

Intensity of attitude

I can engage with the traditional Naxi culture freely.

75.76% ‘absolutely agree’ and ‘agree’ all food inheritors

3.95 (positive)

It is important for me to engage with the Traditional Naxi Culture.

75.48% ‘absolutely agree’ and ‘agree’ all food inheritors

4.07 (positive)

I feel content when I engage with the Traditional Naxi Culture.

87.33% ‘absolutely agree’ and ‘agree’ all food inheritors

4.25 (very positive)

Source: Author’s survey questionnaire, 2013–2014.

of values and components of the food-making crafts as discussed above, interviewees note that tourism promotes a willingness in the cooks to continuously learn and innovate where their culinary skills are concerned. Notably, many cooks or owners of restaurants in Lijiang thought that the development of tourism, along with the increase in tourist visits, benefited their food business so that consumption was extended (interviewees Xiao Jun, Zhang Xiangfang, Chang Qing, 88 Restaurant and Lyu Guijin, 2014). As a result, food-makers felt encouraged to engage continuously with their food business (interviewee Zhang Xiangfang, 2014). Table 8.9 shows that the food-makers interviewed are willing to continue their food-making crafts at present. With regard to intergenerational transmission, their attitude is revealed by the survey: 90.91% of the food inheritors answered that ‘the traditional Naxi culture should be handed down to the younger generation’. The Intensity of Attitude for this answer is 4.43, which suggests quite positive. These figures indicate that food practitioners are willing to transmit their skills to the younger generation. The transmission of Naxi food-making crafts can be classified into two forms according to the origin of the customers. According to my observation and the interviews with the owners, those restaurants where Naxi food is carefully prepared giving attention to varying flavours for the tourists in the Old Town are more popular than the food stalls where Naxi food is only prepared in routine ways for the local people. The first form of Naxi food production can be found in the case of 88 Restaurant, Amayi Restaurant and the Bainian Laodian Lijiang Baba Shop (see Chapter 5). I noted in the fieldwork that these three restaurants are all run as a family business and the current owners are all young people who inherited their food-making skills from their parents, specifically their mothers. For instance, He Zhiming is in his early thirties and he returned from Shanghai to Lijiang a few years previously to take charge of 88 Restaurant; Xiao Jun is in his forties and is now expanding his family enterprise into a successful business in Lijiang; and Chang Qing, in her thirties, now works with her mother Lyu Guijin to make their workshop one of the biggest production centres of Lijiang

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baba. All these restaurants paid great attention to the tourists in addition to the local consumers and all were experimenting with ‘tradition-based innovation’ (interviewee Xiao Jun, 2013). On the one hand, Lyu Guijin and the 88 Restaurant know that, if tradition is not inherited, the food will not be Naxi-flavoured food (interview, 2014); on the other hand, if they stagnate in tradition and do not create new cooking methods and products, their business will lose out in the market place (interviews with 88 Restaurant and Chang Qing, 2014). All three restaurants are popular in the Old Town, yet they would be unable to compete with their non-Naxi rivals in the Old Town if their restaurants were not supported by the government as a licensed shop. As with the case of handicrafts, business competition in the Old Town is extremely intense. I noted from the fieldwork that, because of fast-rising rentals and the increasing cost of genuine ingredients for the traditional food, these restaurants can barely make a profit without the government subsidy and preferential policy. Thus, in the case of 88 Restaurant, for example, they have to adjust their recipes according to the taste of the tourists and develop online ordering methods to keep up with the needs of tourists and young city dwellers in the new town. The second form of the food production is exemplified by the Naxi Baba Shop run by Zhang Xiangfang, Li Dongling’s Lijiang baba shop and by Aunt He who runs Jidou Bean Jelly in a local market. These food practitioners are all less than 50 years of age and they engage with this low-profit food business to support their families. By comparison, their food products are prepared simply and traditionally with more consideration given to local people’s stable taste. Because of the limited profit and high rentals, they are unable to compete with other food providers in the Old Town, so they have had to move to the periphery of the Old Town. During the fieldwork in August 2021, I was sorry to find that Zhang Xiangfang’s restaurant had been driven out of the Old Town by the ruthless market forces and thought perhaps she may have moved to the local market somewhere in the new town. Reflecting on above analysis of the four cases, we can see that, in general, continuity with regard to the values and components of ICH exists in both community-based and tourism-oriented situations. However, commodification of ICH in tourism influences realisation of the values in-the four cases. On the one hand, the introduction of tourists in the ICH making process destabilises the continuity of the interpersonal values embodied between the practitioners and their audiences/consumers to some extent, especially in the case of Dongba cultural practices. Nevertheless, in this case it is important to note that, as long as tourists are not the major audience, continuity of values and components is maintained in the two situations. On the other hand, in the secular ICH cases, emergent interpersonal values and some intrapersonal values are triggered and sustained only in the commodification process in tourism.

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The survey shows that ICH practitioners regard transmission in the context of tourism as a beneficial approach that supplements other transmission methods. Although debate remains as to whether or not Dongba cultural practice can be transmitted and safeguarded in the context of tourism, practitioners can take advantage of tourism to actualise their subjective values in their engagement. By comparison, those practitioners who are able to take the initiative in collaborating with tourism can sustain their practices better than those who are unable to do so. In this sense, I argue that those practitioners who are able to sustain their ICH better in the tourism context are embodied with relatively high levels of subjective authenticity and subjective integrity. Continuity is a key concept in the sustainable transmission of ICH and it is closely related to the identity of ICH practitioners, because ICH provides them with ‘a sense of identity and continuity’, as stated in the ICHC (UNESCO, 2003). From the analysis in this chapter, we can see that continuity of intrapersonal and interpersonal values, which is conveyed by ICH practitioners’ subjective authenticity, finally points to continuity of their identities. While tourists’ ‘authentic self’, in the sense of existential authenticity, is regarded as unstable and unsustainable (Steiner & Reisinger, 2006), my research demonstrates that ICH practitioners are able to engage continuously with ICH practices in the two situations to construct and maintain the continuity of their identities. While identity-making has been recognised as central to the making of ICH (L. Smith, 2006; L. Smith & Akagawa, 2009), ICH practitioners’ ICH-making in various forms of transmission can be understood as a means of identity-making. Specifically, the cases in Lijiang demonstrated that there are two possible ways of the identity-making for ICH practitioners: the first is the reiterative transformation of their performance in the two situations (i.e. community context and tourism context) from time to time, which is exemplified in He Yaowei’s Dongba case; and the second is the pursuit of a better situation in the long term, which is displayed in He Linyi’s music case. In this chapter I have examined the understandings of officials, experts and inheritors of the concepts of continuity and transmission, as well as the relationship between these two concepts and tourism. Firstly, continuity is found to be a new theoretical concept that the higher- and middle-level officials have no knowledge of. Nevertheless, local officials, experts and ICH practitioners can articulate their diverse understandings of continuity based on their knowledge, personal observations or experience related to the ICH elements. By comparison, local officials and experts show sympathy with the local practitioners. Secondly, officials and non-local experts’ understandings of continuity are likely to be influenced by the Chinese ICH AHD, so that these official players tend to maintain the continuity of the officially recognised values of ICH in transmission. Nevertheless, when continuity is understood from the practitioners’ perspective, most of the subjective

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perceived values and the components can be maintained in both community-based and tourism-oriented situations. In the context of tourism, on the one hand a new relationship between ICH practitioners and tourists is established and existing values and components of ICH are destabilised, especially in the case of spiritual Dongba culture. On the other hand, commodification is closely connected to the actualisation and continuation of emergent interpersonal values and some intrapersonal values of ICH, in particular the secular ICH cases. Thirdly, the majority of officials and experts regard tourism as one of the acceptable or even indispensable contexts of transmission although some of them still hold an ambivalent attitude towards transmission between community and tourism, which is a dilemma related to the problems of the conventional concepts of authenticity and integrity. Practitioners also show a positive attitude towards tourism when the emergent values of ICH are triggered and sustained. While research indicates that practitioners’ autonomous participation in tourism can promote the sustainability of the ICH elements, tourism alone is still not enough to facilitate long-term transmission. With regard to the ICH-making Circle (Figure 2.1), continuity describes to what extent the values and the components of an ICH element can be sustained and transmitted diachronically during one generation (in the short term) and to the next generation (in the long term). As demonstrated in this chapter, with the benefits of tourism, most practitioners can sustain their ICH better, so that they are embodied with a relatively high level of subjective authenticity and subjective integrity. However, subjective authenticity and subjective integrity only indicate that the practitioners can sustain their ICH at a certain time and in a certain situation, and it does not guarantee that the ICH can be sustained in the future. Hence, the proposition that the concept of continuity can encourage practitioners to continuously activate their subjective authenticity and subjective integrity in the long term. Notes (1) The other two are authenticity and integrity. (2) The ‘working guidelines’ of the 2005 Opinions say: ‘protection prioritised, rescue first, rational use and transmission and development’. (3) Although the term traditional Naxi culture was used in all questionnaires, it specifically concerned the Dongba culture when the questionnaire was delivered to the Dongba respondents with the author’s oral introduction. The same introduction was also given in other cases. (4) More information about the Yushuizhai Dongba Association is available at http:// dongba.lijiang.com, retrieved 10 December 2016. (5) See the document at http://www.yn.gov.cn/ywdt/hyxx/srd/202004/t20200403_201813. html, retrieved 22 March 2022.

9 The Sustainable Development of ICH Tourism

The safeguarding of ICH and the tourism commodification of ICH used to be understood as two separate domains and, therefore, a contradiction between authenticity and commodification of ICH became inevitable at both the theoretical and practical levels, as we have seen clearly in the case of Lijiang and in China as a whole. Nevertheless, the making of ICH can be realised and sustained in the commodification process, which, if the subjective authenticity and subjective integrity of the ICH practitioners is retained, can be regarded as a meaningful heritagisation process. If we acknowledge the critical heritage studies view, that all heritage is being made via a heritagisation process in the present, we have to acknowledge the fact that the heritagisation process is complex, diversified and even contested, depending on the perspective of the stakeholders who participate in the process. While I have revealed the influential perspectives of two stakeholders in China, namely the officials’ and the experts’, who generally construct the AHD of ICH in China, I have in particular revealed and privileged the perspective of the ICH practitioners, who enabled me to theorise their autonomy, agencies and experiences in the ICH-making process in tourism. The cases of Lijiang and China provide a window for us to look at how ICH tourism happened in reality and how the phenomenon of ICH tourism can be theorised from a critical tourism studies approach. At the time of writing, ICOMOS drafted the latest version of the International Charter for Cultural Heritage Tourism (2021): Reinforcing Cultural Heritage Protection and Community Resilience through Responsible and Sustainable Tourism Management, which advocates ‘responsible and diversified cultural tourism development and management contributing to cultural heritage preservation; community empowerment, social resilience and well-being; and a healthy global environment’.1 This charter emphasises that the governance and enjoyment of heritage are

179

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‘shared rights and responsibilities’; therefore, the local community, among other stakeholders, is recognised as a relevant stakeholder in the planning and management of heritage tourism. Meanwhile, this charter calls for a people-centered and rights-based approach in the development of cultural heritage tourism, advocating the importance of personal and community well-being, identity and resilience, which are critical to a sustainable and responsible development of heritage tourism. Responding to this ICOMOS Charter and theorising sustainable ICH tourism in a critical approach, in the following I will, firstly, critique the current official discourse and management of ICH in China, and then theorise the significance and implications of the engagement of ICH practitioners in tourism. Finally, I will critically examine the relationships between the safeguarding and the commodification of ICH. The Official Management of ICH

Revealing and understanding the dynamism of the imbalanced relationships of the power and ideologies behind the management of ICH is a prerequisite for a critical study of ICH tourism. In previous chapters I revealed that although a hegemonic AHD exists at the top level of the Chinese ICH administrative system, complexity and diversity exist at the middle and local administrative levels. Meanwhile, the national level and the local level interact with each other in a dynamic way. These results demonstrate that the AHD in the Chinese ICH field is not a homogenous and monolithic discourse; rather, it is complex, stratified and dynamic. The Chinese ICH AHD can be understood from different aspects. In the first place, the Chinese ICH AHD is deployed as a top-down governmental governance of culture (T. Lu, 2017; Ludwig et al., 2020; Maags & Svensson, 2018; Y. Zhu & Maags, 2020), which is executed by external bureaucratic experts (usually in the form of the Committee of Experts) in an objective, etic, and preservationist-led perspective. In addition to its preexisting cultural management of tangible cultural heritage and ethnic and traditional culture, China has adopted and accommodated UNESCO’s discourse, for both the ICH and the World Heritage Conventions, in order to establish its national ICH AHD for domestic and international agendas. Among this localisation of discourse, the concept of authenticity became a key issue. In addition to authenticity, the definition of the ‘four values’ of ICH and the concept of integrity are also explicitly upheld in the objectified Chinese AHD, such as the LICH, and these key notions lie at the centre of the problems identified in the Lijiang case. The dynamism and frictions within the Chinese ICH administrative system can be understood against the background of a decentralisation process in China’s governance after Deng Xiaoping’s directives on the Reform and Opening-up in 1978, after which a division emerged in the broad heritage sector between central and local government (Shepherd &

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Yu, 2013; Svensson & Maags, 2018; H. Yan & Bramwell, 2008; Zan, 2014). Nevertheless, the relationship between higher- and lower-level government is not always one of frictions. While a well-structured hierarchical administrative system of ICH across the country was revealed, I also revealed how this system is formed as a dynamic compromise between the national and local ICH systems. Using the policymaking of the Yunnan ICH Ordinance as an example, I demonstrated that the national AHD needs to assimilate the local discourses, which also need to be naturalised into a singular national AHD system. This suggests that there exists a dynamic between the higher and the lower levels within the seemingly authoritarian AHD. This dynamic is mainly executed within a symbiotic government–scholar network (Maags & Holbig, 2016), which exploits the synergetic agencies of the official players, namely the government officials and bureaucratic experts/scholars. The complexity and diversity of the Chinese ICH AHD, as well as the divergence between the theory/policy and implementation of the AHD, is demonstrated more clearly through an analysis of the personal understandings of the official players at the national, provincial, municipal and county levels. In general, the diversity and stratification of the AHD has been noted: the closer the official players are to local ICH practitioners, the more likely it is that they express a sympathetic understanding that is closer to that of the local ICH practitioners. By comparison, the understanding of the national officials is highly restricted by a strong national AHD, as well as awareness of UNESCO’s AHD, of the conventional ideas of authenticity and integrity. At the local level in Lijiang, although the restriction of the AHD still exists, most of the official players hold sympathetic understandings with ICH practitioners with the result that sometimes the boundary between local officials, experts and practitioners is blurred. Current studies on the Chinese AHD indicate a blurring between authorised and unauthorised heritage (Ludwig et al., 2020), as well as between the local community and the AHD (Xia, 2020). This research further reveals that local officials, local communities and Naxi experts participate in the forming of an assemblage of AHDs (Ludwig & Walton, 2020) due to their personal associations with the ICH in Lijiang. Although I captured the Chinese ICH administrative system as a hierarchical, rigorous and top-down one in Figure 3.1, the fieldwork revealed the complexity, diversity and stratification of the AHD that sustains the system. While the official players collectively construct the AHD, their personal understandings in the form of alternative discourses simultaneously de-construct the AHD (Figure 9.1). The closer they are to the local community, the more likely it is that they draw from their cultural practices and local experiences, in the same way as the ICH practitioners, to construct an ‘authorised heritage practice’ in their reality. In this way, the management of ICH in China can be described, in its external aspect,

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Figure 9.1  Chinese ICH management under the influence of the AHD and the local community

as a hierarchical and rigorous administrative system; and, in its internal aspect, as a series of interactive and negotiated practices. With regard to the concept of AHD, I critiqued the Chinese ICH AHD from two perspectives: the one outside the AHD, from the understanding of the ICH practitioners, and the other within the AHD, from the differentiated understandings of the individual officials and experts. By analysing the complexity, diversity and stratification of the Chinese AHD of ICH, the research revealed two crucial issues that are central to the problems of the management of ICH in China. The first is the divergence between the theory/policy and the practical implementation of the AHD in relation to the values of ICH and the concepts of authenticity and integrity. Specifically, I demonstrated the restriction of the officially defined four values of ICH, the inappropriateness of the concepts of authenticity and integrity, and an ignorance of the concept of continuity at higher and middle levels of government. The second issue is that some officials at the middle level, and most of the officials at the local levels, articulate sympathetic understandings with the ICH practitioners in relation to the values of ICH, the concepts of authenticity, integrity and continuity.

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These findings suggest that there are possibilities for establishing a collaborative and dialogical management of ICH tourism between the official players at higher/non-local and lower/local levels, as well as the official players and the local practising communities, in addition to other non-official players. Implementation of the AHD of ICH in China, inevitably, is situated in a broader AHD of ICH, which is shaped by UNESCO. The concept of ICH, as well as of authenticity and integrity, largely originates from UNESCO’s heritage conventions. Therefore, ICH management of any signatory country to UNESCO’s ICHC can be seen as a reflection of the international AHD on the local society. By comparison, it is relatively easy to initiate cooperative communication at the local levels of the Chinese AHD than between the Chinese AHD and UNESCO’s discourse. In many ways, the local Lijiang issues reflect the tensions between UNESCO’s universal proposition, China’s national and international agendas, local governments’ considerations and local ICH practitioners’ individual agencies. When we talk about the ‘ethnic and traditional cultures’ in Lijiang in the discourse of ‘ICH’, we are dealing with the implications of these AHDs. We could then ask: Who ultimately recognises, uses and safeguards ICH, and, for whom? Thus, in advocating free discourse-making and engagement with ICH, which individual practitioners are entitled to, I also advocate the establishment of an ‘inclusive governance’ of the cultural life of the local communities, which guarantees a better integration of ICH and sustainable development (UNESCO, 2015b). Ideally, a conducive context needs to be established collectively by all relevant players at the international, national and local levels. A critical analysis of Chinese ICH management clearly shows that the concepts of authenticity and integrity are powerful ‘discursive tools’ in the Chinese AHD of ICH, which is used to advocate preservation of the officially recognised values in a materialistic, static, past-oriented and preservationist-led objective perspective. At the beginning of the book I identified that the crux of the problem in the case of Lijiang lies in the concepts of authenticity and integrity in the AHD. The findings from the fieldwork not only reveal the causes of the problems noted in ICH tourism in Lijiang but also suggest a resolution to those problems: the need to understand the values and related concepts of ICH as articulated by the practitioners themselves. The Practitioners’ ICH-making

The most innovative contribution of this research is the establishment and application of the practitioners-based approach in the research design, data collection and theorisation. In general, this critical approach allows me to privilege and analyse the agencies, subjective

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understandings, experiences and feelings of the ICH practitioners that are normally marginalised in the official heritagisation, which is dominated by the national AHD. This approach aims to grant the maximum latitude to ICH practitioners to construct their diverse ICH discourses, which are significant to the theorisation of ICH practitioners’ heritagisation. With this innovative approach, which privileges personal multiple subjectivities and agencies, the AHD – which, as Smith (L. Smith, 2004: 30) argues, is characterised by a ‘discourse of logical positivism that stresses objectivity and rationality – can be critiqued and ICH practitioners’ discourse and practice can be established. This is because the practitioners-based approach advocates a bottom-up knowledge flow that critiques the existing top-down knowledge flow that dominates the AHD. This approach is therefore useful not only in investigating ICH but also for studying all forms of heritage. This is because the nature of heritage concerns relevant practitioners’ subjective and diverse discourses and practices in the heritagisation, which are usually suppressed by a standardised, accommodated and authoritative AHD. When I de-constructed the Chinese ICH AHD on the values of ICH, by critically engaging with the concepts of authenticity and integrity, I simultaneously re-constructed these notions in the practitioners-based approach. I identified three key findings: firstly, the values of ICH are understood as a series of diverse, subjective and dynamic meanings in relation to the practitioners themselves and among their social relations; secondly, the existing concepts of authenticity and integrity in the AHD are challenged by practitioners’ understandings and practices; thirdly, the concepts of authenticity, integrity and continuity can be reconceptualised in the practitioners-based approach from the discourses and practices of the ICH practitioners. Thus, the conventional concepts of authenticity and integrity are reconceptualised as subjective abilities of the ICH practitioners to convey and sustain their ICH values respectively. In addition, I reconstructed the concept of continuity so as to describe the continuation of ICH practices in various transmission forms. By proposing the concept of active components of ICH, I theorise continuity as a concept to describe to what extent the active components of ICH are engaged with by the ICH practitioners to convey and sustain their ICH values. In the field of tourism studies, scholars argued that the self of the practitioner is not always real and that existential authenticity is transient and not durable (Steiner & Reisinger, 2006). In the field of heritage studies, Georgina Lloyd has argued that the diverse representations of a single type of ICH should be regarded as equally legitimate (2012). Based on the fieldwork in Lijiang, I would argue that two forms of ICH, which are practised in the less- and more-commodified situations respectively, as well as all the diverse

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practitioners-articulated values emerging in these two forms, should be considered as legitimate within certain contexts. As a result, the practitioners have to engage with, or transfer between, two forms of their ICH in the two situations in order to convey and sustain the dynamic and evolving ICH values. It is in the continuous reiterative (such as the case of Dongba He Yaowei) and/or evolving (such as the case of musician He Linyi) heritagisation process that the ICH practitioners are able to pursue their ‘authentic selves’ in any given period of time. Thus, the heritagisation process is also an identity-building process. Heritage values are made contemporarily relevant to people during the heritagisation process. ICH is continuously made during the ICH heritagisation process in which the practitioners engage with different forms of their ICH practices in order to generate, maintain, use and transmit the values that are central to their lives. In order to convey the diverse and contingent values of ICH, the practitioners have to actually engage with an assemblage of active components that the practitioners recognise, maintain, create or even abandon from the existing components of an ICH element. Integrity in relation to ICH, as well as the constituent components of ICH, is rarely discussed in the literature. Meanwhile, it is still unclear which elements should constitute ICH, which is an issue that the ICHC fails to address (Logan, 2007). In my proposed ICH-making Circle (Figure 2.1), active components are attributes of ICH, which are dynamically recognised and engaged by practitioners. I demonstrated in Chapter 7 that the active components of an ICH element can be ascertained from the changed/changing components in two dimensions: the diachronic dimension from the past to the present, and the synchronic dimension between the less- and the more-commodified forms of the same ICH element. These results show that the active components of ICH can be discerned in practice; I consequently term the practitioner-engaged components as active components that the practitioners engage with in order to sustain their ICH values at a certain time in a certain situation. The practitioners, by engaging with the active components, actualise the ICH values with two crucial abilities. The first concerns the ability to recognise and engage with the components. In line with Herb Stovel’s definition of integrity (2007), I reconceptualised the concept of subjective integrity as the ability of practitioners to recognise and engage with the active components. This engagement enables them to sustain the ICH values according to their free will. In the case of Lijiang, for example, the values ‘cultural dissemination’ and ‘being accepted and trusted’ largely constitute the interpersonal value ‘between the practitioners and the audiences’. In order to sustain this interpersonal value, the ICH practitioners have to interact with the local community members for the value ‘being accepted and trusted’ and with the tourists for the value

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‘cultural dissemination’. Here, community members act as an active component to sustain the value ‘being accepted and trusted’, and tourists act as an active component to sustain the value ‘cultural dissemination’. If either community performance or tourism commodification is prohibited by external force, the practitioners cannot sustain the interpersonal ICH value and, accordingly, their subjective integrity is harmed. The second ability concerns how practitioners convey the values of ICH through their engagement with the active components. I drew on existential authenticity in tourism studies (Steiner & Reisinger, 2006; N. Wang, 1999) and Stovel’s definition of authenticity in heritage studies (2007) to reconceptualise the concept of subjective authenticity as the ability of practitioners to convey the subjective values spontaneously and freely during their engagement with the active components. As demonstrated in the case of Lijiang, the values of ICH in the practitioners’ perspective are diverse, subjective and contingent. Considering the UN’s and UNESCO’s propositions that the free expression of culture and identity is fundamental to human rights and human development (Meissner, 2021), it is therefore reasonable to allow all these dynamic subjective values and meanings to be expressed and conveyed. Subjective authenticity has been observed in reality. For example, in the case of the Dongbas in Baidi Village, who only practise for the community, and the Dongbas in the Yushuizhai Park, who practise in the tourism context, both claim they are ‘real’ Dongba practitioners and that they are practising the ‘authentic’ Dongba rites. Described in terms of the concept of subjective authenticity, they are both embodied with similar subjective authenticity because they are able to convey the ICH values in a certain situation. I demonstrated in the Lijiang case that, although practitioners engage with their ICH in either community or tourism situations, most of the ICH values are similarly conveyed. As long as they are able to actively engage with whatever forms of ICH practice in order to convey the ICH values, they are embodied with similar subjective authenticity. Statistically, the questionnaire surveys indicated that the practitioners in all four ICH tourism cases showed positive attitudes towards being willing to practise their ICH in the present. These results therefore indicate that most of the practitioners studied are embodied with relatively high levels of subjective authenticity, especially those who operate their ICH tourism business well in the market. The nature of ICH implies that it is a form of living heritage that should be dynamically recognised, practised and transmitted across generations. In a certain sense, ICH is a reiterative and ongoing cultural process. The reconceptualised authenticity and integrity can only describe the abilities of the practitioner at a certain time in a certain situation. Therefore, the concept of continuity of ICH becomes

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necessary. In the ICH-making Circle (Figure 2.1), continuity describes the extent to which the practitioners can sustain and convey the ICH values over time. In this sense, continuity describes the re-production or re-creation of the values and components of ICH. I discovered in the Lijiang case that continuity of the values and components of the secular ICH cases (e.g. music, handicrafts and culinary skill) could generally exist in both less- and more-commodified situations while in the spiritual ICH case (e.g. Dongba culture), as long as tourists were not the major audiences, continuity of values and components could be maintained in the two situations. Furthermore, ICH practitioners regard transmission in tourism as a beneficial measure with which they could maintain or pursue their dynamic and contingent intrapersonal and interpersonal values, as well as identities. The practitioners-based approach can also be understood as a human rights-based approach. Heritage, in particular ICH, is not merely just a technical matter but should be regarded as a cultural production or practice and, furthermore, it should ‘take on human rights as a core [principle]’ (Logan, 2012: 242). After the human rights-based approach was initially proposed by the UN in 1997 in order to clarify, protect and eventually realise the rights and duties among different stakeholders in a project or a policy initiative (Ekern et al., 2012: 217), this approach was proposed positively in critical heritage studies (Ekern et al., 2012; Lloyd, 2009; Logan, 2012) for the identification, inscription, management and monitoring of ICH at international, national and local levels (Y.J. Guo & H.Q. Tang, 2009; Hafstein, 2007; Jokilehto, 2012; Z. Liu, 2010; Lloyd, 2012; Logan, 2012; Logan et al., 2010). In the ICH-making Circle (Figure 2.1), the concepts of authenticity, integrity and continuity are three qualifying conditions to safeguard the continuous heritagisation of ICH so as to finally safeguard the abilities and rights of the ICH practitioners in their free expression and experience of culture and identity. These abilities and rights of ICH practitioners are central to human development, which aims for a long and healthy life and a decent standard of living for humanity (UNDP, 1990). These goals clearly respond to some of the 17 SDGs of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, such as SDG 1 (no poverty), SDG 3 (good health and well-being), and SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth), among others. Human development and sustainable development are integrated into the Operational Directives of the ICHC, as Meissner (2021: 38 ) notes. ICH is assumed by UNESCO to carry a ‘double role’: as an ‘enabler’ of human development in regard to human’s identity and creativity, and as a ‘driver’ of sustainable development in regard to the development of tourism and cultural industries. In UNESCO’s document. Intangible Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Development, UNESCO recognises that ICH is useful for the development of tourism, which

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will then benefit individuals and communities in terms of livelihoods, employment, local economy, as well as identity, pride, security and sense of belonging (UNESCO, 2015b). Thus, a healthy relationship between ICH safeguarding and tourism development can contribute to both human development and sustainable development (Meissner, 2021). ICH Tourism with ICH Practitioners

While international organisations such as United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO, 2012) and ICOMOS (2021) have examined the operation and implications of ICH tourism in several aspects, there has been very limited definition of ICH tourism. Meanwhile, UNWTO (2012) defines four types of cultural tourism: tourism-derived/resource-based (supply) versus motivational (demand), and experiential/conceptual (meaning) versus operational (management). In the second types, the dimension experiential/conceptual, which concerns ‘the nature and meaning of the cultural tourism experience’ (2012: 1), is a significant dimension for understanding ICH tourism from a critical approach. I have demonstrated in this book that a critical analysis of the discourse, practice and agencies of ICH practitioners is central to understanding the heritagisation in the context of tourism. From the ICH practitioners-based approach, I would conclude that ICH tourism can be understood as a heritagisation process in which ICH practitioners inherit, create and transmit their intrapersonal and interpersonal ICH values in their interactions with tourists/audiences and other players in the market. This critical understanding privileges the generation and sustainability of agencies, experiences, identities and rights from the perspective of the ICH practitioners, which are advocated in both critical heritage studies and critical tourism studies. Following the ‘critical turn’ in the social sciences, critical heritage studies and critical tourism studies share a number of similar perspectives. Among these, a prominent one is that they perceive the phenomena of ‘heritage’ and ‘tourism’ as socially constructed rather than ‘given’, so that they propose to reveal and critique the unequal power relationships that shape our understanding of ‘heritage’ and ‘tourism’. Secondly, they critique the existing positivist research paradigm of heritage and tourism and advocate for values and ethics, so that they reveal different world views, the lived experience and agencies of those who are marginalised and discriminated against. Finally, these two critical approaches regard heritage and tourism as possible ways of achieving positive changes in the potential, emancipation and well-being of people, in particular the marginalised and disadvantaged. As can be seen from the development of the critical turn in both heritage and tourism studies and from the empirical research in this book, a study of heritage tourism, in particular ICH tourism, can only

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be established with a critical approach, integrating both critical heritage studies and critical tourism studies. ICH tourism is a prominent domain in the emerging critical heritage tourism studies because ICH tourism is pertinent to ICH practitioners’ rights, autonomy and experiences in their embodied interactions with other people and groups, which, nevertheless, will entail asymmetry and contestation of power (Y. Zhu, 2018). A critical approach to heritage tourism is not only necessary but also meaningful, because critical heritage tourism studies could, as proposed by Yujie Zhu (2021), on the one hand, reveal the unequal power relationships and challenge power domination, such as the AHD and economic determinism; and, on the other hand, recognise the rights and needs of relevant social groups so as to facilitate empowerment and emancipation of people through heritage tourism development. These final goals are in line with the propositions of human development and sustainable development. Therefore, understanding, empowerment and, finally, emancipation of marginalised and unrecognised people, in particular the non-official ICH practitioners, are central to the theorisation and management of ICH tourism. UNWTO (2012), ICOMOS (2021) and UNESCO (2020) state expressly that the interests, rights and well-being of local communities, in particular ICH practitioners, should be emphasised and safeguarded in the development of tourism so as to ‘ensure that communities, groups and individuals concerned are the primary beneficiaries of any tourism associated with their own intangible cultural heritage while promoting their lead role in managing such tourism’ (UNESCO, 2020: 71). Having revealed in this book the asymmetric power relationships between the official players (officials and bureaucratic experts) and the ICH practitioners (as well as community members) in China, I identified and theorised the autonomy and agencies of the ICH practitioners, in terms of subjective authenticity and subjective integrity, for the proposition of ‘critical emancipation’ (Tribe, 2008) in critical tourism studies. The continuing tension between the protection of cultural heritage and tourism development will never be settled via the conventional approaches of either heritage studies or tourism studies. A critical approach to heritage tourism studies, built on critical heritage studies and critical tourism studies, can provide alternatives to the understanding and theorisation of the safeguarding and commodification of ICH in the context of tourism. Theoretically, this research contributes to the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of heritage tourism in these aspects. Firstly, I investigated the diverse participation of official players and ICH practitioners in ICH tourism in Lijiang and China. Secondly, I reconceptualised the concepts of authenticity, integrity and continuity from a subjective perspective to identify and theorise the agencies and experiences of ICH practitioners in their engagement with ICH in

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tourism. Thirdly, I illustrated the dynamics and qualifying conditions, with regard to the ICH-making Circle (Figure 2.1), of the commodification of ICH in tourism, which can facilitate the sustainability of ICH. A comprehensive critical approach for heritage tourism studies requires an integrated analytical perspective to examine both macro social structure and micro individual agencies (J. Liu & P. Chen, 2019). While the AHD of authenticity can be seen as a hegemonic way of value-making and heritage management, subjective authenticity can be seen as a means to emancipating the autonomy and agencies of ICH practitioners. Since authenticity is understood as the ability of practitioners to convey the values of ICH, all values, as long as they are generated from the free will and expectations of the practitioners and are in line with the threshold of human rights, can be recognised as meaningful and legitimate. Practitioners can therefore engage with commodification according to their autonomy and agencies. In this sense, both commodified practice in tourism and non-commodified practice in the community constitute a meaningful ICH-making process, provided these two processes are engaged in spontaneously and actively by the ICH practitioners. Integrity, as I reconceptualised in the practitioners-based approach, should be used to describe the ability of the practitioners to sustain the values of ICH. When we allow heritage values to be generated and evolved dynamically, we should also allow the practitioner to deal with the components of their ICH in ways that sustain the values that are important to them in that situation. I also proposed the concept of active components to describe the components being engaged in the ICHmaking process. As long as the components of ICH are actively engaged with according to the practitioners’ autonomy and agencies, subjective integrity exists in that practitioner. Transmission of ICH is crucial to both the safeguarding of ICH and the sustainable development of tourism. When I advocate respect for the free will and spontaneous engagement of practitioners, I also advocate for the continuation of the values and components of ICH. In the ICHmaking Circle, continuity specifically describes to what extent the values and components of ICH can be sustained. Continuation of these two aspects of ICH depends on the autonomy and abilities of practitioners in relation to authenticity and integrity. Therefore, the essence of safeguarding ICH concerns safeguarding the autonomy and abilities of practitioners to continuously convey and sustain the values of ICH. The interdependence of human development and sustainable development (Meissner, 2021) suggests interdependence and a mutually beneficial relationship between the safeguarding of the autonomy and abilities of people and social and economic development through tourism in their community. Therefore, we can see that ICH practitioners can be empowered and facilitated to exert their autonomy and abilities

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within ICH tourism in Lijiang. When comparing ICH practices in both the community and tourism contexts in the Lijiang case, I discovered that, with the exception of Dongba practices, practitioners regarded both forms of ICH as equally meaningful to them. I also demonstrated that most of the ICH values can be simultaneously realised in both community and tourism contexts in Lijiang. These findings show that ICH practices in the tourism market are as significant as those in the community space. Furthermore, the statistical survey of Lijiang communities indicated that the willingness of all practitioners to engage with their ICH is strong and that they generally have the autonomy to engage with their ICH, a situation which makes them feel content. Lijiang can be seen as a mediated field between the state’s discursive structural influence and local performative practices. The opportunities and latitude for local ICH practitioners to engage relatively freely with diverse forms of ICH in tourism in Lijiang can be attributed to the fact that the national AHD is relatively weak in Lijiang and that the local tourism has reached a mature stage. Along with the decentralisation in China’s governance, the Lijiang local government has been advancing tourism development for regional economic and social modernisation since the early 1990s. Against this background, local officials and Naxi experts tend to display sympathetic understandings to local people who participate in tourism. Tourism acts as a complex adaptive system (Xie & Lane, 2006), which provides local people/community with incentives and opportunities (Picard & Wood, 1997). As the concept of leaping ahead in relation to existential authenticity illuminates, ‘tourism can leap ahead of communities to show them that they have possibilities flowing from hosting tourists’ (Steiner & Reisinger, 2006: 311). Therefore, local practitioners can make the best of whatever tourism provides, to convey and sustain ICH values in diverse ways, which can be seen as a means of emancipation. Nevertheless, the autonomy, agencies and experiences of individual ICH practitioners in their engagement with tourism should be contextualised since I noted that not all practitioners in Lijiang reacted to tourism in the same way. Significantly, practitioners of spiritual ICH, such as Dongba culture, displayed more complex, nuanced and contingent understandings towards tourism. For example, Dongba practitioners’ perception on the presence of tourists and the relationship between themselves and the audience is different from the other ICH cases, because the introduction of tourists destabilises the conveyance of the interpersonal values embodied between the Dongba practitioners and their audiences/consumers. However, it is unnecessary to conclude that the interpersonal values of all commodified or staged spiritual ICH will be harmed. This is because, as seen in the cases of Dongba practitioners/ performers He Yaowei and He Guojun, provided that tourists are not the major audience and that the performance is adapted according to the

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practitioners’ will, the values can be conveyed as equally as in the nontourism situation. The above-mentioned findings point to the fact that the implications of tourism for the transmission of ICH in the long term are complex and should be analysed through a practitioners-based approach. In the discussion of continuity and transmission, I found that although tourism benefited the continuation of ICH practice at present, some practitioners would still prefer community-based practices, as in the case of He Lingyi (Baishaxiyue music). In the case of Dongba culture, while governmentfunded transmission projects encountered some problems, the privately funded Yushuizhai Park seems to facilitate Dongba cultural transmission better. In the case of handicrafts, while coppersmith He Shanjun already operated a successful business in the market, he would still like to do something more for the copper smithing culture in the community. In the case of 88 Restaurant, young manager He Zhiming is trying to cater for the tourists better while still serving the changing appetite of the local people. Finally, wood carver He Jinping and Dongba artist He Pinzheng choose to practise their ICH independently in their own studios while still maintaining a connection with both the tourism market and the community. It can be concluded from the case of China that ICH practitioners would like to interact with the changing social economic environment through their ICH. ICH is not only a way in which they build their relationships with themselves and other people but also a means to deal with their relations with the wider world. While the safeguarding of ICH needs collaboration between governments, communities and other market-related players, tourism is just one of the opportunities that the practitioner can take to sustain their ICH. Nevertheless, no matter whether in a tourism or a non-tourism context, it is important to always consider and safeguard the agencies and abilities with which practitioners are able to continuously engage with their ICH in order to support their intrapersonal and interpersonal values over time. Therefore, successful development of ICH tourism is development that supports the empowerment and emancipation of ICH practitioners, as well as the local communities. No matter whether in a community or tourism context, sustainable development of ICH requires safeguarding the rights and subjectivities of ICH practitioners in a dynamic and ongoing way. After all, ICH would not exist if the process of spontaneous and active engagement were to cease. Future Research

I began this research with my observation that in Lijiang the tensions between the AHD and the local communities’ ICH practice leads to tension between the protection of ICH and the commodification and change of ICH in tourism. Then, I gradually revealed that the AHD

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is diversified and heterogenous and the practice is personalised and evolving, which indicates that the relationship between ICH and tourism is complicated and thus needs analysis and theorisation. From a critical heritage tourism approach, I reconceptualised the concepts of authenticity, integrity and continuity to describe the abilities and agencies of ICH practitioners in their ICH value-making processes in tourism commodification and community performance. Nevertheless, other community members, who are not officially recognised as ‘ICH inheritors’ but who practise and inherit ICH in a collective/group way, have not been specifically studied for their subjective authenticity and integrity. At the same time, tourists, who are a significant population in ICH tourism, have not been examined for their subjective authenticity in this book either. Therefore, future research is needed to look at how these unofficial stakeholders, such as unrecognised ICH inheritors, general community members, and tourists, make meanings and identities during their engagement with ICH tourism and to what extent the proposed concepts are relevant to them. Lijiang is a typical case to examine in heritage tourism, intersecting international, national and local dimensions; nevertheless, the findings need to be contextualised. More global case studies, in other contexts, will help unfold intercultural understanding of the key issues in the field of critical heritage tourism studies, such as authority/power, pluralism/diversity, subjectivities/agencies, rights/equality and empowerment/emancipation, among others (Y. Zhu, 2021). Along with a wider range of players participating in the heritagisation processes in China and across the world, new questions and issues about the meaning and practice of heritage will emerge (Ludwig & Walton, 2020). The making of ICH tourism, as I demonstrated with the case of Lijiang and China, is a field of tension, as ICH tourism is an instrument of government governance, a tool for regional social and economic development, and a means for local people’s empowerment and emancipation. Therefore, it is meaningful to examine the mechanism and dynamism behind the interaction, accommodation and reconciliation among a wider range of players – official and unofficial, local and nonlocal – in the heritagisation processes. In particular, future research should look at how local and/or unofficial players can participate in and advance the formation of an inclusive governance of heritagisation in a bottom-up manner (J. Su, 2021). Although ICH is purposively examined in this book, it would be meaningful for future research to look at heritagisation processes for both tangible and intangible heritages. At the time of finishing this book, I, and most of you who are reading this book, are still experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath around the world. Accordingly, I need to conclude with thoughts on the resilience and sustainable development of ICH tourism in a changing world. According to UNESCO’s report (2021) on ICH and COVID-19 and UNWTO’s report (2020) on COVID-19 and transforming tourism, the

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impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on both ICH and tourism around the world has been unprecedented. Nevertheless, UNESCO’s report (2021) and my study in China (J. Su & D. Fang, 2022), somewhat surprisingly, point out that there are positive impacts on the resilience of ICH practitioners to sustain their ICH practice through this difficult time. Meanwhile, UNWTO regards the COVID-19 crisis as a ‘watershed moment to align the effort of sustaining livelihoods dependent on tourism to the SDGs and ensuring a more resilient, inclusive, carbon neutral, and resource efficient future’ (UNWTO, 2020: 4). There is also a call from scholars to take advantage of the stoppage to reflect on the resilience of tourism and to make changes in order to enable the development of sustainable tourism (Romagosa, 2020). During my further visits to Lijiang in the past three years I observed a noticeable decline in mass tourism but I also noticed that there were still some business carrying on in small-sized tourist spots/shops, which were particularly welcomed by domestic individual and family tourists. These culturally characteristic tourist spots, which provide tourists with ‘local natural and cultural heritage and do not contribute to overcrowding’, are regarded as comparatively resilient and therefore sustainable (Romagosa, 2020: 4). ICH tourism is an interaction of different populations and at different scales, so that the notions of the resilience and sustainable development of ICH tourism should be understood at all scales, including local, national and international (Romagosa, 2020). Nevertheless, I would like to say that the core agency of resilience resides in the cultural custodians who inherit, create and transmit their cultural heritage in dealing with the changing world. Tourism is just one of many possible measures through which cultural custodians making meaning of their lives. Once tourism encounters crisis, cultural custodians can still engage with their resourceful cultural heritage to sustain their cultural lives in other measures, as long as they are resilient in their cultural practice. Therefore, a resilient and sustainable development of ICH tourism should also be as a resilient and sustainable means of helping people living in the face of uncertainties. Thus, we can see that in directing attention towards safeguarding ICH, as well as the development of ICH tourism, we are embracing the future. Note (1) See the full draft text at https://www.icomos.org/media/com_acymailing/upload/ictc_ draftcharter_culturalheritage_final_22072021_1.pdf, retrieved 7 April 2022.

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Index

Commodification 4–5, 9, 13–15, 21, 23, 27, 29–30, 32, 34, 36, 45, 48, 62, 84, 85, 98, 101, 106, 110, 112–113, 116, 122, 124–132, 134–139, 141–144, 147–150, 152, 154–155, 158, 160, 163–164, 167, 169–170, 173–174, 176, 178–180, 186, 189–190, 192–193, 196, 198, 204, 207 Component 8, 27–28, 31–32, 34–35, 56, 59, 125–128, 130, 133–135, 138–141, 143–145, 147–150, 155–159, 165, 170, 174–176, 178, 184–187, 190 Confucianism 50, 55, 84 Constructive 27 Constructivism 27 Constructivist 5, 14, 24–25, 27, 29, 103–108, 110–111, 122, 136–137 Continuity 10, 12–14, 20, 32–36, 69, 98, 101, 120, 122, 138, 149, 150–160, 163, 165, 170, 173–174, 176–178, 182, 184, 186–187, 189–190, 192–193, 200, 203 Copperware 86, 90–91, 114, 169, 172 Creativity 10, 27, 108, 112, 114, 169–170, 172–174, 187, 196 Critical approach 6, 17, 20, 34, 48, 69, 180, 188–190, 198 Critical discourse analysis 17–18 Critical Heritage Studies 7, 17–18, 21, 30, 33, 179, 187–189 Critical heritage tourism studies 189, 193 Critical study 6, 180 Critical Tourism Studies 6, 14, 19, 179, 188, 189, 201 Cultural Centre 56, 59–60 Cultural diversity 12, 20, 157, 200–201, 205 Cultural Ecological Protection Zone 16 Cultural integrity 8, 129, 133 Cultural practice 6, 18, 29, 93, 104–105, 108, 117, 124, 133, 136–137, 159–161, 163, 165, 176–177, 194, 201 Cultural relics 38–39, 43, 50, 67

Active component 32, 35, 138, 148–149, 184–186 Activity-related 26 Agency 5–6, 27, 30, 41, 43, 59, 62, 100, 131, 134, 136, 153, 194, 199, 204 AHD (Authorised Heritage Discourse) 6, 17–20, 22, 24–25, 29–30, 32, 34, 38–41, 60–61, 99, 101–102, 106–107, 112–113, 117–118, 124, 126, 133–134, 148–149, 151, 153–156, 177, 179–184, 189–192, 207 Antiquity 33, 102 Attitude 5, 15, 37, 117, 125, 131, 138–140, 143, 145–148, 161–162, 166–167, 170–171, 174–175, 178, 186, 195, 200 Attribute 22, 25–26, 28, 31–34, 36, 64, 71, 103, 105, 113, 119, 122–123, 131, 142, 148, 158, 185, 191 Authentication 27, 29, 41, 61, 73, 104, 130, 134, 196 Authenticity 5, 7–9, 11, 13–14, 21–36, 38, 40, 44–46, 48, 58–59, 62, 69, 83, 86, 97–101, 103–111, 113, 118–127, 129, 132, 147, 149, 151–159, 164, 166, 168–169, 177–184, 186–187, 189–191, 193, 195–209 Autonomy 6, 14, 135, 179, 189–191 Baisha Village 72, 75, 81, 90, 172 Baishaxiyue music 43, 61, 82–85, 102, 116, 122, 139, 154, 165, 167–168, 192, 208 Bottom-up 11, 20, 61, 184, 193 Bureaucratic expert 8, 9, 16, 39–42, 44, 61, 100, 180–181, 189 Bureaucratic scholar 8, 23–24, 31, 38, 40–41, 100–101, 107–108, 124, 127, 135–136 Chinese National Academy of Arts 41 Commercialisation 3–4, 197 Committee of Experts 16, 41, 61, 100, 106–107, 130, 180 210

Index 211

Cultural Revolution 15, 38, 44, 46, 69–71, 79–82, 84, 90, 161 Cultural rights 12, 172, 206 Cultural tourism 2, 48, 63–64, 73, 77, 82, 121, 179, 188, 202–203, 207 Dayan Town 55–56, 58, 84, 92–93, 95, 168 Decentralisation 180, 191 De-contextualisation 31 Deng Xiaoping 38, 46, 49, 51, 180 Diachronic (diachronically) 29, 32, 34, 101, 105, 111, 125, 135, 138–139, 144, 148–149, 178, 185 Diachronic value 101, 111, 125 Dongba 1, 3, 15, 43, 57, 61–64, 69–81, 87–89, 94, 98, 103, 105, 109–110, 112–123, 128, 132–137, 139–148, 156–164, 170–171, 174, 176–178, 185–187, 191–192, 196–198, 200, 207 Dongba religion 57, 70–72, 78–79, 94, 136, 141–142, 207 Dongjing music 61, 83–86, 113, 116, 118, 137, 139, 144, 165, 167–168, 208 Ecological integrity 129, 133 Emancipation 6, 188–189, 191–193 Emergent authenticity 29 Emic 24, 153 Empowerment 179, 189, 192–193 Essentialism 27 Ethnic cultural heritage 1 Ethnic culture 2, 5, 49, 65, 76, 130, 207 Ethnic group 1, 68, 104 Ethnic minority 2–4, 15, 46, 52, 84, 91, 103, 199–200, 209 Ethnic tourism 46, 48, 196, 202, 206–208 Etic 14, 24–25, 29, 103, 180 Existential authenticity 26–29, 147, 184, 186, 191, 196, 200, 204 Experiential authenticity 26 Fairclough, Norman 18, 196 Folklore 1, 4, 7, 10, 16, 22–23, 31, 36–41, 43–48, 50, 60, 62–63, 108, 196, 206 Folklore studies 22–23, 108, 206 Folklorisation 31 Foucault, Michel 18, 198 Globalisation 23, 26 Governance 11, 19, 41, 54–56, 71, 179–180, 183, 191, 193, 203 Government-scholar network 107, 181

Hall, Stuart 6, 18, 198 Heritage tourism 5, 11, 27, 47–48, 63, 163, 179–180, 188–190, 193, 198–199, 204, 209 Heritage-making 18 Heritagisation 17, 20, 32, 34–35, 97, 99, 117, 119, 124, 126, 179, 184–185, 187–188, 193, 207 Hierarchical/vertical approach 99 Human development 12–13, 19, 186–190, 205 Human rights 12–14, 16, 20, 186–187, 190, 197, 199, 201, 205 ICH Protection Centre 41–42, 59–62, 67, 82, 98, 100, 102, 104, 125, 128, 130, 200 ICH tourism 4–6, 9, 21, 27–28, 46–48, 50, 69, 77, 81, 85, 97, 99, 111, 140, 150, 159, 167, 179–180, 183, 186, 188–194 ICHC (Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage) 7, 11–12, 19–20, 24, 29, 31–33, 40–41, 151, 177, 183, 185 ICH-making circle 32, 35–36, 178, 187, 190 ICOMOS (The International Council on Monuments and Sites) 22, 36, 179–180, 188–189, 194, 199 Identity 8, 10, 12–14, 20, 27–28, 30, 33–34, 38–39, 46, 68, 73, 81, 101–102, 104, 106, 108, 115, 117, 121, 123, 129, 140, 145–147, 151, 159–160, 164, 169, 173–174, 177, 180, 185–188, 199, 202 Ideology 6, 18–19, 25, 38, 40, 50, 118, 158 Intangible cultural property 10 Integrity 5, 7–9, 13–14, 21, 30–32, 34–36, 40, 44–46, 59, 69, 97–98, 100, 122, 125–130, 132–134, 136, 138, 144, 148–149, 151–156, 158–170, 177–187, 189–190, 193, 199, 201, 204, 208 Interpersonal 112–115, 117, 121, 124–125, 159, 164, 169–170, 173–174, 176–178, 185–188, 191–192 Interpretative approach 20 Intertextuality 38–39 Intrapersonal 112–114, 116–117, 124–125, 159, 164, 169, 173–174, 176–178, 187–188, 192 Leaping ahead 191 Leather-making 61, 86, 92–93, 170 LICH (Law of the People’s Republic of China on Intangible Cultural Heritage) 7–9, 11, 23, 31, 38–40, 45–46, 100–102, 105–106, 127, 129–130, 134–135, 151–152, 180

212 Index

List 1, 2, 7, 15, 39–40, 44, 49, 51, 56, 60–61, 64, 67, 73, 79, 82, 84, 88–94, 96, 111, 130, 133–134, 153, 156, 195, 201, 204 Living heritage 186, 205 Living Human Treasures 10, 16, 205 Lowenthal, David 17, 19, 22–23, 33, 201 Mao Zedong 37, 40, 50 Market(marketable) 9, 23, 46–47, 49, 50, 64, 69, 75, 83, 88–89, 91, 94, 96–97, 113–114, 118–119, 122, 131–132, 137–138, 140, 143–144, 148, 154, 164–168, 170–174, 176, 186, 188, 191–192, 196, 203 Materialist(Materialistic) 24, 34, 39, 101, 183 Ministry of Culture and Tourism 41, 43, 48, 126 Modernist 25–26 Modernity 25, 27–28, 196, 202, 206 National Tourism Administration 47, 98 Nationalism 14, 23, 39 Nationality 2, 8, 102, 106, 151, 200 Naxi Ancient Music 64, 81, 85, 118, 207, 209 Non-official 11, 73, 81, 99, 164, 168, 183, 189 Objective 5, 14, 19, 24–29, 32, 34, 39, 86, 101, 103, 105, 110–111, 113, 117–119, 122, 125, 149, 156, 158, 164, 168, 180, 183 Objectivist 25 Object-related 25–26, 28 Object-related authenticity 26, 28 Opening-up 2, 38, 46, 49, 63, 65, 71, 180 Original Ecological Culture 9, 23, 103, 105, 109 Original ecology 23, 105, 201 Outstanding Universal Value 3, 31, 59, 62, 108, 198–200 Pandemic 1, 49, 65, 143, 193–194 Performative 26–27, 191 Positivist 6, 188 Postmodernism 27, 196 Postmodernist 25–26 Post-structuralism 27 Power(powerful) 6–7, 11, 18–19, 22–23, 25, 27, 30, 41, 44, 46, 54–56, 58, 65, 70–71, 103, 169, 180, 183, 188–189, 193, 196, 198, 207, 209 Practitioners-based approach 7, 14, 19–21, 28, 30, 32, 34, 97, 112–113, 119, 183–184, 187–188, 190, 192 Productive protection 9, 152, 200

Realism 27 Realist 25, 32 Relativism 27 Resilience 179–180, 193–194 Rights-based approach 180, 187, 197 SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) 12, 187, 194 Shangri-La 45, 52, 78–79 Silverware 86, 91 Smith, Laurajane 6, 10, 17–19, 22, 29, 39, 41, 124, 177, 184, 195, 203 Stakeholder 3, 15, 24–25, 34, 69, 179–180, 187, 193, 197 Stovel, Herb 21–22, 24, 31–32, 34, 185–186, 204 Stratification 124, 181–182 Subjective 19–20, 24–28, 32, 34–35, 103–107, 109, 113, 117, 124–125, 134, 136, 138, 149–150, 153, 160–161, 165–166, 169–170, 173, 177–179, 183–186, 189–190, 193 Subjective approach 24–28, 104 Subjective Authenticity 28, 34–35, 109, 113, 125, 166, 169, 177–179, 186, 189–190, 193 Subjective Integrity 32, 34–35, 138, 149, 177–179, 186, 189 Subjectivity 32, 140 Subject-related 25 Sustainability 12, 14, 32, 34, 36, 93, 116, 168, 170–171, 178, 188, 190 Sustainable development 8, 12–13, 20, 187–190, 192–194, 199, 202, 204–205 Synchronic 69, 101, 105, 111–113, 117, 138, 144, 146, 148–149, 185 Synchronic value 101, 111–113, 117 Tea-horse Route 54–56, 94, 98, 169 Tibet(Tibetan) 49, 52, 54–56, 78, 90–91 Top-down 11, 41, 55, 63, 99, 102, 180–181, 184 Traditional culture 1, 3–4, 7, 10–11, 16, 23, 27, 29, 33, 36–40, 43–46, 48, 58, 62–63, 69–71, 84, 101, 103, 117, 136, 154, 156, 180, 183, 200 UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) 1, 3–4, 6–8, 10–17, 19–20, 22–24, 31, 33–34, 36–37, 39–41, 48, 57–59, 62–65, 67, 70, 98, 108, 177, 180–181, 183, 186–189, 193–201, 203, 205, 207

Index 213

UNWTO (World Tourism Organisation (United Nations)) 48, 188–189, 193–194, 206 Wang, Ning 25–28, 39, 186, 206 Wang, Wenzhang 8–9, 21, 23, 31, 37, 39–40, 100–101, 107, 127–128, 135, 151–152, 155–156, 206 Well-being 27, 179, 187–189 Wood-carving 61, 86, 88–89, 115, 118, 123, 143, 171

World Heritage 1, 3, 7, 8, 12, 15, 19, 22, 31, 34, 36, 40, 47, 56–59, 62–64, 66–67, 72, 100, 108, 180, 195–201, 204–205, 207–208 Xi Jinping 47 Yushuizhai Park 72, 82, 86, 113, 121, 128, 133–134, 140, 146, 157, 160, 162, 186, 192