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Huangshan (Yellow Mountain), China: The Meaning of Harmonious Relationships
| Content Provider | Scilit |
|---|---|
| Copyright Year | 2009 |
| Abstract | In their chapter Ma, Ryan and Bao argue that transferring western, and especially North American values of 'wilderness' as the core function of a National Park is to undervalue the role of cultural understanding of the nature of human-nature relationships as practiced in China. Nowhere is this perhaps more evident than in the applications made by the Chinese government for World Heritage Status (WHS) with reference to a number of China's places of natural and cultural heritage. This chapter uses the example of Huangshan to scrutinize the (western) paradigms that govern WHS assessments and to counterpoise that with a Chinese world-view that sees cultural and natural heritage as a single unitary construct. Such differences inevitably cause tensions, and the practical outcomes are that heritage site management gets caught in a conundrum of applying western models in a Chinese context and value system. Problems thus arise due in part to the prescriptive authority of western paradigms that perhaps pay insufficient attention to culturally determined values of 'Others', a discrepancy that might be interpreted from the framework of Said's (1978) Orientalism versus Westernism. This chapter primarily concerns itself with this difference in world-views, and hence represents a divergence from some of the other chapters that have tended to emphasize the economic role involved in awarding WHS. This is not to deny the importance of the economic, but even the economic roles ascribed to tourism reflect a western empiricism passed down and then filtered through Maoism initiated by a Communist Party. Chinese value systems in assessing natural heritages are thus influenced by the remnants of such thinking and a renewed interest in moreclassical Chinese perspectives. It can be argued that within the professional cadre of the Chinese park management systems, these perspectives are of importance, because it is through these appeals to a domestic tourism market that the economic returns result. |
| Related Links | https://api.taylorfrancis.com/content/chapters/edit/download?identifierName=doi&identifierValue=10.4324/9780203886366-19&type=chapterpdf |
| Ending Page | 185 |
| Page Count | 11 |
| Starting Page | 175 |
| DOI | 10.4324/9780203886366-19 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited |
| Publisher Date | 2009-01-13 |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Subject Keyword | Book Name: Tourism in China Cultural Studies Value System Natural Heritage |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Chapter |
