WUN Virtual Seminar: China's Changing Urbanities - Cultural Heritage Tourism and the Ancient Tea Horse Road of Southwest China

Thirty years of ‘reform and openness’ have brought great changes to the People’s Republic of China. On the positive side, the living standards of a vast proportion of the population have dramatically improved and China has now realised the long cherished dream of the 20th Century to become ‘rich and powerful’ (fuguo qiangbing). On the negative side, China has experienced the same forms of environmental and cultural destruction that all nation-states undergo as they ‘modernise’.

In terms of ‘cultural heritage’, China has in recent decades lost a great deal of tangible heritage as the bulldozers of urbanisation ‘destroy the old to make way for the new’ (pojiu lixin). In terms of intangible cultural heritage, whilst there has been a major revival in some areas after the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), many traditional cultural practices have begun to disappear from everyday life and are in danger of becoming ‘museum relics’ or vanishing altogether.

This paper examines the possible role tourism may play in the cultural heritage preservation of China’s ‘Ancient Tea Horse Road’ (chama gudao). It is argued that whilst tourism can play an important role in socio-economic development and cultural heritage preservation it can also be a very destructive force in its own right.