Creating cultural memory is the magic weapon of the "Changhong" of the Internet celebrity tourism city

The Sinister Society: The Structural Transformation of Modernity is by Andreas Leckwitz, a German sociologist and professor of general sociology and cultural sociology at the Humboldt University of Berlin.

This book can well explain a puzzling phenomenon: since last year, China's cultural tourism market has shown drastic changes, that is, we see the rise of new Internet celebrity cities such as Zibo, Harbin, Tianshui, and Guizhou (village super), Beijing, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Chengdu, Chongqing, Xi'an and other megacities with historical and cultural characteristics continue to be popular, but some other tourist destinations and tourist cities that were very popular in the late 20th century and the beginning of this century have gradually lost people's "favor".

A related phenomenon is that although many consumers are becoming more rational in other aspects of their consumption, and are no longer moved by promotional activities such as Double 11 and "June 18", people are willing to spend money on live concerts and music festivals, sports and art events, as well as fitness, video games, movies, etc.

The author of the book believes that the main consumers are no longer satisfied with participating in tour groups to experience the same tourism products. What can arouse everyone's interest in traveling mainly lies in the particularity of a certain place, a characteristic city with a "real" atmosphere, looking for unique scenery and different daily life.

The book points out that this development trend is actually a situation that has swept the entire late modern global economy, and people no longer follow the consumption logic of the industrial economy era, and are no longer simply satisfied with accepting the same design and arrangement, but must look for differences, which is the so-called "uniqueness".

The book "The Sinister Society: The Structural Transformation of the Modern Age" points out that many cultural scholars, art critics, music fans, and brand fans are keen to mystify the heterogeneity, but this mystification can also be clearly explained.

The author argues that there was a double structural rupture between the industrialized modern and the late modern. The first is the transformation of the industrial economy into a cultural capitalism and a unique economic structure dominated by creative industries. Second, caused by the digital revolution, digital technology is no longer just a universal helper, but can achieve uniqueness at a lower cost. Some keen creatives, entrepreneurs, and designers have created brands that are far more sticky than they can imagine through unique designs.

Heterosexual societies, whether businesses, the public sector, or researchers, must be aware of the high importance of emotion. Because the industrialized modern society has developed to the point of high rationality and order, its core characteristics are standardization, stylization, and generalization, resulting in the reduction of people's emotions. Therefore, people need to find people, things, events, places and processes to achieve emotional comfort, and what can satisfy all these is naturally the realization of "truth".

After China's reform and opening up, many traditional tourist cities have begun to attach importance to tourism development, cultivating it as an important industry, and have also introduced the management and operation mode of domestic and foreign tourist cities and well-known scenic spots to a considerable extent. This led to a tourism boom from the late 20th century to the beginning of this century. However, in the process of such rapid and standardized development, in fact, many local characteristics have been annihilated to a considerable extent, and the investment and construction of tourism facilities and service systems that have been expanding one after another since the beginning of the 21st century have continued to deepen this homogeneity.

In this case, whether tourist attractions, scenic spots, and cities pay attention to increasing the injection of local characteristics, improve the service system, and curb the impulse to increase the price of tickets and related supporting services such as hotels and restaurants because of the continuous expansion of the number of tourists, which tests the wisdom and patience of these local politicians and tourism industry operators. We can find that whether it is Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, or Chengdu and Chongqing, these cities have large populations and economies, and tourism is an important industry but still not enough to constitute a dependence on the local economy. More importantly, because these megacities attach importance to the development of creative and cultural industries, they can flexibly inject value elements to meet the needs of the new generation of tourists in urban space and consumer culture, and constantly create new ceremonial activities and cultural performances and make them a topic of public concern.

Therefore, in some Republican neighborhoods in Shanghai, and in some Ming and Qing Dynasty buildings, historical and cultural streetscapes in Beijing, people flexibly use creative cultural tools and perspectives to establish new "cultural memory" of past events, events, places or people by reconstructing "historical narratives", which is a new way of playing under the logic of uniqueness. In Beijing, in Xi'an, in Nanjing, "places of worship, buildings that show power, buildings that worship gods, places of worship or memorials, and even places where they live or have an atmosphere in the creative industries can all become places of uniqueness in this sense".

In other cities, where the scale is limited and the dependence on tourism is heavier, more attention is paid to expanding the scale of tourism facilities rather than strictly managing the order of services and prices, and the task of transforming into a creative and cultural city has not been completed in time. The so-called traditional operas and local cultural programs displayed in these tourist cities have remained unchanged for many years, and are even far inferior to the works on social media.

Therefore, in the face of the drastic transformation mentioned in the book "Heterogeneous Society: Modern Structural Transformation", cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Chengdu and Chongqing have not been excluded from the demand for heterogeneity, while some other traditional tourism cities with relatively limited scale have experienced a decline in the number and popularity of tourists, which is of course related to the low quality of service and the high price that affects the reputation of the experience, but more importantly, it is not.

We can analyze the characteristics of unique products in the book to analyze the astonishing popularity created by emerging Internet celebrity cities such as Harbin. As the author points out, the primary characteristic of a unique product is "truth". Harbin's various cultural performances and ice and snow scenes not only try their best to show the enthusiasm and sincerity of the local eagerness to please foreign tourists, but also the design is very exquisite, and the scale is very grand, breaking the ceiling of the stylized display of ordinary tourist cities and scenic spots. A similar approach is, of course, high-level and large-scale performances in Xi'an, Luoyang and other places.

The second characteristic of unique products is "instantaneous and long-lasting", that is, they should be able to bring people a very short time of current experience and a very long time of cultural preservation. The activities in Harbin and other places not only immersed the participants at that time and achieved more than expected touching, but also because of the scale of the activities, they are destined to become unforgettable life memories for tourists.

The third characteristic of unique products is "circulation and supraculture". The book points out that Berlin, Rome, and Brasilia actually have buildings in the international style, which were once regarded as rigid standard architectural styles. But embedding a new narrative framework, "in the eyes of late-modern architecture enthusiasts and urban tourists, it becomes a highly complex and unusual piece of architecture." In contrast, Harbin's European-style architecture, whether it is the Sophia Church or other buildings, has undergone a fundamental reversal in its interpretation of meaning because it has been incorporated into the new narrative framework.

The book "The Sinister Society: The Structural Transformation of the Modern" argues that consumers are spectators in the cultural marketplace and will make choices in the face of competing idiosyncratic products. Therefore, if all parts of the cultural tourism market show unique characteristics, then in addition to occasional factors, the key factor that determines who can attract tourists is who can complete the emotional touch of tourists, whether it is joy, tension, thrill, enjoyment, or self-shaping, moral comfort, sense of security, etc.

Books reviewed:

Title: The Sinister Society: The Structural Transformation of the Modern Era

Author: (de) Andreas Leckwitz

Translator: Gong Jie

Publisher: Social Sciences Academic Press

Publication date: January 2024