China has a total of 56 World Heritage Sites, ranking among the top in the world. In addition to the world-famous Great Wall, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, in recent years, Gulangyu Island, Lijiang Ancient City is also a popular punch card, can feed the deer Liangzhu Ancient City Ruins Park is more known as "Hangzhou Little Nara". "Big Fish and Begonias" with Fujian Tulou as the scene, "Coco Xili" with the story of poaching Tibetan antelope, and the World Heritage Site in film and television works are not far away.
However, the inheritance and protection of World Heritage sites needs to be paid more attention to. On 16 July 2021, the 44th World Heritage Conference opened in Fuzhou, Fujian Province. There was conference information on the Weibo screen of the day, but there was less discussion on social platforms.
At the conference, "Quanzhou: The World Maritime Trade Center of Song and Yuan China" was approved to be inscribed on the World Heritage List. In addition to UNESCO's World Heritage category, there are other assessment systems. For example, Ramsar Internationally Important Wetlands, Global Geoparks, Globally Important Agricultural Cultural Heritage, etc., a location will also hang multiple signs. How to excavate the contemporary value of heritage and better protect and inherit these rich heritage resources is a broad and key proposition.
Quanzhou Shishi Wanshou Pagoda panorama. (Xinhua News Agency reporter Wei Peiquan/photo)
On the one hand, heritage is an ancient wisdom and thick history that has been precipitated by time, which is somewhat incompatible with modern social life; on the other hand, heritage is an oasis in the contemporary urban desert – young people are willing to watch Li Ziqi's return to the idyllic life on social media, harvesting the tranquility and purity of rural nature.
"Legacy is not just about the past, it's about the future, so it's important for young people to be involved." Su Mingming, associate professor of the School of Environment of Chinese Min University, mentor of the Young Heritage Professional Talent Project of the Cultural Tourism And Scientific Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, and member of the China Association for the Protection of Monuments and Sites, told Southern Weekend. Looking back, World Heritage is the anchor point for confirming the historical orientation; moving forward, World Heritage should also adapt to the future in dynamic management.
<h3>When modern people talk about heritage, they are discussing something</h3>
Southern Weekend: Many heritage resources no longer function in that year, what is their value in modern society?
Su Mingming: Heritage originates from the past, but it is still valuable and worth passing on to the future resources. UNESCO proposed the World Heritage Project to identify and protect a range of heritage resources that have an outstanding universal value (OUV). Although most heritages have lower-than-boundary and cultural differences in perception, they have outstanding values that are universally recognized.
Specifically, the unique natural landscape, the representative architecture of the times, the wisdom of the working people, the harmonious agricultural system of man and land, etc., the value of which we can understand and appreciate from any cultural background, this is OUV.
Southern Weekend: For example, what are the differences in the determination of the value of the same heritage by people from different cultural backgrounds?
Su Mingming: For example, in Guangdong's Kaiping Diaolou, kaiping people living overseas sent the money they earned abroad back to their hometown, and built a combination of Chinese and Western houses. When defining OUV, UNESCO pointed out that this is a confirmation that ordinary Chinese embrace globalization, but for Chinese, especially for Kaiping people, the watchtower evokes more thoughts about our relatives who are far away from home, understands the hardships of our ancestors working outside the home and misses our hometown and homeland. This is the difference in the interpretation of value from a global and local perspective.
The value and connotation of heritage are also constantly being redefined, and need to be viewed with a developmental and dynamic perspective. For many heritage sites, tourism is a new feature. For example, the original military defense or water transport function of the Great Wall and the Grand Canal no longer exists, but its value is not limited by the original function, and it can be inherited and deepened through the development of tourism.
Kaiping Drum Tower in Chikan European Style Street, Kaiping, 2017 (star Wei/Photo)
Southern Weekend: Is there anything else in the heritage besides travel?
Su Mingming: Of course, the value of heritage is rich and diverse. For example, education, scientific research - including archaeology, geological research, etc. In addition to visiting and visiting, the Palace Museum also has a strong cultural display and publicity function. Of course, different values do not exist in isolation, but are also interrelated. For example, the value of science and education and tourism have a strong correlation. The documentary "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City" is not only an archaeological study, but also plays a role in cultural dissemination and education, and also enhances people's willingness to visit the Forbidden City. Dunhuang is also making similar innovations, in order to reduce the impact of tourists visiting the caves, digital technology has brought new tourism models in recent years.
The display of tour technology outside the Mogao Caves allows the nine-colored deer to "fly into the real scene" (screenshot of the online tour). (Xinhua News Agency, Photo courtesy of Dunhuang Research Institute)
Heritage resources can also be reused through functional conversion, such as Beijing's 798, Shougang Park, etc., which are all new functional areas that meet modern needs, such as industrial heritage transformation into art spaces, recreation and leisure areas, community public spaces, and so on. For example, the steel factory in Fülklingen, Germany, is a World Heritage Site, the nearby Iron Smelting Science Center hosts exhibitions on fire and steel, and some small mold houses have been converted into experimental centers and practice bases for local universities, as well as photography and art exhibition halls.
Southern Weekend: Many World Heritage Sites carry out tourism activities, how to balance the relationship between tourism development and heritage resource protection, and achieve sustainable development of heritage sites?
Su Mingming: There is no conflict between heritage protection and tourism development, and reasonable tourism planning and management are very important. It is important not only to involve local governments, planning and design units, and tourism management agencies, but also to local communities. In the past two years, the team of teacher Bao Jigang of the School of Tourism of Sun Yat-sen University has done a pilot in Argenko, based on scientific research results, actively promoting community participation, promoting the development of local tourism, and also playing a good poverty alleviation effect.
【Introduction to the Argenko Program】
Located in Yunnan Province, Arsko is one of the villages in the Honghe Hani Heritage Area of the World Cultural Heritage Site. The Argenco plan aims to carry out targeted poverty alleviation in the region led by heritage protection and tourism development. In the past three years, Argenko has been selected as "2019 China's Beautiful Leisure Villages" by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, "Chinese Ethnic Minority Characteristic Villages" by the State Ethnic Affairs Commission, and "National Rural Tourism Key Villages" by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
Southern Weekend: After the withdrawal of foreign think tanks, can locals still plan for themselves?
Su Mingming: Teacher Bao stressed in the Tiarke plan that poverty alleviation should be based on wisdom, rely on education, and pay attention to the capacity building of local residents in tourism development. But community participation also does not mean that it can only rely entirely on the community's own development, whether it is a university research team or a professional company, it can participate in it. In fact, community participation does not exclude the intervention of capable foreign entities, but focuses on whether the community can effectively participate in tourism development, and derive benefits from it and its ability to achieve sustainable development.
For example, the ancient villages of Xidi and Hongcun in Huizhou at the foot of Huangshan Mountain in Anhui Province were inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2000. Among them, Hongcun is the first enterprise-led world cultural heritage site in the country, while Xidi is operated by a company established by the local government, and the two villages have different types of operating entities, but both ensure the effective participation and benefit of the community. Tourism development must face and respond to the needs of the market, and also require the participation of experienced operators.
In December 2020, Hongcun, Yi County, Huangshan County, Anhui Province, after the snow. (Xinhua News Agency, Shi Yalei/Photo)
<h3>Protection also allows residents to have a better life</h3>
Southern Weekend: Locals need to be fully involved in heritage conservation and development, what if there is a contradiction between conservation and development?
Su Mingming: We need to protect and inherit the material forms of heritage resources, such as the pattern of villages and traditional buildings, as well as intangible cultural heritage such as traditional art performance forms and traditional lifestyles, and even more importantly, we need to protect the people who create and inherit heritage. Because indigenous people are also an important part of the heritage site, we protect not only the house, but also the way people live, traditional customs, social relations and so on. If the aborigines no longer exist, only the empty shell of the building remains, there will be no human-land relationship contained in the heritage resources. However, people's needs are dynamic, and in order to meet the experience of tourists, we hope that community residents will live in primitive houses and live primitive lives.
Therefore, we emphasize dynamic protection and adaptive management. On the one hand, it preserves traditional culture and lifestyles, such as traditional houses, festivals and other traditional cultural characteristics; on the other hand, it also enables residents of the community to have a better quality of life and meet the diverse development needs of residents. For example, through infrastructure upgrading to improve the living conditions of residents, through tourism and other industries to provide residents with more development opportunities.
Southern Weekend: In addition to participating in planning, what role do local residents play in heritage conservation?
Su Mingming: Local residents are an important carrier of local culture, and it can be said that heritage is created by local people in the process of living with nature. The identification and excavation of the value of heritage resources, the protection and inheritance of heritage depends largely on the strength of local residents. For example, if the local people master the design of the irrigation system of the terraces and the production method of rice-fish symbiosis, then the protection and inheritance of agricultural cultural heritage need to rely on the local people to practice traditional agricultural farming methods for generations, and carry forward traditional knowledge and farming culture. In the process of the development of heritage tourism, the residents of heritage sites are also the main force of tourism development, cultural inheritance, heritage interpretation and tourism services.
Southern Weekend: Can these skills be replaced by modern technology to increase productivity? After substitution, does the legacy disappear?
Su Mingming: Take farming technology as an example. On the one hand, there are some traditional farming techniques that are adapted to the local special topography, such as the small area of terraces and large slopes, which are not suitable for modern mechanized operations, so it is difficult to be replaced by current technology. On the other hand, in addition to protecting traditional farming practices, traditional crop varieties are also protected, which raises the issue of biodiversity. Therefore, to a certain extent, traditional wisdom and skills do not need to be replaced by new technologies, and the protection of agricultural cultural heritage is not to increase the yield of agricultural products, but also has other outstanding values, such as biodiversity conservation, traditional cultural inheritance, scientific education, tourism development and so on. Through the development of tourism and other activities, the path of realizing the diversified values of agricultural cultural heritage sites can be expanded, and more opportunities can be brought to the development of local communities.
In the early spring of 2021, farmers work in the terraces of Nanha Shangzhai in Sancun Township, Honghe County, Yunnan Province. (Xinhua News Agency reporter Chen Xinbo/photo)
Southern Weekend: When you talk about the story behind the heritage, what are the advantages of local residents telling heritage stories?
Su Mingming: Local people have lived in heritage sites for generations, participated in the creation and inheritance of heritage resources, and have a deep understanding of the ins and outs of heritage resources, as well as deep feelings. Combined with their own growth experience, they can tell the characteristics, connotations and stories behind the heritage resources, which can arouse the resonance of tourists and deepen their understanding and love for heritage resources. For example, in the Yunnan Hani Rice Terrace Azhike Plan, tourism development has attracted the sister-in-law who originally worked outside to return to their hometown as a tour guide, they have rich local life experience, understand the local folklore and culture, know how to tell the details of the cultivation of the terraces, can take tourists to fish, so that tourists can experience the most authentic Hani rural life.
<h3>Let the young people stay</h3>
Southern Weekend: What issues did young people around the world focus on at the World Heritage Youth Forum?
Su Mingming: UNESCO's World Heritage Youth Forum aims to arouse the attention of the younger generation to heritage. The forum focused on heritage and community, and also fully discussed the relationship between heritage and community, community livelihoods, community empowerment, and some innovative means of promoting community participation, in particular the role of young people in heritage conservation and inheritance, including participation pathways, how to promote heritage protection and inheritance, and cases of community development.
Southern Weekend: Young people are often reluctant to stay in their hometowns, how to let young people stay?
Su Mingming: Legacy is not only about the past, but also about the future. Many heritage sites now have intergenerational problems. In particular, the intergenerational crisis facing cultural heritage, intangible cultural heritage and agricultural cultural heritage is likely to be more serious. With economic development and social progress, the younger generation is faced with more diverse choices and development opportunities, and the cognition and development needs of heritage are also different, so how to make heritage resources better dialogue with the younger generation, identify the meaning and value of heritage to the younger generation, and constantly seek a new model of heritage protection and utilization in the new era is the core of promoting the protection and inheritance of heritage.
Southern Weekend: What is the significance and value of heritage for the younger generation? What are the driving forces behind young people's participation in heritage conservation actions?
Su Mingming: Heritage, whether it is natural heritage or cultural heritage, can enable the younger generation to recognize the past, perceive history, and enhance the cultural identity and identity of young people to better face the challenges of the future. Therefore, the protection and transmission of heritage has outstanding value and significance at the regional, national and global levels.
For the younger generation of heritage communities, the conservation and development of heritage resources is a new livelihood or development opportunity. Now, many heritage sites are attracting young people to return to their hometowns to develop and start businesses. In addition to tourism, there are new industrial forms such as cultural creativity, homestays, research and study to attract more young people to join the protection, inheritance and development of heritage.
On the other hand, young people have a strong emotional attachment to the community and local environment in which they were born, return to their hometown to participate in heritage protection, inherit local culture, and can find their own sense of belonging, and strengthen cultural identity and identity. For example, the ancient city of Lijiang, a World Heritage Site, not only attracts many urbanites to live here, but also many young people who return from big cities to run homestays. It can be seen that heritage can satisfy young people's independent pursuit of an ideal life, emotional attachment to their hometown, and find spiritual belonging while realizing personal value.
(Southern Weekend intern Han Ningyu also contributed)
Southern Weekend contributed to Wu Bangle