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Abstract
This article examines Red Tourism through a case study of Yan’an, China. Drawing upon social/critical scholarship on media and space, the author argues that Red Tourism is better conceived as a social space, both produced and productive. Specifically, from the qualitative data derived from this study and through a spatial analysis of architecture, urban planning, and the museum of Yan’an, the author argues that Red Tourism was created by the state to xuanchuan/propagandize its revolutionary past and attached politico-ideological legitimacy by catering to the postsocialist nostalgia on the one hand, and is producing a dynamic “Red” economy through the commodification of the space on the other. Departing from Henri Lefebvre's powerful thinking around the production of space, this article sheds additional light on the close ties between propaganda and space that have been largely invisible in the field.
Notes
[1] Zhun Jin, “What Makes Red Tourism so Popular,” The People's Daily (oversea edition), November 7, 2012, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90782/8009039.html (accessed January 24, 2015).
[2] The General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, “National Red Tourism Development Outline 2011–2015,” lotour.com, http://www.lotour.com/news/20110630/619116.shtml (accessed January 24, 2015).
[3] Zhou Zhenguo and Gao Haisheng, Hongse luyou jiben lilun yanjiu [A study of the general theory of Red Tourism] (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2008).
[4] Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
[5] John Urry, The Tourist Gaze (London, UK: Sage, 2002).
[6] MacCannell, Tourist, 98.
[7] Urry, Tourist Gaze, 134.
[8] Urry, Tourist Gaze, 124.
[9] Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1991).
[10] Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1991).
[11] Armand Mattelart, The Invention of Communication, trans. Susan Emanuel (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).
[12] Lefebvre, Production of Space.
[13] Umberto Eco, “Function and Sign: The Semiotics of Architecture,” in Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, ed. Neil Leach (London, UK: Routledge, 1997), 182–201.
[14] John Hannigan, Fantasy City: Pleasure and Profit in the Postmodern Metropolis (London, UK: Routledge, 1998).
[15] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, UK: Verso, 2006).
[16] Roland Barthes, The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies (New York: Hill & Wang, 1997).
[17] Lefebvre, Production of Space.
[18] Lefebvre, Production of Space, 40.
[19] Chris Rojek and John Urry, “Transformations of Travel and Theory,” in Touring Cultures, ed. Chris Rojek and John Urry (London, UK: Routledge, 1997), 11.
[20] Mattelart, Invention of Communication, 179.
[21] For an overview of xuanchuan see Liu Hailong, “The Origin and Changing Meaning of ‘xuanchuan’ in Chinese Language” [in Chinese], Guoji xinwen jie, no.11 (2011): 103–07; Wang Fanyi, “The War Literature and the xuanchuan War in Tang Dynasty” [in Chinese], Shandong shehui kexue, issue 5 (2011): 120–23; and Deng Zhuoming, “A Note on xaunchuan Activities in Ancient China” [in Chinese], Shangrao shizhuan xuebao, issue 6 (1988): 41–46.
[22] Both Qiu and Guo point out that Confucius and Mencius along with many other Pre-Chin philosophers are great propagandists. Qiu Zhengyi, Shijie xuanchuan jianshi [A brief world history of propaganda] (Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanshe, 1993); Guo Zhikun, Xianqin zhuzi xuanchuan sixiang lungao [A note on Pre-Chin Philosophers' propaganda] (Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanshe, 1985).
[23] Qiu, Shijie xuanchuan jianshi.
[24] Qiu, Shijie xuanchuan jianshi.
[25] Chunfeng Lin, “Red Is Not an Answer: Rethinking Propaganda in the Mao Era” (paper presented at the annual NCA conference, Washington, DC, November 21–24, 2013).
[26] Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong xuanji [Select works of Mao Zedong], vol. 1 (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1991), 149–50.
[27] Mao Zedong, Mao Zedong xuanji [Select works of Mao Zedong], vol. 1 (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1991), 149–50.
[28] “Outline 2011–2015.”
[29] “Outline 2011–2015.”
[30] Zhou and Gao, Hongse luyou jiben lilun, 2–4.
[31] Zhou and Gao, Hongse luyou jiben lilun, 2–4.
[32] Yan Fan, Dachuanlian: yichang shiwuqianli de zhengzhi luyou [The Great Marches and Rallies: an unprecedented political tourism] (Beijing: Jingguan jiaoyu chubanshe, 1993).
[33] Yan Fan, Dachuanlian: yichang shiwuqianli de zhengzhi luyou [The Great Marches and Rallies: an unprecedented political tourism] (Beijing: Jingguan jiaoyu chubanshe, 1993).
[34] Zhou and Gao, Hongse luyou jiben lilun, 4.
[35] Zhou and Gao, Hongse luyou jiben lilun, 4.
[36] Backed by Tsinghua University, databases of CNKI contain most Chinese academic journals, newspapers, dissertations, proceedings, yearbooks, reference work, etc.
[37] See Harold Lasswell, On Political Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977); and Jeffrey K. Sawyer, Printed Poison: Pamphlet Propaganda, Faction Politics, and the Public Sphere in Early Seventeenth-century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
[38] For example, “western liberal” versus “communist totalitarian.” See Fred S. Siebert, Theodore Peterson, and Wilbur Lang Schramm, Four Theories of the Press: The Authoritarian, Libertarian, Social Responsibility, and Soviet Communist Concepts of What the Press Should Be and Do (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1963).
[39] Lefebvre, Production of Space, 38–39.
[40] Lefebvre, Production of Space, 38.
[41] All the interviewees’ names, whether officials or tourists, have been anonymized throughout.
[42] Interview, June 23, 2013.
[43] The Tourist Bureau of Yan’an, “The Development of Red Tourism Industry in Yan’an” [in Chinese].
[44] Lefebvre, Production of Space, 25.
[45] Eco, “Function and Sign.”
[46] Interview, June 24, 2013.
[47] Yan’an spirit was fashioned during the Long March and developed as a national spirit of perseverance during the Maoist days. Characterized as self-reliance, hard work, and devotion to the people, the Yan’an spirit continues to serve as the backbone guideline for the Party to the present. For a brief review of the Yan’an spirit, see Mark Selden, “Yan’an Communism Reconsidered,” Modern China 21, issue 1 (1995): 8–44.
[48] “Development of Red Tourism.”
[49] Interview, June 25, 2013.
[50] Martin King Whyte, “China's Post-Socialist Inequality,” Current History 111, issue 746 (2012): 229–34.
[51] Interview, June 25, 2013.
[52] David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005), 120.
[53] Zhang Xudong, Postsocialism and Cultural Politics: China in the Last Decade of the Twentieth Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).
[54] Zhang Xudong, Postsocialism and Cultural Politics: China in the Last Decade of the Twentieth Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 15, 16.
[55] Fredric Jameson, “Globalization and Political Strategy,” New Left Review 4 (2000): 54.
[56] Linda Hutcheon, “Irony, Nostalgia, and the Postmodern,” in Methods for the Study of Literature as Cultural Memory, ed. Raymond Vervliet and Annemarie Estor (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 195.
[57] Linda Hutcheon, “Irony, Nostalgia, and the Postmodern,” in Methods for the Study of Literature as Cultural Memory, ed. Raymond Vervliet and Annemarie Estor (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 195.
[58] Dai Jinhua, “Imagined Nostalgia,” Boundary 2 24, issue 3 (1997): 148.
[59] Dai Jinhua, “Imagined Nostalgia,” Boundary 2 24, issue 3 (1997): 152.
[60] Wu Jing, “Nostalgia as Content Creativity: Cultural Industries and Popular Sentiment,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 9, issue 3 (2006): 359–68.
[61] Wu Jing, “Nostalgia as Content Creativity: Cultural Industries and Popular Sentiment,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 9, issue 3 (2006): 359–68.
[62] Wulumuqi is the capital of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the northwest of China.
[63] He Jingzhi is a Chinese poet and playwright. He went to Yan’an in 1940 when he was sixteen and joined the Party a year later. During those days, He Jingzhi wrote his masterpiece, Return to Yan’an, a poem in which the poet affectionately calls Yan’an “mother.” The poem was included in many primary and secondary school textbooks.
[64] Interview, June 23, 2013.
[65] Anderson, Imagined Communities.
[66] Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum (London, UK: Routledge, 1995).
[67] Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum (London, UK: Routledge, 1995).
[68] Robert Moses Peaslee, “Media Conduction: Festivals, Networks, and Boundaried Spaces,” International Journal of Communication 7 (2013): 824. In this article Peaslee defines “media conduction” as “movement of information due to a difference in level of access (from a high-access to a lower-access region) through a transmission medium (e.g., festivals, conventions, events) that simultaneously reifies the value of that access” (811).
[69] David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 219.
[70] Jameson, “Globalization and Political Strategy,” 53.
[71] Hannigan, Fantasy City.
[72] Hannigan, Fantasy City, 76.
[73] Hannigan, Fantasy City, 26.
[74] Interview with the official, June 25, 2013.
[75] Liu Xiaoyan and Gao Le, ‘‘Battle of Yan’an Earned More than 2 Million Yuan during the National Day Holidays ’’ [in Chinese], Yan’an Daily, October 14, 2014, http://www.yadaily.com/News_View.asp?NewsID=26288 (accessed January 25, 2015).
[76] Interview, June 26, 2013.
[77] Yan’an Tourism Bureau, “The Battle of Yan’an,” http://www.yanantour.com.cn/detail-263-245.html
[78] Hannigan, Fantasy City.
[79] Interview, June 25, 2013.
[80] The Municipal People's Government of Yan’an, “The General Urban Planning of Yan’an” [in Chinese], http://www.yanan.gov.cn/info/1241/60048.htm