Let fragments speak for themselves: vernacular heritage, emptiness and Confucian discourse of narrating the past

Abstract

China has developed, over thousands of years, a unique way of representing, valuing and using the past. However, it has silenced, ignored and even denied many aspects of this tradition when dealing with its own heritage in recent decades. This paper seeks to explore a non-western approach to the meaning-making of Chinese heritage by presenting a case of a grassroots project to record and make meanings of heritage in an ordinary village in China. Specifically, it will demonstrate how the Confucian discourse of narrating the past could be appropriated and deployed in Chinese heritage practice to interweave fragments of the past and present by means of holistically embracing the narrative of villagers’ lives in a subtle, transparent and critical way. By doing so, a locally situated way of managing heritage is sought in order to transcend the boundaries of the tangible and intangible heritage categories and to achieve a morally and spiritually enriched heritage experience.

Keywords:

• Confucius
• fragment
• discourse
• ambiguity
• heritage making
• authenticity

Acknowledgements

The research was supported by National Social Science Fund of China (Grant No. 12BMZ046). I would like to thank Yu Hua for her assistance in the earlier preparation of this draft. I would like to acknowledge Dr Denis Byrne for his constructive comments that significantly improved the presentation of the paper. I also want to extend special acknowledgement to all the members of the Dongwushan research team for their invaluable contribution to this project.

Notes

1. Fuyang Municipal Government Policy Study Office and Shouxiang County Government, 2008. Integrating the metropolitan city of Hangzhou to Build a New Ecological District (Internal government policy document).

2. Three farmers in Zhejiang Invited scholars to thoroughly investigate their village’s culture). China Net (中新网), 16 September 2009 [Online]. Available from: http://www.china.com.cn/news/edu/2009-09/16/content_18532762.htm [Accessed July 2013]