Newly Released: Thinking Heritage Through China

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Author: Andrew Scott Johnston
January 2025
Routledge

Thinking Heritage Through China explores major themes in international heritage through the lens of heritage practice in China. 

China is a dynamic proving ground of heritage practice where international ideas are debated, fought over, and realized in many forms within the context of complex economic, political, and reputational forces. Preservation in China engages with many of the central themes of international heritage practice, shedding new light on considerations of authenticity and intangible heritage, politics and nationalism, and tourism and development. These forces lie at the heart of contemporary heritage practice, not only in China but also all over the world. Written by an architectural historian, architect, and heritage professional with experience in China, this book uses an architecturally and spatially focused analysis bridging critical heritage studies and the study of the built environment as shaped through heritage practice, exploring a wide range of contemporary heritage themes for a broad audience including China scholars. 

This book will be of interest to scholars, practitioners, and both undergraduate and post‑graduate students interested in contemporary international heritage practice, heritage studies, theory and methods of heritage, comparative heritage practice, and heritage practice in China and Asia. 

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Images Clockwise from top left: 1. The Maple Bridge in Suzhou, 2023. Photo by Bo Bian; 2. Starbucks Coffee shikumen at a prominent corner in Xintiandi, 2023. Photo by Bo Bian; 3. A building reconstruction within the Ancient City of Ping Yao World Heritage Site, 2015. Photo by Andrew Johnston; 4. Evening view of the Bund in Shanghai, 2012. Photo by Andrew Johnston.

One of Johnston's central arguments of Thinking Heritage Through China is that the built environment matters, especially in creating and reinforcing heritage. Johnston explains, "Culture includes the built environment; the built environment is not merely a trace of culture, but an active part of it, shaping daily, supporting or discouraging cultural practices." The author provides a deeply researched articulation of the limitations that exist within the norms of heritage preservation that separate tangible and intangible heritage.

When heritage preservation focuses either on built heritage or intangible heritage, neglecting the cultural aspects of the built environment and the built context of intangible heritage, the result can be a hollowed-out culture, spaces that reflect the past but are without life in the present...

Thinking Heritage Through China uses an architecturally and spatially focused analysis bridging critical heritage studies and the study of the built environment as shaped through heritage practice. This book employs an interdisciplinary approach that places built environment studies into conversation with critical heritage studies. Johnston argues, "If we wish to explore social questions related to heritage practices, then physical and material evidence is key for study and understanding. Attention to built projects, focused on their spatial, physical, and material attributes, offers a lens that compliments previous socially focused approaches to heritage practices."

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This title is part of the Routledge Cultural Heritage and Tourism Series that offers an interdisciplinary social science forum for original, innovative, and cutting‑edge research about all aspects of cultural heritage‑based tourism. This series encourages new and theoretical perspectives and showcases groundbreaking work that reflects the dynamism and vibrancy of heritage, tourism, and cultural studies. It aims to foster discussions about both tangible and intangible heritages, and all of their management, conservation, interpretation, political, conflict, consumption and identity challenges, opportunities, and implications. This series interprets heritage broadly and caters to the needs of upper level students, academic researchers, and policymakers. The series is edited by Dallen J. Timothy, Arizona State University.

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Author

Andrew Scott Johnston is Associate Professor and Director of the Program in Historic Preservation at the University of Virginia. He is a licensed architect with a PhD in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. He has served as a supervising architect for the Historic American Engineering Record and as an environmental planner for the California State Department of Transportation (Caltrans), working with a wide range of experts and stakeholders on the preservation and interpretation of historic cultural landscapes. He was the founding director of both the Master of Architecture degree program and the Urban Design degree program at Xi’an Jiaotong‑Liverpool University in Suzhou, China.
 

Table of Contents —

Introduction: Thinking Heritage through China.  

Part 1: Frameworks of Heritage Practice.  

1. The “China Dream”: Heritage Practice under President Xi.  
2. “A Chinese Spirit in Modern Strength”: A Foundation Story for Chinese Preservation.   
3. A Past of the Mind: The New Suzhou Walls and the Limits of Universal Preservation. 

Part 2: Nationalism and Heritage Practice.  

4. Inventing a World Heritage Site: Time, Nationalism, and Tourism.  
5. Searching for Shangri-la: Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Unity.  
6. Remembering and Forgetting: The Century of Humiliation and the Rise of China.  

Part 3: Development and Heritage Practice.  

7. Imagining the "Old City": Creating Places of Consumption.  
8. Tourism and the Tourist Experience: The Ancient City of Pingyao. 
9. Nostalgia and Rural Heritage.  

Conclusion: Questions Inspired by Chinese Heritage Practice.