Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: (Un)Authorised Heritage Discourse and Practice in China
- Section 1 (Re)constructions, (Re)inventions, and Representations of Heritage
- Section 2 Creating Identities: Constructing Pasts, Disseminating Heritage
- Section 3 History, Nostalgia, and Heritage: Urban and Rural
- Section 4 Appropriations and Commodifications of Ethnic Heritage
- 10 ‘Even if you don't want to Drink, you still have to Drink’: The Yi and Alcohol in History and Heritage
- 11 ‘Ethnic Heritage’ on the New Frontier: The Idealisation and Commodification of Ethnic ‘Otherness’ in Xinjiang
- Afterword: Historicising and Globalising the Heritage Turn in China
- Index
- Publications / Asian Heritages
3 - From Destruction to Reconstruction: China's Confucian Heritage, Nationalism, and National Identity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: (Un)Authorised Heritage Discourse and Practice in China
- Section 1 (Re)constructions, (Re)inventions, and Representations of Heritage
- Section 2 Creating Identities: Constructing Pasts, Disseminating Heritage
- Section 3 History, Nostalgia, and Heritage: Urban and Rural
- Section 4 Appropriations and Commodifications of Ethnic Heritage
- 10 ‘Even if you don't want to Drink, you still have to Drink’: The Yi and Alcohol in History and Heritage
- 11 ‘Ethnic Heritage’ on the New Frontier: The Idealisation and Commodification of Ethnic ‘Otherness’ in Xinjiang
- Afterword: Historicising and Globalising the Heritage Turn in China
- Index
- Publications / Asian Heritages
Summary
Abstract
The preservation and expansion of the ‘Three Confucian Sites’ at Qufu are no doubt driven by tourism, but a more important reason is the Chinese Communist Party's change of heart about China's cultural heritage and national identity since 1989. In 2013, President Xi Jinping unequivocally abandoned the Party's decades-long tradition of iconoclasm and confirmed its return to Chinese cultural roots. Governments at various levels have now set about promoting Confucian values and fostering a Confucian identity. While the effects of the state's nation-building remain to be seen, there is no denying that China's disremembered Confucian heritage is being re-materialised, re-interpreted and re-invented as never before in the People's Republic of China or during the past century.
Keywords: cultural heritage, Confucianism, Qufu, national identity, nationalism
Introduction
The ‘Three Confucian Sites’ (san Kong) in Qufu, birthplace of Confucius (551-479 BCE) in East China's Shandong Province, are the centrepiece of the country's tangible Confucian heritage and rank among the best known complexes of ancient Chinese architecture, alongside the Forbidden City and the Chengde Summer Resort. Their past and present glory can only be attributed to the remarkable stature and resilience of Confucius (551-479 BC). For the better part of the past two millennia, Confucianism was China's state religion (guojiao), while Confucius was commonly known in the country as ‘Master Kong’ (Kongzi), ‘Grand Master Kong (Kong Fuzi), ‘Great Sage’ (Zhisheng), ‘First Teacher’ (Xianshi), and ‘Model Teacher for Ten Thousand Ages’ (Wanshi Shibiao). However, the Sage was knocked off his pedestal as iconoclastic intellectuals set about ‘smashing the Confucius shop’ during the New Culture and May Fourth Movements that swept across China in the first two decades of the twentieth century. The Confucian sites suffered unprecedented damage during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) as Red Guards went on their own rampage against Confucius and his ideas.
Yet, in a dramatic twist of events towards the end of the 1980s, the Chinese Party-state not only began to rehabilitate Confucius and Confucianism but also to revive China's largely disremembered Confucian past and to re-create Confucian rituals in Qufu and Confucius Temples across the country. At the same time, the city of Qufu has been reconstructed and expanded to restore it to its former glory and turn it into a ‘Confucian Mecca’, ‘China's Jerusalem’ or the ‘Holy City of the Orient’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Heritage Turn in ChinaThe Reinvention, Dissemination and Consumption of Heritage, pp. 89 - 110Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020