China?s Heritage through History

China's Heritage through History employs a longue durée approach to examine China's heritage through history. From Imperial to contemporary China, it explores the role of practices and material forms of the past in shaping social transformation through knowledge production and transmission.

The art of collecting, reproducing, and reinterpreting the past has been an enduring force shaping cultural identity and political legitimacy in China. Offering a unique, non-Western perspective on the history of heritage in China, Zhu considers who the key players have been in these ongoing processes of reconfigured pasts, what methods they have employed and how these practices have shaped society at large. The book tackles these questions by delving into the transformation of practices related to heritage through examples such as the book collection at Tianyi Private Library, the reproduction of the Orchid Pavilion Preface calligraphy and its associated sites, and the dynamics of exchange within the Liulichang antique market. Zhu reveals how these practices, once reserved for elites, have become accessible to the broader public. These processes of transformation, embodied in various forms of reconfigured pasts, have given rise to modern approaches to preservation, digitisation, museums, and the burgeoning heritage tourism industry.

China's Heritage through History will be an invaluable resource for academics, students, and practitioners working in the fields of heritage, museum studies, and art history. 

"The sheer scale, depth and richness of China?s past certainly provides a seemingly endless resource for writing histories. However, China?s myriad regional diversities, sometimes astounding temporal continuities and discontinuities, together with the complex and, often, pragmatic relations between state and localities, also provide potent ammunition. Through an exploration of how China?s past is deployed in the present, Yujie Zhu?s China?s Heritage through History, critically examines the process of how a sense of ?pastness? is narrated, circulated and used in the present. Connecting everyday practices and the local stories of community life to a rapidly expanding tourist industry and a self-consciously global aspiration for a specifically ?Chinese Heritage? to be recognised, Zhu?s study develops an insightful critical examination that weaves a conversation between recent research in ?critical heritage studies? and non-Anglophone heritage perspectives. Taking a longue durée approach, the book explores the epistemological biography of heritage in China and, crucially, reflects on its future-making prospective as reconfigured pasts are used to forge a purposeful legacy for generations to come." ~ David C Harvey, Aarhus University.

"Yujie Zhu?s book is an original study of the social practices developed over centuries to transmit China?s cultural heritage to later generations.  His long-term perspective makes this study a strikingly original account of the Chinese arts of memory and the people who have preserved and protected it." ~ Jay Winter, Yale University.

"China?s Heritage through History is an excellent contribution to expanding beyond Western conceptions of heritage, both those used in practice and also in existing heritage studies." ~ Sharon Macdonald, Humboldt University of Berlin.