Abstract

Over the last decade, the notion of the maritime Silk Road has gained considerable interest in contemporary politics as a symbolic terrain for wielding economic and geopolitical influence on the world stage. The launch of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, based on reinvigorating two ancient trading routes—the overland Silk Road and the maritime Silk Road—marks a watershed in the mobilisation of Silk Road rhetoric for advancing China’s ambition for global dominance. Under the BRI, large-scale infrastructural projects backed by Chinese state investments are recast as strategies to revive historic trading nodes and networks on the ancient Silk Road, alongside an initiative led by the Chinese government to preserve their collective heritage through their serial nomination to UNESCO’s World Heritage List. In 2014, India launched “Project Mausam: Maritime Routes and Cultural Landscapes”, proposing research that could form the basis for inscribing the transnational World Heritage cultural routes of the Indian Ocean littoral. Such a quest for world heritage status has led to significant recent transformations of these maritime port cities. In this chapter, I examine the cultural politics of heritage instrumentalisation at Quanzhou, a maritime port city which has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since July 2021 for its role as a maritime emporium within the Southeast Asian Maritime Interaction Sphere (SAMIS) between the 10th and 14th centuries. Based on ethnographic fieldwork at Quanzhou from 2018 to 2020, I show how heritage conservation has been negotiated by different stakeholders in Quanzhou and its implications for the local communities and their cultural heritage.

Introduction

For over 2,000 years, the waterways linking the South China Sea, the Java Sea and the Indian Ocean, as well as their arteries, have been a vibrant centre of maritime exchange, hosting the journeys of seafarers, explorers, religious emissaries, fishermen, merchants, and other communities (Ray 2003; Miksic 2013). Many names, such as the ‘maritime Silk Road’, ‘Indian Ocean route’, ‘spices trail’ and ‘ceramics trail’ (Miksic 2013) have been bestowed on this century-old seaborne passage connecting continents and regions from China, India, and the Malay Archipelago and all through to the Arabian Peninsula. Although the term ”globalisation” only gained popularity in the 1990s, the idea of a world connected economically, politically, culturally, and ideologically has existed for as long as the century-old maritime exchanges across the sea. The sea voyages, which were regulated by the monsoon winds and rains up until the 19th century, brought into contact distant civilisations, transforming worldviews, beliefs, as well as taste and consumption patterns on a global scale. While the maritime exchanges led to cross-cultural exchanges of civilisations and the expansion of urban centres, especially at the coastal port cities, they were also entangled with historic processes of enslavement, exploitation, invasion, and colonialisation.

Some of these early voyages were privately organised by merchant guilds for trade, whereas others were sponsored by suzerain states as exploratory and trade missions or even as naval expeditions to extend their trade, military, and diplomatic agendas. On these sailing vessels and at the numerous port cities lining the vast stretches of shorelines, multicultural crews and passengers mingled with one another as well as with local communities, exchanging not only foodstuffs, commodities, and personal possessions but also knowledge of technologies, faiths, cultures, and ideas (Ray 2003). The vast number of commodities that were once traded on this maritime route included agricultural goods, fisheries, textiles, ceramics, silk, metals, religious scriptures, timber, ivories, and slaves, among others. Some of these luxury goods and currencies now leave their mark as collections in museums or as heirlooms of royalty and prized possessions of collectors, which are scattered across different parts of the world, especially in the coastal regions once plied by this ancient maritime trade.

The invention of steamships in the 19th century significantly reduced the reliance of maritime travel on seasonal winds and made year-round maritime travel and trade possible. After the Second World War, the seaborne trade received a major boost from the invention of container vessels and the introduction of containerisation as an intermodal system, opening the way for transporting large consignments of goods over vast distances more efficiently. Today, the international shipping industry accounts for the carriage of about 90 per cent of the global trade of goods (ICS 2020). While the control of the maritime trade over the last 400 years has been intricately connected with the European colonisation of the 16th to 20th centuries, the modern maritime trade is now entangled with the economic and, sometimes, political dominance of nations and cities in the 21st century. Today, the maritime Silk Road has also been recast as a symbolic form of geo-cultural power, as countries seek to mobilise their maritime history and heritage to advance their own economic, cultural, nationalistic and diplomatic agendas (Winter 2019). The quest for geo-cultural power is most evident in China’s mobilisation of the Silk Road heritage to advance its ambition for global dominance under the auspices of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as well as in India’s instrumentalisation of an India-centric discourse on transnational maritime heritage for its Project Mausam research initiative.

Geographically, the island of Singapore sits within this centuries-old network of maritime exchanges. While much about Singapore’s ancient role within this Southeast Asian Maritime Interaction Sphere remains to be studied, its contemporary position within this seaborne network is well-established. Since its modern revival as an entrepot, Singapore has occupied a significant place in this seaborne trade and remains one of the world’s busiest container ports today. As it seeks to consolidate its position as a leading maritime nation and to achieve its ambition to remain a global maritime hub, Singapore has also jumped on the bandwagon of instrumentalising its maritime heritage to project its geopolitical and geo-cultural interests (Cai 2022). Elsewhere, I have discussed how state museums in China and Singapore have mobilised their maritime heritage to advance Silk Road diplomacy (Cai 2022). Specifically, I have demonstrated how the capacity of Singapore’s Asian Civilisations Museum for Silk Road diplomacy is constrained by its questionable interpretation of Singapore’s pre-colonial histories and the absence of ethical issues from the exhibition narratives of its Tang Shipwreck collection (Cai 2022).

In this chapter, I examine another form of heritage instrumentalisation of maritime history and heritage, that is, by heritage designation on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Specifically, I focus on the process of heritage instrumentalisation at Quanzhou, a historic multicultural port city in China, which was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) in July 2021. I will demonstrate how heritage conservation in Quanzhou has been politicised through the UNESCO WHS designation process to serve broader economic and political objectives of the Chinese government, and the implications of this heritage instrumentalisation for the cultural heritage and lives of the local communities.

Primary data was derived from long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted at Quanzhou from 2018 to 2020, during which I made numerous visits to survey the sites proposed for designation on the UNESCO World Heritage List and spoke to officials and residents about their transformations. I also conducted discourse analysis of UNESCO charters and reports to understand how conservation rhetoric is applied in practice, and the implications of those documents for the material manifestation of these sites and the cultural heritage of local communities. In the next section, I offer an overview of how Silk Road heritage has been instrumentalised through the machinery of UNESCO to promote a range of economic, political, and nationalistic agendas to set the context for my discussion.

UNESCO and the Instrumentalisation of Silk Road Heritage

Today, the maritime Silk Road has taken on new significance in contemporary politics, where ancient trading nodes and networks are revived as heritage projects to promote the economic, political, nationalistic, and diplomatic agendas of nations (Winter 2019; Ray 2020). In the last two decades, some countries have deliberately recreated historical naval expeditions for cultural and diplomatic purposes, blurring the distinctions between the pre-modern uses of sailing ships and their contemporary purposes (Ray 2020). For example, the Maritime History Society of India recreated the Chola Expedition, a modern replication of the Chola Kingdom’s 11th-century maritime “invasion” of the ports of Srivijaya on Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, which involved a reconstructed Indian vessel sailing from India to Indonesia in 2008 (Ray 2020). In the same year, the Government of Oman commissioned the construction of a replica of a 9th-century dhow Jewel of Muscat, which was later presented as a gift of friendship to the Singapore Government (Winter 2019). The replica dhow set sail from Oman to Singapore in 2010 and was put on display at Singapore’s Maritime Experiential Museum and Aquarium. In March 2020 the museum was closed; the ship is now exhibited as part of the Singapore Oceanarium on Sentosa Island.

In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping unveiled plans for an ambitious development strategy, the BRI, aimed at enhancing trade cooperation and infrastructural connectivity between China and Eurasian countries, based on reinvigorating two ancient trading routes: the overland Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) connecting China to Europe, and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road (MSR) linking China to the Middle East through South and Southeast Asia. The BRI seeks to draw on a romanticised historical narrative of the “Silk Road” to promote the formation of a new world order and a reorganised world economy centred on China, based on the principles of cooperation, peaceful co-existence, and shared prosperity (Zhao 2015; Xin 2017; Winter 2019). Hailed as China’s new Silk Road diplomacy, the BRI aims to counter criticisms of China’s intensifying geopolitical and economic power by evoking rhetoric of its ”peaceful rise”, aimed at cultivating good relations with its neighbouring countries, unlike the European style of imperialism and colonisation that seeks to control and dominate key trading routes (Wong 2014).

In 2014, a year after China’s BRI launch, 33 heritage sites along the Chang’an-Tianshan corridor on the overland Silk Road in China, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan were successfully inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List at the 38th World Heritage Session held at Doha, Qatar (UNESCO 2014). The serial transnational inscription of heritage sites along the Chang’an-Tianshan Silk Road corridor was the first successful nomination under UNESCO’s cultural route category, which was introduced in 2005 to recognise clusters of geographically disparate sites which are connected by historical, cultural, and social bonds (ICOMOS 2008). The serial nomination of the Chang’an-Tianshan corridor came to fruition only after a decade of planning and preparation due to the dissonance between China and the Central Asian countries on the interpretation of the Silk Road narrative (Wang 2019). The initial monumental approach to heritage conservation, which legitimised a China-centric narrative of the Silk Road by focusing on the impact of ancient China on the Silk Road, did not go well with the other countries in Central Asia (Wang 2019). It was only after China agreed to a shift in the overarching narrative of the serial nomination, following recommendations by UCL experts, to an assemblage network of nodes and corridors that would equally recognise the contribution of different countries to the Silk Road rhetoric, that the nomination managed to take off (Wang 2019).

In 2014, at the same World Heritage Session at Doha during which the serial nomination of the Chang’an-Tianshan Silk Road corridor was approved, India launched “Project Mausam: Maritime Routes and Cultural Landscapes” to promote more cross-cultural research collaboration on transnational routes of the Indian Ocean littoral (Indian Ministry of Culture 2020). The project was intended to foster research on cultural corridors as focal points of transnational networks and the seasonality of the monsoon winds around the Indian Ocean that regulated the manner of this sea-borne connectivity, which could then form the basis for the inscription of transnational World Heritage cultural routes across the Indian Ocean region (Indian Ministry of Culture 2020). The initial proposal attracted the interest of many countries such as the UAE, Qatar, Iran, China, and Vietnam, which sought to be part of this global research network (Indian Ministry of Culture 2020).

Despite its focus on the transnational heritage of the Indian Ocean littoral, Project Mausam was later mobilised by “Indian government ministers [who] saw the nomination as an opportunity to forge ties with powerful allies across the region that mapped onto neither historical relationships nor relevant cultural sites that academic advisors had identified for inclusion” (Meskell 2019, 123–4). The term “Project Mausam” was subsequently used by India’s government for a policy that sought to extend India’s geopolitical and economic influence in the region (Meskell 2019, 124). It did not help that the project was frequently branded by political commentators as “India’s answer to China’s ‘Maritime Silk Road’” to challenge China’s BRI dominance (Pillalamarri 2014). The shift in the focus of Project Mausam’s maritime Silk Road rhetoric from a transnational approach focusing on cultural networks and knowledge exchanges to an Indian-centric approach centred on India’s maritime heritage eventually led to its premature demise (The Wire, 20 July 2020).

The conference “Roads, Winds, Spices in the Western Indian Ocean: The Memory and Geopolitics of Maritime Heritage” held virtually on 6 and 7 July 2020 (IWCA 2020) and an India Quarterly special issue edited by Himanshu Prabha Ray and Madhu Bhalla (2020) reflect an attempt to revive interest in Project Mausam, although opinions differed on the approaches and forms the project should take. The International Council of World Affairs’ (ICWA) media release on the conference reported that “the panelists reiterated the importance of Project Mausam and emphasised the need to clearly define its objectives, at the core of which is knowledge creation pertaining to India’s maritime cultural heritage” (ICWA 2020, np), suggesting an Indian-centric approach to the project. This position was quickly challenged by academics who argued for an equal partnership with other nations grounded in research and scholarship on the maritime exchange (Ray and Bhalla 2020, 1–2; Bhalla 2020). These rhetorical exchanges alluded to the persistent fault-line between India’s governmental bodies and its academia on the remit and approach of Project Mausam.

In May 2017, UNESCO signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with China to enhance cooperation on the Belt and Road, signalling China’s interest in promoting cultural heritage preservation along the Belt and Road countries (Hou 2017). At the MOU signing ceremony, then Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong commented that there was close alignment between BRI’s objectives of promoting people-to-people bonds between different civilisations, and UNESCO’s mission of building a culture of peace for the shared future of humankind (Hou 2017). This is notwithstanding the fact that the major infrastructural projects and other development projects under the BRI are significantly transforming the cultural heritage of port cities on the historic maritime Silk Road that UNESCO seeks to preserve. In Melaka, reclamation work carried out for the Melaka Gateway project under the BRI has led to the inflow of water into the historic Portuguese Settlement, which is threatening the cultural heritage of this Portuguese enclave and Melaka’s status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site (Singho 2015; Augustin 2017). In Sri Lanka, there are concerns that the US$1.1 billion deal signed between the governments of Sri Lanka and China to develop a deep-sea port at the Hambantota Port in July 2017 may lead to the destruction of its rich cultural heritage (BBC News, 29 July 2017).

One of the initiatives promoted under the cooperation framework was the serial nomination of UNESCO’s listing of World Heritage Sites along the historic maritime Silk Road (UCL 2017). The agreement was also intended to lend weight to China’s proposal to nominate its second historic port city^[1] (and its first non-colonial port city) of Quanzhou in the coastal province of Fujian for inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2016. Before delving into my case study of Quanzhou, I first explain, in the next section, the broader dynamics surrounding the institutionalisation of heritage conservation in the neoliberal regime that will shed light on the ongoing heritagisation of Quanzhou.

The Institutionalisation of Heritage Conservation in the Neoliberal Regime

In this neoliberal regime, heritage is increasingly institutionalised through the formalisation of certain modes of conservation and managerial practices, which in turn constitute a field of expertise focusing on heritage resource management (Coombe 2013; Meskell 2019). The work of international organisations such as UNESCO, ICOMOS, and other international heritage agencies, as well as their programmes such as the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention and the 2003 UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention, have given rise to a new system of governance for heritage which has been formalised through the implementation of technologies and practices such as selection, inventorying, standardisation, and accreditation (Coombe 2013). Through these governance and bureaucratic processes, heritage conservation is made to come under particular “evidentiary regimes of documentation and publication [and] subject to wider professional scrutiny ensuring the application of global best practices” (Coombe 2013, 381).

In the institutionalisation of heritage, international heritage agencies as well as academics and heritage professionals are empowered and legitimised as key actors who can offer specialised knowledge and expertise to develop the heritage field of practice (Mattli and Buthe 2003; Coombe 2013). This resulted in the formation of the “heritage regime in which certain international heritage agencies such as UNESCO and ICOMOS hegemonise the reproduction of certain ‘best practices’ of heritage conservation across the globe through their bureaucratic systems, technical apparatus, heritage experts, funding schemes, conventions, regulations, and guidelines, dominating the transformation of heritage in particular ways in order to meet the predetermined standards for heritage recognition and inscription” (De Cesari 2013).

The institutionalisation of heritage has created a universalised and institutionalised form of world heritage, or what Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (2004) considers “the heritage of humanity”. In reality, this not only creates a “presumptive universalism with myriad sovereign agendas” (Meskell 2019, 86), but also reinforces a ”global hierarchy of values” (Herzfeld 2004), leading to the formation of a new praxis of power and hierarchy in the realm of global heritage politics (Coombes 2013). There is now greater appreciation of the fact that the process of UNESCO heritage nomination is intertwined with national politics, with “political problems … often concealed as technical issues, and now all parties from the Secretariat and the Advisory Bodies to the Committee itself retreat into the bureaucracy and supposed neutrality of the organisation to make any headway in achieving their goals” (Meskell 2019, 87).

In the age of post-politics, heritage has also emerged as a depoliticised regime grounded in global discourses of threat, vulnerability, and sustainability, with dissonances around the management of heritage being depoliticised and subsumed under hegemonic discourses on heritage sustainability (Cai 2019). The narrative of the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention alludes to the salvage paradigm in its conceptualisation of heritage as being “increasingly threatened with destruction not only by the traditional causes of decay but also by changing social and economic conditions which aggravate the situation with even more formidable phenomena of damage or destruction” (UNESCO 1972). This creates a moral imperative aimed at preserving and protecting cultural heritage from endangerment and destruction caused by the overpowering modernity and the demise of traditional practices brought about by the advent of globalisation and modernisation (Cai 2019).

Under the aegis of the capitalist developmental discourse of the neoliberal heritage regime, heritage sites have been developed and promoted as tourist attractions and capitalised as cultural resources that can yield a return on investment. This often sets in motion waves of urban regeneration, commodification, and other capitalist developments, such as the creation of cultural products and the development of hotels and other food and entertainment outlets around these heritage sites that significantly change the economic, cultural, and social fabric of these sites. To diffuse local resistance to such an interventionist approach to heritage preservation, positive rhetoric of urban sustainability, heritage preservation and community-based, participatory approaches to urban development are frequently mobilised to engender “buy-in” from local communities (Cai 2019). The gentrification and touristification of heritage sites can result in an erosion of multiculturalism in favour of a monoculturalism driven by commercial interests. Next, I examine how maritime heritage is mobilised in Quanzhou in the context of UNESCO’s propensity to institutionalise heritage and consider the implications of the inscription for the local place histories and the lives of the residents.

Quanzhou: A World Emporium on the Maritime Silk Road

A major focus of China’s maritime Silk Road strategy is the coastal city of Quanzhou in Fujian Province, once a hub of the maritime Silk Road facilitating exchanges between China and the world. In 2016, the Chinese government applied for 16 historic sites in Quanzhou to be added to UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites, citing their “contribution to the exchange system of the maritime Silk Roads and interchange of the Chinese people and foreigners in China on religious beliefs from the 10th century to the 14th century” (UNESCO n.d.a). The initial application was deferred for further clarification, and in 2021, six more sites were added to the revised nomination. These 22 sites are chosen to represent: institutional guarantee (five components), multicultural communities (seven components), production sites (three components) and transportation networks (seven components) (Hong 2021). The revised nomination was also repositioned as ”Quanzhou: Emporium of the World in the Song-Yuan China” to “illustrate the city’s vibrancy as a maritime emporium during the Song and Yuan periods (10th–14th centuries CE) and its interconnection with the Chinese hinterland. Quanzhou thrived during a highly significant period for maritime trade in Asia” (UNESCO n.d.b: n.p.). Based on this revised nomination, Quanzhou was successfully inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in July 2021 (Hong 2021). In this chapter, I shall focus my discussion on five of these designated sites.

Although Quanzhou was proposed for nomination by the Chinese government for inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2016, the maritime heritage of Quanzhou came to the attention of UNESCO much earlier. In February 1991, a delegation from UNESCO visited Quanzhou as part of the “Integral Study of the Silk Roads of Dialogue” programme. Whilst at Quanzhou, the delegation attended a seminar on the maritime Silk Road and visited the Cao’an Temple where the delegation was particularly impressed to see a stone statue of Mani, the world’s only remnant of the founder of Manichaeism or Zoroastrianism still preserved in the stone temple that was built during the Song dynasty (960–1279 CE). UNESCO’s endorsement of Quanzhou as an important node on the maritime Silk Road prompted the local government to fund a new purpose-built facility for the Quanzhou Maritime Museum in the same year, in recognition of the museum’s role in preserving and promoting an important aspect of Quanzhou’s maritime history (Cai Forthcoming).

The launch of China’s BRI in 2013 renewed interest in the Quanzhou Maritime Museum in view of its research expertise on the maritime Silk Road (Cai Forthcoming). In 2015, the museum was appointed a key institutional partner to support the nation’s nomination of Quanzhou on the UNESCO World Heritage List (Cai Forthcoming). A research team was set up in the museum to provide research support for the selection of sites, and to oversee their transformation into heritage sites in line with UNESCO’s “best practices” on heritage conservation (Cai Forthcoming). As part of preparatory work, extensive restorations were undertaken at the selected sites to transform them into tourist destinations, in line with the standard practice adopted at natural and cultural sites inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

As Quanzhou‘s UNESCO WHS nomination was based on its place and position as the “emporium of the world” (Schottenhammer 2000) when Quanzhou was at the peak of its maritime trade during the Song and Yuan dynasties, this inevitably led to the privileging of Quanzhou’s historical past during the Song and Yuan dynasties at the expense of other historical periods, including their contemporary histories and meanings for their local communities. Bilingual signage in Mandarin and English languages was erected at each of these sites to elucidate their cultural significance, especially during the Song and Yuan dynasties, as “universal heritage” and therefore worthy of UNESCO WHS inscription, along with the establishment of small galleries at some of these sites to explain their history and heritage during this time. At each heritage site, one would also find a large map of Quanzhou providing information on the location of the other heritage sites identified for UNESCO WHS inscription, inviting tourists to visit them. In Quanzhou, the UNESCO World Heritage List is actively being marketed as a brand for the promotion of mass tourism and as a symbol of national pride, leading Meskell (2019) to lament that UNESCO’s commitment to preserving heritage has been overridden by the quest for international branding and marketing to fulfil economic and nationalistic objectives.

The quest for UNESCO WHS status in Quanzhou has accelerated plans to restore some heritage sites, which have fallen into disuse and given way to dereliction. Plans to restore sites for the UNESCO nomination have led to the construction of roads and other infrastructure, which has enhanced the accessibility of these otherwise remote locations. For example, for the Cizao kilns at the Jinjiaoyi Hill which were abandoned since the 14th century, but were re-discovered and subsequently excavated in 2002–03, the UNESCO WHS nomination facilitated the construction of an exhibition hall at the archaeological site that raised public awareness of the history of these kilns and an access road to this remote region of Quanzhou, opening up the area for public access. Many examples of the pottery produced at Cizao kilns were exported to Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean.

UNESCO WHS nomination can, however, lead to the demolition of historic buildings and the displacement of communities in other localities. For example, the recent archaeological excavation of the Deji Gate (South City Gate) (first built in 1230 during the Song dynasty, but repaired in the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties), and its subsequent conversion into a fenced heritage site for the nomination, led to the displacement of local communities in the old town of Quanzhou. Since the Deji Gate and the Tianhou Temple in the old town were proposed for UNESCO WHS inscription, their surroundings have given way to gentrification, as old trades which lent the town its sense of authenticity were gradually pushed out to make way for a range of new souvenir shops and cafes which took their places. This has given rise to a monoculturalism driven by capitalist interests, with local resistance to this interventionist approach diffused through the positive rhetoric of heritage conservation, which is a manifestation of heritage politics in the post-political neoliberal regime.

The accessibility of some community sites in Quanzhou changed due to their impending UNESCO WHS nomination. Sites previously open to the public for free are now fenced up as tourist destinations, applying admission charges to their visitors in ways that seem to alienate their local communities, who are no longer able to visit these sites for free. Many delineations of space in the city were undertaken in the spirit of outlining clear site boundaries and buffer zones to protect the character of these sites as mandated in the guidance for achieving UNESCO WHS nomination. Similarly, the implementation of admission charges was conceived as a risk-mitigating strategy to address the problem of over-capacity due to the projected increase in visitor numbers. As such, the mechanisms of UNESCO’s nomination process may present incompatible choices to state parties between the need for engagement with local communities and the restriction of access to preserve site capacity and integrity.

One example is the Holy Islamic Tombs on Mount Lingshan, which allegedly contain the tombstones of the third and fourth disciples of Prophet Muhammad who were sent to China to preach Islam during the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE). Also found at the site of the tombstones is a tablet written in Arabic script commemorating the Ming dynasty (1368–1644 CE) Chinese Admiral Zheng He, a Chinese Muslim who led seven expeditionary voyages to Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Arabian Peninsula between 1405 and 1433. In preparation for its listing on the UNESCO World Heritage List, the site underwent significant renovation during which an exhibition hall was constructed to tell the history of the Holy Islamic Tombs, curated by the Quanzhou Maritime Museum. Some tombstones were relocated to other sites, and a fence was built around the site, with admission fees introduced for visits to both the exhibition and the cemetery. The cemetery has been an important pilgrimage site for Muslim devotees from within China and other parts of the world, who would visit the site to pay respects to the third and fourth disciples of Prophet Muhammad.

Descendants of the local Islamic communities would visit the cemetery to commemorate their deceased ancestors during major cultural festivals. It has also been a neighbourhood park patronised by local residents living in the nearby residential estate who are drawn to its scenic hillside ambience. Due to the imposition of admission fees by the local tourism authority to regulate the number of visitors at the site, local communities and pilgrims are now subjected to admission charges, raising questions about the accessibility and inclusivity of the heritage site for the local community, whose participation and engagement have been a key aspect of the UNESCO nomination process.

Another example is the Qingjing Mosque, the only surviving mosque in Quanzhou today out of the many that were built during the Song and Yuan dynasties. Modelled after the architectural style of mosques in Syria’s Damascus, the Qingjing Mosque underwent significant transformation since its nomination as a UNESCO WHS. Signage and plaques were erected to explain Islamic epigraphs and tombstones in the mosque compound. A new exhibition on Quanzhou’s Islamic history was installed in the mosque, tracing how these mosques were established by the Arabic merchants who arrived in Quanzhou during the Song and Yuan dynasties at the height of the maritime Silk Road trade. The exhibition privileged Quanzhou’s Islamic history during the Song and Yuan dynasties and celebrated values of religious tolerance and cultural diversity, as it downplayed the persecution of ethnic and religious minorities in the subsequent Ming dynasty, and their Sinicisation into the mainstream Han Chinese population. Although many worshippers at the mosque today are Chinese Muslims hailing from other parts of China, their stories remain absent in the exhibition rhetoric. The UNESCO WHS nomination thus privileges certain histories and communities over others, pointing to the problems of conceptualising ‘community’ as a collective and unified entity, which has been uncritically promoted within the UNESCO rhetoric (Cai 2020). Similar to the Holy Islamic Tombs on Mount Lingshan, while the mosque was free to visit in 2018, an admission charge was introduced in 2019, raising issues of accessibility and engagement with its contemporary communities.

The quest for UNESCO WHS nomination has also led to the revival of older history and heritage. An example is the Cao’an Temple, which was originally built in a thatched building for the worship of Manichaeism during the Song dynasty. Due to the persecution of Manichaeism in the subsequent dynasties, the religion is no longer practised in Quanzhou. The stone temple, which was constructed during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368 CE), has now been converted to a Buddhist temple, with the image of its founder, Mani, venerated as the “Buddha of Light”. When the UNESCO team surveyed the site in 1991, they were impressed to find a remnant of Manichaeism at Cao’an and recognised it as an important historic site of Manichaeism, rather than its current significance as a Buddhist site. Today, this UNESCO visit is commemorated by a plaque on the site, with the signatures of the members of the UNESCO delegation inscribed on the plaque.

<Insert Figure 5: [Photograph: Author]>

As seen from the examples above, the UNESCO WHS programme has led to the promotion of certain forms of heritage in Quanzhou that seem to fossilise the proposed sites in a time capsule rather than recognise their dynamism and organic evolution over time. This is rooted in the inherent Eurocentrism within ICOMOS and UNESCO, which privileges a monumental approach to heritage conservation that underlies the rigid interpretation of concepts such as “authenticity”. Eurocentric bias within the international heritage agencies is starkly evident in the ICOMOS assessment of the proposed heritage sites in Quanzhou, which was presented to the World Heritage Committee at its 42nd meeting held at Bahrain from 24 June to 4 July 2018, during which China’s proposal to nominate Quanzhou as a UNESCO WHS was considered, and subsequently deferred for further clarification.

In reviewing Quanzhou’s initial proposal for UNESCO nomination, ICOMOS adopted a rigid interpretation of ”authenticity”, arguing that some of the structures on the nominated list have been ”extensively restored or reconstructed”, citing examples of the Confucius Temple featuring “elements from the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties”, the Zhenwu Temple featuring “some stone elements from the Song dynasty, but the wooden elements date to the Qing dynasty”, as well as “major construction work undertaken at Luoyang Bridge in 1993”, among others (UNESCO 2018, 73). In ICOMOS’ view, these restorations and repairs to the nominated properties have resulted in “losses of authenticity through unsympathetic conservation treatments” (UNESCO 2018, 73). This reflected a long-held Eurocentric bias within UNESCO and ICOMOS that privileges the monumental approach to heritage conservation and promotes an unchanging form of heritage that fails to consider its transformation and adaptation over time, creating a fossilised form of heritage frozen in time which may not reflect their contemporary meanings and relevance to their current communities.

Such “provenance-based measures of authenticity” (Chua 2006; quoted in Byrne 2014, 99), which are based on a Eurocentric bias on material heritage, are increasingly under criticism for their failure to account for the numinous meanings associated with heritage forms in the non-western world (Byrne 2014). ICOMOS’ conceptualisation of authenticity also contradicts the conventional academic scholarship on cultural heritage, which tends to favour a constructionist approach that conceives of both cultural heritage and authenticity as fluid, dynamic and relative, rather than fixed, unchanging, and absolute (Lowenthal 1998; Graham el. al. 2000; Zhu 2012; Harrison 2013). ICOMOS’ narrow interpretation of the concept of “authenticity” is also out of step with the spirit of authenticity, recommended by Paragraph 13 of the Nara Document on Authenticity, which states that:

Depending on the nature of the cultural heritage, its cultural context, and its evolution through time, authenticity judgements may be linked to the worth of a great variety of sources of information. Aspects of the sources may include form and design, materials, and substance, use and function, traditions and techniques, location and setting, and spirit and feeling, and other internal and external factors. The use of these sources permits elaboration of the specific artistic, historic, social, and scientific dimensions of the cultural heritage being examined. (UNESCO 1994, np)

While it was amenable to the inscription of other port cities such as Goa (India), Venice and its Lagoon (Italy), Macao (China) and Melaka (Malaysia) on the World Heritage List for their historical roles as port cities, UNESCO ICOMOS rejected Quanzhou’s nomination on the same basis, citing the fact that Quanzhou was not a colonial port. Such reasoning seems to privilege the historical experience of European colonisation as “universal heritage” over other historical periods and reveals a deeply rooted sense of European exceptionalism in what constitutes the ”heritage of humanity” (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 2004). Due to this embedded Eurocentrism within ICOMOS and UNESCO, the material focus continues to dominate the rhetoric and practice of heritage conservation on the international stage today, marginalising non-material forms of cultural heritage that emanate from the non-western world, and perpetuating the creative destruction of heritage sites which are fossilised in the historic past.

Following further clarification offered in the revised dossier on Quanzhou’s nomination and its successful designation on the UNESCO World Heritage List in July 2021, it appeared that UNESCO/ICOMOS had rolled back on its initial criticism of Quanzhou’s nomination. With reference to the site’s authenticity, UNESCO/ICOMOS subsequently noted that:

Surviving original locations; information of historical functions that can be clearly recognized and understood; historical information of forms, materials, processes and traditional maintenance mechanisms and technical systems reflected in physical remains and their historical records, as well as surviving beliefs and cultural traditions that these monuments and sites carry; all testify to a high degree of authenticity and credibility of the component parts. The physical evidence can be confirmed by a wealth of historical documentation and Chinese and international research results. (UNESCO n.d.b., n.p)

Quanzhou’s successful designation can also be read in the context of significant investments made by the Chinese authorities to cultivate UNESCO and ICOMOS, including the hosting of the 44th World Heritage Committee session in July 2021 in Fuzhou, also in Fujian Province, during which Quanzhou’s nomination was considered. Quanzhou’s designation as a UNESCO WHS echoes Meskell’s (2019) assertion that UNESCO’s nomination process is bound up with contemporary politics and national patrimony, rather than an international effort to preserve universal heritage for humanity. Due to the institutionalisation of heritage in the neoliberal regime and the inherent Eurocentrism within international heritage bodies such as ICOMOS and UNESCO, as can be observed from the case study of Quanzhou, restoration carried out based on the “best practices” recommended by ”heritage experts” have perpetuated certain forms of heritage practices that often lead to the fossilisation and/or creative destruction of these heritage sites, as well as the alienation of contemporary communities.

Conclusion

An in-depth ethnographic study of Quanzhou in China, a recently inscribed UNESCO WHS, has demonstrated how maritime heritage has been mobilised to promote broader economic and political objectives of the Chinese government through the UNESCO WHS program and in line with its broader strategy for the BRI, leading to the commodification and creative destruction of Quanzhou. At the local, national, and international levels, UNESCO’s designation is also embedded in cultural politics and national patrimony. The WHS has come to be an international brand which countries mobilise to advance their economic and political interests, both internationally and domestically.

While the heritage designation of Quanzhou as a UNESCO WHS has contributed to the opening up of previously inaccessible and remote areas, as in the case of the Cizao kilns at Jinjiaoyi Hill, it has also led to the displacement of other communities such as the residents of Quanzhou old town who had to make way for the transformation of the Deji Gate into a tourist attraction. The process has also led to the privileging of older heritage, such as the Cao’an Temple and Qingjing Mosque in Quanzhou, that bear little connection to their contemporary communities. The need to delineate physical boundaries as historic cores and buffer zones, as mandated by UNESCO’s designation mechanisms, and control site capacity has also made some community heritage sites such as the Holy Islamic Tombs on Mount Lingshan inaccessible and has alienated the local communities.

The heritage transformation of Quanzhou is emblematic of broader heritage developments under the neoliberal heritage regime, in which the institutionalisation of heritage through international heritage bodies such as UNESCO and ICOMOS has led to the prevalence of familiar processes of touristification and urban gentrification driven by capitalist interests. Local communities and their heritage are inevitably pushed out by these capitalist-driven developments, and new heritage, often in commodified forms, comes to be established in their places, changing the urban and social fabric that these international heritage bodies seek to preserve. This is also exacerbated by an inherent Eurocentrism within international heritage bodies such as ICOMOS and UNESCO that promotes and perpetuates certain governing practices which privilege European histories and Eurocentric perspectives of heritage as ”universal heritage”, excluding the histories and heritage forms of the non-western world, especially those that emphasise the spirit of places over their material manifestations.

To truly liberate heritage conservation from its Eurocentric tendencies, there is a need to decolonise heritage conservation. We can move away from the Eurocentric hegemony in the interpretation and practice of cultural heritage by engaging with a wider pool of heritage experts beyond art historians, archaeologists, and architects to include cultural theorists, anthropologists, sociologists, and post-colonialist scholars so that we can engage with heritage conservation from interdisciplinary and critical perspectives. It is hoped that this case study on the heritagisation of Quanzhou can offer useful learning points for Singapore as it explores the possibilities for mobilising its maritime history and heritage to further its economic, cultural, and geopolitical agendas.

Acknowledgements

This paper was first presented at the International Conference on “Singapura before Raffles: Archaeology and the Seas, 400 BCE–1600 CE” from 23 to 24 April 2019, held at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Professor John Miksic for giving me the opportunity to present my ongoing research at this important conference. I would also like to acknowledge the generous financial support offered by the UCL Centre for Critical Heritage Studies Small Grant towards my fieldwork in Quanzhou, China in 2018.

Bibliography

Footnotes

1. The city of Macao is the first historic port city in China to be inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 2005, Macao was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site based on its historical significance as a Portuguese colony up until 1999, after which it was returned to Chinese sovereignty. ↩︎