The concept of the politically charged “site of memory” inspires college courses and academic conferences, but this is the first volume to focus entirely on the phenomenon in China. At issue is the latent ideological resonance of monuments and museums, a topic first articulated by the French historian Pierre Nora. Complementing Eric Hobsbawm's idea of the invented tradition, Nora's notion of the site of memory (lieu de mémoire) challenges us to peel back the taken-for-grantedness of commemorative sites, to focus our attention beyond their surface pronouncements, and to engage critically with their contemporary political uses.
As David J. Davies explains in his chapter on Qin Shihuang's terracotta warriors, sites of memory are “not places for conveying historically accurate memories; instead, they are locations for meaningful experiences that claim a relationship to the past and assert meaning in the present and for the future” (p. 19). Although readers may not be entirely convinced of the volume's claim to a significantly new methodological approach (p. 2), they will discover a great deal about contemporary Chinese politics and society by learning how museums and monuments are created, how they are used to articulate political policies, and how those policies evolve over time. In recent years in Hong Kong and Taiwan, monuments have been redefined to criticize colonialism and promote democratization, while in mainland China, sites of memory no longer emphasize Maoist class struggle. Instead, they encourage pride in an idealized past and express confidence in the nation's economic dynamism.
The terracotta warriors museum is a paradigmatic example of a new, post-Maoist narrative. As Davies discusses, museum exhibits in the 1970s focused on Qin Shihuang's tyranny and celebrated the heroism of anonymous statue-makers. But since the late 1990s, visitors are prompted instead to feel responsible for safeguarding the nation's “past imperial strength and grandeur” (p. 38). James Flath describes a multistage overturning of a Maoist narrative in his chapter on the Opium War Museum in Humen, the town where Commissioner Lin Zexu destroyed British opium in 1839. Marxist historians tarred Lin as the architect of China's “century of humiliation” at foreign hands. But after the start of the reform period in the late 1970s, a new body of scholarship emphasized his bravery and patriotism. More recently the Humen museum, opened in 1990, has relocated the narrative once again by showcasing exhibits that “focus attention on the goal of realizing national prosperity and dignity” under the leadership of the Communist Party (p. 185).
Maoist narratives are not always directly referenced, but many historical sites, even those that commemorate places of battle or destruction, now aim to replace memories of humiliation with positive tourist experiences. The ruins of the Qianlong emperor's Yuanmingyuan, or Old Summer Palace, in Beijing, for example, were preserved as a ruin by the PRC government to bear witness to how foreign troops razed the European-style palaces in 1864. But visitors in recent years are prompted to take pride in their nation's architectural accomplishments and to feel refreshed by a visit to an urban oasis. As Haiyan Lee explains, the park thus aspires to sharply contradictory effects, which she sums up as “how to enjoy a national wound” (p. 193). And do not expect authentic Maoism even in Yan'an, the wartime headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party and highlight of the Red Tourism circuit. As Kirk Denton shows, its popular new attractions include avant-garde art installations and Gettysburg-style battle reenactments, suggesting that the town has embraced a “postsocialist” identity (p. 233).
Perhaps it is simply characteristic of sites of memory that they are highly vulnerable to political shifts, as we see in Hon Tze-Ki's study of the Song Emperor's Terrace garden in Hong Kong. This is where Southern Song loyalists, fleeing the Mongol invasion in the late thirteenth century, briefly established a refuge, later commemorated by an inscribed stone tablet. In the late nineteenth century, the area was popular with residents of the crown colony who wished to celebrate Chinese identity, but during the Pacific War the tablet was severely damaged by the occupying Japanese. After 1949, the British installed a refurbished tablet in a new park, hoping to promote solidarity with refugees from communism. But the park languished until Hong Kong returned to China in 1997, and today, it symbolizes British colonial rule.
No sites of memory could be more politically combustible than the memorial halls of the main protagonists of the mid-century Chinese civil war, Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek. Volume editor Marc Andre Matten shows that in democratic Taiwan, Chiang Kai-Shek's hall is vulnerable to partisan gamesmanship, as when independence supporters briefly gained authority to rename it “National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall.” Mao's mausoleum in Beijing may seem safeguarded by a one-party state, except that his successors have peopled the hall with their own likenesses. Daniel Leese argues that this pantheon of “great men” (p. 91) dilutes Mao's symbolic preeminence and prevents the hall from becoming too potent a place for recollecting his mistakes.
As this volume's fascinating essays suggest, sites of memory in China support an array of historical narratives, but they are almost always state-initiated. Even when private citizens establish a site of memory initially, as with the Song Emperor's Terrace, a government entity usually co-opts it. Yet the power of the state is contested by vernacular memory and accretions of lived experiences. Tour-guide recollections, student field trips, and amateur historical scholarship can gradually overlay state-run museums and memorials with personal counter-narratives. The fact that “various social and political actors” in China are becoming more “responsible for the creation and propagation of places of memory” (p. 7) is indeed an inspiring example of how master political narratives can be subverted from below.
