The China Quarterly

• Published in: The China quarterly (London) 2007-12, Vol.192, p.1033
• Main Author: Denton, Kirk A
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cities; Committees; Cultural factors; Cultural heritage; Cultural property; Culture; Dai Qing; Dams; Hotels & motels; Interest groups; Language culture relationship; Museums; Neighborhoods; Politics; Treaties; Values
• ISSN: 0305-7410; 1468-2648
• DOI: 10.1017/S0305741007002342

TIANTIAN ZHENG Cultural Heritage Management in China: Preserving the Cities of the Pearl River Delta Edited by HILLARY DU CROS and YOK-SHIU F. LEELondon and New York: Routledge, 2007xxii + 170 pp. 75.00ISBN 978-0-415-39719-3. doi:10.1017/S0305741007002342 The authors of the essays in this volume in addition to the two editors, they are Euphemia Chow, Lynne DiStefano, William Logan, David P. Y. Lung and Alexandra Sauvegrain-McClelland begin in chapter one with a universal model for the formation, development and maturation of cultural heritage management (CHM). The authors recognize the political and cultural forces that ``mitigate against the global factors'' (p. 140), such as the political and cultural factors that prevent community stakeholders from openly participating in the interpretation of cultural heritage, but their language suggests that this is the right and inevitable direction of cultural heritage development. Perhaps because many of its authors are from Hong Kong or work there and know the situation intimately, the book is most critical of Hong Kong's efforts to preserve cultural heritage, which are more often than not ``completely subservient to extrinsic values, such as their value for revenue generation'' (p. 110). Particularly lively is the discussion of Shamian Island (a European enclave in Guangzhou when it was a treaty port) and the multiple agents (neighbourhood committees, city officials, tourist bureaus and tourist hotels) involved in its transformation into the ``Romantic Tourist Cultural Island'' tourist destination.