Mining for Tourists in China
Industrial heritage at China’s new national mine parks, and its role in economic, cultural, and ecological regeneration, is the topic of this project. Since 2005 seventy-two inoperative state-owned coal, mineral, and oil shale mines have been designated as parks, a massive heritage initiative that is virtually unstudied. This state-sanctioned, commercially-oriented redevelopment is intended to attract tourist spending and new business to municipalities with underperforming economies and degraded environments. It is also part of China’s program to build an “ecological civilization” that balances economic growth, environmental protection, and concern for people’s quality of life. If China’s national mine parks follow the trends found at industrial heritage sites around the world, they offer interpretations and experiences that “improve” history and nature for visitors by displacing the political and economic decisions that caused environmental pollution, layoffs, and socioeconomic decline. I propose to conceptualize industrial heritage as a material and interpretive process of gentrification, investigating the experiences these former mines create for tourists about industry, nature, history, and consumption, and the role they play in regenerating cities suffering from the closure of extractive industries. I will use a mixed methods approach that combines archival research, participant observation, and interviews to analyze industrial heritage at seven national mine parks.
Final report
Mining heritage and mine parks – former mines reinvented as tourist destinations – are relatively new additions to the global heritage repertoire. The first mine parks were created in Europe during the mid-20th century to commemorate national histories of industry and facilitate economic redevelopment of deindustrialized areas. The practice spread quickly, and today mine parks can be found in Australia, Bolivia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Indonesia, Svalbard, Sweden, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, the United States and elsewhere. Recently, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has joined the list of countries hoping to address economic, environmental, and social problems by turning mines into heritage parks. Between 2005 and 2021, government officials transformed 88 former state sector mines into national mine parks. This heritage-making initiative concluded when the central government decided to create a new national park system. It was extensive and expensive, and remains little studied.
Mining for tourists in China aimed to investigate the kinds of heritage experiences and interpretations that the PRC’s national mine parks offered Chinese tourists. It asked what the parks conveyed about industrial modernization, China’s national development, consumption, the environment, and fossil fuels. In addition, the project used the PRC’s heritage-making initiative as a catalyst for scrutinizing and rethinking theoretical models for understanding heritage and particularly industrial heritage. Research included a review and critique of the theoretical literature on heritage, digital ethnography of online user-generated content on a popular Chinese-language travel platform (Trip.com), and field work at four mine parks.
Implementing the project during the pandemic required significant adjustments to the original plan. The PRC was the first country to implement lockdowns in January 2020 and among the last to reopen its borders in 2023. During the first years of the project, theoretical research and digital ethnography of online user-generated content were the primary activities. Field work took place after China re-opened in the spring of 2023, in collaboration with Dr. Eric Boyd and Mr. Hui Lin, who joined the project as assisting researchers during this period. First publications appeared in 2022 and 2023. A manuscript was submitted to a journal for publication in November 2023 and requests for minor revisions had been resubmitted at the time this report was written. Analysis of the field data was ongoing, with a book chapter accepted for publication in an edited volume by Mayfly Books, and a paper under preparation for submission to a journal.
One contribution of the project was to theorize heritage through the lens of gentrification. Heritage, and industrial heritage in particular, draws our attention to how redevelopment practices exclude and include along class boundaries. Industrial heritage displaces the working class, both figuratively and physically, to construct sites for middle- and upper-class consumption and leisure. Previous models for theorizing heritage have thought about heritage as layers or a palimpsest, or explored how it both praises and buries, destroys and creates. While productive, these models neglect the class implications of industrial heritage. Gentrification, by contrast, puts class at the centre of the analysis.
A second contribution was to demonstrate the value of digital ethnography as a tool for the study of online user-generated content. While research based on user-generated content is proliferating, most scholars use a big data approach in which computer algorithms target texts or images. Digital ethnography, by contrast, is a holistic approach that considers words, images, and how they relate to one another. By using digital ethnography to study online reviews from the PRC mine parks, the project found that imagining other future tourists is central to online reviews. Previous research tended to ignore “practical” information in online reviews, which can be transmitted in text or through photographs of for example ticket prices or opening hours. In creating this content, however, reviewers imagine not only what future visitors need to know but also what kind of people they are: who they should invite to accompany them to the mine park (“bring the kids”), what they will enjoy (locomotives, mining tunnels, vistas), and how much time they should spend there (“two hours”).
Digital ethnography also facilitates the researcher’s ability to go beyond the dominant patterns found by searching for word frequency with an algorithm. If we accept the argument that how mining is remembered affects the sustainable (or unsustainable) use of natural resources, we need to learn about the potential that mine parks have for transforming how visitors think. Digital ethnography allows the researcher to identify the full range of meanings and thoughts found in online reviews, both those that are common and those that are infrequent. For example, while most visitors to coal mine parks did not reflect about their energy use, a few responded by noting the importance of conserving energy. This experience suggests that mine parks have a role to play in promoting more sustainable practices.
Some heritage scholars have argued that researchers should devote more attention to asking “what do the tourists want to have?” While some have begun to answer this question, it has barely been considered in relation to mining heritage. This project contributed to addressing this gap by studying online reviews from the PRC mine parks. One finding was that Chinese tourists’ experiences of Chinese national mine parks share much in common with each other and with mining tourism in other locations. This suggests the existence of a global repertoire or “authorized discourse” for mining heritage. Most visitors to the mine parks experience them as rewarding and educational. They find the mines spectacular, and enjoy the stories of coal, technology, and regional and national progress told at such sites. In the PRC and elsewhere, visitors expect to see an extraordinary “sight” or unique vista at the former mines, and want park staff to be accessible, knowledgeable, and hospitable. When these expectations are met, visitors are happy. When they are not, visitors become disgruntled.
Mine park tourists who devote time and energy to complaining about their experiences in online reviews feel strongly that something has gone wrong. Both the “what” and the “how” of their complaints are important. Our analysis revealed that “disgruntled tourists” almost always described their visits using a language of deficiency. That Chinese tourists talked about what was missing rather than what was bad in their accounts of the parks is an original finding with implications for tourism management, since a language of deficiency suggests that most of what disappoints the authors of negative reviews could be remedied. For example, visitors who look at a mine pit and see only “a hole in the ground” are likely to have more rewarding experiences if they are provided with more knowledge about that “hole,” who made it, and how. Here the broader literature on heritage tourism suggests that tour guides are especially adept at helping tourists to “see” more than they otherwise would by providing knowledge and stories at heritage sites.
Research for the project suggested that how disgruntled tourists use money to express their disappointment at mine parks deserves more attention. Complaints about “value for money” may, as other researchers have found, tell us something about the financial constraints of travellers. However the online reviews analysed in the project indicated that this mode of expression was not simply about the economic circumstances. The reviewers who complained about how much they paid for the mine parks in relation to what they got out of them were not budget travellers. Money has symbolic as well as economic value, and money talk is an effective shorthand for conveying dissatisfaction with a heritage destination. Talking about value for money can also play a role in giving readers the impression that the reviewer is an experienced traveller who knows how to assess value.
According to some scholars, industrial heritage tourism is the only way forward for the PRC’s former mining communities. By investigating visitor experiences at mine parks, the project helped shed light on the viability of this development strategy. Research indicates that while many visitors are pleased with China’s national mine parks, not all mine parks are equally successful at attracting tourists. Proximity to mega-cities affects the numbers of visitors. Access to underground pits plays a large part in visitors’ experiences and what they say about the parks. Given that online reviews can influence the behaviour of potential future tourists, social media is an important factor in the state’s ability to achieve its development goals. More research is needed to understand how audiences interpret online reviews of the PRC’s mine parks and how it affects their decisions about travel.
Dissemination for the project has included presentations at research seminars in anthropology at the University of Gothenburg, Stockholm University, and Seoul National University. The project has Swedish and English language websites. Current publications are open access through Berghahn and Taylor and Francis. A presentation will take place at the Mary Douglas seminar, University College London in May 2024. An abstract has been submitted for presentation at the Swedish anthropology conference.
Mining for tourists in China aimed to investigate the kinds of heritage experiences and interpretations that the PRC’s national mine parks offered Chinese tourists. It asked what the parks conveyed about industrial modernization, China’s national development, consumption, the environment, and fossil fuels. In addition, the project used the PRC’s heritage-making initiative as a catalyst for scrutinizing and rethinking theoretical models for understanding heritage and particularly industrial heritage. Research included a review and critique of the theoretical literature on heritage, digital ethnography of online user-generated content on a popular Chinese-language travel platform (Trip.com), and field work at four mine parks.
Implementing the project during the pandemic required significant adjustments to the original plan. The PRC was the first country to implement lockdowns in January 2020 and among the last to reopen its borders in 2023. During the first years of the project, theoretical research and digital ethnography of online user-generated content were the primary activities. Field work took place after China re-opened in the spring of 2023, in collaboration with Dr. Eric Boyd and Mr. Hui Lin, who joined the project as assisting researchers during this period. First publications appeared in 2022 and 2023. A manuscript was submitted to a journal for publication in November 2023 and requests for minor revisions had been resubmitted at the time this report was written. Analysis of the field data was ongoing, with a book chapter accepted for publication in an edited volume by Mayfly Books, and a paper under preparation for submission to a journal.
One contribution of the project was to theorize heritage through the lens of gentrification. Heritage, and industrial heritage in particular, draws our attention to how redevelopment practices exclude and include along class boundaries. Industrial heritage displaces the working class, both figuratively and physically, to construct sites for middle- and upper-class consumption and leisure. Previous models for theorizing heritage have thought about heritage as layers or a palimpsest, or explored how it both praises and buries, destroys and creates. While productive, these models neglect the class implications of industrial heritage. Gentrification, by contrast, puts class at the centre of the analysis.
A second contribution was to demonstrate the value of digital ethnography as a tool for the study of online user-generated content. While research based on user-generated content is proliferating, most scholars use a big data approach in which computer algorithms target texts or images. Digital ethnography, by contrast, is a holistic approach that considers words, images, and how they relate to one another. By using digital ethnography to study online reviews from the PRC mine parks, the project found that imagining other future tourists is central to online reviews. Previous research tended to ignore “practical” information in online reviews, which can be transmitted in text or through photographs of for example ticket prices or opening hours. In creating this content, however, reviewers imagine not only what future visitors need to know but also what kind of people they are: who they should invite to accompany them to the mine park (“bring the kids”), what they will enjoy (locomotives, mining tunnels, vistas), and how much time they should spend there (“two hours”).
Digital ethnography also facilitates the researcher’s ability to go beyond the dominant patterns found by searching for word frequency with an algorithm. If we accept the argument that how mining is remembered affects the sustainable (or unsustainable) use of natural resources, we need to learn about the potential that mine parks have for transforming how visitors think. Digital ethnography allows the researcher to identify the full range of meanings and thoughts found in online reviews, both those that are common and those that are infrequent. For example, while most visitors to coal mine parks did not reflect about their energy use, a few responded by noting the importance of conserving energy. This experience suggests that mine parks have a role to play in promoting more sustainable practices.
Some heritage scholars have argued that researchers should devote more attention to asking “what do the tourists want to have?” While some have begun to answer this question, it has barely been considered in relation to mining heritage. This project contributed to addressing this gap by studying online reviews from the PRC mine parks. One finding was that Chinese tourists’ experiences of Chinese national mine parks share much in common with each other and with mining tourism in other locations. This suggests the existence of a global repertoire or “authorized discourse” for mining heritage. Most visitors to the mine parks experience them as rewarding and educational. They find the mines spectacular, and enjoy the stories of coal, technology, and regional and national progress told at such sites. In the PRC and elsewhere, visitors expect to see an extraordinary “sight” or unique vista at the former mines, and want park staff to be accessible, knowledgeable, and hospitable. When these expectations are met, visitors are happy. When they are not, visitors become disgruntled.
Mine park tourists who devote time and energy to complaining about their experiences in online reviews feel strongly that something has gone wrong. Both the “what” and the “how” of their complaints are important. Our analysis revealed that “disgruntled tourists” almost always described their visits using a language of deficiency. That Chinese tourists talked about what was missing rather than what was bad in their accounts of the parks is an original finding with implications for tourism management, since a language of deficiency suggests that most of what disappoints the authors of negative reviews could be remedied. For example, visitors who look at a mine pit and see only “a hole in the ground” are likely to have more rewarding experiences if they are provided with more knowledge about that “hole,” who made it, and how. Here the broader literature on heritage tourism suggests that tour guides are especially adept at helping tourists to “see” more than they otherwise would by providing knowledge and stories at heritage sites.
Research for the project suggested that how disgruntled tourists use money to express their disappointment at mine parks deserves more attention. Complaints about “value for money” may, as other researchers have found, tell us something about the financial constraints of travellers. However the online reviews analysed in the project indicated that this mode of expression was not simply about the economic circumstances. The reviewers who complained about how much they paid for the mine parks in relation to what they got out of them were not budget travellers. Money has symbolic as well as economic value, and money talk is an effective shorthand for conveying dissatisfaction with a heritage destination. Talking about value for money can also play a role in giving readers the impression that the reviewer is an experienced traveller who knows how to assess value.
According to some scholars, industrial heritage tourism is the only way forward for the PRC’s former mining communities. By investigating visitor experiences at mine parks, the project helped shed light on the viability of this development strategy. Research indicates that while many visitors are pleased with China’s national mine parks, not all mine parks are equally successful at attracting tourists. Proximity to mega-cities affects the numbers of visitors. Access to underground pits plays a large part in visitors’ experiences and what they say about the parks. Given that online reviews can influence the behaviour of potential future tourists, social media is an important factor in the state’s ability to achieve its development goals. More research is needed to understand how audiences interpret online reviews of the PRC’s mine parks and how it affects their decisions about travel.
Dissemination for the project has included presentations at research seminars in anthropology at the University of Gothenburg, Stockholm University, and Seoul National University. The project has Swedish and English language websites. Current publications are open access through Berghahn and Taylor and Francis. A presentation will take place at the Mary Douglas seminar, University College London in May 2024. An abstract has been submitted for presentation at the Swedish anthropology conference.