Xi’an, China: what is a historic city?

Abstract eng:
Xi’an has a reputation as an ancient city, one of the top ten cities in China visited by tourists, yet it has hardly any ‘old’ buildings in the European understanding of ‘old’. Although parts of the Ming dynasty city have been rebuilt as a historic urban landscape, other monuments are surrounded by post-1980s buildings. New construction, often clearly driven by the motor of consumerism, uses architectural and spatial references to the Tang dynasty, the period which is the foundation of Xian’s tourist attractions. City planners have appropriated western urban forms while anchoring them in Chinese idiom, specifically derived from Tang dynasty Xi’an; this new production of heritage is intended to be consumed by visitors. This paper examines four sites which illustrate the complex origins of the new heritage: a heritage which reflects contemporary Chinese political issues and which remains, in many different ways, essentially Chinese.

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