Conclusion
The Red Tourism initiative of the Chinese state transformed the sacred land of revolution and democracy into a site where the revolution is increasingly reenacted and consumed as part of popular culture.
The analysis above has shown that this proved to be an easier task when combining education with entertainment instead of continuing the older approach by showcasing the revolution in brick-and-mortar museums. The diversification in making the past meaningful for the present, however, did not result in a weakening of the CCP’s hegemony. According to Kang Liu (2000), safeguarding ideological hegemony is easier to accomplish in Chinese popular culture than in academia because the former is not characterized by decenteredness and indeterminacy to the same degree as in Europe and North America. While liberal societies allow for a plurality of agency in writing, performing, and selling history in society, alternative voices in representing or reenacting the past are not likely to emerge in China. This is also the case for private museums such as the Jianchuan Museum Cluster in SichuanProvince, which seemingly disrupts the Mao-era narrative by showcasing a plethora of artifacts dating from the decades after 1949, including items from the Cultural Revolution that inevitably remind the visitor of the cruelty of political campaigns in that period (Zhang, 2020). It can do so because the majority of material objects in the museums portraying the Red Era are presented without textual explanation or incorporation in performances. The museum’s founder, Fan Jianchuan, decided to let the objects speak for themselves, thereby inconspicuously shifting agency from the institution to the artifacts while emphasizing in interviews that the chaos of the past is remembered for ensuring social and political stability in the present (Denton, 2019).
In other words, even a private museum exhibiting the most painful and trauma-laden period of contemporary Chinese history shares the dominant narrative of Yan’an in which the primary task of red tourism is to be didactic for the present. Both the private museum in Sichuan and the commodified revolution in Yan’an point to the future by reintegrating communistideals and the success story of China’s modernization in an increasingly commercialized society. Compared with other prominent red tourism destinations such as the site of the First National Congress in Shanghai, where the CCP was founded, or the uncountable martyr memorials in the People’s Republic, the site in Yan’an is as much an educational opportunity as a consumerist experience. Avoiding the impression of a boring memorial by providing colorful reenactments and tangible experiences to visitors has developed in recent years into an effective strategy where the performance of the revolutionary struggle is a powerful reminder of the achievements of the CCP, for which gratitude is not only expected but also granted in today’s society.