ABSTRACT
In North America, investments in landscape and commodity reproduction have become a common activity since the early 1970s, while, as Zhang and Zhang write in the previous chapter, the concept of estate management being tied to tourism and property development is certainly not unknown in China. Such developments range in size from those associated with ‘green field’ sites such as Overseas Chinese Town to a smaller, newer type of post-modern community that has emerged known variously as a tourist, recreational or heritage shopping centre or village (Mitchell 1998). Such centres are small in scale and are not restricted to conventional villages. Such communities are centres of consumption that specialize in the provision of hand-crafted products reflecting local or regional heritage and they also often sell products brought in from farther afield.
