ABSTRACT
Under China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the coastal city of Quanzhou in China, once hub of the maritime Silk Road facilitating exchanges between China and the world, is experiencing a renewed interest in its history and heritage. Different stakeholders within Quanzhou have been mobilising their cultural heritage for different agendas, producing complex ramifications for Quanzhou and its people. One such effort is the ‘Connecting Emotions through Wells’ project, a community-led initiative to preserve and revitalise the old wells located within the Tongzheng community district in Licheng District. In this paper, I examine the cultural politics of the ‘Connecting Emotions through Wells’ project to shed light on how a community-led urban heritage initiative is drawing on heritage as a way of promoting community engagement, urban sustainability and heritage tourism, and consider the implications of this initiative for the local communities and their neighbourhood. Based on an ethnographic study of the project, I examine how positive discourses of urban sustainability, heritage preservation as well as community-based, participatory approaches to urban development have been mobilised by state-endorsed civil society organisations, such as the community action group of the ‘Connecting Emotions through Wells’ project, to diffuse local resistance to the urban gentrification and touristification of the Tongzheng community district. I suggest that these can be construed as part of the technologies of governing that work to consolidate a post-political condition in urban Quanzhou that replaces overt political resistance with a managerial-technocratic approach to governance characterised by rationalisation, compromise and consensus.
