Dialogue on ICH Tourism in World Heritage Sites in China
With Junjie Su – Yunnan Provincial Research Base of Intangible Cultural Heritage, Yunnan University (China)
Chaired by Robert Baron (SIEF, ICH NGO Forum)
5 November 2026 | 3 p.m. – 4 p.m. CET
Intangible Cultural Heritage Tourism in World Heritage Site: Case Study of Lijiang, China
Abstract
Lijiang, a UNESCO World Heritage city in Southwest China, offers a productive case for rethinking the relationship between intangible cultural heritage (ICH), World Heritage, tourism, and community life. Drawing on long-term fieldwork and a critical heritage studies perspective, this paper examines how Lijiang’s Naxi cultural practices have been transformed from everyday cultural forms into heritage resources, tourist experiences and commercial products. Rather than treating tourism simply as an external force that damages authenticity, the paper asks how authenticity, value and cultural rights are negotiated among authorities, ICH practitioners, tourism enterprises, local communities, and visitors.
The discussion focuses on four forms of ICH tourism in Lijiang: Dongba religious culture, Naxi music, handicraft production and culinary products. These cases show that tourism can create new economic opportunities, public visibility and new channels of ICH transmission. At the same time, it may reshape cultural meanings, reallocate benefits, and produce tensions between performance, consumption and management. The paper therefore argues that ICH tourism should be understood as a dynamic process of heritage-making, in which cultural practices are continuously recontextualised through market demand, state heritage policies and practitioners’ own strategies.
By bringing together World Heritage, ICH safeguarding and heritage tourism, the paper contributes to international debates on sustainable and people-centred heritage development. It suggests that the central question of ICH tourism is what conditions tourism can support ICH practitioners’ subjectivity, cultural rights and the continuing vitality of living heritage.
Short Bio of Junjie Su
Junjie Su, PhD (Deakin, Australia), is Director of the Yunnan Provincial Research Base of Intangible Cultural Heritage and Associate Professor at the School of Ethnology and Sociology, Yunnan University, China. Dr. Su is an expert member of the International Committee of Intangible Cultural Heritage of ICOMOS and advisory expert of intangible cultural heritage research for UNESCO . Dr. Su’s research interests concern critical heritage studies, ICH, heritage tourism, museum studies, and global Chinese heritage. Dr. Su’s latest book is Intangible Cultural Heritage and Tourism in China (Channel View Publications) and the forthcoming book is The Commodification of Intangible Cultural Heritage in China (Routledge, 2027).
