Harriet Evans is professor emerita of Chinese cultural studies at the University of Westminster and visiting professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. Michael Rowlands is professor emeritus of anthropology and material culture at University College London.

China’s vast economic transformation has ushered in a “heritage boom,” in which state actors, economic elites, and ordinary people struggle over how the material sediments of the past might be preserved, refurbished, commodified, authorized as signs of the nation, or tended as the soil of lived attachments to place. In this conceptually rich volume, scholars based in China collaborate with researchers from the UK to interrogate a diverse variety of heritage projects, from Beijing’s alleys and Anhui’s mountains to the temples and tea plantations of Fujian, and from museums and minority ethnic communities in the southwest to Tibet’s oldest monastery. These essays interrogate heritage work from a “grassroots” perspective, analyzing its contradictions, revealing its many forms of violence, and thinking through alternative ways that the preservation of the material past might coexist with local worlds where the past is a lived reality.

• List of FiguresAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Grassroots Values: Issues, Questions and Perspectives on Local HeritageHarriet Evans & Michael RowlandsChapter 1: What and Whose is Local Heritage? Perspectives from Everyday Lives in an “Old Beijing Neighborhood” Harriet EvansChapter 2: Encountering Virginia Woolf in Dashalar: Heritage Quests and Local Efficacies Beverley ButlerChapter 3: Rediscovering “Huangshan” in a Heritage Context: Spatial Strategy and Invisible Locality Luo PanChapter 4: ‘Slave(s)’ to the Great Museum: Heritage, Labor and Ethics in the Jianchuan Museum ComplexZhang LishengChapter 5: Between State and Local Residents: Heritage Perspectives and Their Combination in Quanzhou, Southern FujianStephan FeuchtwangChapter 6: Naming the Living Heritage in Quanzhou Michael Rowlands Chapter 7: Commitments to the Past: Cultural Transmission in a Naxi VillagePeter Guangpei RanChapter 8: Threads of Time in a Small Naxi Village; Women, Weaving and Gendered Dimensions of

Harriet Evans is professor emerita of Chinese cultural studies at the University of Westminster and visiting professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. Michael Rowlands is professor emeritus of anthropology and material culture at University College London.

China’s vast economic transformation has ushered in a “heritage boom,” in which state actors, economic elites, and ordinary people struggle over how the material sediments of the past might be preserved, refurbished, commodified, authorized as signs of the nation, or tended as the soil of lived attachments to place. In this conceptually rich volume, scholars based in China collaborate with researchers from the UK to interrogate a diverse variety of heritage projects, from Beijing’s alleys and Anhui’s mountains to the temples and tea plantations of Fujian, and from museums and minority ethnic communities in the southwest to Tibet’s oldest monastery. These essays interrogate heritage work from a “grassroots” perspective, analyzing its contradictions, revealing its many forms of violence, and thinking through alternative ways that the preservation of the material past might coexist with local worlds where the past is a lived reality.

• List of FiguresAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Grassroots Values: Issues, Questions and Perspectives on Local HeritageHarriet Evans & Michael RowlandsChapter 1: What and Whose is Local Heritage? Perspectives from Everyday Lives in an “Old Beijing Neighborhood” Harriet EvansChapter 2: Encountering Virginia Woolf in Dashalar: Heritage Quests and Local Efficacies Beverley ButlerChapter 3: Rediscovering “Huangshan” in a Heritage Context: Spatial Strategy and Invisible Locality Luo PanChapter 4: ‘Slave(s)’ to the Great Museum: Heritage, Labor and Ethics in the Jianchuan Museum ComplexZhang LishengChapter 5: Between State and Local Residents: Heritage Perspectives and Their Combination in Quanzhou, Southern FujianStephan FeuchtwangChapter 6: Naming the Living Heritage in Quanzhou Michael Rowlands Chapter 7: Commitments to the Past: Cultural Transmission in a Naxi VillagePeter Guangpei RanChapter 8: Threads of Time in a Small Naxi Village; Women, Weaving and Gendered Dimensions of

Harriet Evans is professor emerita of Chinese cultural studies at the University of Westminster and visiting professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. Michael Rowlands is professor emeritus of anthropology and material culture at University College London.

China’s vast economic transformation has ushered in a “heritage boom,” in which state actors, economic elites, and ordinary people struggle over how the material sediments of the past might be preserved, refurbished, commodified, authorized as signs of the nation, or tended as the soil of lived attachments to place. In this conceptually rich volume, scholars based in China collaborate with researchers from the UK to interrogate a diverse variety of heritage projects, from Beijing’s alleys and Anhui’s mountains to the temples and tea plantations of Fujian, and from museums and minority ethnic communities in the southwest to Tibet’s oldest monastery. These essays interrogate heritage work from a “grassroots” perspective, analyzing its contradictions, revealing its many forms of violence, and thinking through alternative ways that the preservation of the material past might coexist with local worlds where the past is a lived reality.

• List of FiguresAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Grassroots Values: Issues, Questions and Perspectives on Local HeritageHarriet Evans & Michael RowlandsChapter 1: What and Whose is Local Heritage? Perspectives from Everyday Lives in an “Old Beijing Neighborhood” Harriet EvansChapter 2: Encountering Virginia Woolf in Dashalar: Heritage Quests and Local Efficacies Beverley ButlerChapter 3: Rediscovering “Huangshan” in a Heritage Context: Spatial Strategy and Invisible Locality Luo PanChapter 4: ‘Slave(s)’ to the Great Museum: Heritage, Labor and Ethics in the Jianchuan Museum ComplexZhang LishengChapter 5: Between State and Local Residents: Heritage Perspectives and Their Combination in Quanzhou, Southern FujianStephan FeuchtwangChapter 6: Naming the Living Heritage in Quanzhou Michael Rowlands Chapter 7: Commitments to the Past: Cultural Transmission in a Naxi VillagePeter Guangpei RanChapter 8: Threads of Time in a Small Naxi Village; Women, Weaving and Gendered Dimensions of