Les concessions occidentales dans la mise en valeur touristique de Tianjin : un patrimoine ambivalent

Image: Llieux d’intérêt référencés comme concessionnaires par le guide touristique de 2017, cartographie LU Yue, 2017

Abstract

This article examines the status of Western concessions in the tourism promotion of Tianjin, a major industrial and commercial centre and China's fourth largest city by population. Based on the way in which various official tourist media have presented, since the 1970s, the numerous vestiges of an architecture that is globally perceived as Western, it shows that the concessions, initially absent from a promotion of the city focused on its economic achievements and its craftsmanship, have become, since 2004, an element of the municipal narrative, which highlights the historical role of the city in the modernisation of China, as a place where the hybridisation of Chinese traditions and Western innovations took place. Nevertheless, it is an ambivalent heritage, which remains marginal in the image of a living environment adapted to contemporary life that the municipality is currently promoting. The ten or so documents examined, which range from 1974 to 2017, are each situated in the heritage and tourism context of the time of their preparation; five maps show the sites successively highlighted.