This book includes ethnographic studies of social belonging and knowledge manifest in everyday ideas about cultural practices and their transmission in China. Intersecting with state, entrepreneurial, and transcultural interests, the contributors argue that the grassroots is where cultural beliefs are sustained as the condition of living heritage.

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.

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Grassroots Values: Issues, Questions and Perspectives on Local Heritage

Harriet Evans & Michael Rowlands

Chapter 1: What and Whose is Local Heritage? Perspectives from Everyday Lives in an "Old Beijing Neighborhood"

Harriet Evans

Chapter 2: Encountering Virginia Woolf in Dashalar: Heritage Quests and Local Efficacies

Beverley Butler

Chapter 3: Rediscovering "Huangshan" in a Heritage Context: Spatial Strategy and Invisible Locality

Luo Pan

Chapter 4: 'Slave(s)' to the Great Museum: Heritage, Labor and Ethics in the Jianchuan Museum Complex

Zhang Lisheng

Chapter 5: Between State and Local Residents: Heritage Perspectives and Their Combination in Quanzhou, Southern Fujian

Stephan Feuchtwang

Chapter 6: Naming the Living Heritage in Quanzhou

Michael Rowlands

Chapter 7: Commitments to the Past: Cultural Transmission in a Naxi Village

Peter Guangpei Ran

Chapter 8: Threads of Time in a Small Naxi Village; Women, Weaving and Gendered Dimensions of Local Cultural Heritage

Harriet Evans

Chapter 9: Destruction, Devastation and Reinvented Tradition in Heritage Construction in Dukezong, Shangri-La

Wu Yinling

Chapter 10: From "Cultural Relics" to "Sacred Objects": A Case Study of Local Heritage Protection in a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery

He Beili

Afterword

Wang Mingming

About the Contributors