The Legacy of Red

Ansai waist drummers perform at a Red Tourism site a few miles north of Yan’an city, China. Red Tourism (hongse luyou) refers to tourism of the People’s Republic of China in which people visit tourist spots with historical significance to either the Communist Party of China (CPC) or the Chinese revolution. My dissertation entitled, “Red Tourism in China: Propaganda, Space, Commodification,” examines a kind of oxymoronicality of Red Tourism. Specifically, Red Tourism is a yoking together of two extraordinarily powerful drivers in the cultural language surrounding China. On the one hand, “Red” is associated with ideology, discipline, and loyalty combined with a history of authentic struggle and liberation. On the other hand, tourism designates an ongoing process of capitalization. “The Legacy of Red” epitomizes this cultural imagination of contemporary China with two most salient colors, red and black & white.Ope