Preservation by Demolition: Toxic Heritage in Contemporary China

This chapter explores how residents in a Chinese neighbourhood bargained with their “toxic heritage.” Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between the spring and autumn of 2018, the chapter details how the villagers of Samtilwei, a periurban neighbourhood adjacent to a polluting petrochemical plant in southern China, tried to maximise their financial gains through the double act of destroying and remaking their toxic heritage. In exploring how villagers tactically mobilised the idea of “preservation” to retain their intangible connections to the villages while making justifications for demolishing their tangible estates, I unravel the implications of this peculiar phenomenon of “preservation by demolition” for heritage studies