Historical Narration In A Tourist Space

’Red Tourism’emerged at2005, which means visiting the former revolutionary bases and landmarks. The CCP leaders launched this new program as one part of the ideological education and propaganda campaign, to enhance the regime’s political legitimacy, display the achievements and the glory of the CCP, shape the identity of the ruling party and national state.However, in the case of Shajiabang Scenic Area in this study, the Red Tourism site is gradually turning into a leisure tourism scenic spot. This research adopts qualitative research method. It explores how Shajiabang, the name of a revolutionary model opera, has turned to be a name of a location. Then local government constructed Shajiabang Scenic Area to display the communist red history and local revolutionary tradition, and successfully promoted the scenic area by seizing the opportunities of Red Tourism program and remaking of’red classics’in2005. But in recent years, Shajiabang Scenic Area became market-oriented, and turned from a ’patriotic education base’to a leisure tourism scenic spot with a reconstructed watery town attracting more and more tourists. Local government also needed this to develop tourism industry and promote the city image. Shajiabang was employed strategically as a symbol during the construction and transformation of Shajiabang Scenic Area, referring to the red history or nostalgia tourism spot. So the symbol itself drifted between the signifier and the signified.This research has three focuses. Firstly it analyses political and economic backgrounds behind the production of tourist space. Secondly it presents how these heritage scenic spots use space to show history. Thirdly it explores how the central and local governments construct collective memory and identity by representing the history. This study suggests that national and local interest considerations are different, and there exits tensions between the politics, economy, culture and society, leading to the cracks behind the history display. This is directly related to how to tell the history, what kind of history, and how common people understand history.