There is something about Red Tourism that bothers me. Actually, let's expand that too all kinds of historical tourist pilgrimages, especially as they are related to wars--Civil War reenactments, touring Gallipoli to sit where a near-massacre took place, crawling through the Cu Chi tunnels on the Mekong River Delta south of Ho Chi Minh City...
Take a look at this article from the Sydney Morning Herald. Red Tourism, as it concerns China, refers to the visitation of historically important sites, monuments and the one corpse that played a role in the Communist history of China--which has now, apparently, expanded to the visiting of historically important, living people.
Red Tourism, as this article states, is not new in China. It's not even a product of the new, economy-fuelled China--in my semi-amateur opinion, I would say that Red Tourism began during the early times of the Cultural Revolution in the summer of 1966. Red Guards were given free transport on China's railway system to all over the country, to bring the continuing revolution wherever they went. Naturally, many of these teenagers flocked to places like Jinggangshan in Jiangxi and Yan'an in Shaanxi, as well as Mao's birthplace in Shaoshan, Hunan. Red Guards wanted to experience being present in the places that had nurtured their Red leaders, and they wanted to learn about their past
Mrs Pan, a former Red Army soldier and member of the famed Red Women's Detatchment sits in her home on Hainan Island and talks to tourists about her experiences, with the aid of her two sons.
I'm going to stay off my expected rant about the emotional insensitivity behind making an old, possibly senile woman who has gone through so much in life a tourist attraction. Instead, I want to talk a little about how Red Tourism is creepy and potentially dangerous.
It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that I am somewhat obsessed with the CCP's reeducation campaigns, and in particular, the movements where soldiers, cadres and youth were sent to learn the values of being good revolutionaries from peasants in the countryside. It also shouldn't come as a surprise that the comment made by the university student in this article alarmed me greatly.
The naive tone of "you have to go experience it yourself" is worrying. While it is admirable and profitable that young people in China want to learn more about their history that the books (or rather, their history textbooks) never talk about, would it actually be a good idea to send a large group high school and university students on a recreation of, let's say, the Long March?
Let's try to picture it: Chinese students from all over the country gather in Jiangxi at the attraction of education and learning about the glorious nature of the past, dressed in army khakis and carrying a week's worth of supplies to recreate a route taken by the Red Army in the 1930s that infamously led to the death of around one third of the participants. Would the goal be to recreate the harsh conditions of the trek, the urgency caused by the Guomindang chase, or the Communist propaganda that ultimately turned Mao Zedong into the undisputed leader of the CCP? Along the way, would the tourists have to deal with a shortage of food, the disappearance of their colleagues and constant snow storms in inadequate clothing?
Or would that be taking the idea of Red Tourism too far?
Travel agents attempting to capitalise on bringing naive college students to Hainan would disagree with me by arguing that it would never be their intention to put tourists in any kind of danger. But how could people living in the present possibly go about 'experiencing' their 'revolutionary' history--and in particular, the glorious, battle-driven moments--without having to face similar conditions and circumstances as their historical counterparts?
Mao and his CCP faced the same problem in early years of the PRC. In order for the urban masses, especially the inquisitive and privileged city youth, to understand the plight, the lifestyle and the mentality of the 'real' revolutionaries (the poor peasants), China's leaders developed a mechanism in which hundreds of thousands of urban youth headed to the countryside to live in small, poor villages. Teaching them about rural life in their sheltered classrooms was not adequate, nor was instructing students to read books on the subject. The only was was to make them learn through experience.
Regardless of any typical criticism of this Up to the Mountains, Down to the Countryside Rustification Movement about its lack of real results and leading to years of wasted time for the youth involved, two very important factors need to be taken into consideration: firstly, that many of these participants were volunteers, eager to prove themselves worthy of a revolutionary cause, and secondly, that the youth were not coddled or protected in any way during these experiences. Rustification during the 1960s and 70s became the longest, most realistic and most widely participated even in Red Tourism history--yet its tourists returned to their homes overwhelmingly critical and regretful.
It is ignorant to believe that Red Tourism can help China's citizens learn about their history without oversimplifying important stories, avoiding political interference or glorifying violence. For a country that is suddenly dedicated to remembered a bloody past, 'reliving the experience' is a terrible way to carry through the necessary education.
Let's keep the past in the past, and at the same time, improve literacy rates by reading books.
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