Tourists’ construction of diverse identities with natural disaster dark heritage sites

Abstract

Intertwined with death, pain, suffering, and disaster, dark heritage is multi-faceted, controversial and has profound social influence. This paper attempts to uncover the identity-making experiences of natural disaster dark heritage tourists using a classic Chinese dark heritage site—the ‘5.12’ Wenchuan Earthquake Epicentre Memorial Museum. Using content analysis of 3,006 messages left behind in the museum’s visitors’ book from 2012 to 2019, we uncovered four significant themes: place identity, value identity, political identity, and personal contemplation. State-led discourses enhance the political identity of tourists, including patriotism, collective identity, and party identity. Concurrently, tourists’ identity is complicated and dynamic in this study. The natural disaster and the large-scale devastation of death present in the museum has imprinted a profound impression upon the tourists, evoking place identity, value identity and personal contemplation. Natural disaster dark heritage differs from man-made disaster heritage as it provides rich and fertile grounds to sow the seeds for self-contemplation, provoking tourists to reflect on their personal views towards life, inter-personal human relationships and relationships between humans and nature. Our study provides emergent findings of the complicated, multi-faceted and multi-dimensional process of identity construction and has practical implications for the display and interpretation of dark heritage.