When heritage tourism goes glocal – The Little Mermaid in Shanghai

Abstract

The bronze sculpture of the Little Mermaid is a national treasure in Denmark. When the World Exposition 2010 was held in China, the statue was moved from its original location in Copenhagen to the Danish pavilion in Shanghai. The move prompted a media debate in Denmark that revealed some of the perspectives and challenges involved when an item belonging to a local cultural heritage is moved to a field of global interest. The Little Mermaid is cultural property, and the topic explored in this paper is how the media debate reflected a ‘property language’ about the statue and how the physical place of cultural heritage was actualized with this language. The media debate about the statue encompassed two dominant discourses about the statue: one in which it was referred to as a cultural object of exchange and the other in which it was perceived as a subject: a little girl. On basis of the property language in these two discourses, it is suggested that when heritage is detached from its place, the key to a successful performance of glocal heritage tourism is to be found in the tension field between the perceptions of exchange value and symbolic value.