The people’s heritage of Wuyou Town : cultural mapping of the central area of sea-salt old town in Yancheng city, Jiangsu province, China

Abstract

This dissertation is about the documentation and cultural mapping of the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of a central area of Wuyou(伍佑)Old Town in Yancheng(盐城)city, Jiangsu province, where there is a government plan to conserve the town’s architecture for tourism development and resettling the old community elsewhere. And the author was involved in the planning study of this plan, which paid predominant attention to the physical environment. The town has been increasingly urbanized since 2010 and is facing a threat of redevelopment now.1 The purpose of this thesis is to argue that the conservation of a place, in particular a large place such as an area, district, or town, cannot be done by merely conserving the tangible (the buildings and other “hardware”), but must also include the intangible (the local community’s culture, practices, and other “software”) in order to fully express the character of the place, leading to better conservation that will provide continuity of not only its tangible historic fabric but also its intangible social fabric. As the only prefecture-level city in China named after “Salt”, Yancheng was once a prosperous town surrounded by dozens of salt pans (Sea salt) in Jin Dynasty (317-420), and Wuyou town was one of them.2 The author chooses this central area in Wuyou town as an example to carry on the research by documenting the way the community used to live in the Old Town. This Old Town attracted many salt merchants to gather and it declined because the change of the coastline and the development of industry in the end of Qing Dynasty (1636-1912). And this central area is one of the significant areas mixing the open space and living space, which never changes its function in this town. There are some practices of conservation of old towns around Yancheng, but most of them have been preserved by redeveloping or reconstructing the constructions and the layout without the original community. However, judging from the empty streets and low occupancy of shops, the planning results and implementation performance are not optimistic. The author recognizes the issue that if the intangible cultural heritage of the place is not included in the study, then the conserved town would be a soulless shell that would eventually lose its attraction, leading to sustainability issues. The author also intends to carry out this research in order to call on people’s attention and show them the way to record a town, especially these indigenous people and practices in Wuyou, so that we can conserve those precious heritage assets better.