Remembering trees as heritage: Guji discourse and the meaning-making of trees in Hangzhou, Qing China

Research reveals that trees in Hangzhou, Qing China, were transformed into culturally significant heritage through a fourfold meaning-making process embedded in the local discourse of guji (ancient vestige). This process frames trees as rare landscapes, sites of poetics and memory, and place names, challenging Western Cartesian culture-nature dualism. The study analyzed five local gazetteers to demonstrate how subaltern ways of remembering trees construct natural existence as analogous to cultural heritage, offering an alternative framework for understanding heritage that transcends the intangible-natural dichotomy.

Hou, S. (2018). Remembering trees as heritage: Guji discourse and the meaning-making of trees in Hangzhou, Qing China. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 25(5), 455–468. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2018.1509229