Developing A Practical Framework for Ecomuseums in China: Building the Malanyu Ecomuseum with the Community of Descendants of the Caretakers of the Eastern Qing Tombs

The thesis examines the practical framework of ecomuseums within the Chinese context and its promotion of community engagement approaches to preserve community memory and heritage. The aim is to document and examine the practices and patterns followed by the descendants of the Imperial Tomb caretakers of the Qing dynasty when preserving both tangible and intangible heritage, thereby providing a practical framework for developing innovative ecomuseums that support the continuing memory and identity associated with heritage sites and their communities. The thesis research question asks how a practical framework of ecomuseums could be developed to support the associated communities within the Chinese social context, sustainably participating in narrating and preserving local heritage through self-development and re-discovery of the community’s memories.

The UNESCO World Heritage site of the Imperial Tombs of the Qing dynasty and the communities of the tomb caretakers’ descendants will be investigated to narrate the evolution of the connection between them from the seventeenth century until the present day. In addition, the thesis demonstrates and documents the practices and patterns of how the caretakers protected the tombs across history, as well as the identity and memory their descendants inherited, which are currently neglected. Qualitative research methods such as interviews, physical evidence collection, focus group meetings, community activity observation, archives and textual analysis are used for data collection.

This research concludes that a practical growth framework for an ecomuseum within the Chinese context can facilitate community engagement through processes of self-discovery and construction of collective memory and identity. The proposed framework applied by the descendants’ community (in Malanyu Town) reveals that some conditions are still required to enable the universal application of the framework. However, the research reveals that the proposed framework can address the problems faced by ecomuseums in China, and it is applicable within other regions worldwide within a similar social context and may improve the various approaches taken there when faced with related challenges.