Theme Park-ing

It appears that the management or governments of certain cultural landmarks in East Asia often turn to amusement and novelty as a means of propagating the survival of their establishment. Although such performances may or may not be deliberate, their effects are somewhat critical in reinforcing imagery that supports the hollistic sence of immersion for visitors and guests. Though some sites advertise such features more aggressively than others, this sense of thematic amusement remains generally constant.

Incidentally, when the Chinese government were faced with the task of creating a feasible enterprise out of the Old Summer Palace, they turned, quite explicitly, into a theme park, replete with foot-pedaled swan rides in the man-made lakes that once carried splendid yachts in which royalty or nobility were transported on their elusive vacations. While this is no longer the case, the New Summer Palace slowly turns towards such tactics to reinvigorate its environment with the use of a variety of arguably irrelevant vendors and hawkers marketing products that refer to traditional Chinese arts or motifs.

The activities of these vendors, cumulatively, work to satisfy other senses that the physical monument itself does not seem capable of satisfying. While the buildings and landscapes offer that primary visual factor to the experience, the cacophany of vendors hawking crude musical devices, the overflowing stands of novelties that visitors may wear, touch, or play with, offer a wealth of audio and tactile stimuli that simultaneously bombard passers-by. Such activities reinforce the cultural illusions, lending the site some sense of currency, despite its almost total loss of function, and also despite the fact that the activities and wares of those hawkers and vendors relate very little to the Summer Palace.