Author(s)

Qingyun Chen ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ Guilin Yixin Planning and Design Co., Ltd., Guilin, 541004, China

Corresponding Author

Qingyun Chen

ABSTRACT

Rock art, as immovable cultural heritage, is physically immovable and intangible, and the mechanism through which its heritagization process influences local residents' place identity has not been systematically examined. Taking the Zuojiang Huashan Rock Art Cultural Landscape in Guangxi as a case study, this paper adopts a qualitative research method combining literature analysis, observation, and interviews to examine the changes in local Zhuang residents' place identity under the background of heritage tourism development, from three dimensions: symbolic translation, historical memory, and geographical space. The findings are as follows: the successful World Heritage inscription of Huashan Rock Art established "Little Red Figure" as the core local symbol, but there is a gap between the official translation of the symbol and residents' daily cognition; the image of "Huashan" is not fully unfolded in residents’ identity; from "ancestral spirit place" to "World Heritage", residents' place identity has experienced tensions from sacred to secular, and from local to national; the heritage site boundary exhibits openness in administrative, ethnic, and transnational spaces. This paper proposes the concept of "intangible identity" to explain the special mechanism of residents' identity construction in rock art heritage sites, theoretically expanding the heritage types in place identity research, and practically providing reference for the sustainable management of rock art World Heritage sites.

KEYWORDS

Place identity; Huashan Rock Art; Rock art heritage; Symbolic translation; Heritage tourism

CITE THIS PAPER

Qingyun Chen. A Study on Residents' Place Identity in Rock Art Heritage Sites: A Case Study of Huashan Rock Art in Guangxi. Art and Performance Letters (2026). Vol. 7, No. 2, 63-70. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/artpl.2026.070209.

REFERENCES

[1] Sun Jiuxia, Zhou Yi. Residents' place identity at heritage sites: Symbols, memories and space of the "Home of Diaolou" [J]. Geographical Research, 2015, 34(12): 2381-2394.
[2] Peng Zhengrong. Homeland Heritage: The Anthropological Study of modern heritage [J]. Journal of Xuzhou Institute of Technology (Social Sciences Edition), 2013, 28(5): 73-78.
[3] He Yinchun, Chen, Guo, Wang Jinwei, & Zeng Bindan. Development and empirical test of the scale of visitors’ heritage identity in World Cultural Heritage sites [J]. Tourism Science,2024, (4), 80-98.
[4] Zheng Qunming, Hong Xinyan. What changes have tourists perceived of World Heritage Site after the successful inscription on the World Heritage List? An analysis of UGC web data of Quanzhou[J]. Journal of Chinese Ecotourism, 2023, 13(3): 438-452.
[5] Hou Tao, Ding Lingling, Liu, Lu. Place identity and self-identity effects of cultural heritage tourism under the background of agriculture-culture-tourism integration: Evidence from Shanxi Province[J]. Journal of China Agricultural University, 2026, 31(10): 175-187.
[6] Gao Qian. Social values and rock art tourism: An ethnographic study of the Huashan Rock Art Area[J]. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites, 2017 19(1), 82-95.
[7] Pan Dongnan, Liang Hui. Community participation in cultural heritage tourism development of Huashan Rock Art[J]. Manlv, 2022, 9(11), 25-28.

Sponsors, Associates, and Links

---

• Journal of Language Testing & Assessment
  
  
• Information and Knowledge Management
  
  
• Military and Armament Science
  
  
• Media and Communication Research
  
  
• Journal of Human Movement Science
  
  
• Lecture Notes on History
  
  
• Lecture Notes on Language and Literature
  
  
• Philosophy Journal
  
  
• Science of Law Journal
  
  
• Journal of Political Science Research
  
  
• Journal of Sociology and Ethnology
  
  
• Advances in Broadcasting