39 City, Culture and Architecture 2015; 1(1): 39-49 City, Culture and Architecture 2015; 1(1): 39-49 ISSN: 2148-1938 (Print) DOI: 10.15340/2148193811861 Research Article Historicizing Contested Places in Growth Projects: Two Cases Based on the“Qujiang Model” in the 21st Century Shaanxi, China Meng-chi Hsueh 1* 1 Tunghai University, Taiwan Abstract: Cultural-heritage tourism is nowadays a major force of economic growth, especially in economically lagging but culturally-rich western China. This article begins with a discussion of the prevailing “Qujiang Model” formulated in Xian, Shaanxi Province, and then looks into the model’s application in two nearby county-level cities. Each project is connected through the place to a famous historical or legendary igure, and each project is utilized as a precursory territorializing strategy for a larger cultural development scheme envisioned by the Qujiang Committee. Through two case studies, this article examines the strategy, territoriality, and effectiveness of historical “facts” that are deployed in each growth project. By looking into the rationale and means behind the construction of authenticity, the article examines the power restructuring and regional transformation in the process of carrying out historicizing projects. The article notes a distinct synergy between the nostalgic appeal of place and the romanticization of place in the media, demonstrating that storytelling, as opposed to establishing authenticity, plays a signiicant role in the Qujiang Model. From observing varied strategies for accumulating and mobilizing capital envisioned by the Qujiang Committee, further, this article argues the historicization of places in Shaanxi serves not only as an economic strategy but also as a territorial one centered on the local government’s authority to proit from land-related business. Keywords: regional development, territoriality, historicization, Qujiang Model, cultural strategy, cultural theme park *Meng-chi Hsueh, Tunghai University, No.1727, Sec.4, Taiwan Boulevard, Xitun District, Taichung 40704, Taiwan R.O.C. Email: mchsueh@gmail.com 1. Introduction Promoting a city by conserving its cultural and historical spaces is, by now, a development strategy with a fairly long history. However, heritage-oriented development strategies, which typically unfold and adapt over decades in developed countries, have only recently been deployed in China and are being carried out rapidly, on a large scale, and with extremely high expectations that such projects will foster development miracles. As a consequence, heritage tourism-oriented urban development strategies lead to social and spatial transformations of greater intensity and scale than those observed in the West. Upgrading cities’ cultural and historical images is now taken as a primary means to achieve growth and bring about the “green” and “humane” urbanism that are the current guiding slogans of city building in China. Tim Oakes has noted China’s “cultural turn” in the 1990s regional development as “a direct outcome of the state’s iscal decentralization” while “local culture is being viewed increasingly as a viable economic sector capable of signiicant revenue generation” (2006a, 14). Based on Oakes’s observation, this article further argues the process of historicizing places and reformulating regional cultural identity serves not only as an economic strategy for attracting investment and enhancing product value but also a territorial one centered on the local government’s authority to proit from land-related business. Territoriality is deined as spatial strategies to consolidate power in a given place and time.