From October 1st to October 6th, Dr. Zhang Rouran from the College of Tourism and Service Management of Nankai University was invited to participate in the Annual Conference of the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) in the Pacific Region. The conference is themed with “CULTURE: Conserving it Together”, and attended by representatives from cultural heritage industries from countries in Oceania, as well as China, the United States, Germany and Japan.

On October 5th, Wang Lijun, director of the Institute of Historic Architecture of China Architecture Design and Research Institute, and Dr. Zhang Rouran participated in the drafting seminar of the Pacifica Chater aimed at developing a viable charter for the protection and management of world heritage of island countries in the Pacific. At the meeting, Dr. Zhang Rouran proposed the multiculturalism in the Pacific region, and pointed out it was necessary to respect the cultures among different communities and elaborate in detail the definition of the community.

On October 3rd, Dr. Zhang Rouran delivered a keynote report at the meeting entitled Exploring the Significance of Cultural Landscape from the Perspective of Heritage Stakeholders. Taking the West Lake in Hangzhou as an example, the report compares the differences between international experts, domestic experts, citizens and tourists in Hangzhou on the understanding of the value of cultural landscape of the West Lake. It points out that the understanding of the cultural landscape from the Chinese people (including tourists and local residents) reflects the multi-faceted Chinese traditional culture. More bottom-up researches are required to be considered when calling for cultural heritage studies.