Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Framing Postcolonial Narratives in the Prison Museum: The Qingdao German Prison Museum

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Framing the Penal Colony

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture ((PSCMC))

Abstract

This chapter examines the postcolonial narratives playing out at the German Prison Museum in Qingdao asking how these narratives are perceived and framed by the museum visitor. The prison is one of two sites of former incarceration that Germany built after Qingdao became a colony in 1898. Under German occupation European prisoners were held there, later it was used by the Japan and the Guomindang to house Chinese prisoners. Analysing user generated data on a variety of social media platforms, the chapter examines how these different stories are understood by the visitor and asks how we can engage with postcolonial heritage without experiencing the sites in person. The chapter argues that user generated data can allow the researcher to engage with heritage from a different perspective and offer new insights into how multidimensional heritage sites are understood and framed by the visitor.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Ambrose, T., & Paine, C. (2018). Museum basics: The international handbook. Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, C., Ifill, M., Adams, E., & Moss, K. (2020). Guyana’s prisons: Colonial histories of post-colonial challenges. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice, 59, 335–349. https://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12382

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anico, M., & Peralta, E. (2009). Introduction. In M. Anico, & E. Peralta (Eds.), Heritage and identity: Engagement and demission in the contemporary world (1st ed., pp. 1–12). Taylor & Francis Group.

    Google Scholar 

  • Butler-Kisber, L. (2008). Collage as inquiry. In J. G. Knowles, & A. L. Cole (Eds.), Handbook of the arts in qualitative research (1st ed., pp. 265–276). Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cardinal, R. (2004). Collecting and collage-making: The case of Kurt Schwitters. In R. Cardinal (Ed.), Cultures of collecting (1st ed., pp. 68–96). Reaktion Books, Limited.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carter, P. L. (2016). Where are the enslaved?: TripAdvisor and the narrative landscapes of southern plantation Museums. Journal of Heritage Tourism, 11(3), 235–249. https://doi.org/10.1080/1743873X.2015.1100625

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Coco, O. (2019). German imperialism in China: The leasehold of Kiaochow Bay (1897–1914). The Chinese Historical Review, 26(2), 156–174. https://doi.org/10.1080/1547402X.2020.1750231

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Demgenski, P. (2015). Seeking a future for the past: Negotiating inner city redevelopment and heritage in Qingdao, China [Doctoral Dissertation, The Chinese University of Hong Kong]. CUHK Digital Repository. https://repository.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/en/islandora/object/cuhk%3A1291962/metadata

  • Demgenski, P. (2019). Dabaodao: The planning, development, and transformation of a Chinese (German) neighbourhood. Planning Perspectives, 34(2), 311–333. https://doi.org/10.1080/02665433.2017.1389656

  • Denton, K. (2014). Exhibiting the past: Historical memory and the politics of museums in postsocialist China. University of Hawaii Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dikötter, F. (2002). Crime, punishment and the prison in modern China. Hong Kong University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dikötter, F., & Brown, I. (2007). Cultures of confinement: A history of the prison in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Cornell University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Falk, J., & Dierking, L. (1992). The Museum experience. Whalesback Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferguson, M., & Madill, D. (2017). From shame to fame: “Celebrity” prisoners and Canadian prison museums. In J. Z. Wilson, S. Hodgkinson, J. Piché, & K. Walby (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of prison tourism (1st ed., pp.417–434). Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Flint, A., & Jennings, B. (2022). The role of cultural heritage in visitor narratives of peatlands: Analysis of online user-generated reviews from three peatland sites in England. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 28(2), 163–179. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2021.1941198

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goodman, B., & Goodman, D. (2012). Introduction. Colonialism and China. In B. Goodman, & D. Goodman (Eds.), Twentieth century colonialism and China. Localities, the everyday, and the world (1st ed., pp. 1–21). Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Graham, B., Ashworth, G. J., & Tunbridge, J. E. (2000). A Geography of heritage: Power, culture and economy. Arnold.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huang, S. (2017). Remembering and representing imprisonment in postcolonial cities: Decommissioned prisons in East Asia. In J. Z. Wilson, S. Hodgkinson, J. Piché, & K. Walby (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of prison tourism (1st ed., pp.651–672). Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Huang, S., & Lee, H. (2019). Difficult heritage diplomacy? Re-articulating places of pain and shame as world heritage in northeast Asia. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 25(2), 143–159. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2018.1475410

  • Huang, S., & Lee, H. (2020). Heritage, memory, and punishment. Remembering colonial prisons in East Asia. Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, I. (2011, April 3). At China’s new museum, history toes party line. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/world/asia/04museum.html

  • Johnston-Weiss, E. (2019). In the eye of the beholder: Gaze and distance through photographic collage in the Topography of Terror and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. In J. Echternkamp, & S. Jaeger (Eds.), Views of violence: Representing the second world war in German and European Museums and memorials (1st ed., pp. 92–108). Berghahn Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee, H. (2012). The Ruins of Yuanmingyuan: Or, how to enjoy a national wound. In M. Matten (Ed.), Places of memory in modern China: History, politics, and identity (1st ed., pp.1 93–232). Brill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lin, H. (2017). Taiwan’s former political prisons: From incarceration to curation. In J. Z. Wilson, S. Hodgkinson, J. Piché, & K. Walby (Eds.) The Palgrave handbook of prison tourism (1st ed., pp. 217–240). Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lindauer, M. (2006). The critical museum visitor. In J. Marstine (Ed.), New Museum theory and practice (1st ed., pp. 203–223). Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Liu, C. (2006). The contemporary development of Qingdao’s urban space. The perspective of civil society’s participation in Chinese Urban Planning [Doctoral Dissertation, Bauhaus Universität Weimar]. https://e-pub.uni-weimar.de/opus4/frontdoor/deliver/index/docId/855/file/Dissertation_Liu_pdfa.pdf

  • Liu, Y. (2020). Evaluating visitor experience of digital interpretation and presentation technologies at cultural heritage sites: A case study of the old town, Zuoying. Built Heritage, 4(14). https://doi.org/10.1186/s43238-020-00016-4

  • Logan, W. (2009). Hoa Lo Museum, Hanoi. Changing attitudes to a Vietnamese place of pain and shame. In W. Logan & K. Reeves (Eds.), Places of Pain and Shame. Dealing with Difficult Heritage (1st ed., pp. 182–197). Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lu, T. (2014). Museums in China: Power, politics and identities. Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lü, X., Luo, H., Xu, S., Sun, J., Lu, R., & Hu, Y. (2022). Dark tourism spectrum: Visual expression of dark experience. Tourism Management, 93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2022.104580

  • Lü, Y. (2017). Colonial Qingdao through Chinese eyes. In K. Mühlhahn (Ed.), The cultural legacy of German colonial rule (1st ed., pp. 127–141). De Gruyter Oldenbourg.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ludwig, C., & Walton, L. (2020). Introduction (Un)Authorised heritage discourse and practice in China. In C. Ludwig, L. Walton, & Y. Wang (Eds.), The heritage turn in China: The reinvention, dissemination and consumption of heritage (1st ed., pp. 15–38). Amsterdam University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Macdonald, S. (2006). Expanding museum studies: an introduction and other editorial commentary. In S. Macdonald (Ed.), A companion to Museum studies (1st ed., pp. 1–12). Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mah, A. (2014). Port cities and global legacies: Urban identity, waterfront work, and radicalism. Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Mahmoudi, L., Motamed, B., & Ghadirinia, M. (2018). Investigating heritage sites through the lens of social media. Journal of Architecture and Urbanism, 42(2), 199–211. https://doi.org/10.3846/jau.2018.7057

  • Mgadla, P. T. (2014). Racial discrimination in colonial Botswana: 1946–1965. South African Historical Journal, 66(3), 486–503. https://doi.org/10.1080/02582473.2014.900646

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mommsen, W. J., & Osterhammel, J. (1986). Imperialism and after: Continuities and discontinuities. Allen and Unwin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mühlhahn, K. (2012). Negotiating the nation. German colonialism and Chinese nationalism in Qingdao, 1897–1914. In B. Goodman, & D. Goodman (Eds.), Twentieth century colonialism and China. Localities, the everyday, and the world (1st ed., pp. 37–56). Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mühlhahn, K. (2013). Mapping colonial space: The planning and building of Qingdao by German colonial authorities, 1897–1914. In L. Victoir, & V. Zatsepine (Eds.), Harbin to Hanoi colonial built environment in Asia, 1840 to 1940 (1st ed., pp. 103–128). Hong Kong University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nield, R. (2015). China's foreign places: The foreign presence in China in the treaty port era, 1840–1943. Hong Kong University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pedersen, C. (2017). Screening tourist encounters: Penal spectatorship and the visual cultures of Auschwitz. In J. Z. Wilson, S. Hodgkinson, J. Piché, & K. Walby (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of prison tourism (1st ed., pp. 131–151). Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schept, J., & Mazurek, J. (2017). Layers of violence: Coal mining, Convict Leasing, and Carceral Tourism in Central Appalachia. In J. Z. Wilson, S. Hodgkinson, J. Piché, & K. Walby (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of prison tourism (1st ed., pp. 171–190). Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwenkel, C. (2009). The American war in contemporary Vietnam: Transnational remembrance and representation. Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Steinmetz, G. (2007). The devil’s handwriting: Precoloniality and the German colonial state in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa. University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Steinmetz, G. (2009, January 16–17). Qingdao as a colony: From apartheid to civilizational exchange [Workshop presentation]. Johns Hopkins Workshops in Comparative History of Science and Technology, “Science, Technology and Modernity: Colonial Cities in Asia, 1890–1940,” Baltimore, United States.

    Google Scholar 

  • Steinmetz, K. F., Schaefer, B. P., & Henderson, H. (2017). Wicked overseers: American policing and colonialism. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 3(1), 68–81. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649216665639

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Strange, C., & Kempa, M. (2003). Shades of dark tourism Alcatraz and Robben Island. Annals of Tourism Research, 30, 386–405.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Trofanenko, B. (2010). The educational promise of public history museum exhibits. Theory & Research in Social Education, 38(2), 270–288. https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2010.10473425

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Turner, J., & Peters, K. (2015). Unlocking carceral atmospheres: Designing visual/material encounters at the prison museum. Visual Communication, 14(3), 309–330. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470357215579599

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Varutti, M. (2014). Museums in China: The politics of representation after Mao. The Boydell Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walby, K., & Piché, J. (2011). The polysemy of punishment: Dark tourism and Ontario’s penal history museums. Punishment & Society, 13(4), 451–472. https://doi.org/10.1177/1462474511414784

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang, P., & Bell, D. (2022). Qingdao: The city of ideals. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 25 (5), 667–682.https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2021.1881741.

  • Wang, Z. (2012). Never forget national humiliation: Historical memory in Chinese politics and foreign relations. Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, J.Z., Hodgkinson, S., Piché, J., & Walby, K. (2017). Introduction: Prison tourism in context. In J. Z. Wilson, S. Hodgkinson, J. Piché, & K. Walby (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of prison tourism (1st ed., pp.1–10). Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Winter, T. (2014). Heritage conservation futures in an age of shifting global power. Journal of Social Archaeology, 14(3), 319–339. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469605314532749

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wong, C. (2013). The sanitization of colonial history: Authenticity, heritage interpretation and the case of Macau’s tour guides. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 21(6), 915–931. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2013.790390

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Xu, J. (2020). The old/new Unit 731 Museum. A place of memory and oblivion. In J. Micieli-Voutsinas & A. M. Person (Eds.), Affective architectures: More-than-representational geographies of heritage (1st ed., pp.40–55). Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zang, X. (2020). Heritage conservation in Chinese colonial port cities [Doctoral Dissertation, Utrecht University]. Utrecht University Repository. https://dspace.library.uu.nl/bitstream/handle/1874/381362/1-xiaolinzangdissertation.pdf?sequence=1

  • Zang, X., van Gorp, B., & Renes, H. (2020). Beer as cultural lubricant: Brewing Tsingtao, regenerating Qingdao. In N. Wise, & T. Jimura (Eds.), Tourism, cultural heritage and urban regeneration changing spaces in historical places (1st ed., pp. 39–55). Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zatsepine, V., & Victoir, L. (2013). Introduction. In L. Victoir & V. Zatsepine (Eds.), Harbin to Hanoi colonial built environment in Asia, 1840 to 1940 (1st ed., pp. 1–16). Hong Kong University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. History, Heritage and Global Cultures, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

    Katharina Massing

Authors
  1. Katharina Massing
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Katharina Massing .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

    Sophie Fuggle

  2. University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

    Charles Forsdick

  3. Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

    Katharina Massing

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Massing, K. (2023). Framing Postcolonial Narratives in the Prison Museum: The Qingdao German Prison Museum. In: Fuggle, S., Forsdick, C., Massing, K. (eds) Framing the Penal Colony. Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19396-5_9

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19396-5_9

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-19395-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-19396-5

  • eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation