On the Sustainability of Local Cultural Heritage Based on the Landscape Narrative: A Case Study of Historic Site of Qing Yan Yuan, China

As a feature of local cultural heritage, historical garden sites should not only focus on landscape sightseeing, but should also champion the sustainability of cultural heritage and promote the local community’s wellbeing. This article uses the landscape narrative method to explore how the local public, with both professional and non-professional backgrounds, manages the cultural heritage and enhances its sustainability. Qing Yan Yuan is a historical garden site in Huai’an, Jiangsu Province, China, and constitutes the research area of this study. This article firstly conducts in-depth interviews with local residents with non-professional backgrounds; then, it collects relevant information from professionals, such as introductions, comments, news, periodicals, etc.; finally, it adopts the content analysis method to decode, summarize and sort out accordingly. Through the analysis of landscape narrative data, this paper found that three cultural heritage value strategies are used by the public: (1) origin landscape narrative; (2) functional landscape narrative; (3) meaningful landscape narrative. The origin landscape narrative is the expression of a cultural heritage value of “past presentation”; the functional landscape narrative is a cultural heritage value of “place identity”; the meaningful landscape narrative shows a cultural heritage value of “future education”; all these together constitute the local public subjective conception of the sustainability of cultural heritage.