Local visitors’ affective engagement with dark heritage: the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre

Existing research has shown how the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders, a dark heritage site in Nanjing, China, operates as a state-curated site of national memory, patriotic education, and commemoration of the victims of wartime atrocity. Less attention has been paid to how local visitors engage affectively with this site. Drawing on 24 in-depth semi-structured interviews, this article analyses local visitors’ affective engagement with the Memorial Hall through the lens of affective heritage practices. The findings suggest, first, that the embodied dimension of this engagement unfolds through sensory, spatial, and material encounters and is sustained through situated attention and social attunement within the site. Second, such engagement is evaluative and normatively mediated, as local visitors assess other visitors’ conduct, curatorial choices, and their own emotional responses through internalised commemorative expectations and feeling rules. Third, post-visit reverberations take shape through dreams, digital retransmission, everyday self-positioning, and peace-oriented contact. The study contributes to dark heritage research by showing that local visitors’ affective engagement with dark heritage extends beyond the visit itself, taking embodied and reflexively negotiated forms that are carried into everyday life and reworked by those who live alongside the site.