ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects on what may be understood as an overly Eurocentric focus on landscape in the first edition of the Companion to Landscape Studies. In addressing the topic from an Asian perspective, with specific reference to China, we decided to take a reflective, rather than an essentialist, approach to the concept of ‘Eurocentrism’, not just in landscape studies, but in the related field of cultural heritage studies. We say this because for us the concepts of landscape, memory and identity (Taylor 2008) are inextricably linked to and influence notions of heritage, where heritage with its intangible connections to human values is no longer focused solely on the materiality of monuments and sites, but also on associated cultural meanings. We maintain this is so no matter which cultures – Western or Asian – are concerned, whilst accepting that there are also cultural differences in how landscape is experienced and understood. The question is whether a European – Western – mode has subjugated other cultural perceptions of landscape and its meaning and, in particular, the Chinese way of seeing? Winter (2014) has similarly reflected on this topic and it is one to which we return later. Consequently, with these thoughts in mind the purpose of the chapter is to suggest, and then demonstrate, that differences between West and East are more conceptual than real.
