Shanghai Street View: Making Culture Affordable 沪经动向：让文化更能负担得起
I want to officially add my voice to the hundreds of sarcastic and disappointed Shanghai residents who were underwhelmed to learn that only 2 of the city’s obscure tourist sites were included on a national list of attractions that will offer discounted ticket prices during the upcoming October 1 National Day holiday. And even at the 2 Shanghai sites that made it on to the list, the discounts were so small that they were almost laughable.
The roll-out of this list is part of a broader national campaign that has seen Beijing finally realize that entrance prices for many of the country’s top tourist attractions have gotten out of control, the result of over-commercialization. Operators of these sites work on a simple logic: they know that visitors have often traveled great distances at big expense to come to Shanghai and other famous Chinese cities and scenic spots. They use that fact to blackmail those same tourists into paying 100 yuan and more for popular attractions, even though they know such high prices can often equal as much as 10 percent or more of a monthly paycheck for someone from many of China’s smaller cities.
Site operators can charge such prices because they know, for example, that a tourist who has come all the way from an interior province like Guangxi or Hunan won’t want to go home without seeing the Bund from the top of the Oriental Pearl Tower, where admission prices range from 100-150 yuan. Even tickets to Yuyuan Gardens, another of the city’s top tourist attractions, cost a relatively pricey 40 yuan, with another 10 yuan required to tour the City God Temple inside the complex. Luckily the Bund is still free, as it’s quite a large area that can’t easily be cordoned off to charge a fee. But if there was a way to do that, I have little doubt that visitors would have to pay a steep fee to visit Shanghai’s most famous landmark as well.
Many Chinese planning to hit the road during the October 1 holiday were full of hope when Beijing released a list of 80 tourist spots across the country that would offer discounted ticket prices during the weeklong vacation. But sounds of sarcasm and disappointment quickly filled the cyberspace on popular social media sites like Weibo after the actual list was released, revealing a line-up of mostly obscure tourist sites offering just minor discounts.
In Shanghai, the only 2 sites to make the list were the Shanghai Earthquake Museum in suburban Songjiang district, and the Fuquanshan Ancient Culture Ruins in the equally distant Qingpu district. And even at those 2 sites the discounts were quite trivial, with the Earthquake Museum waiving its 5 yuan admission price during the holiday while the Fuquanshan site lowered its price by a mere 2 yuan, charging 8 yuan instead of the usual 10 yuan.
Before I get too negative about these price cuts, I should at least applaud central leaders in Beijing for making this effort in the first place. Today’s current sky-high prices are largely the result of unchecked market forces over the last 2 decades, as China has moved toward a more commercial-oriented economy that allows sellers to charge whatever they think consumers will pay for a product or service.
This latest campaign by Beijing reflects the recognition that sometimes intervention is needed to make sure that prices remain affordable for average people, even as the government also needs to make sure that operators of popular tourist sites can get the funds they need to stay in business. Shanghai and other cities have been on a Long March to making their popular sites more affordable for the last few years, taking steps like eliminating many of the entrance fees at city parks to make them more accessible for local residents. In Shanghai the city also took the important step of eliminating the entrance fee to its popular Shanghai Art Museum last year, again as part of a Beijing-mandated campaign to make such cultural sites more affordable for the average person.
All that said, these reductions at the Earthquake and Fuquanshan museums for the upcoming holiday may represent a step in the right direction, but also underscore that more strong-arming by Beijing and the Shanghai government may be necessary to make any real progress in reducing overinflated admission fees at the city’s tourist attractions. Then again, perhaps these discounts will at least encourage people to discover some of the city’s lesser know attractions. Who knows — maybe I’ll even pay a visit to the Earthquake Museum or Fuquanshan, a burial mound containing elaborate tombs, over the long holiday next week.
