Les mondes ‘exotiques’ de Tianjin

The former international concessions built by several Western countries in Chinese ports between the 1840s and 1940s have been experiencing since the last years of the 20th century the joint phenomena of heritagization and touristification (Gravari-Barbas et al., 2020). These developments are remarkable because of the history of the concessions described as semi-colonies and referring to a not very glorious past for China, marked by the domination of foreign powers.The buildings constructed by the different concessionary countries have often employed an architectural and decorative vocabulary of national inspiration: an Italianate style for the Italian concession (Marinelli, 2009) or a 'Beaux-Arts' style for the French concession of Tianjin for example (Alliance Française de Tianjin, 2013). Their recent touristification has tended to exacerbate these national architectural frames of reference, resulting in the creation of 'mini themed parks', dedicated to commerce, leisure or tourism (Lu et al., 2019). Several researchers have shown the thematization of urban spaces in European or North American cities (rehabilitated waterfronts, museumized historic city centers, etc.) (Davis, 1998; Sorkin 2000). Fewer works, however, highlight these phenomena in Asian cities and in post-colonial contexts marked, through tourism, by a reversal of positions vis-à-vis former colonial forces.This is the scope of this article, which focuses on the former French and Italian concessions in Tianjin. The article highlights the processes, actors and tools of the transformation of former concessions into thematic spaces. It shows that the heritagization of the former concessions was facilitated by their opening to tourism and by the creation of 'exotic' environments, featuring thematized lifestyles, gastronomy, products, and businesses.