Theme parks rise to cultural challenge

Millions welcomed

Western influence is clearly evident in the theme park world, as Shanghai Disneyland attracts nearly 1 million more visitors annually than China's most popular non-Western theme park, Chimelong Ocean Kingdom, a marine-life venue in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, according to data from 2022-22 collected by a report.

In April, the Shanghai International Tourism Resort, home to Shanghai Disneyland, said it had welcomed more than 113 million visitors and earned revenue of over 61.5 billion yuan ($8.46 billion) since it opened seven years ago.

The only theme park in China to rival Shanghai Disneyland in terms of attendance is Universal Beijing Resort, which opened in 2021 to an overwhelming response despite the COVID-19 pandemic, with nearly 30,000 people flocking to the venue on its opening day.

This raises the question of why such parks in China with local themes appear to find it impossible to match the likes of Disneyland and Universal Studios.

Zhang Zheng, deputy dean of Tsinghua University's School of Journalism and Communication, said one reason is that the cultural intellectual properties, or IPs, which include hit movies, books and characters, these international parks rely on, have long been well-received and loved by China's main consumer groups.

Amanda Wu, 30, who works in Beijing as an analyst, said she visited Universal Beijing Resort twice in the past six months, and is planning a third trip. She said she bought the tickets because of the iconic IPs the venue boasts.

"I was born in the 1990s and grew up with movies such as the Harry Potter and Transformers series. When my family visited me, we thought it would be fun to go to Universal Beijing Resort, where we could experience such world-class IPs without leaving the country," Wu said.

Sui, the Changchun student, said she is drawn to Shanghai Disneyland and Universal Beijing Resort because she enjoys animated Disney movies and is familiar with the characters featured at these venues.

If an iconic cultural IP is the key to success for international theme parks, then China certainly has an abundance of beloved cultural icons. China can draw on classic works such as Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Chamber, an 18th-century novel written by Cao Xueqin, for its theme parks, and the recent Netflix adaptation of Journey to the West and the popular Disney movie Mulan underline the international recognition of Chinese classics.

The fact that China lacks a national theme park based on these traditional icons is not for want of trying. A report in the weekly magazine China Newsweek said the country once boasted more than 400 theme parks based on stories from Journey to the West, but most of them have closed after failing to attract enough visitors.

Zhang said, "One big problem in building traditional Chinese theme parks is that they are based on adaptions of well-known literary works, which may not be able to support the core story needed to establish such a park."

Journey to the West is now a public intellectual property, meaning that anyone can create cultural products based on the story without having to pay royalties. However, Zhang said the fact that the original story was extremely popular does not necessarily mean that any spin-off will be equally as successful.

"Products based on secondary creations usually draw smaller audiences. Attractions such as Shanghai Disneyland and Universal Beijing Resort essentially rely on their original IPs to attract visitors. If a park is based on secondary interpretations of well-known IPs, it lacks a core story to build its theme, and I think this is why it is difficult to develop theme parks based on traditional Chinese iconography represented by Journey to the West," Zhang added.