Mining heritage gone wrong: A study of disappointed tourists at China’s national mine parks

ABSTRACT

Mine parks are a late twentieth-century addition to the global heritage repertoire. To date, most studies of visitor experiences at mining heritage sites focus on tourists who appreciate their outings. Yet mine parks do not satisfy all those who visit. What goes wrong for those who visit these destinations and feel disappointed, and how do they express their displeasure? We answer this question by scrutinising the online negative reviews of tourists from seven Chinese national mine parks. Our analysis indicates ‘disgruntled tourists’ want the sites of former resource extraction to include a sight and meet their expectations for hospitable, accessible, and knowledgeable service. When mine parks fail to deliver, they become disappointed, dissatisfied, and angry. They overwhelmingly articulate their unhappiness using a language of ‘lack’ or deficiency and talking about ‘value for money’. The reviews further suggest that disappointed visitors write online reviews to vent negative emotions, warn other tourists, and punish site staff. Drawing on the broader literature on mining tourism, heritage tourism, and visitor experiences, we indicate strategies that mining heritage professionals could use to remedy disgruntled tourists’ sense of deficiency, while also contributing to scholarly discussions about what makes tourism meaningful.

KEYWORDS:

• Online reviews
• heritage tourism
• spectacle
• service
• negative visitor experiences

Introduction

It was so lacking it ruined my imagination. There was not even the least bit of interaction, the least bit of imagining, the least bit of flavour. Especially the underground pit. It was just too hateful. And they dare to charge you that price for the ticket. Visitor to a Chinese national mine park, Trip.com

As mining areas in western Europe deindustrialised during the late twentieth century, many defunct mines were repurposed as heritage destinations (Xie, 2015, pp. 38–39). Scholars began researching mining tourism shortly thereafter, with the UK a focus of attention (Dicks, 2008; Prentice et al., 1993, 1998). Turning shuttered mines into heritage parks has since become a global practice. Researchers have investigated sites in Australia (Eklund et al., 2021), Bolivia (Pretes, 2002), Canada (Oakley, 2015), the Czech Republic (Frantál & Urbánková, 2017), Estonia (Kesküla, 2013; Metsaots et al., 2015), Indonesia (Armis & Kanegae, 2020), Svalbard (Kotašková, 2022), Sweden (Byström, 2022), Taiwan (Xie, 2015, pp. 121–144; Wu et al., 2015), and the United States (Ronck & Price, 2019).

Between 2000 and 2021, the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) repurposed 88 closed and partially closed coal, oil shale, and mineral mines as tourist destinations (Zhao et al., 2020). Scholarship on the PRC’s mine parks includes comparative studies of the parks’ contributions to economic, environmental, and social sustainability (Zhao et al., 2020), their potential for regional industrial heritage development (Wang et al., 2020), and the impact of the mining-to-tourism trajectory on specific communities (Audin, 2020). Two studies investigate tourist experiences at mine parks (Gillette & Boyd, 2024; Tang & Liang, 2023).

Most of the literature on mining heritage tourism focuses on what kinds of stories mine parks tell about industrial resource extraction and what tourists enjoy about their visits. To understand what visitors appreciate, researchers have administered survey questionnaires (e.g. Prentice et al., 1993) and conducted interviews (e.g. Byström, 2022), sometimes in conjunction with participant-observation research (e.g. Armis & Kanegae, 2020). However, another useful resource for understanding ‘why tourists are interested in mines’ (Gouthro & Palmer, 2011) and ‘what heritage tourists want’ (Ashworth, 2010) is online reviews. Many tourists write online reviews, and researchers have investigated such user-generated content to understand tourist experiences in a range of settings (e.g. Hodsdon, 2022; Ramírez-Gutiérrez et al., 2018; Su & Teng, 2018). An advantage to conducting research on visitor experiences through online reviews is that this content is not created in response to the researcher’s questions. Online reviews are ‘small stories’ that tourists tell for their own purposes (Vásquez, 2012). To date, online reviews have rarely been the focus of mining tourism investigations, and existing scholarship focuses on positive reviews (Gillette & Boyd, 2024; Ronck & Price, 2019).

In this study, we direct attention to the online reviews of ‘disgruntled tourists’ (Orange & Laviolette, 2010) at mining heritage sites in the PRC. We ask what went wrong for these visitors, and how they express their displeasure. Mine park staff and tourism operators may be able to rectify or prevent mining heritage from going wrong if they understand those who have such experiences. Furthermore, investigating what happens to disgruntled tourists at mine parks, and how they talk about it, can contribute to scholarly debates about what makes tourism meaningful (e.g. Kim et al., 2021; Knobloch et al., 2014; Nawijn & Biran, 2019; Robinson, 2012).

We organise our study as follows. In the following section, we review the literature on mining heritage tourism and note significant findings from the broader literature on heritage tourism, visitor experiences, and negative reviews. We then describe the PRC’s national mine park development, the seven parks in the study, and our data and methods. Next, we present the main patterns from the online reviews. A discussion comes next, followed by a conclusion in which we reflect on the scholarly and practical implications of our work.

Literature review

The literature on mining heritage tourism suggests that visitors to such sites tend to enjoy similar aspects of these destinations and experience similar responses. One shared finding is that visitors appreciate the sight of dramatic human-deformed landscapes and industrial technologies (Frantál & Urbánková, 2017; Gillette & Boyd, 2024; Kotašková, 2022; Metsaots et al., 2015; Prentice et al., 1998; Pretes, 2002; Ronck & Price, 2019; Wu et al., 2015). Often large mining pits, underground caves, and what Pretes (2002) calls the ‘technological sublime’ engender feelings of wonder and appreciation for the work of former miners. Guided tours led by former miners (e.g. Kesküla, 2013; Ronck & Price, 2019) and family histories of mining (Gouthro & Palmer, 2011) enhance these responses. Tourists also report that they enjoy learning about mining’s historical importance (Byström, 2022; Gillette & Boyd, 2024; Prentice et al., 1993, 1998; Pretes, 2002; Ronck & Price, 2019; Wu et al., 2015). Rather little is known about tourists who are disappointed or unsatisfied with their visits to mine parks. Extant studies identify which types of visitors are more likely to have negative experiences at Welsh collieries (Prentice et al., 1998).

In the broader scholarship on heritage tourism, some researchers find a relationship between tourists’ knowledge and their experiences of pleasure. For example, Desforges (2001) finds that budget travellers in Peru enjoy having ‘insider knowledge’ of local prices, which enables them to avoid being ‘ripped off’ and enjoy ‘authentic’ experiences. Derbaix and Gombault (2016), who investigate Cézanne’s ‘nearly empty’ studio in Aix-en-Provence, argue that the deeper the visitor’s knowledge, the more intense and ‘authentic’ his/her experience, despite the fact that this destination offers very little to see. In her study of online reviews of Musée d’Orsay exhibits, Hodsdon (2022) identifies a link between tourists’ prior knowledge and how they respond to the displays. Visitors are ‘thrilled’ to be in the ‘presence’ of art they ‘studied in college’, and have more distanced experiences of unfamiliar works (Hodsdon, 2022, pp. 406-411). In her investigation of online views of Tintagel, a site strongly associated with King Arthur in literature and tourism marketing, Hodson (2022) also suggests that tourists’ prior knowledge affects their experiences. She finds a relationship between visitors who have historical knowledge of Tintagel Castle and visitors who are able to transform what disgruntled tourists call ‘a pile of rubble’ into a ‘space for the imagination to work’ (Hodsdon, 2022, pp. 416–417).

In general, the scholarly literature on tourist experiences (that drawing on user-generated content and employing other methods), suggests that visitors’ ideas, and public and commercial mediations about sights and sites, inform tourist visits (e.g. Alexander et al., 2018; Kim et al., 2021; Ramírez-Gutiérrez et al., 2018; Robinson, 2012; Vergopoulos, 2016). Scholars have argued that specific types of destinations tend to evoke distinct responses: awe while viewing La Réunion’s volcano caldera (Picard, 2012), calm at the New Zealand Bay of Islands (Knobloch et al., 2014), sorrow at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Moskwa, 2022), respect for miners when visiting a Welsh colliery (Prentice et al., 1993, 1998). Expectations for service and management, by contrast, are less destination-specific. These instead relate to ideas about leisure consumption (Alexander et al., 2018; Kim et al., 2021; Soltani-Nejad et al., 2024; Su & Teng, 2018; Vergopoulos, 2016).

In the study of visitor experiences, negative tourism responses are an emerging topic, particularly for scholars investigating online reviews (e.g. Kim et al., 2021, 2022; Kirilenko & Stepchenkova, 2019; Su & Teng, 2018). In their study of TripAdvisor reviews of London museums, Alexander et al. (2018) note that unsatisfying exhibits were most likely to cause negative experiences, with overcrowding and unclean toilets also significant. Su and Teng, in their study of negative reviews from 15 museums in the UK, US, and Europe, found that displays were far less likely to cause visitor dissatisfaction than long queues, large crowds, and ‘rude’ or disengaged staff (2018). Kim et al. (2021), who scrutinised 298 Chinese travelogues, report that unethical business practices most frequently caused negative experiences (40% of the travelogues), followed by inhospitable or unresponsive staff (18%). Kirilenko and Stepchenkova (2019), who investigated 14,273 TripAdvisor reviews of the Qin Emperor burial site in Xi’an, state that the most common shared grievance was overcrowding. Many tourists also complained about unethical or pushy entrepreneurs. Smaller numbers expressed disappointment with the heritage site’s contents, for example commercialisation, (in)authenticity, and ‘boring’ scenery.

Context, data and methods

According to researchers, the PRC invested in transforming defunct mines into parks to address environmental, economic, and social problems (Wang et al., 2020; Zhao et al., 2020). The state saw tourism as ‘the new fuel’ for redeveloping deindustrialised mining areas (Ren, 2017). This heritage-making initiative concluded when the government incorporated the mine parks into a new national park system intended to be the world’s largest (Zhao, 2022).

For this study of disgruntled tourists’ experiences with mining heritage, we selected seven parks: Jinchuan, Gansu Province; Yeshan, Nanjing municipality; Kailuan, Hebei Province; Jiayang, Sichuan Province; Jinhuagong, Shanxi Province; Suichang, Zhejiang Province, and Wanshan, Guizhou Province. These sites offer a cross-section of energy and mineral mining heritage from north, south, east, and west China (see Figure 1). Included are mines established after the PRC’s founding, during the early twentieth century, and those used for hundreds or thousands of years.

Figure 1. Map showing seven mine parks.

Jinchuan, in northwest China, opened as a nickel mine in 1958 and became a park in 2009. Jinchuan contains open and closed pits and an industrial park (Yu et al., 2022). According to the platform we used to gather online reviews (Trip.com), Jinchuan has a museum of local mining history. Visitor photographs suggest that scenic views of the open pit are a main attraction. Yeshan, in east-central China, was an iron mine for thousands of years (Young et al., 2021), and opened as a modern industry in 1957 (Baidu, n.d.). Since becoming a park, Yeshan has been awarded a triple A (AAA) tourist destination rating by the PRC’s National Tourism Administration. Trip.com indicates that Yeshan features mining landscapes, old equipment, a steam train, and an underground exhibit. Kailuan, in northeast China, originally opened as a government coal mine in 1878 and became a park in 2008 (Zhu et al., 2014). The National Tourism Administration gave Kailuan a quadruple A (AAAA) rating. Kailuan contains an underground pit, mining machinery, train cars, a locomotive, mining exhibits, and former industrial and administrative buildings. Jiayang, in southwest China, became a state-run coal mine in 1938, although the area was mined prior to this (Huang, 2020). Jiayang includes underground pits, a narrow-gauge steam railway, river ports from which coal was shipped, and two museums (Tang & Liang, 2023). Jinhuagong is in an area of north China well known for its coal fields. Originally developed during the Japanese occupation, Jinhuagong expanded dramatically during the Mao era and was central to coal production after Deng Xiaoping’s reforms (Audin, 2020). It opened as a park in 2012 and has an underground pit, pump stations, headframes, drift excavators, an exhibition hall, and mining-themed sculpture. Suichang, in the southeast, is a former gold mine (Yu et al., 2022). Gold was mined here from the Song Dynasty (960-1279). Beginning in 1954, pyrite was mined as well as gold and silver; these minerals were exhausted by the mid-1990s (Hudson Institute of Minerology, 2023). Suichang opened as a park in 2007 and has a quadruple A rating from the National Tourism Administration. It contains a narrow-gauge railway, mine pits, a museum, a cable walkway over a gorge, and a shopping facility (Suichang National Mine Park, 2019). Wanshan, in southwest China, was a mercury mine. Like Yeshan, Wanshan was mined for thousands of years (China Daily, 2016). Wanshan opened as a park in 2019 and contains a mining hall, canteen, pits, and former warehouses repurposed as exhibition halls. Trip.com suggests that tourists traverse the park via walkways bolted into the rock walls of the valley, portions of which have glass bottoms through which visitors look down on the forests below. Wanshan, like Suichang, includes hotel facilities and leisure attractions. It has a quadruple A rating.

Table 1 shows Trip.com’s records for the number of negative reviews per park and the total number of reviews at the time this study was conducted. Trip.com is a multinational one-stop travel application offering reviews, information, and booking services (Trip.com Group, 2022). It resembles TripAdvisor, the world’s largest travel site and a common source of online reviews for researchers (e.g. Hodsdon, 2020; Soltani-Nejad et al., 2024; Vásquez, 2012). Scholars investigating tourist experiences in China regularly use Trip.com as a data source (e.g. Li et al., 2021, 2023). User names and the language of posts indicate that the site is primarily patronised by Chinese tourists.

Table 1. Negative reviews per park and total reviews on Trip.com.

Name of park	Number of negative reviews	Total number of reviews
Jinchuan	2	49
Yeshan	5	34
Kailuan	13	722
Jiayang	2	48
Jinhuagong	2	114
Suichang	23	587
Wanshan	28	514

For our analysis, we gathered all the reviews that Trip.com classified as negative using manual ‘cut and paste’ techniques to transfer the reviews from the online site to a MSWord document saved on OneDrive. We compiled the negative reviews into a table organised by park that listed the date each review was posted (2015–2023), the date we accessed the review (6–12 June 2023), the original review in Chinese, an English translation by Author A, and the numeric rating (1–5) awarded the park by the reviewer. Following Trip.com’s praxis, ‘negative’ reviews were all those awarded a rating of 1 or 2. Of the 75 collected, the language of one review (rated 1) suggested the visitor’s experience was positive, and the language of a second (rated 2) was neutral or mildly negative. Contents of the remaining 73 reviews with ratings of 1–2 indicated that the tourists were unhappy with their visits. We read all online reviews from Jinhuagong and Kailuan and did not find any reviews with ratings 3–5 where the reviewer expressed disappointment or dissatisfaction. Based on this sample, we take the reviews gathered from the seven parks to include the totality of unhappy park visitors who posted on Trip.com.

After assembling the reviews by park and creating the table, we read through all the reviews and discussed their contents. We coded for themes by combining deductive and inductive approaches, drawing some codes from the literature on tourist experiences, and identifying other codes based on the topics and language of the reviews. For example, the literature on negative tourism experiences indicated that we should code for overcrowding, long queues, and overcommercialisation. Based on the contents of the reviews themselves, we determined to code on ‘lack’ or deficiency and the dominant responses to negative tourism experiences, namely to vent or share, warn or protect, or punish.

As a data source on tourist experiences, online reviews have their advantages and disadvantages. They are accessible to anyone with access to the internet, tend to be about visitor experiences and perceptions, reflect the online reviewer’s concerns and priorities rather than the researcher’s, and avoid the self-selection bias of survey research (Hodsdon, 2020; Zhuo & Wang, 2022). However, little is known about who writes and who does not write. Whereas a survey researcher could link visitor experiences to demographic information (e.g. Prentice et al., 1993), the researcher studying online reviews is limited to the account that the author chooses to provide. Methods such as interviews or participant-observation allow the researcher to probe the research participant’s experiences by asking for additional explanations or posing follow-up questions; this is not possible in studies of user-generated content. There are also ethical concerns. Any given individual who publishes an online review may not have considered that the text could be used for research. In this study, we enhance the anonymity of reviewers by excluding all personal data, dates, and park names from our presentation.

Results

The median length of the original Chinese texts was 30–70 words, with the shortest five words (‘really really really really average’) and the longest 320 words. The dominant themes in the reviews pertain to sights and service, reviewers’ emotional responses to their negative experiences, and the idiomatic expressions they used to express themselves. Most reviews address all three categories.

Sights & service

Table 2 summarises the complaints in the reviews. A total of 44 reviews described a single experience that went wrong and 29 recounted multiple experiences. Four were general criticisms of the parks, e.g. ‘It really is very lacking’.

Table 2. Categories of complaints from the mine parks.

Category	Number
Nothing to see/no view/it’s just a pit/it’s just a cave	38
Poor/deficient service	17
Too commercial	7
Bad management	6
Unspecified negative experience	4
Overcrowded	3

‘Nothing to see’ was the most common complaint. More than half of the reviewers wrote that the parks had ‘nothing to see’, ‘nothing is there’, ‘the scenery is poor/deficient/junk’, and/or that the site was ‘just a big pit’ or ‘just a cave’. For example, one wrote,

Absolutely not worth it, there is nothing here of the least interest, a very low value for your money. The Tang Dynasty mine is just a cave, the Ming Dynasty mine is also just a cave with very little lighting, the little train is really small and you cannot see anything. If a person could give zero points for a rating I would do that without hesitation. For 120 yuan [ticket price] you should just forget it, even 20 yuan would be a waste of money.

The second most common complaint was poor service. Tourists said staff had ‘a poor attitude’, were ‘inhospitable’, and ‘hated tourists’. Many described specific examples of inadequate service, which ranged from a lack of staff (e.g. ‘no one is there to direct you’) to staff who did not do their jobs properly, by for instance failing to answer visitor questions, organise guests into queues, ensure that passengers on park vehicles had seats, turn on the air conditioner, or wait for ticketed passengers. For example, one reviewer recounted,

I went to [place name] National Mine Park in June. It cost 130 yuan for a ticket, 100 yuan for student tickets, and people who are disabled have to pay to enter. And then, when you do enter, there is really nothing to see, I mean seriously, there is really nothing, just a mountain landscape, and then a few attractions but you have to pay an extra charge for them. Basically it is exactly like walking around in an ordinary park, no difference from an ordinary park whatsoever. And the park staff, I got the impression that they had an attitude and no energy. If you ask a question, then you get a totally inhospitable reply. What the hell did I pay 130 yuan for?? I don’t require that you are super-enthusiastic and hospitable, but at the very least I expect that you don’t have that kind of attitude and lack of energy. I mean, if you are going to be like that, refund my money! [Reader,] Don’t go to this place! If [place name] wants to develop the tourist industry, well let me tell you, they are never going to be able to get it to develop if they act like this, it is totally ineffective. What I want to know is, how could this place possibly get a 4A tourist rating? After I completed my visit, well it really made me totally furious.

A few tourists claimed that staff intentionally sought to cheat them. For example, one wrote that the staff purposefully gave him/her counterfeit bills when refunding a deposit for a recorded tour. Two recounted stories of a staff member tricking them into writing a wish in a book, and then charging them for it. Another described being encouraged to pose for ‘free’ photographs and then being forced to purchase them. Such stories were often linked to strong emotions (see below).

cA small number of reviewers mentioned other problems: that the parks were overly commercial, poorly managed, ‘lacking’ (unspecified), or overcrowded. Complaints about management included inadequate information about opening hours, travel, or parking, inadequate signage, and ‘chaos’. For example, a reviewer reported, ‘The management of this tourist attraction does not take responsibility and get things in order, especially the queue to get on the bus, everyone was pushing! I have no words to describe it, it was so unbelievably deficient’. Finally, a few simply described their experiences as wanting. For example, one stated, ‘One word: deficient, two words: very deficient, three words: very very deficient. It is not at all like a 4A tourist attraction, and the entrance fee is simply not worth it’.

Emotional responses

A total of 73 of the 75 reviews contained language suggesting that their authors responded negatively to their mine park visits. Some reviewers explicitly stated that they were angry, dissatisfied, ‘could not believe’ their experience, or that their expectations were not met. In other cases, reviewers shared their disgruntlement (‘really really really really average’). While we recognise that other researchers might interpret the reviews differently than we did, when we compared our independent coding of the reviewers’ emotional responses, we identified three interconnected reasons for writing. Reviewers wanted to: (a) vent or share how they felt about the parks; (b) warn or protect others, often with the explicit intention of preventing visits; and/or (c) punish or exact revenge by calling the staff names or issuing veiled threats (e.g. ‘lady, I remember you!’). 69 reviews contained rhetoric marking two or three of these responses. Table 3 classifies the reviews according to the three emotional responses we saw in the reviews.

Table 3. Types of emotional responses the reviews.

Emotion	Number of reviews
Vent/share	65
Warn/protect	48
Punish/exact revenge	45

Nearly all reviewers shared their disappointment, dissatisfaction, and/or anger with the parks. They called the parks ‘really inadequate’ or ‘extremely lacking’, ‘very disappointing’ or ‘extremely disappointing’, ‘the worst scenic spot I have ever visited’, ‘a really rotten attraction’, ‘garbage scenery’, etc. Some expressed disbelief about the parks’ high ratings from the National Tourist Administration. As one wrote, ‘I have serious suspicions about how this place could possibly have been awarded a 4A rating’. Several stated that visiting the parks made them angry, or that others would feel angry if they visited. For example, one reviewer explained that s/he often took out-of-town visitors to the mine park. Because of this, s/he had visited the park many times. S/he continued, ‘Each time I have visited it has been worse than the previous time, and this time it really made me angry’.

Many tourists indicated which specific features of the sites they found upsetting. Often this was the lack of a view, as in this post:

A cheat of a little train, it cost 50 yuan for a ticket, I originally thought that the small train would enter the mine pit. In fact, it was just one round trip on a track. Go out for 20 minutes, come back for 20 minutes. All along the journey all you can see is rice fields.

Some visitors expressed annoyance with site policies. For example, one group visited a park that required tourists to purchase a ticket to enter the mine pit. Among this party of three, one person decided not to enter because of a long queue. The reviewer felt strongly that this person should be able to return his or her ticket, but the staff refused this request. ‘Why can’t you refund this ticket?’ s/he complained.

Several reviewers were angered by the ‘poor attitudes’ of staff. A number recounted stories of particular interactions, as with this tourist:

I visited the mine park today, a Monday, and looked around. The park itself is free and the two museums charge entrance fees. At the entrance to the park, a museum staff member stopped me and said, ‘To enter the park you need to buy a museum ticket, but the museum is closed on Mondays, so no one is allowed to enter’. You don’t get to enter a free park without buying a museum ticket? That is crazy! I asked, ‘Isn't it the case that the park is free?’ The staff member said, ‘To enter the park you have to buy a museum ticket, if you do not buy a museum ticket you cannot enter the park!’ So then I asked, ‘What is inside?’ She answered, ‘I don't know, the park leadership does not allow us to wander about inside’. After that I entered the park from the toilet. I ran into another staff member who said, ‘There is absolutely nothing in here, please leave by the same way that you came in’. I mean, I looked it up on the internet and thought that it looked pretty good. Then I came here and experienced the hateful way that the staff treats the tourists and tries to stop tourists from visiting.

More than half of the reviewers tried to warn others away from the mine parks or protect them from negative experiences. Such reviewers advised readers to avoid the park. They used phrases such as ‘not recommended’, ‘definitely do not come’, ‘I recommend that everyone avoid visiting’, ‘I advise everyone not to come’, etc. Many described the park as ‘a cheat’, ‘kind of a fraud’, or ‘a trap’. Some talked about being ‘misled’ or ‘deceived’. For example, one wrote, ‘Average, very average. We were misled, this is not a place that should be visited, it is only a couple of caves, it really has no scenery at all’.

A few visitors warned readers in relation to specific concerns. For example, one wrote,

This tourist attraction has quite a few people, the management is a disaster, the whole place is littered with garbage. There are also a huge number of vendors. This is a really difficult place for an elderly person to enjoy a tourist experience.

Another recounted, ‘You definitely do not want to swing on the swing, the space is way too small, my child was using the swing and hit the one next to it and got a big bruise’.

Revenge was another response we saw in the reviews, often accompanied by language that talked about the parks as traps or cheats. Proclaimed one visitor, ‘One word, trap! These people are playing the tourists as if they are fools!’ Another warned potential visitors by using a proverb that depicted the park as a lawless place, writing: ‘Everywhere you go is full of lures, the whole place is commercial, the mountain is high and the emperor is far away, the whole thing is really lacking, you will only do it once’.

Some reviewers wrote that the site staff/management should feel ashamed. Several used accusatory language about specific staff. Some called the staff names, such as this reviewer who admonished the park managers, ‘do not let old rat shit ruin a good bowl of soup’. Others described particular staff as ‘hateful’ or ‘evil’. Still others identified the staff who lured them into participating in fee-paying activities without making them aware that they would be charged.

Idioms

Reviewers used similar expressions to talk about what was wrong with the mine parks. We summarise the dominant idioms in Table 4. Rhetoric employing the language of money to express that the parks were deficient was the most common, followed by language describing the parks as uninteresting or lacking distinction. A third way of talking about the parks, often combined with the other two, was to use a language of ‘lack’ or deficiency. Finally, a significant minority of reviewers described the parks as a ‘cheat’ or ‘trap’.

Table 4. Idioms.

Phrase	Number
Not worth the money/a waste of money/bad value for the money/too expensive	31
Boring/uninteresting/no flavour/no fun/nothing special	20
Poor/lacking/deficient	19
A cheat/trap/fraud	18

Many reviewers described their experiences by using the language of money. They described visiting as ‘wasting money’, ‘not worth spending the money’, ‘absolutely not worth the price’, ‘low value for the money’, or ‘too expensive’. For example, one wrote, ‘Not worth it, the entry tickets are too expensive and the scenery is too poor. Not one thing here has any value at all. Poor poor poor’. A number expressed disbelief about how much they were charged to visit the parks, given their experiences of the parks as deficient. For example, a reviewer wrote, ‘This tourist attraction costs 130 yuan to enter. I cannot believe that someone dared to charge that kind of price’.

Tourists who used monetary idioms indicated a gap between what they thought the mine parks would be and what their experiences were. Some did this in general terms, others provided more detailed accounts. For example, one wrote,

I was attracted to come here by the cute new little train, but unfortunately the gap between appearances and reality was just too big. All along the way the environment was really bad, garbage was right beside the railroad tracks, it was such a cheat, and yet there were still so many people. It was really hard to walk, the road was so terrible I wanted to die. I recommend to everyone that you don’t visit, it is a waste of money and time. From the way that the train looks, it seems like it is going to be good, but the scenery on the way is just too lacking.

A way of expressing disappointment or dissatisfaction was to describe the parks as ‘boring’, ‘totally uninteresting’, ‘without feeling’, ‘lacking any distinctive characteristics’, or, as in the epigraph, ‘completely without flavour’. Some connected this assessment to money. For example, one reviewer wrote,

This site, when you compare it to others, it has absolutely nothing interesting. It costs a lot and there are only two attractions. You have to pay extra when you enter them. I think you are better off going to [name of another heritage location]. At that site there is no entrance fee.

A third idiom found in many reviews is a term meaning ‘lacking’, ‘inadequate’, or ‘deficient’ (差). Tourists used this term to describe the scenery, staff attitudes, experiences in general, and their overall view of the parks. For example, one wrote,

I review it as lacking! It was not just me who felt this way, on the way back everyone who was in the train car felt exactly the same way. What a cheat. I really cannot recommend anyone to visit here.

Describing the parks as a ‘cheat’, ‘fraud’, or ‘trap’ was an expression used by a substantial minority of reviewers. Some authors may have chosen to use this term because it has a direct linguistic relation to the Chinese term for pit. One reviewer explicitly played with this relationship, writing ‘Mine pit, crazy trap (矿坑,狂坑)! I do not advise you to visit, it is a tourist destination based on an old industrial area, it has absolutely no amenities or amusements whatsoever’. Authors who evaluated the parks as a ‘cheat’ linked this opinion to their experience of the park as deficient and/or their view that the park was ‘not worth the money’.

Discussion

When a visit to a mine park does not offer an opportunity to gaze at scenery or objects that tourists regard as extraordinary, they become disgruntled. Tourists expect mining heritage to include a sight. Research on mining heritage indicates visual spectacle is central to positive experiences of mining tourism (e.g. Armis & Kanegae, 2020; Frantál & Urbánková, 2017; Kotašková, 2022; Metsaots et al., 2015). Like visitors to other heritage sites, mining tourists expect to see ‘something’ (Hodsdon, 2020; Nawijn & Biran, 2019). They react with disappointment and anger when they do not. That so many negative reviewers wrote that the mine parks had ‘nothing to see’ or described what they saw as ‘boring’ supports Ramírez-Gutiérrez et al.’s contention that the visual is ‘essential’ to the experience of heritage (2018).

Considered in light of the broader scholarship, our results indicate that what constitutes a sight for a mining tourist varies. Many tourists experience visual spectacle at former mines. For example, visitors to Taiwanese salt mines report being impressed by the landscape (Wu et al., 2015). Tourists at open pits in the Czech Republic regard former mines as worth gazing upon (Frantál & Urbánková, 2017). Visitors to an Estonian oil shale mine notice the singularity of the industrial landscape, even when they prefer gazing upon ‘nature’ (Metsaots et al., 2015). Indeed, research examining online reviews from PRC mine parks, including two of the parks studied here, demonstrates that many visitors to these sites find the sight of industrial mine pits, infrastructure, and machinery impressive and worth seeing (Gillette & Boyd, 2024).

Two possible explanations for why disgruntled tourists find nothing to see at mine parks can be derived from the literature on mining tourism and heritage tourism. One potential explanation is that a mine becomes a ‘sight’ when a visitor is able to put him – or herself in the position of a miner. Mine park visitors who have family histories of mining, or who take guided tours with former miners, enjoy visiting former mines (Gouthro & Palmer, 2011; Kesküla, 2013). These tourists express wonder and appreciation for the labour of mining, suggesting that they ‘see’ former mines as not merely ‘holes in the ground’, but rather caves or pits carved out by human labour, with a slew of attendant risks.

A second, and related, potential explanation of what went wrong for the disgruntled tourists points to their knowledge about mines, or lack thereof. Most scholars accept that tourists ‘know’ the sites they visit through public and commercial discourse (e.g. Knobloch et al., 2014; Picard, 2012; Soltani-Nejad et al., 2024). Some have found strong links between tourists’ knowledge and enjoyment (e.g. Derbaix & Gombault, 2016; Desforges, 2001; Hodsdon, 2020, 2022). For example, visitors who have deep knowledge of Cézanne find his empty artist’s studio to be worth seeing (Derbaix & Gombault, 2016). The unhappy tourists who complained about the mine parks having nothing to see may have been influenced by other exemplars of mines or simulacra (see Hodsdon, 2020). The images of mines that they had in their mind’s eye shaped what they thought they would see. Alternatively, disappointed mine park visitors may lack visual referents entirely. Insufficient knowledge may prevent these tourists from ‘transforming’ the hole or cave into a ‘space for the imagination to work’ (Hodsdon, 2020; see also Ramírez-Gutiérrez et al., 2018).

In addition to a (missing) sight, a second factor causing visitor displeasure is inadequate service. Complaints about service at the parks strongly resembled one another, indicating that visitors’ expectations were not site-specific, but rather related to tourism as consumption (see Vergopoulos, 2016). Mine park tourists expect staff to be hospitable, available, and knowledgeable, as found in other tourism studies (Alexander et al., 2018; Kim et al., 2021, 2022; Kirilenko & Stepchenkova, 2019; Soltani-Nejad et al., 2024; Su & Teng, 2018).

Overcrowding, overcommercialisation, and bad management were not common complaints in the online reviews from the seven mine parks. This type of problem occupied a small minority of reviewers in our sample. Here, the mine parks diverge from other studies of visitor dissatisfaction, including in the Chinese context (Alexander et al., 2018; Kirilenko & Stepchenkova, 2019; Su & Teng, 2018).

By posting online reviews, mine park visitors share their experiences with an audience. In our sample, displeasure, anger, disbelief, and other negative emotions were central to how tourists made meaning of their visits. This finding supports tourism scholars who argue that negative emotions are as important to making meaning in tourism as positive ones (Nawijn & Biran, 2019; Robinson, 2012). That the reviewers not only experienced negative emotions but chose to express them on the internet also supports arguments that connect tourism emotions to action (Robinson, 2012).

Many negative reviewers sought to protect others from falling into the same ‘trap’ as they did. This marks their belief that those who read online reviews share the reviewer’s expectations and values. Here, our findings support the argument that online reviewers imagine other tourists to be very similar to themselves (Gillette & Boyd, 2024). They not only ‘consider themselves part of a community of travellers’ (Ramírez-Gutiérrez et al., 2018, p. 636; see also Soltani-Nejad et al., 2024), they presume that the members of the community experience tourism as they themselves do.

In our sample, reviewers frequently chose the language of money to convey their disappointment and/or dissatisfaction with the mine parks. This practice has been termed ‘value for money’ in the scholarly literature (Desforges, 2001; Zhuo & Wang, 2022). One interpretation of this pattern is that the tourists were ‘price sensitive’, like the budget travellers in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen described by Zhuo and Wang (2022). However, many other aspects of the reviews suggest that financial constraints were not the primary reason for this ‘money talk’. For example, numerous reviewers referred to other leisure travel experiences within China and abroad. They compared park deficiencies to more satisfactory travel experiences and recommended different destinations to readers. Some of the reviewers described driving private vehicles to the parks and combining their visits with other forms of consumption. This suggests that the language of the parks ‘not being worth the money’ may not have been primarily about visitors’ economic resources.

Money in tourism is not only about exchange value, it also conveys symbolic meanings. For example, Desforges (2001) has shown that tourists’ ‘money talk’ signals their imaginations, self-perceptions, and moral values. Among the long-haul travellers to Peru that he studied, ‘value for money’ was not only about the quality of the product, or the tourist’s budget, but also about the tourist’s expertise. Independent tourists with ‘insider knowledge’ about prices felt they had ‘authentic’ encounters, while package travellers, who did not worry about how much their trip cost, were also less concerned with encountering the ‘real Peru’ than having a ‘hedonistic good time’ (Desforges, 2001, 359-362). In our case, characterising the parks as ‘not worth the money’ seems to function primarily as a communicative device. Here, we note that research that examines positive reviews of China’s mine parks does not describe reviewers talking about the parks as good ‘value for money’ (Gillette & Boyd, 2024; Tang & Liang, 2023). If tourists’ experiences of mine parks were informed by an internal money-experience exchange rate, satisfied consumers would be just as likely to talk about money as dissatisfied ones.

Negative reviews of Chinese mine parks frequently used a language of ‘lack’ or deficiency. This mode of expression has not previously been identified in the literature on mining tourism or heritage tourism, nor has it been discussed in tourism scholarship based on data from Chinese sources (e.g. Kim et al., 2021; Kirilenko & Stepchenkova, 2019; Li et al., 2023; Tang & Liang, 2023; Wu et al., 2015; Xie, 2015). Time and again, reviewers talked about the sights, the staff, and the parks in general as ‘wanting’ or ‘poor’. Rather than describing their visits as ‘bad’ (in Chinese, literally ‘not good’), the reviewers selected a term that indicated a deficiency or absence. Previous research has argued that tourists consciously choose which words they use to talk about their experiences (Knobloch et al., 2014; Zhuo & Wang, 2022). Tourists differentiate between words and specific terms mark specific sensory and emotional engagements. In our case, reviewers’ choice of a language of ‘lack’ suggests that when mining heritage goes wrong, something is missing. Such a gap could potentially be filled or remedied. In the case of a sight, a tour guide may be able to help visitors see the mines differently (e.g. Derbaix & Gombault, 2016). When it comes to service, better-trained staff could address what online reviewers found wanting.

Idioms describing the mine parks as ‘a waste of money’, boring, lacking distinction, and inadequate convey a reviewer’s evaluation. They also imply that the reviewer has had other, better recreational experiences. These idioms not only mark the parks as deficient, but they construct the reviewer as a tourist who ‘knows better’. Through such language, sometimes used in conjunction with explicit comparisons to other tourist experiences, the reviewer positions him – or herself as someone who is knowledgeable and whose evaluation should carry weight in the community of travellers. Other scholars have argued that online reviewers assume an authoritative position in relation to those who read their ‘travellers’ tales’ (Jameson, 2017; see also Ramírez-Gutiérrez et al., 2018; Vásquez, 2012). This interpretation is apt in our case. Reviewers construct themselves as having not only information about the parks but also the expertise to assess them.

About one-quarter of the reviewers used the language of cheating and deception to describe their visits. When the train did not enter the mine pit or the scenery was not spectacular, tourists felt ‘cheated’. However, very few tourists described active attempts to defraud them at the mine parks. Here our results diverge significantly from Kim et al.’s study of Chinese travelogues, where 40% of the sample linked negative experiences to unethical behaviour (2021).

Conclusion

In this study, we have investigated tourists’ negative stories about Chinese mining heritage by scrutinising online reviews from a Chinese-language tourism platform. The PRC’s initiative to transform shuttered mines into heritage parks was relatively short-lived, but it was both extensive and expensive. What visitors make of these mine parks has barely begun to be researched (cf. Gillette & Boyd, 2024; Tang & Liang, 2023). Indeed, the whole field of mining heritage tourism has been criticised for being ‘Eurocentralised’ (Eklund et al., 2021). Our investigation works against this trend by adding another non-European case to enrich our understandings of this global phenomenon.

Our finding that mine park visitors want a sight is of practical use to site managers and tourism operators. The language of deficiency with which online reviewers talk about their disappointment with the visual aspects of the mine parks suggests this is a problem that could be remedied. According to Robinson, the ‘site/sight of difference for the tourist’ depends upon the ‘accumulated and cumulative layering of part thoughts and visions, partly processed, partly mediated, partly remembered and partly forgotten – and all derived’ (2012, p. 30). Mining tourists who find the ‘site/sight’ of industrial mining wanting may lack an accumulation of thoughts, visions, and mediations about industrial resource extraction. Mine park managers and tourism operators could address this gap by offering more knowledge at the parks, including through tour guide services, to compensate.

Tourists who devote time and energy to ‘ranting’ (Vásquez, 2012) about their experiences in reviews feel strongly that something has gone wrong with their tourism experience. Here both the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of tourist complaints are important. Knobloch et al. (2014) contend that researchers have ‘misunderstood’ the nature of tourism experiences because they have failed to attend to the meanings that tourists attach to specific words. In our case, ‘money talk’ by disgruntled tourists deserves more attention. Complaints about ‘value for money’ may tell us something about the financial constraints of particular travellers (e.g. Zhuo & Wang, 2022), yet our data suggests that such a mode of expression is not simply ‘about the money’. Reviewers who complain about how much they have paid for the mine parks in relation to what they got out of them do not appear to be budget travellers. Instead, money talk is an effective shorthand for communicating disappointment and dissatisfaction with a heritage destination. It also conveys the impression that the reviewer is an experienced traveller who ‘knows’ about value of tourism.

According to Ashworth, ‘what do the tourists want to have?’ should be a central question for tourism researchers (2010, p. 281). While scholars in heritage tourism have taken steps to answer this question (e.g. Derbaix & Gombault, 2016; Su & Teng, 2018), it has rarely been addressed with respect to mining heritage. Our study of negative online reviews from seven PRC mine parks begins to offer some answers. Chinese mine park visitors want mining heritage to include a sight and park staff to achieve minimum levels of hospitality, availability, and knowledgeability. When this goes wrong, they are disappointed, dissatisfied, and angry. At least some – those who post online negative reviews – vent or share their emotions, warn others, and punish site staff and managers. While there is no ‘universal recipe for memorable or extraordinary experiences’ among tourists (Knobloch et al., 2014, p. 602), case studies can teach us about what particular kinds of tourists want.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their perceptive and helpful suggestions about how to improve the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond: [Grant Number P18-0515:1].

Notes on contributors

Maris Boyd Gillette

Maris Boyd Gillette is Professor of social anthropology at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Since the late 1990s, she has published extensively on China’s transition to capitalism, with particular attention to changing production and consumption patterns and state-society relations. In recent years she has conducted research on industrial heritage in China, first in Jingdezhen, and more recently related to national mine parks. Gillette is principal investigator of a multi-year research project on Chinese mining heritage and tourism funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. Other recent research concerns Swedish fishers, coastal communities and alternative seafood networks.

Eric Boyd

Eric Boyd is a Research Associate at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg. He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology, specialising in extractivism, heritage, and future imaginaries. He is an active member of the Young Researchers Network at ZiRS research centre in Halle, Germany, and the DurhamArctic Research Group, Durham, UK.