Mining for tourists in China: a digital ethnography of user-generated content from coal mining heritage parks

ABSTRACT Mine parks and industrial heritage are relatively recent tourism phenomena, emerging in Europe and North America during the mid-twentieth century. In the People’s Republic of China, government officials undertook large-scale promotion of mining heritage between 2005 and 2021, when 88 former state-sector mines were designated national parks. From an official vantage point, transforming former extractive industries into heritage sites helped communities negatively affected by the social and environmental legacies of mining and mine closure to pursue a future in China’s lucrative tourism sector. To date, this endeavour has been little studied, with research on visitors’ experiences particularly limited. In this article, we interrogate Chinese tourists’ responses to national mining heritage by analysing online user-generated content (tourist reviews) from three coal-mines-turned-heritage parks. We ask how visitors made meaning at these sites, and whether and how the mining tourism imaginaries they co-constructed in online reviews resembled visitor experiences of mining heritage elsewhere. How Chinese tourists respond to the parks not only affects the state’s ability to achieve its development goals, but also informs perceptions of mining, energy production, and tourism more broadly. Such perceptions have implications for sustainable resource and energy use.


Introduction
Mine parks and industrial heritage are relatively recent phenomena in the global history of heritage and tourism.Early efforts to preserve what we might today call cultural heritage began in the 1830s in France, with the UK following shortly thereafter, while the first movements to preserve natural heritage originated in the US a few decades later (Harrison, 2013, pp. 43-46;Lowenthal, 2006).Industrial heritage emerged about 100 years later in Europe and North America, with the Ruhr region in Germany an early and globally influential mining heritage site (Berger et al., 2017;Berkenbosch et al., 2022;Harrison, 2013, pp. 79-84;Lu et al., 2020).In the People's Republic of China, officials began promoting industrial heritage in the 1990s, largely as a response to largescale deindustrialization as China shrunk the size of its planned economy (Gillette, 2017;Lu et al., 2020;Yang, 2017).Most industrial heritage in China is linked to urban redevelopment of former manufacturing sites (ibid.).However, between 2005 and 2021, the Ministry of Land Resources turned 88 former state-sector mines into national mine parks (Song, 2017;Wang et al., 2020;Zhao et al., 2020).
By transforming defunct and downsizing sites of industrial resource extraction into heritage destinations, central government and local officials intended to reroute some of China's more than four billion annual domestic tourist arrivals, and the billions of yuan 1 they generated in tourism revenue, into communities suffering the socio-economic and environmental consequences of mining and mine closure (Song, 2017; see also Audin, 2020;Wang et al., 2012Wang et al., , 2020)).Repurposing mines into heritage parks entailed combining 'the historical value, technical value, social significance and scientific research value of the old industrial and mining areas' with 'tourism elements such as eating, toilet facilities, traveling, purchasing, and entertainment in order to develop new types of experience, interactivity, rich cultural connotations, and unique entertainment tourism products' (Wang et al., 2020, p. 3875).With 'exceptional financial support from the Chinese [central] government and local governments,' somebut not allof these former mines have become successful tourist attractions (Zhao et al., 2020(Zhao et al., , p. 1062(Zhao et al., , 1064)).
In this article, we interrogate Chinese tourists' responses to national mining heritage by analysing UGC (tourist reviews) from three coal-mines-turned-heritage parks.We use digital ethnography to explore tourists' texts and photographs posted on the Chinese travel site Trip.com.We ask how mine park visitors made meaning at these tourist destinations, and whether and how the mining tourism imaginary they co-constructed online resembles visitor experiences at mining heritage sites located elsewhere.As other research indicates, how Chinese tourists respond to the PRC's national mine parks affects the state's ability to achieve its development goals (Tang & Liang, 2023;Zhao et al., 2020).Equally if not more important, what Chinese tourists take away from visiting defunct coal mines also has implications for sustainable resource and energy use, while shedding light on tourism and mining heritage as global social practices.
In the following sections, we provide context about the PRC's national mine parks, review scholarship on UGC in tourism and heritage research, and present the central findings from the literature on visitor experiences' of mining tourism.Next comes a description of our research materials and methods.We then present the dominant themes found in the Trip.comreviews.A discussion of the coal-mining tourist imaginary in the online reviews, and how it relates to other research on mining heritage and tourism UGC, follows.We conclude by reflecting on the contributions and implications of our study.

China's national mine parks
Inoperative state-owned mines are found all over the PRC (e.g.Audin, 2020;Hu & Yang, 2018;Stanway, 2016;Wang et al., 2020;Zhao et al., 2020).Many have been inactive since the late 1900s and early 2000s, when China's central government reduced the planned track of the economy, causing industrial bankruptcies and mass unemployment (see Frazier, 2006;Gillette, 2016;Qian, 2003).Some coal mines survived these challenges only to falter when the price of coal fell in 2013 (Audin, 2020).In February 2016, the PRC downsized the coal industry, laying off 1.3 million workers, reducing production capacity, and closing mines (ibid.;China Daily, 2019).Accompanying this were measures to encourage Chinese households to move away from coal toward cleaner energy (Li et al., 2021).
Scholarship based on UGC has been published in the fields of tourism and hospitality (e.g.Pearce & Wu, 2018;Qi & Chen, 2019;Stoleriu et al., 2019) museums and heritage (e.g.Alexander et al., 2018;Carter, 2016;Hodsdon, 2020;Moskwa, 2022), and nature conservation (e.g.Egresi & Prakash, 2019;Hausmann et al., 2020).The majority of researchers gather UGC via a computer algorithm and 'mine' it for word frequency or image content to get at the visitor experience or heritage communication (e.g.Alexander et al., 2018;Carter, 2016;Deng et al., 2019;Egresi & Prakash, 2019;Hausmann et al., 2020;Hodsdon, 2020;Lupu et al., 2019;Qi & Chen, 2019).Sometimes big data approaches are combined with methods such as interviews, participant-observation, or focus groups.For example, Wartmann and Mackaness interviewed visitors at two Scottish parks to collect 'natural language terms' that were then applied to Flickr tags and coordinates in order to map where visitors experienced tranquillity (Wartmann & Mackaness, 2020).Studies of UGC that are not based on data mining techniques but instead employ manual interpretive methods are uncommon.To take one example, Varnajot (2020) adopted a phenomenological approach to study 100 Instagram photographs taken by sojourners entering the Arctic Circle.He identified three dominant tropesthe frozen fairytale, realisation of the self, and summer in non-summerwhich collectively constructed visits to the Arctic as a 'last chance,' a fetishistic encounter with the 'end of the world,' magically and paradoxically experienced and survived.
Chinese tourist UGC is relatively understudied (Liang et al., 2017), although big data research that mines UGC, including on Chinese-language platforms, is beginning to emerge (e.g.Deng et al., 2019;Li et al., 2023;Zhuo & Wang, 2022).We contribute to this field by using digital ethnography to scrutinise visitors' texts and photographs from three national coal mine parks on the Chinese travel site Trip.com.Studying visual and written UGC together is unusual in UGC-based tourism and heritage research, perhaps because most studies rely on computer algorithms that target either text or image, but not both.At the time of writing, no peer-reviewed qualitative research investigating Chinese tourists' experiences of domestic heritage destinations based on visual and written UGC had been published.
The scholarship on mining tourism, like research on industrial heritage more broadly, indicates a widespread tendency for mining heritage sites to focus on positive representations, industrial high points, and what Pretes, following Nye, has called the 'technological sublime' (Berger et al., 2017;Cameron, 2010;de Bary, 2004;Pretes, 2002;Price & Ronck, 2018;Stanton, 2006).Some scholars find that mining heritage recruits support for extractive industries (Price & Ronck, 2018).Only rarely do tourists at mine parks link their experiences to broader socio-political concerns such as the social consequences of deindustrialisation (Prentice et al., 1998) or mining's negative environmental impacts (Frantál & Urbánková, 2017).Given that 'industrial attractions inform perspectives on the use of unsustainable resources' such as coal, scholars have called attention to this trend (Price & Rhodes, 2022, p. 841).Mining heritage could raise questions about sustainability, environmental protection, and energy use, but the scholarship on visitor experiences suggests it typically does not.

Materials and methods
UGC for this study comes from Trip.com, a multinational one-stop travel application offering reviews, information, and booking services (Trip.com Group, 2022).Founded in 1999, Trip.com was acquired by the Chinese online travel agency Ctrip in 2017 (O'Neill, 2017).Trip.com closely resembles TripAdvisor, the world's largest travel site and a common source of UGC for researchers.TripAdvisor has been banned in China since 2020 but has had a strategic partnership with Trip.com since 2019 (BBC News, 2020;TripAdvisor, 2021).Scholars report that Trip.com is 'a reliable data source' and there is no evidence that UGC on the site is censored or manipulated (Li et al., 2023, p. 6).
We investigated visual and written UGC from Jinhuagong National Mine Park in Shanxi Province, Kailuan Mine Park in Hebei Province, and Haizhou Open Pit Mine Park in Liaoning Province.All are in North China, where the bulk of China's coal industry has developed.Some scholars call for these sites' integration into 'coal mine tourism industrial heritage tourism clusters,' resembling regional industrial heritage in the Ruhr, Manchester, and Lorraine (Wang et al., 2020).Evidence from Trip.com suggests similarities between the parks: each contains an exhibition hall or museum, open-air displays of industrial machinery and art (mostly sculpture), and access to a physical mine.Haizhou is an exposed pit, whereas Jinhuagong and Kailuan are closed (underground).This divergence shapes the reviews, as we describe below.
Jinhuagong, on the Jinbei coal field in Shanxi, is part of Datong municipality.It opened as a mine park in 2012 after a ¥463 million cleanup and landscaping (Audin, 2020).Originally developed into a centre of coal production during Japanese occupation in the 1930s, Datong continued to be an important coal producer from the PRC's founding (1949) into the twenty-first century (ibid.).Jinhuagong belongs to a state-owned mining enterprise.Local coal miners and journalists state that it receives few tourists (Audin, 2020;Economist, 2015).
Kailuan Mine Park, owned by the state-run Kailuan Group, is located on a large coalfield near Tangshan municipality in Hebei (Zhou & Wang, 2014;Zhu et al., 2014).Industrial mining began here in the late nineteenth century and the area is still regarded as a major coal transport hub (Yin, 2022).While all of China's former mines suffer environmental degradation (see Hu et al., 2012;Zhao et al., 2020;Zhou & Wang, 2014), Tangshan is especially renowned for environmental problems, which the government has been addressing since 2008 (Hu et al., 2012;Liu et al., 2021;Xinhua, 2020;Zhou & Wang, 2014).Kailuan is about two hours driving distance from the megacities of Beijing and Tianjin, unlike the other two mine parks which are in more remote areas.As a result Kailuan is more reviewed than the other parks (see Table 1).
The Haizhou Open Pit Mine Park is part of Fuxin municipality, Liaoning province.Initially operated by the Japanese, Haizhou was a coal mine from 1940 to 2005 (Zhong, 2017).Its open pit is described as being is as wide as Manhattan and deeper than the Chrysler building (Kaiman, 2012).Fuxin was once known for its coal and power production, receiving major investments from the central government under the planned economy (Hu & Yang, 2018).As the state sector has shrunk, Fuxin and Liaoning province more generally have suffered economic decline (Hu & Yang, 2018;Zhong, 2017).Journalists report local skepticism about the area's tourism potential (Kaiman, 2012).Table 1 summarises the total numbers of reviews and photographs about these three parks posted on Trip.com as of 31 January 2023.All texts were written in Chinese and reviewers' usernames suggest that the authors were domestic tourists (see also Liang et al., 2017).Reviews varied in length from a few words to multiple paragraphs, and the photographs per post ranged from none to more than a dozen.All translations below were provided by Gillette.Trip.com enables users to rank destinations on a point scale (1-5) as well as providing space for texts and photographs.Most visitors awarded the mine parks high rankings: Jinhuagong had an average ranking of 4.4 points, Kailuan had 4.5, and Haizhou 4.5.High ratings did not preclude criticisms, for example about exhibits being closed or ticket prices too expensive.In general, reviewers were more likely to complain about Haizhou 'not having enough to see' than Jinhuagong and Kailuan.Haizhou's exhibition hall appears to be less extensive with more limited opening hours, plus the park has an open pit mine viewable from an observation platform.Jinhuagong and Kailuan by contrast have mine shafts and underground pits into which visitors may descend, in addition to exhibition halls.Most reviewers at Jinhuagong and Kailuan regarded their trips into the underground mine as the highlight of their visit, and the opportunity to descend into the closed pit influenced tourists' imaginings.
The methods employed for this study were digital ethnography or online participant-observation and thematic analysis.Using social media to learn about destinations is common around the world (e.g.Hausmann et al., 2018;Liang et al., 2017;Stoleriu et al., 2019) and like millions of others (World Bank Group, 2018), we regularly use UGC for travel.Prior to this research, we had never used Trip.com, but had consulted similar platforms.Gillette read all texts and viewed all photographs posted about the three mine parks on two separate occasions.The first visit was to form a sense of the 'field site' and evaluate amenability for a qualitative study.During this round of participant-observation, Gillette (who reads Chinese) noted recurring themes in the reviews and images; they showed that the Trip.commaterials contained dominant tropes, as found in other UGC studies (e.g.Carter, 2016;Hodsdon, 2020;Moskwa, 2022;Pearce & Wu, 2018;Varnajot, 2020;Vásquez, 2012).The second visit was a systematic study of user comments and photographs, during which Gillette categorised the reviews according to their dominant theme (see Table 2).Both emic patterns and themes from the scholarly literature on mining heritage and UGC informed categorisation (cf.Berkenbosch et al., 2022).A third round of participant-observation was done by Boyd, who re-read all textual content using Google Translate, checking specific reviews with Gillette where needed, and examined all images.Finally, in addition to these three rounds of 'field work,' the authors made multiple return visits between October 2021 and March 2023 to re-examine specific photographs/reviews.Almost all the reviews that do not fall under the category 'general review' in Table 1 address more than one of our themes.To facilitate using manual methods to ascertain theme frequency and distribution in a large data set, we identified a dominant theme for each review.For example, one review from Haizhou mine park describes where it is located ('three kilometres away from Fuxin City Centre'), what it contains ('The mine park consists of the open pit, an exhibition square, a museum and a ringroad.The pit contains Mesozoic sedimentary strata such as the Jurassic and Cretaceous.The exhibition square displays large excavation and transportation equipment such as shovel excavators, steam locomotives, bulldozers, and drilling and blasting machines.The museum is divided into two exhibition halls'), and how to move from one component to the next (via the 'ringroad in the centre').The reviewer also comments on the 'green and lush' mountain and the 'trains roaring past' that s/he saw from the observation platform, but since the bulk of the text is about the park's contents and getting around, we classified it as 'navigating the site' (see Table 2).

UGC and ethics
Tourists who post online reviews on Trip.com want to share their evaluations of tourist destinations with others.As with TripAdvisor, many write 'small stories' about their experiences that establish their expertise and elicit reader empathy (Jameson, 2017;Vásquez, 2012).Because online reviews are 'spontaneous communications uninfluenced by the intervention of researchers' (Ramírez-Gutiérrez et al., 2018, p. 635), many scholars regard them as particularly useful for studying tourist experiences.That having been said, their use as data is not free from ethical concerns.For example, any given person who publishes an online review may not have considered that it could be part of a research study (see Franzke et al., 2019).We have chosen to preserve the anonymity of the tourists whose UGC we scrutinise here by omitting user names and the dates of postings.

Results
UGC authors addressed an imagined audience of potential visitors who had never been to the parks.The general reviews (24% of the total data set) offered an overall evaluation.The remaining UGC largely fits under four substantive themes: (1) Navigating the site, (2) Enjoying the scenery, (3) Historical importance, and (4) Mining lifeworlds.This latter theme was more dominant in reviews from Kailuan (see Table 2), although reviewers from all the parks made reference to it.
As Table 2 indicates, a small number of visitors (three percent of the online reviewers) addressed other themes in their reviews.These included environmental degradation, energy use, the parks' positive or negative impacts on the local economies and communities, and the state's capacity for administering museums and heritage sites.We classify such reflections as subordinate meanings and present them separately below.

Navigating the site
Getting around the site was a dominant theme.Visually, photographs of site entry (the gates to the mine park, large entry signs made of stone or metal), the entrances to exhibition halls, and key components of the parks, such as large machinery or specific exhibits, depicted this theme.All three parks had many such images, which closely resembled one another.In texts, reviewers provided information about how to reach the site by public transportation, car, or on foot; the cost of admission and whether and how many tickets were required for various elements; parking facilities; and nearby attractions such as shopping, restaurants, hotels, and additional tourist destinations, such as the Yungang grottos which are within walking distance of Jinhuagong.To give an example, a visitor to Kailuan wrote, There is a hotel nearby.After you eat your breakfast in the morning you can go take a look.Within the city it's a pretty nice attraction.In the morning there are a lot of people there doing morning exercises.The parking is terrible.
Reviewers frequently advised readers on how best to prepare for visiting.Many spoke about the need to walk at the parks and recommended wearing proper shoes.At Jinhuagong, several wrote that tourists were not allowed to bring mobile phones and cameras into the pit.This prohibition, a fire preventative measure, was annoying to many.At Jinhuagong and Kailuan, reviewers talked about how cold underground temperatures were and suggested what to wear.Warnings about darkness and slippery conditions were also common, sometimes accompanied by photographs (see Figure 1).
Typically reviewers told readers which aspects of the mine park were most and least interesting, educational, or worth visiting, as well as who should come.The vast majority wrote that the mine parks offered 'knowledge' and advised Trip.com users to 'bring the children.' 'Educational' featured prominently as a term to describe the parks.For example, one reviewer described Haizhou as a 'natural classroom' and urged readers to bring their children to take a look.At Kailuan, a reviewer emphasised the 'sizeable harvest' that students could reap from a visit.To take a third example, a Jinhuagong reviewer wrote the mine park was 'suitable for bringing the kids, the pit is magical, you can learn about the history of mining and the environment, thumbs up for the miners.' Reviews that addressed navigating the site often included recommendations about how much time to spend there.For example, a reviewer of Jinhuagong told readers to allocate at least an hour to the pit tour.Others provided time allocations and advice for experiencing the entire site, e.g.'two hours,' 'half a day,' or 'make sure you give yourself enough time,' etc.

Enjoying the scenery
Comments about the scenery were part of many online reviews, and visitors often posted photographs of the landscape, plaza, fountains, sculpture, lakes, trees, and plantings.Reviewers described the parks as a 'good environment,' remarking they were 'a good place to come to relax.' Descriptions of the parks as 'beautiful,' 'special,' 'really quite nice,' and 'a scenic spot' were common.For example, a Haizhou reviewer wrote, The Haizhou Open Pit National Mine Park, the park is not big, but if you include the open mine then it is huge.The plaza has former mining equipment and vehicles.If you look from the observation platform, you can see they have stopped mining, you get a feeling of grandeur.In some places the mine is still smoking.This is surely one of Fuxin's must-see attractions.
Many characterised the scenery as 'striking,' describing the parks as 'unique,' 'worth a visit,' and offering experiences that most people will never have.
Some reviewers related the scenery to industry as past.A number called the parks 'industrial heritage resources.'Others linked them to 'memory' and bygone days.For example, a Kailuan reviewer wrote that visitors would never again be able to see 'scenic ruins from the past' like these.Generally such comments had a positive tone, and took on a nostalgic quality among reviewers who stated they were visiting mine parks in their 'hometown.'A small subset connected the contemporary scenery and former industry to a 'dark' past.For example, a visitor at Jinhuagong wrote, 'The mine is like a park with green trees and blooming flowers, even a wooden bridge across a scenic lake.Obviously these contemporary changes are different than its dark past.'

Historical importance
A dominant theme in the UGC, second only to navigating the site, emphasised the mine parks' historical importance.Reviewers wrote about the sites' significance in relation to earth history (mainly geology), technology (including coal's role in the history of electricity and transport), and local, regional and/or national history.For example, one author described Kailuan as a 'complete tourist destination.'S/he continued: Inside the park there is a museum with three exhibition halls (under construction), the contents are the origins and formation of coal, the history of coal mining in ancient times, the geological formation of the Kailuan coal field, the steps of the coal mining process and the history of coal mining, the uses of electricity, studies of electricity and the developmental history of electricity's uses, the history of steam locomotives and the history of China's railway transportation, an exploration of the mining pit, and knowledge about subsidence from mining, etc.
Numerous reviewers expressed amazement at how 'old' the sites were and how 'amazing' the 'story of coal' was.For example, a Jinhuagong reviewer praised 'the ancient history and culture of coal mining and the rare geological wonder of its Jurassic coal seam.' Photographs of geological maps, minerals displayed in the exhibits, and lumps of coal, sometimes labelled by type, regularly accompanied such comments or were posted without written texts.Some visitors posted photographs of fossils or dinosaur models that were on display, which also pointed to age and history.
Many reviewers linked the parks' historical importance to technology, explaining that visitors would learn the history of coal mining from its most 'primitive' to its most 'advanced' methods.Photographs depicting the tools and machines used to excavate the coal, which could be actual artifacts, artistic recreations, and/or photographs of tools and machines (e.g.photographs of photographs) also conveyed the importance of technology and the development of technologies over time.Some reviewers posted pictures of exhibits that showed technologies related to coal which were not used in the mines, such as coal-fired stoves and kilns.Trains and locomotives that burned coal were especially frequently photographed, with several reviewers writing about coal's use in railway and steam transportation.
Visitors who wrote about technology usually connected technology to 'progress.'This imaginative construct was particularly prominent in the reviews from Haizhou and Kailuan.To take one example, a reviewer at Kailuan wrote, 'You experience 150 years of industrial progress, as if you are passing through history.It was the most 'modern' mine in China at that time, the 'number one mine' in China, accumulating valuable experience of managing mining and coal production for China, and pioneering China's railway transportation.'Many reviewers described the former mines' contributions to local, regional, and national history.For example, Jinhuagong showcased Datong as the 'coal mine capital' and Kailuan 'played a decisive function in the formation of Tangshan municipality.'Numerous reviewers talked about the mines' 'contributions to the nation,' describing them as 'developing the nation' or 'building the fatherland.'Some pointed to international historical importance.For example, one reviewer stated Haizhou was 'Asia's first and worldwide the second modern open pit mine.' Visually, such comments were often accompanied by monumental sculpture and art commemorating the 'industrial epoch' or 'the mining spirit' (see Figure 2).

Mining lifeworlds
A third theme that dominated a smaller but still significant proportion of reviews focused on how the mine parks spurred visitors to imagine what it was like to be a coal miner (see Table 2).This theme was most pronounced at Kailuan (underground pit) and least at Haizhou (open pit).
Visually, the mining lifeworlds theme was expressed in photographs of outdated mining machinery, miners' tools and equipment, mannikins wearing outmoded protective clothing, and, among reviewers at Jinhuagong and Kaliuan, photographs of visitors wearing or holding mining equipment in the dark tunnels.In text, the UGC emphasised authentically 'experiencing' mining.For example, a Jinhuagong reviewer posted: Jinhuagong National Mine Park lets you experience going down the mine.You ride a mine cart and wear a mining lamp and a mining uniform.The secret world underground is very interesting, very powerful.It is worth a visit.It is a different kind experience and really a good choice.
Another wrote, The place where tourists come is a pit 153 metres deep in the ground.You can personally experience riding in a mine cart, wearing a miners' uniform and a mine lamp, you really experience what a miner's life was like.You can with your own hands operate an electric coal drill and drive a mining machine.It's a first-hand experience of what it was like to mine coal.Some reviewers connected the material conditions of the miners' working lives to local and national pride, bravery, and stoic martyrdom.For example, a Kailuan reviewer reflected, This visit really moved me deeply.I really got a deep understanding of the difficulty of the miners' work and environment; how bitter their lives were.And the enormous contribution that they made to the cause of advancing the nation's coal industry.
Urged another reviewer, 'Take your children to experience the difficulties of mining work.It really makes you respect the working class, the greatness of ordinary people.Bless the fatherland and keep the people of the nation safe.'Another reported, The tools displayed in the underground are all original real tools.The underground is very cold, dark and humid.Here, you can feel that every minute of the miner's work was accompanied by danger.Even if you made it up safely, you would in the future suffer from occupational diseases.
Yet another visitor mused about the deep depression and gloom lingering in the mine.A country's road to industrialisation is not an easy thing that can be described lightly.Those minors who work here every day in such difficult conditions are really the most hard-working workers imaginable.
A few reviewers acknowledged that their experiences were staged, yet found the sensorial impact of the sites powerful.To take an example, a Jinhuagong reviewer wrote, 'As a visitor to the coal mine, your conditions are really so much better than if it were a real mine, but you can still get a sense of how bitter it was for the actual miners.' Visitors typically framed the miners' hard labour as service to the nation in their reviews.However, one reviewer associated this labour with war and military violence, linking the Haizhou openpit mine to interred labour during the Japanese occupation.S/he recommended that visitors take a local bus to visit two other nearby destinations, a mass grave and the Fuyu Museum.These sites are dedicated to the thousands of Chinese forced to work in the mine by the Japanese forces during World War II.

Subordinate meanings
For a handful of visitorstwenty out of 657the mine parks stimulated other imaginings than the dominant themes we describe above.These reviewers linked the sites to reflections on environmental degradation, the dangers of burning coal for energy, the socio-economic relationships between the mines and their host communities before and after their reinvention as heritage, and the state's administration of the mine parks.
A few reviewers connected the parks to the environmental damage that mining causes.For example, at Jinhuagong a reviewer wrote that Shanxi's coal mines had become a 'sunset industry' as the nation increasingly emphasised environmental protection.A Haizhou visitor called the open pit a 'scar on the earth.'Another wrote about the 'deep feelings' inspired by the open pit mine with its 'roaring machines, yellow smoke, and serious pollution.'Rarely, a reviewer found a visit to a mine park an opportunity to reflect on energy use.At Kailuan, a visitor wrote, Coming to Tangshan, the first thing you think about is that it is a place where coal is produced.I took the kids to look at the reality of mining coal, how mining changed in different time periods, and how tough it was for the miners.It really makes you think about the future and how we need to conserve energy.
A few visitors raised socio-economic concerns, with some questioning the state's desire to maintain the site and the community.For example, one reviewer contrasted the Haizhou mine's historic economic contribution with the state's lack of financial investment in the heritage park: Fuxin made a major contribution to the economic development of the New China [the PRC].The open-pit mine is a vivid example.It represents several generations' hard-labour contribution, the flourishing and decline of Fuxin's economy and its transformation.I wish my hometown a better tomorrow!Lately maintenance has not been kept up, it's a pity.It is said that some funds have recently been provided to build, I hope it can be built better.

Discussion
UGC from the three former coal mines has many similarities.This finding is consistent with other UGC scholarship, which notes that reviewers' stories and images tend to resemble one another (e.g.Moskwa, 2022;Varnajot, 2020).The patterned nature of UGC suggests that online reviews may be 'spontaneous' with regard to researchers, but are also a narrative genre (cf.Ramírez-Gutiérrez et al., 2018;Vásquez, 2012).The prevalence of our four themes also point to reviewers co-constructing a tourist imaginary, only some of which relates directly to coal mining heritage.
How to navigate the mine parks was a dominant theme in the reviews.Authors advised potential visitors about logistics, appropriate dress, ticket prices, and what the parks contained, and contributed photographs that would help others get around.Many scholars have noted that tourist UGC typically contains information about 'practicalities,' but most do not investigate this topic (Hodsdon, 2020, p. 414; see also Atwal et al., 2019;Carter, 2016;Lupu et al., 2019;Stoleriu et al., 2019).However, this theme's prevalence indicates that imagining potential future tourists is central to tourism imaginaries, at least among tourists who write UGC.Online reviewers concoct future visitors who share their own needs for information about parking, ticket prices, transportation, and dress.They envision readers who are looking for fun and educational activities for children or a family outing, and who share the authors' sense of how much time a visit should last.Much of the information about 'practicalities' in the mine park reviews is not specific to mining heritage, although some aspects, such as warnings about the prohibition on mobile phones and cameras in the underground pits, or the need for warm clothes, are.Providing this guidance for others appears to be altruistic (see also Atwal et al., 2019;Munar & Jacobsen, 2014).Even so, UGC authors shape readers' expectations by coupling practical information with their own opinions about the mine parks' value (cf.Moskwa, 2022).Sharing knowledge about practicalities also constructs the reviewers as 'expert witnesses' (Jameson, 2017).
Much UGC focused on the mine parks' historical importance; for many visitors, this was why the mines mattered.This aspect of the PRC coal-mining tourist imaginary is consistent with the broader scholarship on mining heritage: visitors report learning about history and mining's historical importance (Byström, 2022;Prentice et al., 1993Prentice et al., , 1998;;Pretes, 2002;Price & Rhodes, 2022;Ronck & Price, 2019;Wu et al., 2015;Xie, 2015).At the PRC coal mine parks, visitors commented on the sites' geological age, the story of coal, technological development, and how the mines contributed to local, regional, and national histories.In general the reviews linked the history of coal mining to progress, a smooth upward temporal advance.Scholarship about other industrial heritage sites has noted similar patterns (e.g.Cameron, 2010;Oakley, 2015;Stanton, 2006;Stern & Hall, 2019).As is the case at other mining heritage destinations, the mine parks appear to focus on industrial high points and the benefits of mining (Byström, 2022;Price & Rhodes, 2022;Price & Ronck, 2018;Stern & Hall, 2019).Very few reviewers question or appear to notice the movement from industrial peak to heritage site, or comment on the negative consequences of extractive industry.
For many reviewers, the mine parks offered an entry into the lifeworld of mining.Artifacts, models, landscapes, and experiences (especially descents into the pit) catalysed this imaginative work (cf.Hodsdon, 2020).Reviewers tended to imagine mine workers as brave and heroic, a result that resonates with findings from other mining heritage sites (e.g.Dicks, 2000;Kesküla, 2013;Kotašková, 2022;Oakley, 2015;Prentice et al., 1993Prentice et al., , 1998;;Pretes, 2002;Price & Rhodes, 2022).As Oakley has put it, the former miners are 'imaginary tenants' who 'give the sites their impact' (2015, p. 64).Yet while many reviewers talked about the 'bitterness' of mining lifeworlds, almost no one connected mining to death and dying, despite the fact that miners have twice the mortality of non-miners (Lyatuu et al., 2021).The mines-turned-heritage destinations could have stimulated visitors to ponder what happened to workers, their families, and communities after the mines were permanently shutsurely also an experience of miners' 'bitterness'but such imaginative acts were largely missing.In other words, while reviewers frequently commented on mining's historical importance, and experienced emotional connection to the miners during their visits to the parks, they also accepted what de Bary (2004) has called industrial heritage's 'willful amnesia.' Although the preceding four themes dominated the tourist imaginary we found in the UGC, a handful of visitors articulated other, subordinate meanings.These reviewers thought about humaninduced environmental destruction, the long-term consequences of energy use, and the socioeconomic decline brought about by a deindustrialisation overseen by the state.For this small group of visitors, the mine parks sparked darker imaginings and raised questions about coal mining and (un)sustainability.That few tourists to the sites responded in this way is consistent with the literature on mining tourism.As other scholars have noted, such imaginings are unusual at mining heritage sites (Price & Rhodes, 2022;cf. Frantál & Urbánková, 2017).

Conclusion
In recent years, many scholars interested in heritage and tourism have turned to UGC as a way to investigate the images and tropes that characterise specific heritage and tourism destinations and how visitors make meaning of their experiences (e.g.Carter, 2016;Hausmann et al., 2018;Moskwa, 2022;Pearce & Wu, 2018;Stoleriu et al., 2019).Most adopt a big data approach in which computer algorithms target either texts or images, but not both.Our study contributes to methodological development of this field by using digital ethnography as a way to study UGC.Rather than assuming that word frequency correlates to meaningful theme (e.g.Lupu et al., 2019;Qi & Chen, 2019;cf. Pearce & Wu, 2018), we drew on participant-observation to identify emic themes in the reviews, link texts to photographs, and make connections to the scholarly literature.We join other scholars (e.g.Liang et al., 2017) in arguing for more research that uses qualitative methods to investigate 'etourism,' including how online reviewers co-construct meaning at coal-mines-turned-heritage destinations and tourist imaginaries more broadly.
Digital ethnography offers a number of advantages to scholars working with UGC.For example, one outcome of our participant-observation was that we gave the UGC about 'practicalities' due attention, rather than dismissing it (see also Alexander et al., 2018;Moskwa, 2022).Imagining potential future tourists is clearly central to authoring online reviews, yet rarely included in discussions of tourist imaginaries.Reviewers envision not only what these fictive future visitors need to know, but also what kind of people they are: who they should invite to accompany them to the mine park ('bring the kids'), what they will enjoy (locomotives, mining tunnels, vistas), and how much time they should spend there ('two hours').By coupling what appears to be neutral, practical information with recommendations and judgements, reviewers increase their influence over readers' behaviour and shape their tourism expectations (see also Moskwa, 2022).Such content also enhances readers' trust in the review author as a reliable witness or 'expert.' Because big data studies investigate text or image but not both, they de facto neglect the relationship between written and visual content.Our approach not only gave us access to what visitors found meaningful in two types of media, it facilitated attending to the relationship between textual and visual content.This directly affected how we interpreted the data and determined what should be considered as dominant themes.For example, a different methodology could have missed the connections between a reviewer's photograph of a sculpture devoted to 'the spirit of mining' and his or her text that reflected on the 'bitterness' of being a miner.
Still another advantage of employing online participant-observation as opposed to algorithms was that we could identify subordinate themes, imaginative work notable for its scarcity.Big data mining is unsuited to yielding this kind of result.Yet as other tourism scholars have pointed out, 'those advocating for a move toward the use of sustainable resources' should be concerned about how mining is remembered (Price & Rhodes, 2022, p. 837).This requires more than learning what most visitors experience at mining heritage sites; it also means attending to the sites' potential.Identifying subordinate meanings directs our scrutiny to what mining heritage can be, as well as to what it is for most people.
Rather than the more-oft studied Trip Advisor, Instagram, and Flickr, this study was based on UGC from Trip.com, a Chinese-language social media platform.Choosing Trip.com facilitated our ability to examine Chinese tourists' experiences, which remain relatively understudied (Liang et al., 2017).The numbers of Chinese tourists, domestic and international, have increased significantly in recent years, suggesting this segment deserves more study (Liang et al., 2017;Qi & Chen, 2019;Quer & Peng, 2021).Given the fact that TripAdvisor is banned in the PRC, scholars interested in Chinese tourism will need to turn to other platforms.Our study suggests that Trip.com can provide useful data (see also Li et al., 2023).
Heritage destinations offer tourists encounters with specific objects, landscapes, and institutional narratives.Yet while we often think of heritage as local and singular, our study finds that tourist experiences in Jinhuagong, Kailuan, and Haizhou have much in common with each other and with mining tourism in other locations (e.g.Berger et al., 2017;Kesküla, 2013;Metsaots et al., 2015;Oakley, 2015;Prentice et al., 1993;Pretes, 2002;Price & Rhodes, 2022;Ronck & Price, 2019;Storm, 2014).While some of the similarities in visitors' experiences are likely related to online reviews as a narrative genre, another factor is the emergence of a global repertoire or 'authorised discourse' for mining heritage (see Ashworth, 2010;Lu et al., 2020).In the PRC, the 'Route of Industrial Heritage' in the Ruhr was a direct source of inspiration for transforming deindustrialised areas into heritage (Chang & Koetter, 2005;Wang et al., 2020).As Ashworth points out, 'the heritage industry, its developers, investors, planners, designers and architects are increasingly global with a tendency to replicate ideas and concepts with a proven record of success ' (2010, p. 283).
According to some scholars, industrial heritage tourism is the only way forward for the PRC's former coal mining communities (Wang et al., 2020;cf. Zhao et al., 2020).Investigating visitor experiences at coal mine parks helps shed light on the viability of this development strategy.Our research indicates that while visitors are generally pleased with China's national mine parks, not all mine parks are equally successful at attracting tourists.Proximity to mega-cities and access to underground pits affect visitor experiences and UGC about the parks.Online reviews in turn influence the behaviour of potential future tourists.This makes social media an important factor in the state's ability to achieve its development goals.
As with other heritage sites, the mine parks studied here were catalysts for tourists to imagine.Reviewers experienced the parks as 'educational' and encouraged imaginary future tourists to bring their children and students.Most found meaning in the sites' historical importance, the story of coal, technology, and progress, as is frequently the case with mining heritage (e.g.Prentice et al., 1993Prentice et al., , 1998;;Pretes, 2002;Price & Rhodes, 2022;Ronck & Price, 2019;Wu et al., 2015;Xie, 2015).Industrial ruins, 'one of a kind' vistas, and an 'authentic' encounter with mining also made mining tourism rewarding.For many visitors, the parks sparked reflection about miners' daily experiences, eliciting gratitude for their labour and contribution to local, regional, and national development.
Yet while the mine parks catalysed visitors' imaginations, our results, like copious other scholarship, suggest that industrial heritage also forecloses the imagination and invites 'willful amnesia' (de Bary, 2004; see also Gillette, 2017Gillette, , 2022;;Stanton, 2006;Wallace, 1987).For example, according to Walker, mining heritage at Blaenavon in Wales presents 'sanitized or romanticized interpretations, rather than inciting debates about inequalities or contemporary concerns ' (2012, p. 27).At the Estonian mining heritage site Kesküla studied (2013), technology, progress, mining knowledge and labour were celebrated while mining's environmental impact and the consequences of using fossil fuels for energy production were ignored.Although officials laud the Ruhr's economic success, scholars complain that the heritage trail 'sanitizes history' and 'covers up' environmental degradation (Berger et al., 2017; see also Storm, 2014, pp. 101-126).Still other 'forgotten' themes at industrial heritage sites include what happened to the workers, their families, and communities after industry closure, the unsustainability of fossil fuel use, and the role that extractive industries play in (un)sustainable futures (e.g.Cameron, 2010;Price & Rhodes, 2022;Price & Ronck, 2018;Stanton, 2006;Storm, 2014).
The UGC investigated here indicates that China's national mine parks are vulnerable to scholarly critiques about sanitized history, gentrification, and romanticization.Yet for a tiny minority of visitors, the mine parks triggered recognition of social, environmental, and economic costs associated with large-scale resource extraction and deindustrialisation.Coal remains China's primary energy source, and the PRC's coal burning is one of the world's largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution (Stahel, 2020).That the mine parks elicited critical reflections about environmental pollution, energy use, and social responsibilityeven if only for a few visitorspoints to the potential that such sites have for stimulating change, including towards greater sustainability (cf.Harrison, 2013;Price & Rhodes, 2022;Salazar & Graburn, 2014).Put differently, although Kailuan, Haizhou, and Jinhuagong appear to reinforce the (unsustainable) status quo for most visitors, they possess a latent promise which could be drawn upon and elaborated to make China's mining heritage a force supporting more sustainable futures.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Entering the mine pit.In the accompanying review, the visitor wrote, 'On the third floor is a steep ladder going underground.It felt rather dark.If you bring an elderly person, use the flashlight on your smartphone.'

Table 1 .
Total Trip.com reviews as of 31 January 2023.

Table 2 .
Written reviews classified by dominant theme.