China

  

A truly huge country, but not offering a huge amount for the dark tourist – or not much that can be visited (safely). China is hardly a haven of free speech and openly coming to terms with the darker sides of history (let alone the present), of which there are far from few – just think of the so-called "cultural revolution" (which also served as the model for the Khmer Rouge's Cambodian genocide).

So, with the exception of the Nanjing massacre memorial (which points the finger at Japan as the culprit), there's next to nothing that's really developed for dark tourism as such. However, there are two further places which are marketed for other reasons but which do have a certain overlap with (kinds of) dark tourism: one about (former) cult-of-personality tourism: Mao's mausoleum on Tiananmen Square. The other is the Three Gorges Dam – marketed as a great technological achievement, but it can also be considered a dark site, namely for both the grievances it has already caused as well as for the potentiality for disaster in the future that it holds.

One already current environmental disaster is the burning coal fires esp. in the north (in particular around Wuda – see places not to be visited), but those are pretty much out of bounds for tourists (as are practically all of the other currently dark sites in this huge empire).

 
- Nanjing Massacre Memorial, Nanjing

- Mao's mausoleum on Tiananmen Square, Beijing

- The Three Gorges Dam

  

 

• China 1 - Great Wall
• China 2 - Great Wall unusually uncrowded
• China 3 - Beijing Forbidden City in smog
• China 4 - Beijing
• China 5 - cliche
• China 6 - old China
• China 7 - modern China
• China 8 - shrine to the holy rubbish bin ;-)
• China