ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The intended topic for this research was culture and tourism product innovation in Eco-tourism destinations in Sandakan, Malaysia. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, access to Malaysia was limited, forcing the cancellation of my original plans to visit Sandakan and learn from local Living lab practices. China was instead selected as the research site due to greater access to more resources and key stakeholders. The change of the topic left me with limited time and resources. Thus, I am incredibly thankful to those who gave me support and assistance to let me go through the pain of changing the topic and reestablish research direction. Firstly, I would like to thank my course director Ms. Ingrid Schröder and my supervisor, Dr. Felipe Hernandez, who kindly provided me with support and reassurance when the research topic was forced to change. Then I would like to show my appreciation for my design tutors, James Pockson and Conrad Koslowsky, for all the suggestions I was given to develop the speculative pilot project even though the project is not shown in this dissertation because of the site change. I am very grateful for Dr. Andong Lu at Nanjing University, who guided me through the research of this project during my fieldwork. Also, I would like to thank all the organizations that are willing to let me stay and do observation, including (1)DesignUniverse, (2)Tongji NICE 2035 Living Line, (2)Digua community, and (4)Box Community. They kindly shared their spatial and operational situation and visions through interviews. I also should thank Minister Jin, Minister JI, and Sir Dai for their willingness to provide me with their opinions about Living Labs in China and connections. This dissertation could not get such detailed insights if it were not for them. They provided me with the material to cook with and complete my dissertation. Finally, I would like to thank my family, Yifu Liu, Diancong Liu, Weixuan He, Zizheng Wu, Huiwen Shi, Zheng Zhou, Tarun Shah, Peter Adolfsson, and Barton Road flatmates, for their company and support during the Covid-19. They helped me maintain good mental health to keep myself devoted to the dissertation. *This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except where specifically indicated in the text
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