New Narratives of Urban Space in Republican Chinese Cities : Emerging Social, Legal and Governance Orders

The nine empirical studies in New Narratives of Urban Space in Republican Chinese Cities , organized under the general framework of urban space, examine three critical dimensions of the great urban transformation in Republican China--social, legal and governance orders. Together these narratives suggest a new perception of this historical urbanism. While modern economic development was a major drive for Chinese urban transformation, this volume highlights the dimension of the multilayered forces that shape urban space by looking into that less quantifiable, but equally important cultural realm and by exposing the ways in which these forces created new urban narratives, which became themselves shapers of urban space and of our perception of the Republican urbanity. Cover 1 Title 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 List of Contributors 8 Acknowledgements 12 Chapter One Urban Space in Republican Chinese Cities as Seen Through Cultural Narratives: A Prologue 14 Part One Social Order 26 Chapter Two Changing Spaces and Civilized Weddings in Republican China 28 Chapter Three City-Building, New Life and the ‘Making of the Citizen’ in 1930s Nanchang 58 Chapter Four Wartime Refugee Relief in Chinese Cities and Women’s Political Activism, 1937–1940 78 Part Two Law and Order 106 Chapter Five Unorganized Crime: Forgers, Soldiers, and Shopkeepers in Beijing, 1927, 1928 108 Chapter Six The Ordering of Crime in Republican Beijing from the 1910s to the 1930s 126 Chapter Seven Dangerous Cities: Judicial Authorities, Criminologists, and the Perception of Crime Zones in 1920s and 1930s China 148 Part Three Governance Order 168 Chapter Eight British Concessions and Chinese Cities, 1910s–1930s 170 Chapter Nine Provincializing the City: Canton and the Reshaping of Guangdong Provincial Administration, 1912–1937 210 Chapter Ten Xi’an, 1900–1940: From Isolated Backwater to Resistance Center 236 Index 288 The nine empirical studies in 'New narratives of urban space in republican Chinese cities', organized under the general framework of urban space, examine three critical dimensions of the great urban transformation in Republican China -social, legal and governance orders. Together these narratives suggest a new perception of this historical urbanism. While modern economic development was a major drive for Chinese urban transformation, this volume highlights the dimension of the multilayered forces that shape urban space by looking into that less quantifiable, but equally important cultural realm and by exposing the ways in which these forces created new urban narratives, which became themselves shapers of urban space and of our perception of the Republican urbanity New Narratives of Urban Space in Republican Chinese Cities offers nine empirical studies to examine the social, legal and governance dimensions of the great urban transformation in Republican China pertaining to the cultural realm of the urban space. This work offers nine empirical studies to examine the social, legal, and governance dimensions of the great urban transformation in Republican China pertaining to the cultural realm of the urban space