Remaking the Chinese City : Modernity and National Identity, 1900-1950

In China today skyscrapers tower over ancient temples, freeways deliver lines of cars and tour buses to imperial palaces, cinema houses compete with old theaters featuring Peking Opera. The disparity evidenced in the contemporary Chinese cityscape can be traced to the early decades of the twentieth century, when government elites sought to transform cities into a new world that would be at once modern and distinctly Chinese. __Remaking the Chinese City__ aims to capture the full diversity of recent Chinese urbanism by examining the modernist transformations of China's cities in the first half of the twentieth century. Collecting in one place some of the most interesting and exciting new work on Chinese urban history, this volume presents thirteen essays discussing ten Chinese cities: the commercial and industrial center of Shanghai; the old capital, Beijing; the southern coastal city of Canton; the interior's Chengdu; the tourist city of Hangzhou; the utopian "New Capital" built in Manchuria during the Japanese occupation; the treaty port of Tianjin; the Nationalists' capital in Nanjing; and temporary wartime capitals of Wuhan and Chongqing. Unlike past treatments of early twentieth-century China, which characterize the period as one of failure and decay, the contributors to this volume describe an exciting world in constant and fundamental change. During this time, the Chinese city was remade to accommodate parks and police, paved roads and public spaces. Rickshaws, trolleys, and buses allowed the growth of new downtowns. Department stores, theaters, newspapers, and modern advertising nourished a new urban identity. Sanitary regulations and traffic laws were enforced, and modern media and transport permitted unprecedented freedoms. Yet despite their fondness for things Western and modern, early urban planners envisioned cities that would lead the Chinese nation and preserve Chinese tradition. The very desire for modernity led to the construction of a visible and accessible national past and the imagining of a distinctive national future. In their investigation of the national capitals of the period, the essays show how cities were reshaped to represent and serve the nation. To promote tourism, traditions were invented and recycled for the pleasure and edification of new middle-class and foreign consumers of culture. Abundantly illustrated with maps and photographs, __Remaking the Chinese City__ presents the best and most current scholarship on modern Chinese cities. Its thoroughness and detailed scholarship will appeal to the specialist, while its clarity and scope will engage the general reader. **Contributors:** Michael Tsin on Canton, Ruth Rogaski and Brett Sheehan on Tianjin, David Buck on Changchun, Kristin Stapleton on Chengdu, Liping Wang on Hangzhou, Madeleine Dong on Beijing, Charles Musgrove on Nanjing, Stephen MacKinnon on Wuhan, Lee MacIsaac on Chongqing, and Jeffrey Wasserstrom and David Strand with concluding essays. Contents List of Illustrations Preface Chapter 1. Modernity and Nation in the Chinese City Part I: The Modernist City Chapter 2. Canton Remapped Chapter 3. Hygienic Modernity in Tianjin Chapter 4. Urban Identity and Urban Networks in Cosmopolitan Cities: Banks and Bankers in Tianjin, 1900–1937 Chapter 5. Railway City and National Capital Two Faces of the Modern in Changchun Chapter 6. Yang Sen in Chengdu Urban Planning in the Interior Part II: Tradition and Modernity Chapter 7. Tourism and Spatial Change in Hangzhou, 1911–1927 Chapter 8. Defining Beiping Urban Reconstruction and National Identity, 1928–1936 Chapter 9. Building a Dream Constructing a National Capital in Nanjing, 1927–1937 Part III: City and Nation Chapter 10. Wuhan’s Search for Identity in the Republican Period Chapter 11. The City as Nation: Creating a Wartime Capital in Chongqing Chapter 12. Locating Old Shanghai Having Fits about Where It Fits Chapter 13. New Chinese Cities Notes Glossary Bibliography Contributors Index

In this timely work, Liu Kang argues that globalization in China is both a historical condition in which the country's gaige kaifang (reform and opening up) has unfolded and a set of values or ideologies by which it and the rest of the globe are judged. Moreover, globalization signals a significant ascendancy of culture. Liu examines China's current ideological struggles in political discourse, intellectual debate, popular culture, avant-garde literature, the news media, and the internet. With careful textual analysis and observation informed by critical theories and cultural studies, he offers a forceful critique of the Chinese version of globalism that privileges economic development at the expense of social justice and equality.