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This chapter examines the new economic system that emerged after the reshaping of the urban form of Republican Beijing. It argues that two economic systems overlapped in Republican Beijing: a global industrial-economic network that treated the city primarily as a market for commodities and did not contribute to its productive development; and a preindustrial economic network which served as the main source of sustenance for the majority of the city's population. The chapter suggests that Beijing's recycling economy reveals in specific material terms how a complex web of practices bound the most disparate parts of Beijing society together in quite intimate ways.

This chapter examines literature in Republican Beijing, focusing on the work of Lao She. It argues that in his fictionalization of Republican Beijing, the novelist may have revealed more historical truth about the city than that which historians have been able to achieve. The chapter also describes the works of the so-called new intellectuals and suggests that while they appear as nostalgic as the old ones, their sentiment was not directed toward the same things or for the same reasons.

This introductory chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about the history of Republican Beijing. The book brings together the political, economic, social, and cultural forces in Beijing life involved in the transformation of the old imperial capital, and its recreation as the cultural city of modern China. The chapter describes the spatial transformations, the city's material life, and representations of the city. It stresses the importance of the years of Nationalist rule in Beijing's history.

This chapter relates the story of Republican Beijing's modernization, focusing especially on changes in the city's basic spatial plan and administrative system. It explains that the foundation of Beijing was laid during the Yuan dynasty, and that when the Republic was established in 1912, Beijing had to redefine its raison d'être and the principles underlying its organization as a city. The chapter highlights the republican government's belief that the physical evidences of Beijing's imperial past were obstacles to modernization and had to be removed. Some of the changes included the adjustment in the relationship between the demands of urban development and the creation of a new spatial order, and the change in the relationship between the city and the countryside.

This chapter examines Republican Beijing's new market system and patterns of consumption. It explains that three types of goods, excluding food, circulated through Beijing's markets: industrial products, handicraft items from Chinese cities and the countryside, and recycled articles. Despite some overlaps, markets and shops tended to specialize in only one of these types of goods, and their customers tended to be limited to fairly distinct social groups. The chapter argues that while most forms of trading tended to divide the consuming population along class, status, or gender lines, the aspect of Beijing's business world that most often united them was recycling, which involved items ranging from extremely expensive antiques to strips of rag.

This chapter focuses on a sociological analysis of the urban ills of Republican Beijing. It describes some of the serious problems facing Republican Beijing–including poverty, prostitution, and crime–and suggests that the sociological studies of Republican Beijing were just products of a specific knowledge system. The chapter explains that when sociologists were confronted with the reality of life in Beijing, the discrepancies between their disciplinary framework and its explanatory power were exposed.

This chapter explores the economy of recycling in Republican Beijing through an examination of the Tianqiao district. It examines some of the contemporary perspectives on Tianqiao and describes the processes that led to the formation of this district. This examination of the dynamics that formed Tianqiao also provides insight into an understanding of the feeling and meaning of the market and its cultural dimensions.

This concluding chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the history of Republican Beijing. It argues that Republican Beijing, despite its imperial structures, was definitively a modern city, especially if modernity is understood to be a condition of existence structured by large-scale capitalist-industrial production in an integrated world characterized by bureaucratic nation-states and a people's consciousness of and actions to define their position in this integrated world. The chapter explains that the approaches of the people of Republican Beijing to both the past and the future were marked by a sense of selectivity. They actively dealt with and gave meaning to the present in which they were living, believing in its significance for the future rather than waiting to shed tradition and embrace a future defined in Western terms.

This chapter examines how major interest groups involved in the reshaping of Republican Beijing's urban form struggled over the meanings of political concepts, commercial interests, and cultural and historical identities of local communities. It explores the operation of and interaction among the municipal government, commercial interests, and ordinary urban residents through the Xuanwu Gate project; the establishment of the street-car system; and the naming of streets. The chapter argues that while the reshaping of Republican Beijing was initially planned and initiated by the state, the state's efforts to establish a certain urban identity were balanced to a considerable degree by residents' struggles for their material interests in the spaces being transformed.

This chapter considers the pre- and post-1928 histories of Beijing/Beiping, and examines how tradition was affected by the reshaping of the urban form of Republican Beijing. It explains that the new local strategies which emerged to enable Beiping to deal with the relocation of the central administration associated with urban-form reshaping embodied a new national politics of cultural identity and nationalism. The chapter suggests that what happened to the imperial relics in Beiping during these years reveals much about the ways in which urban spaces and life were related to state politics, ideals of urban planning, and concerns about Chinese cultural identity.