Madeleine YueDong
Reginald E. Zelnik (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520230507
- eISBN:
- 9780520927636
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520230507.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
Old Beijing has become a subject of growing fascination in contemporary China since the 1980s. While physical remnants from the past are being bulldozed every day to make space for glass-walled ...
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Old Beijing has become a subject of growing fascination in contemporary China since the 1980s. While physical remnants from the past are being bulldozed every day to make space for glass-walled skyscrapers and towering apartment buildings, nostalgia for the old city is booming. This book offers a comprehensive history of Republican Beijing, examining how the capital acquired its identity as a consummately “traditional” Chinese city. For residents of Beijing, the heart of the city lay in the labor-intensive activities of “recycling,” a primary mode of material and cultural production and circulation that came to characterize Republican Beijing. An omnipresent process of recycling and re-use unified Beijing's fragmented and stratified markets into one circulation system. These material practices evoked an air of nostalgia that permeated daily life. Paradoxically, the “old Beijing” toward which this nostalgia was directed was not the imperial capital of the past, but the living Republican city. Such nostalgia toward the present, the author argues, was not an empty sentiment, but an essential characteristic of Chinese modernity.Less
Old Beijing has become a subject of growing fascination in contemporary China since the 1980s. While physical remnants from the past are being bulldozed every day to make space for glass-walled skyscrapers and towering apartment buildings, nostalgia for the old city is booming. This book offers a comprehensive history of Republican Beijing, examining how the capital acquired its identity as a consummately “traditional” Chinese city. For residents of Beijing, the heart of the city lay in the labor-intensive activities of “recycling,” a primary mode of material and cultural production and circulation that came to characterize Republican Beijing. An omnipresent process of recycling and re-use unified Beijing's fragmented and stratified markets into one circulation system. These material practices evoked an air of nostalgia that permeated daily life. Paradoxically, the “old Beijing” toward which this nostalgia was directed was not the imperial capital of the past, but the living Republican city. Such nostalgia toward the present, the author argues, was not an empty sentiment, but an essential characteristic of Chinese modernity.
J. Charles Schencking
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231162180
- eISBN:
- 9780231535069
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231162180.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This chapter describes the optimistic views of the Japanese elite who saw the Great Kantō Earthquake as an opportunity to create a “new” Tokyo that would be free from the social ills and afflictions ...
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This chapter describes the optimistic views of the Japanese elite who saw the Great Kantō Earthquake as an opportunity to create a “new” Tokyo that would be free from the social ills and afflictions of the “old” Tokyo. In the minds of many bureaucrats, urban planners, and social welfare advocates, the earthquake altered the landscape of the capital literally and figuratively. Postdisaster Tokyo not only reflected destruction but also inspired dreams of what Tokyo could become. These individuals saw the disaster as a destroyer of a city that Japan, the people of Tokyo, and the state had outgrown, but a city whose residents and leaders were unable and unwilling to alter if it meant personal loss or sacrifice. Tokyoites were then given the kōki or golden opportunity to create a new imperial capital that would not only initiate Tokyo's renaissance but also serve as a symbol of Japan's modern emergence to the world.Less
This chapter describes the optimistic views of the Japanese elite who saw the Great Kantō Earthquake as an opportunity to create a “new” Tokyo that would be free from the social ills and afflictions of the “old” Tokyo. In the minds of many bureaucrats, urban planners, and social welfare advocates, the earthquake altered the landscape of the capital literally and figuratively. Postdisaster Tokyo not only reflected destruction but also inspired dreams of what Tokyo could become. These individuals saw the disaster as a destroyer of a city that Japan, the people of Tokyo, and the state had outgrown, but a city whose residents and leaders were unable and unwilling to alter if it meant personal loss or sacrifice. Tokyoites were then given the kōki or golden opportunity to create a new imperial capital that would not only initiate Tokyo's renaissance but also serve as a symbol of Japan's modern emergence to the world.
Madeleine Yue Dong
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520230507
- eISBN:
- 9780520927636
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520230507.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
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 ...
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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.Less
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.
Morris Low
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- August 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780262013987
- eISBN:
- 9780262265935
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262013987.003.0082
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter is organized into four parts. The first examines the reinvention of Tokyo as imperial capital during the Meiji era. The second considers how looking to the past was necessary in order ...
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This chapter is organized into four parts. The first examines the reinvention of Tokyo as imperial capital during the Meiji era. The second considers how looking to the past was necessary in order for Japan to move forward. Museums were important in this process. Participation in international exhibitions and the holding of domestic industrial exhibitions also helped the Japanese to envision a future led by science and technology. The third part focuses on how Japan put itself on display abroad, and on the educational value of showcasing its achievements and foreign know-how at home. The fourth part examines how Gotō Shinpei (1857–1929), mayor of Tokyo and then home minister, sought to rebuild Tokyo according to “scientific” principles after the Great Earthquake of 1923.Less
This chapter is organized into four parts. The first examines the reinvention of Tokyo as imperial capital during the Meiji era. The second considers how looking to the past was necessary in order for Japan to move forward. Museums were important in this process. Participation in international exhibitions and the holding of domestic industrial exhibitions also helped the Japanese to envision a future led by science and technology. The third part focuses on how Japan put itself on display abroad, and on the educational value of showcasing its achievements and foreign know-how at home. The fourth part examines how Gotō Shinpei (1857–1929), mayor of Tokyo and then home minister, sought to rebuild Tokyo according to “scientific” principles after the Great Earthquake of 1923.
Linda Rui Feng
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824841065
- eISBN:
- 9780824868062
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824841065.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
The introduction explains the important relationship between Chang’an and Tang literati writers, arguing that they serve as intermediary between the city and text. It gives a brief contextualized ...
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The introduction explains the important relationship between Chang’an and Tang literati writers, arguing that they serve as intermediary between the city and text. It gives a brief contextualized introduction to the Chang’an as both an imperial capital and a site for collective life. It discusses the nature and provenance of the book’s major textual sources, arguing for a need to reconceptualize and reimagine these texts as workings of the cultural imagination, rather than confined to bibliographic categories and regulated within generic boundaries. It also introduces the theoretical models used throughout the book, as related to the concepts of liminality, spatial practice, and the production of space.Less
The introduction explains the important relationship between Chang’an and Tang literati writers, arguing that they serve as intermediary between the city and text. It gives a brief contextualized introduction to the Chang’an as both an imperial capital and a site for collective life. It discusses the nature and provenance of the book’s major textual sources, arguing for a need to reconceptualize and reimagine these texts as workings of the cultural imagination, rather than confined to bibliographic categories and regulated within generic boundaries. It also introduces the theoretical models used throughout the book, as related to the concepts of liminality, spatial practice, and the production of space.
J. Charles Schencking
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231162180
- eISBN:
- 9780231535069
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231162180.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This chapter examines how the Japanese government and media instilled into the populace the culture of renewal and reconstruction needed to form a true modern, imperial capital. Political leaders ...
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This chapter examines how the Japanese government and media instilled into the populace the culture of renewal and reconstruction needed to form a true modern, imperial capital. Political leaders understood that the people would have to perceive the Great Kantō Earthquake, which was in fact a regional catastrophe, into national tragedy that would necessitate a long and expensive program of reconstruction. Through speeches and ceremonial events, colorful lithograph prints and pictorial postcards, harrowing survivor accounts that often lionized selfless behavior, objects taken from the destruction, images and evocations of the dead, and documentary movies, government officials, the media, and other institutions constructed the earthquake as an unprecedented national calamity that needed a humanitarian response unseen before. The chapter also talks about how these institutions used the analogy of war when describing the carnage of the earthquake, claiming outright that the sacrifice of those who were killed would be remunerated in the form of a new capital.Less
This chapter examines how the Japanese government and media instilled into the populace the culture of renewal and reconstruction needed to form a true modern, imperial capital. Political leaders understood that the people would have to perceive the Great Kantō Earthquake, which was in fact a regional catastrophe, into national tragedy that would necessitate a long and expensive program of reconstruction. Through speeches and ceremonial events, colorful lithograph prints and pictorial postcards, harrowing survivor accounts that often lionized selfless behavior, objects taken from the destruction, images and evocations of the dead, and documentary movies, government officials, the media, and other institutions constructed the earthquake as an unprecedented national calamity that needed a humanitarian response unseen before. The chapter also talks about how these institutions used the analogy of war when describing the carnage of the earthquake, claiming outright that the sacrifice of those who were killed would be remunerated in the form of a new capital.
Weijie Song
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- December 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190200671
- eISBN:
- 9780190200695
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190200671.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Mapping Modern Beijing investigates five methods of representing Beijing- a warped hometown, a city of snapshots and manners, an aesthetic city, an imperial capital in comparative and cross-cultural ...
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Mapping Modern Beijing investigates five methods of representing Beijing- a warped hometown, a city of snapshots and manners, an aesthetic city, an imperial capital in comparative and cross-cultural perspective, and a displaced city on the Sinophone and diasporic postmemory—by authors traveling across mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and overseas Sinophone and non-Chinese communities. The metamorphosis of Beijing’s everyday spaces and the structural transformation of private and public emotions unfold Manchu writer Lao She’s Beijing complex about a warped native city. Zhang Henshui’s popular snapshots of fleeting shocks and everlasting sorrows illustrate his affective mapping of urban transition and human manners in Republican Beijing. Female poet and architect Lin Huiyin captures an aesthetic and picturesque city vis-à-vis the political and ideological urban planning. The imagined imperial capital constructed in bilingual, transcultural, and comparative works by Lin Yutang, Princess Der Ling, and Victor Segalen highlights the pleasures and pitfalls of collecting local knowledge and presenting Orientalist and Cosmopolitan visions. In the shadow of World Wars and Cold War, a multilayered displaced Beijing appears in the Sinophone postmemory by diasporic Beijing natives Liang Shiqiu, Taiwan sojourners Zhong Lihe and Lin Haiyin, and émigré martial-arts novelist Jin Yong in Hong Kong. Weijie Song situates Beijing in a larger context of modern Chinese-language urban imaginations, and charts the emotional topography of the city against the backdrop of the downfall of the Manchu Empire, the rise of modern nation-state, the 1949 great divide, and the formation of Cold War and globalizing world. Drawing from literary canons to exotic narratives, from modernist poetry to chivalric fantasy, from popular culture to urban planning, this book explores the complex nexus of urban spaces, archives of emotions, and literary topography of Beijing in its long journey from imperial capital to Republican city and to socialist metropolis.Less
Mapping Modern Beijing investigates five methods of representing Beijing- a warped hometown, a city of snapshots and manners, an aesthetic city, an imperial capital in comparative and cross-cultural perspective, and a displaced city on the Sinophone and diasporic postmemory—by authors traveling across mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and overseas Sinophone and non-Chinese communities. The metamorphosis of Beijing’s everyday spaces and the structural transformation of private and public emotions unfold Manchu writer Lao She’s Beijing complex about a warped native city. Zhang Henshui’s popular snapshots of fleeting shocks and everlasting sorrows illustrate his affective mapping of urban transition and human manners in Republican Beijing. Female poet and architect Lin Huiyin captures an aesthetic and picturesque city vis-à-vis the political and ideological urban planning. The imagined imperial capital constructed in bilingual, transcultural, and comparative works by Lin Yutang, Princess Der Ling, and Victor Segalen highlights the pleasures and pitfalls of collecting local knowledge and presenting Orientalist and Cosmopolitan visions. In the shadow of World Wars and Cold War, a multilayered displaced Beijing appears in the Sinophone postmemory by diasporic Beijing natives Liang Shiqiu, Taiwan sojourners Zhong Lihe and Lin Haiyin, and émigré martial-arts novelist Jin Yong in Hong Kong. Weijie Song situates Beijing in a larger context of modern Chinese-language urban imaginations, and charts the emotional topography of the city against the backdrop of the downfall of the Manchu Empire, the rise of modern nation-state, the 1949 great divide, and the formation of Cold War and globalizing world. Drawing from literary canons to exotic narratives, from modernist poetry to chivalric fantasy, from popular culture to urban planning, this book explores the complex nexus of urban spaces, archives of emotions, and literary topography of Beijing in its long journey from imperial capital to Republican city and to socialist metropolis.
Linda Rui Feng
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824841065
- eISBN:
- 9780824868062
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824841065.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
During the Tang dynasty, the imperial capital of Chang’an shaped literati identity and the collective imagination through its new relationship to the empire’s most prolific writers. They came through ...
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During the Tang dynasty, the imperial capital of Chang’an shaped literati identity and the collective imagination through its new relationship to the empire’s most prolific writers. They came through its fold as examination candidates, sojourners, prospective officials, and as participants in pageantries and contests showcasing literary talent. As the central site of examination culture and social transformation, Chang’an emerged in prose narratives with a distinctive and newly formed metropolitan consciousness. In spatially evocative tales and anecdotes featuring literati protagonists, narratives demonstrate the ways in which Chang’an generated new domains of experience and added new perceptual categories to the Tang cultural imagination. In particular, these narratives explore the role of the literati as routine travelers, the interplay between literary prowess and sexual license, and the possibilities for extra-official promotion and unorthodox forms of valuation and livelihood. Because these explorations are subsumed under metropolitan, situational knowledge, they bring to our attention an unprecedented interval of social, existential, and geographical mobility maintained and reinforced by the spatial contiguities of urban space. City of Marvel and Transformation conceptualizes this literary phenomenon, and argues that such narratives amend our understanding of men of letters in between social identities and institutions, as they straddled anonymity and legitimacy.Less
During the Tang dynasty, the imperial capital of Chang’an shaped literati identity and the collective imagination through its new relationship to the empire’s most prolific writers. They came through its fold as examination candidates, sojourners, prospective officials, and as participants in pageantries and contests showcasing literary talent. As the central site of examination culture and social transformation, Chang’an emerged in prose narratives with a distinctive and newly formed metropolitan consciousness. In spatially evocative tales and anecdotes featuring literati protagonists, narratives demonstrate the ways in which Chang’an generated new domains of experience and added new perceptual categories to the Tang cultural imagination. In particular, these narratives explore the role of the literati as routine travelers, the interplay between literary prowess and sexual license, and the possibilities for extra-official promotion and unorthodox forms of valuation and livelihood. Because these explorations are subsumed under metropolitan, situational knowledge, they bring to our attention an unprecedented interval of social, existential, and geographical mobility maintained and reinforced by the spatial contiguities of urban space. City of Marvel and Transformation conceptualizes this literary phenomenon, and argues that such narratives amend our understanding of men of letters in between social identities and institutions, as they straddled anonymity and legitimacy.
J. Charles Schencking
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231162180
- eISBN:
- 9780231535069
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231162180.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This introductory chapter provides an insight into the events that happened during and after the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake. Referred locally as the Kantō daishinsai, the calamity was one of the ...
More
This introductory chapter provides an insight into the events that happened during and after the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake. Referred locally as the Kantō daishinsai, the calamity was one of the most destructive natural disasters of the twentieth century. In less than three days, more than 100,000 people perished. Almost immediately after the quake hit, thousands were crushed by falling objects or died in collapsed buildings. However, amidst all of the destruction, political elites and other professionals saw an opportunity to create a true, modern, imperial capital from the rubbles of Tokyo. The chapter talks about how the earthquake amplified many social, political, and economic promises that had already begun to define the increasingly contoured landscape of interwar Japan. It studies how politicians and bureaucratic elites across cultures and from diverse political systems regularly make opportunistic and idealistic calls for reconstruction and renewal following major natural disasters for political and ideological ends.Less
This introductory chapter provides an insight into the events that happened during and after the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake. Referred locally as the Kantō daishinsai, the calamity was one of the most destructive natural disasters of the twentieth century. In less than three days, more than 100,000 people perished. Almost immediately after the quake hit, thousands were crushed by falling objects or died in collapsed buildings. However, amidst all of the destruction, political elites and other professionals saw an opportunity to create a true, modern, imperial capital from the rubbles of Tokyo. The chapter talks about how the earthquake amplified many social, political, and economic promises that had already begun to define the increasingly contoured landscape of interwar Japan. It studies how politicians and bureaucratic elites across cultures and from diverse political systems regularly make opportunistic and idealistic calls for reconstruction and renewal following major natural disasters for political and ideological ends.
Jonathan Harris
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199641888
- eISBN:
- 9780191808357
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199641888.003.0005
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Asian and Middle Eastern History: BCE to 500CE
This chapter explores some of the political implications of the increasing interest in trade taken by Byzantine aristocrats in the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. It reveals an ...
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This chapter explores some of the political implications of the increasing interest in trade taken by Byzantine aristocrats in the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. It reveals an entirely unexpected but highly important dimension to Constantinople — the loss of the city's hinterland to the Turks in the late fourteenth century and the diversification of the economic interests of the urban political elite into trade meant that by the fifteenth century Constantinople had many of the characteristics of an Italian city-state rather than of an imperial capital. Many of those who were assumed to be the upholders of an exclusive and defensive Byzantine identity turned out to be janus-faced: simultaneously loyal subjects and highly placed servants of the Byzantine emperor but also citizens of Italian cities, especially Genoa and Venice.Less
This chapter explores some of the political implications of the increasing interest in trade taken by Byzantine aristocrats in the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. It reveals an entirely unexpected but highly important dimension to Constantinople — the loss of the city's hinterland to the Turks in the late fourteenth century and the diversification of the economic interests of the urban political elite into trade meant that by the fifteenth century Constantinople had many of the characteristics of an Italian city-state rather than of an imperial capital. Many of those who were assumed to be the upholders of an exclusive and defensive Byzantine identity turned out to be janus-faced: simultaneously loyal subjects and highly placed servants of the Byzantine emperor but also citizens of Italian cities, especially Genoa and Venice.
