Republican Beijing
The City and Its Histories
$55.00, £32.95 hardcover
978-0-520-23050-7
Available Now
403 pages, 6 x 9 inches, 15 b/w photographs, 10 maps, 4 tables
August 2003, Available worldwide
Categories: History; Asian History; China; Urban Studies
August 2003, Available worldwide
Categories: History; Asian History; China; Urban Studies
Downloadable eBook version available:
Adobe E-Reader at ebooks.com, $15.95
Adobe E-Reader at ebooks.com, $15.95
"This is the first full account of Republican-era Beijing to be published in English. . .Because of [Dong's] well-formulated analysis, this book will no doubt become the standard interpretation of the city's economic and social history during those turbulent and fluid years."—Ronald Suleski, Intl. Journal of Asian Stds
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. Madeleine Yue Dong offers the first 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.
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.
Excerpt from the foreword by Thomas Bender:
"To explore such a history of cities and global developments of modern city culture a century ago, we need to recognize a history of metropolitan cities as a genre of its own: not isolated from other histories, including national histories, but a history that recognizes the development of the modern metropolis as a historical process of global proportions. While this book is written within the burgeoning historiography of Chinese cities, it is very attentive to similar studies of big cities on other continents—Carl Schorske's study of Vienna, Jeffrey Needel's of Rio de Janeiro, and a number of studies of Paris. Now the students of those cities—and more—must engage the work of Dong and other recent studies of Beijing and Shanghai.
Dong, like Michel de Certeau, explores the relation of everyday life in cities to the sense of history and to modernizing planning agendas. But she goes beyond most accounts of the everyday by understanding that one cannot study the everyday without examining the state and its relation to everyday life and the 'making of history in the modern city."
"To explore such a history of cities and global developments of modern city culture a century ago, we need to recognize a history of metropolitan cities as a genre of its own: not isolated from other histories, including national histories, but a history that recognizes the development of the modern metropolis as a historical process of global proportions. While this book is written within the burgeoning historiography of Chinese cities, it is very attentive to similar studies of big cities on other continents—Carl Schorske's study of Vienna, Jeffrey Needel's of Rio de Janeiro, and a number of studies of Paris. Now the students of those cities—and more—must engage the work of Dong and other recent studies of Beijing and Shanghai.
Dong, like Michel de Certeau, explores the relation of everyday life in cities to the sense of history and to modernizing planning agendas. But she goes beyond most accounts of the everyday by understanding that one cannot study the everyday without examining the state and its relation to everyday life and the 'making of history in the modern city."
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
PART I. THE CITY OF PLANNERS
Chapter 1. From Imperial Capital to Republican City
Chapter 2. Power: The City and Its People
Chapter 3. Tradition: The City and the Nation
PART II. THE CITY OF EXPERIENCE
Chapter 4. Production: Beijing in a New Economic System
Chapter 5. Consumption: Spatial and Temporal Hierarchies
Chapter 6. Recycling: The Tianqiao District
PART III. THE LETTERED CITY
Chapter 7. Sociology: Examining Urban Ills
Chapter 8. History: Recording Old Beijing
Chapter 9. Literature: Writing New Beijing
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
PART I. THE CITY OF PLANNERS
Chapter 1. From Imperial Capital to Republican City
Chapter 2. Power: The City and Its People
Chapter 3. Tradition: The City and the Nation
PART II. THE CITY OF EXPERIENCE
Chapter 4. Production: Beijing in a New Economic System
Chapter 5. Consumption: Spatial and Temporal Hierarchies
Chapter 6. Recycling: The Tianqiao District
PART III. THE LETTERED CITY
Chapter 7. Sociology: Examining Urban Ills
Chapter 8. History: Recording Old Beijing
Chapter 9. Literature: Writing New Beijing
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index