西岸．陽光燦爛的日子

Shanghai on Strike

2006-12-01T23:40:00.000-08:00

Reading response to Elizabeth Perry's Shanghai on Strike

The central argument of Elizabeth Perry’s book Shanghai on Strike is that different workers engage in different politics (239). She traces who these workers were, where they came from, what practices they brought with them to the workplace, what associations they developed there, and how such traditions and organizations shaped their patterns of collective action. (239) Perry suggests that skill was found to be a key variable in differentiating among workers. Together with native-place origin, gender composition, levels of education, literacy, and urbanization, these factors created the intra-class differences among workers in Shanghai before the CCP occupations. However, labor fragmentation did not incapacitate the Chinese working class; rather, Perry argues that it can provide a basis for politically influential working-class action, not only in support of one or another political party but even in the emergence of new political regimes. Different segments of society and even different segments of one class within society may forge linkages with state officials that alter the fate of both GMD and CCP (2).

Therefore, in the three parts of her book, Perry illustrates how the Shanghai labors were fragmentized, and its implication to political mobilization. Part I, “The Politics of Place,” traces the geographic roots of the Shanghai work force to suggest that early labor protest in the city varied along native-place lines. Part II, “The Politics of Partisanship,” narrates the story of the Shanghai labor movement from the 1920’s to 1940’s, and shows how outside organizers were forced to come to terms with the traditions that antedated their arrival. Part III, “The Politics of Production,” investigates the workplace to discover how workers at different pints in the production process responded to the political agendas of the day. Perry points out that with workers from particular geographical origins occupying specific productive niches in the Shanghai economy, identifiable political divisions developed among skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled laborers.(6)

Through exploring the history of Shanghai’s labor movement, Perry challenges, or modifies, several conventional understandings on labor politics. Firstly, she highlights that the divisions among Chinese workers generated systematic and long-standing solidarities which provoke rather than discourage activism, thus rejecting the Marxist argument that only the growth of a monolithic working-class consciousness could attribute to the rise of labor movement (29). Secondly, Perry challenges the modernization theorists’ emphasis on the transformative effect of capitalism. She argues that tradition persists as central organizing principles of industrial life (11). Thirdly, Perry challenges the claims that Chinese labor movement was mobilized by intellectuals, students or party cadres. Rather, she points out that the Shanghai labor movement had a life of its own, closely linked to the countryside from which its workers sprang. Shanghai workers were heirs to a tradition of collective action that did not always fit easily with the plans of outside organizers. Lastly, Perry disagrees with the Chinese scholars’ conventional narratives that foreign ownership, suggesting imperialist exploitation, stimulated fierce resistance on the part of patriotic workers (164). She argues that it is the company’s prosperity and the conditions of labor within each industry that account for the discrepancy in the level of strife.

Last but not least, Perry’s study of the Shanghai labor movement illustrates the social foundations of the modern Chinese state. (239) She points out that the divergent cultural and associational proclivities of the Shanghai working class became aligned with major political parties. By tracing the affinity of the guild-based Jiangnan artisan for the Communists or of the gang-based North China machine operator for the Guimindang, Perry reveals the strengths and limitations of both parties. Each of these contending parties gave raise to its own state system (the Republic of China followed by the People’s Republic of China). The Chinese states – imperial, republican, and Communist alike – have been commonly characterized as “despotic,” “bureaucratic,” “autonomous,” or “totalitarian.” Such designations imply a minimal place for social forces. By contrast, Perry’s study shows the dynamic influence of local society, divided though it was, on state transformation. (8)

Culture, Power and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942

2006-11-17T03:00:00.000-08:00

Summary to Prasenjit Duara's Culture, Power and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942

In his book, Prasenjit Duara seeks to explore the dynamic of state society relations in China. Through studying the surveys of six villages conducted by the research bureau of the South Manchurian Railway Company from 1940 to 1942, Duara examines the impact of state strengthening - the ability for the state to penetrate and absorb the resources of local society - on the organization of power in rural North China from late Qing to the early modern state. He points out that the Chinese pattern of state strengthening was closely interwoven with modernizing and nation building goals (2). Under these two goals, the Republican state destroyed the old political legitimation developed in late Qing, without being able to create new working alternatives. Duara points to a conclusion that it is precisely the loss of legitimacy that led to the fall of the Nationalist regime and the rise of the Communists. Therefore, Duara’s study can be divided into two parts: the development of the old political legitimation in the late Qing, as represented by the coalition between the state and the local gentry; and the replacement of the old by the modernizing legitimation of the Republican state, as represented by the state’s alliance with the entrepreneurial brokers.

Duara coins the phrase “cultural nexus of power” to refer to the affiliation of symbolic values to hierarchical organizations and networks of informal relations (5). It serves as the framework that structures access to power and resources in the local society (24). Duara argues that the Qing state had relied significantly on the cultural nexus of power to establish their authority among the rural communities of North China in late 19th century, through the successful conversion of much of the nexus into a sprawling infrastructure of popular orthodoxy that legitimate the imperial order. This was made possible with the help of upwardly mobile rural elites for whom this conversion process reinforced the role of the nexus in legitimating their leadership. Following his teacher Philip Kuhn, Duara asserts the influence of gentry in local authorities and their important roles in the state-society relationship.

However, the state expansion and penetration in the 20th century profoundly eroded these local sources of political authority. Under the ideology of modernization, the Republican state simply ignored the resources in the “backward” cultural nexus and sought to build a political system outside it, such as transforming the religious properties and institutions into components of a purely political public sphere (248). Duara criticizes that the new ideology of the modernizing state did not succeed in providing a viable alternative to the cultural nexus that had generated legitimacy both for local leaders and for the state (248).

To extract resources from local society (an important task of state strengthening), the state charged a host of new taxes such as the tankuan. However, local gentry refused to work for the state as tax collectors and withdrew themselves from the political arena. The budding alliance between the modernizing state and the rural elite failed to flower. As such, traditional leaders were increasingly replaced by political entrepreneurs who were “local bullies” pursued office for entrepreneurial gains and did so at the expense of the interests of the community he supposedly led (251). The Republican state ended up creating a stratum of political entrepreneurs who became a dominant form of predatory power in rural society before the Communist Revolution. Duara proclaims that the replication and extension of entrepreneurial brokerage that accompanied state penetration cost the state dearly in terms of legitimacy. It led to what Duara have called state involution, meaning that growth in certain spheres (the state penetration and extraction of local resources) could unleash a process of self-destruction and revolutionary transformation (249 & 253).

Duara concludes that the new communist state marked a radical departure from the involutionary pattern of state expansion. The elimination of entrepreneurial state brokers during the early years of communist rule was an important factor behind the Communists’ ability to generate a critical increase in revenue. Through tax evasion and engrossment, Duara claims that the early communist regime was in fact fulfilling the state-making goals of the Republican regimes (254).

State Authority and Social Participation in Late Qing Dynasty

2006-11-14T01:24:00.000-08:00

Historians of earlier generations tend to consider imperial China as a stable, inertial society following rigid Confucian dogmas. Weber, for instance, believes that what made imperial China different from other civilizations was its state religion, Confucianism, which carried a deep-seated traditionalism, praised highly conventions and debased innovations in the social system. He argues that Confucianism effected strongly counteractive to capitalist development, thus capitalism thrived in the West but not in China (Weber, 1951). Likewise, Fairbank argues that the legacy of the traditional tributary system, which was based upon Confucian superiority over barbaric neighbors, made it difficult for the Chinese to rise to the challenge of British maritime trade (Fairbank 1953: 7). He points out that under the “synthesized Sino-barbarian Confucian monarchy, there was no room for popular movements, and, therefore, no room for nationalism in the modern mass form” (Fairbank 1953: 45). Following this trajectory, many scholars believe that the Qing Empire fell precisely because the Confucian imperial system failed to compete with the western powers in the early modern period.

This assertion is not totally true, for it fails to explain the emergence of a series of domestic rebellions in China since mid 19th century, not to mention the 1911 revolution. If Confucian China was stable, inertial, rejecting any social innovations, in which every member of the society was submitted to Confucian teachings and was obedient to the political and social leaders in the upper hierarchy, there should be no legitimate reason for the rise of any rebellion, an act considered to be challenging the Mandate of the Heaven. The emergence of the domestic rebellions in late Qing, therefore, offers two counter-thoughts: firstly, unlike what Weber has argued, the penetration of the alleged state religion Confucianism in imperial China was limited: not everyone was submissive to Confucian rules, whereas the state and the society were not fused by Confucian teachings. Secondly, a Confucian China did not necessarily mean an unchanging, stable, inertial society, where people blindly followed the rigid dogmas.

With these two propositions in mind, I wish to discuss Philip Kuhn and Mary Backus Rankin’s works on the period when the Qing state experienced domestic rebellions and foreign encroachment at the same time. Both Kuhn and Rankin explore the decline of the imperial system less from the externality (how the western powers threatened the sovereignty of the Qing state) but more from within (how the domestic society challenged the state authority). They both assert the important political role of the gentry in this chaotic historical period. In this essay, I seek to compare and contrast Kuhn’s studies that consider gentry as the necessary agents in local administration, with Rankin’s work that considers gentry as rivals of state power and contributors to the 1911 Revolution.[1]

Kuhn argues that the modern state began not at the point of the 1911 Revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty, but from the Taiping rebellion in mid 19th century. He points out that there are several domestic constitutional agendas in the modern age that have their origins from the late Qing (Kuhn, 2002). These constitutional agendas, which Kuhn defines as a set of concerns about the legitimate ordering of public life and the will to grapple with these concerns in action, are largely about the dilemma between state authority and social participation.[2] The crucial problem of the modern state, therefore, concerns the ways to absorb the excess human energy in the society without diminishing state control and authority. This excess human energy, as in the late imperial period, was the large number of gentry who did not hold official positions. They were degree holders who received classical Confucian teachings, enjoyed economic and social privileges, and normally with career goals to serve the state.

Unable to join the very narrow state structure, the gentry were excess human energy accumulated in the localities. Kuhn argues that it was the Taiping rebellion that provided an opportunity for the gentry to partake in political activities – a way to discharge this excess human energy. Population pressure, official corruption, economic straights incurred by opium traffic, and etc. in the mid 19th century eventually led to the outbreak of the Taiping rebellion. The Qing state was unable to protect the society and had to rely on the gentry to maintain local control. Various defensive and control systems, such as tuanlian and baojia, were setup by the state and the gentry within the localities. Being excluded from the official state bureaucratic structure before, the gentry now served as the leaders of the local communities and worked closely with the state. Kuhn points out that the gentry had an intention to preserve the state, while the state had an intention to involve the gentry. He argues that “the entrusting of formal powers to the elite was less a devolution of power out to the magistrate’s hands than a shifting of power from a relatively uncontrollable and dangerous group (the clerk and the runners) to a relatively sympathetic and predictable group (the gentry), or so it could be rationalized” (Kuhn 1970: 214). The gentry became the necessary agents in local administration.

Yet, precisely at this point of strong cooperation between the state and the gentry that Kuhn regards as the end of the imperial system and the beginning of the modern state. Before the Taiping rebellion, there was a large routine bureaucracy in the middle of the state structure that served as the buffer between the imperial monarch and the society, as illustrated in Kuhn’s Soulstealers. This bureaucratic layer, a characteristic feature of the imperial system, was where the conflicts and controls between the state and the society took place. Yet, this bureaucratic layer dissolved after the Taiping rebellion, not because of the rebellion per se but because of the expanded participation of the gentry in the localities. The heavy involvement of the gentry in defending local properties and in post-rebellion reconstruction shifted the site of controls and conflicts from the middle bureaucracy to the localities. The centre of gravity of state governances and political activism was decentralized to the region or the province. The dilemma of state control and expanded social participation marked the beginning of the modern state.

Nevertheless, the expansion of social participation does not imply the emergence of democracy nor the public sphere in late Qing according to Kuhn’s analysis. The biggest goal of the gentry, whose prestige social status was obtained through royal examination on Confucian classics, was to gain official positions and be incorporated in the state structure. To absorb these gentry, the state institutionalized the self-initiated defensive and control systems in the localities, which in returns allowed state control to reach the very bottom of the bureaucracy. The state and the gentry developed a cooperative relationship and formed an extensive quasi-governmental structure.

Kuhn’s logic seems to suggest that the gentry had no direct contribution to the 1911 Revolution, since they were being incorporated to the official structure and worked as state agents in local administrations. However, Rankin has a different viewpoint. She suggests that it was the gentry that had the organizational capacity first to erode Qing rule and later to challenge it politically. She reasons why the gentry “that had benefited most from the imperial state also had reason to oppose it” (Rankin 1986: iii). Like Kuhn, Rankin points out that the Taiping Rebellion marked a decisive shift in the balance between the state and elite society, in part because it brought about widespread and sometimes persisting local militarization, as what Kuhn has argued. More important, post-rebellion reconstruction fostered a rapid and permanent expansion of elite-managed, quasi-governmental local activities (Rankin 1986:3).

Yet, Rankin makes a very strong argument that allows her to move a step further from Kuhn’s studies on the gentry’s role in late Qing politics: there was a shift in the gentry’s interpretation on Confucian patriotism. Following the traditional Confucian concept on patriotism, it was impossible for the gentry to challenge the authority of the state and the imperial monarch. However, Rankin notices that after the Taiping rebellions, the gentry reinterpreted the Confucian patriotism from the loyalty to the imperial monarch, to the loyalty to the nation. This reinterpretation, as triggered by foreign invasions, led to the expansion of social participation and the public sphere; it provided the legitimacy for the gentry to organize self-improvement programs outside the bureaucratic structure in order to “save the nation,” and to criticize the Qing state’s poor administration and polities publicly. As such, the gentry were not only state agents in local administration as what Kuhn has demonstrated, but also rivals to state powers who challenged the state’s authority. She therefore claims that the 1911 Revolution could not have succeeded without broad support from the gentry. Rankin’s analysis shows that Confucian dogmas were not rigid and unchangeable, whereas Confucian society was not stable and inertial at all.

Although Rankin tries very hard to demonstrate that the influences of the gentry had departed from the localities to the national level, it remains questionable how representative her case study on Zhejiang elites is. In particular, when we compare her study with Esherick’s book on the origins of the Boxers Uprising, we learn that there were many different actors other than the gentry that were responsible for the creation of the state authority and social participation dilemma.

References
John K. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast: The Opening of the Treaty Ports, 1842-1854 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953).

Joseph W. Esherick, The Origins of the Boxers Uprising.

Mary Rankin, Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China, Zhejiang Province, 1865-1911 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986).

Max Weber, The Religion of China (New York: Free Press, 1951).

Philip A. Kuhn, Rebellion and Its Enemies in Late Imperial China: Militarization and Social Structure, 1796-1864 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980).

Philip A. Kuhn, Origins of the Modern Chinese State (Stanford, Calif.: Standford University Press, 2002).

Notes
[1] Both the term “gentry” (used by Kuhn) and “elites” (used by Rankin) denote the degree-holding literati in Qing China. These two terms are interchangeable.

[2] The three constitutional dilemmas that Kuhn lists in his book are: (i) how to reconcile broadened political participation with enhancement of the power of the state? (ii) How to reconcile political competition with the concept of a pubic interest? (iii) How to reconcile the fiscal demands of the state with the needs of local society?

The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism

2006-11-03T00:35:00.000-08:00

Summary of Max Weber's The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism.

Max Weber’s seminal book The Religion of China describes not only religious, but also social, political, and economic conditions of imperial China. Using a comparative approach, Weber shows that circumstances which are usually considered to have been obstacles to capitalist development in the Occident, such as the fetters of feudalism, landlordism, and guild system, had not existed in China. Then, why did capitalism not developed in China? Weber points out that the varied conditions which externally favored the origin of capitalism in China did not suffice to create it. He argues that the basic characteristics of the “mentality” of the Chinese – the practical attitudes towards the world – effects strongly counteractive to capitalist development. Such mentality was cultured by China’s state religion: Confucianism.

Confucianism was adopted as the only orthodox state religion (in contrast to Taoism as the heterodoxy) in the 2nd century. Unlike other religions, Confucianism represented an inner worldly morality of laymen. It carried a deep-seated traditionalism, praised highly conventions and debased innovations in the social system. Weber points out that Confucianism was being “rationalized”, meaning that (i) it had divested itself of magic, and (ii) it had systematically unified the relation between God and the world and therewith its own ethical relationship to the world. The rationalization of Confucianism reduced tension with the world to an absolute minimum. The corresponding individual ideal was expressed in fulfilling traditional obligations, which meant watchful and rational self-control and the repression of whatever irrational passions might cause poise to be shaken.

The Confucian ideal thus favored a stable political environment. It represented a tremendous code of political maxims and rules of social propriety for cultured men of the world. Confucianism shaped, and was shaped by, the political economy and social structure of China in two major areas: the pontifical and charismatic nature of imperial authority, as well as the development of bureaucratic administration dominated by the literati. Weber argues that the charismatic character of Confucianism suited imperial authority’s interests in the centralization of power. He points out that neither the cities nor the guilds had political autonomy and military power. Rather, power was concentrated in the hands of the imperial monarch who was the pontifex and the son of the Heaven. His ruling represented the mandate of the Heaven and was therefore unchallengeable. On the other hand, the abolition of feudal system led to the establishment of a regime of officials who qualified through personal merit. Classical education in Confucian teachings, therefore, became the decisive prerequisite for entering the ruling status group. These officials were predominately Confucius literati who tended to develop a bureaucratic administration for self-preservation. They supported the retention of ancestor worship as absolutely necessary for the undisturbed preservation of bureaucratic authority. In this regard, the pontifical and charismatic nature of the imperial authority converged with the bureaucratic administrative structure, making China a static, routine, self contained, patrimonial state for millenniums. Weber argues that it is precisely this Confucius mentality that made capitalism unable to develop in imperial China.

Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China

2006-10-27T01:47:00.000-08:00

Reading response to Mary Backus Rankin, Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China.

Why some members of the social groups that had benefited most from the imperial state also had reason to oppose it? (viii) The Chinese elites had helped the imperial state to settle the Taiping rebellion and contributed significantly in post-rebellion reconstruction; yet, in only half a century’s time they led to the 1911 Revolution that eventually overthrew China’s imperial system. The dilemma of state-building and social mobilization in the period between the two incidents is the subject of Rankin’s book. Rankin claims that it was the elites that had the organizational capacity first to erode Qing rule and later to challenge it politically. Even though many people consider the radicals and the revolutionary parties as the leaders of the 1911 Revolution, Rankin argues that the revolution could not have succeeded without broad support from both the old and the new elites in central and south China.

The population growth and commercialization in the 19th century had exerted pressure for fundamental changes in China and upset the existing balances between the state and society. The critical point marked the change in the state-societal relationship was the Taiping Rebellion, which brought about widespread and sometimes persisting local militarization; and post-rebellion reconstruction fostered a rapid and permanent expansion of elite-managed, quasi-governmental local activities. The movement of elites away from their established relations with state power can be seen in two phenomena, namely the growth of public spheres of activity outside the bureaucracy, and the emergence of oppositional public opinion.

The public sphere grew during the Qing as population size and mobility, growing trade, increasing numbers of market centers, and expanding social organization made the administrative capacity of the bureaucracy obsolete. By the end of the 18th century, the weak Qing state was forced to rely upon sub-bureaucracy of clerks and runners, thus leading to the development of elite management outside the bureaucracy. The elite managers developed autonomous ambitions that were not fully reconcilable with official supervision. When the country was under foreign attack during the 19th century, the elite’s patriotism shifted from the loyalty to the nation-state, to the defence of the country. This brand of patriotism placed a premium on social mobilization, fostered demands that public opinion influence government policy, and eroded faith in leaders who could not protect the country (26). By studying elite public management within Zhejiang province, Rankin illustrates the change from an apolitical social activism to a politicized challenge to the government.

The continuing mobilization of core-area elites clashed with a new attempt at aggressive state-building by the Qing government. The elites wished to reply on social mobilization outside the bureaucratic structure, while the state wished to extend state control over society while enlisting its support. Nevertheless, neither the state’s effort to extend its control nor the elites’ mobilization initiated a decisive trend. The Qing and the republican governments that followed did not succeed in controlling the elites bureaucratically, nor did the elites translate their public positions into a permanent control of state power (29). Rankin points out that the most lasting legacy in this period was the expansion - both institutionally and conceptually - of the public arena, which continued to be redefined during the Republic by the fluctuating competitions to control it (29). She concludes that after the revolution destroyed the monarchy, the bureaucratic-statist expansion and the elite organizational expansion cancelled each other out. To capture the divergent social and political strands traceable to the 19th century, another revolutionary movement was required, which would reorganize society and build up the sociopolitical organization from below (309).

In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West

2006-10-23T18:36:00.000-08:00

Reading reponse to Benjamin Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West.

In his book, Benjamin Schwartz discusses two hypostatized entities, “Western culture” and “Chinese culture.” He follows the conscious responses of one individual, Yen Fu, to the cultural and historic situation of China at the turn of the 20th century. Yen has been chosen because he relates himself with peculiar directness to the confrontation of traditional China with the ideas of 18th and 19th century Europe. Unlike his predecessors and contemporaries, Yen is profoundly interested in what Western thinkers have thought about issues like military, economic and political power. To Schwartz, Yen does not respond to the “West” as an integral entity but to certain definite strands within the complex of eighteenth and nineteenth century thought, and thus he shed light on which is problematic in both cultures.

The questions that Yen concerned were “what does the West have which China lacks? Where does the crucial difference lie?” The questions are thrust forward by an urgent, overriding concern with the woeful debility of the Chinese state – its lack of wealth and power. In seeking the ultimate sources of the West’s power Yen Fu has driven far beyond the domain of the political to an inquiry into the very essence of modern Western civilization. Schwartz points out that two strands of modern Western development can be distinguished in Yen Fu’s writings. The first is the Faustian-Promethean strain – the exaltation of energy and power both over non-human nature and within human society. Yen believes that the crucial difference between the Western and Chinese culture is not a question of matter but a question of energy. The West has exalted human energy in all its manifestations – intellectual, moral, and physical. The Faustian-Promethean nature of Western civilization has produced the West’s enormous output of wealth and power.

The second strain might loosely be called the stream of social-political idealism, represented by terms like freedom, equality, democracy and socialism. Yen is convinced by many Western scholars that the energies which accounted for the West’s development are stored up in the individual and that these energies can be realized only in an environment favorable to individual interests, which is provided by liberty, equality, and democracy. Yen looks into the nature of relations among men within the larger macroscopic structures of political and social life.

Schwartz considers these two strains as the machinery of wealth and power, and the social political ideals. He argues that it is only in the early 19th century that close functional relations come to be perceived between the two strains. Yet, he suggests that such relationship is much more accidental, equivocal, haphazard, and mutable that is generally assumed in the bland religion of modernization. The problem of relations between the two is not just the problem for Yen Fu and China but for every modern society.

The Rebuilding of the World Trade Centre

2006-10-14T23:16:00.000-08:00

This essay aims to discuss the controversy around the rebuilding of the World Trade Centre. I want to make clear my proposition that I object the building of any structure in attempt to replace the lost WTC; rather, I am inclined to keep the site empty as many victim families suggested.[1] If a memorial is a structure built to retrieve people’s memory to a historical event, I will argue that the construction of a new WTC shifts people’s memory from the 911 event per se to the physicality of the lost towers. It marked the shift from the grief of the lost human lives to the grief of the lost objects.

Last summer, I attended a talk given by Peter Eisenman, who declared during the talk the end of postmodernism.[2] To Eisenman, postmodernism began in 1968, when Robert Venturi wrote the remarkable Complexity and Contradiction, and end in 2001, when the 911 tragedy happened. He points out that one of the key features of postmodernism is the thriving of the spectacle. The postmodern world is a world of spectacle, and “to see and to be seen” occupies significant parts in people’s lives. I interpret the fond of spectacle as a significant reason behind the construction of monumental structure like the WTC, in which people consider it not merely as functional spaces but key spectacles in the city – they were too visible. Yet, Eisenmen argues that people’s love for the spectacle end with the 911 event. The crashes of the planes, the collapse of the towers, the explosions, and the comings and goings of ambulances and fire-engines, were impressive visual images to people who witnessed the tragedy on site or by the televisions. But at the same time, people suddenly aware of the limitations and narrowness of the spectacle – it no longer fulfill people’s needs. When many people’s friends and families were lost during the tragedy, when the city was full of smoke and dirt for days, when the threat of a second terrorist attack disturbed every Americans, the 911 event was not spectacular images distant from people’s lives; it was real life. And the spectacle itself could not capture nor address people’s complex feelings, sensations, and experiences - grieve, sorrow, fear, and insecurity were so real to the people. The reality can only be understood through people’s own experiences and interactions, but not through engaging in any spectacular activity as we usually do in the postmodern era. I think Tony Oursler’s comment to the media’s obsession of the 911 tragedy is very convincing.[3] The media’s endless replaying and reprocessing of reality, retrieves people’s bitter memories without helping them to understand the reality at all. People are no longer contented with the spectacle. The 911 event brings us back to a humanized reality.

The 911 event is by nature a complex happening that tie to too many people’s too many sensations. Sadly, such complexity is being simplified and quantified - what I notice is that there is a shift from the grief of the lost human lives to the grief of the lost objects. The complex event was reduced to the memory of the lost twin-towers, which are quantified by highlighting the towers’ physicality, notably the impressive form and size. The glorification of the physicality of the towers can be seen in many artists’ imagined memorials. Nancy Rubins honored the twin towers by proposing two deep holes carved into the earth the same size and shape as the WTC.[4] In his proposal, Art Spiegelman reduces WTC into a forest of a hundred and ten one-story towers. He mentioned in the interview that he really “misses the old towers.”[5] In these two cited cases, what the artists memorize are the lost objects instead of the lost human lives. I begin to ask, for whom that we dedicate the memorial? The towers or the victims? The glorification of the objects contrasted with the humanized reality brings back by the 911 events. No wonder why the victim families raise up against the construction of any structure on the WTC site, for it will redirect the memory from the event per se to the physical objects.

In opposition to the victim families’ advocacy to keep the site empty are the people who insist in the building of the new WTC. Although different groups of people favor different architectural schemes, they all have a common preference: a new WTC compatible to the lost ones in terms of size. James Glanz and Eric Lipton illustrate vividly that the longing for bigness is deeply rooted in the historical development of the old WTC.[6] The developers and the authority had a deep conviction that thinking big and building big was the root cause for the success of WTC. They equaled the building of the mega-towers as an indicator of the city’s progress. When planning the project in the 1950s, Robert Moses, New York’s then public-works czar, told the developer David Rockefeller that “unless we got others to see that there was a future in Lower Manhattan…”[7] The future that Moses pointed to, was the construction of the WTC with unprecedented size. It implied that New York will bit other big cities like Los Angeles and Tokyo in the provision of office spaces, and reinforced the city’s position as global financial center. Anyone opposing to the development was portrayed as anti-progress. As Glanz and Liption comment that the ambitious planning of the WTC excited the society and made “the Radio Row merchants [who refused to relocate to make room for the project,] look like mere obstructionists standing in the way of the inevitable march of progress.”[8] Thus, the WTC has become a symbol of Lower Manhattan’s progress, and that symbol is in fact tied to the towers’ bigness, making today’s people easily reduce their memories of the lost towers into only the physicality.

Because of the famed bigness, the towers generate enormous income to the developer and the authority – about to $30 million a year in profit.[9] It is not surprising that the developer and the authority opt for the construction of the new WTC with the same bigness in view of economic considerations. I am not sure if there is any statistic showing how many New Yorkers support the rebuilding of the WTC site. However, I am sure that, along with the discussion of the exciting rebuilding schemes, people’s attentions are directed to the comparison between the old and new towers, to the new-bigness, to the projected future and progress associated with the new construction, and their memories to the event are eventually dissolved.
When I visited the WTC site after the event, seeing people staring the empty site, weeping silently, I consent that the disappearance of the physicality, the absence of the spectacle, is the best way for us to examine our heart, to memorize the lost lives, to rethink the meaning of peace and war, and to address our complex sensations to the historical event.

Note:
[1] Since the architectural design proposal regarding the reconstruction of the World Trade Center is still under debate, I am not sure if the winning Freedom Tower will be the final scheme to be put on the site. For easy discussion, I will use the simple term “new World Trade Center” to denote any commercial tower aim to replace the lost WTC. It does not include the memorial structure, park and transport interchange constructed on the site.
[2] Peter Esienmen delivered the talk in the UIA 2005 World Congress, Istanbul.
[3] Calvin Tomkins, “After the Towers: Nine artists imagine a memorial,” in The New Yorker, July 15, 2002, 59.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] James Glanz and Eric Liption, “The Height of Ambition: In the epic story of how the World Trade Towers rose, their fall was foretold,” in The New York Times Magazine, September 8, 2002, 32-44.
[7] Ibid., 34.
[8] Ibid., 36.
[9] Ibid., 44.

The Statecraft of the Qing Empire

2006-10-09T00:14:00.000-08:00

An episode in a popular Chinese novel: Emperor Kangxi, the main character in the novel, was confronted with a Ming loyalist who wished to overthrow the Qing and regain the Ming power. Kangxi argued with him, “it doesn’t matter if this is the Manchu or the Han who rule the nation. It does matter, however, if the ruler is an able one. Can’t you deny that you Han Chinese’s livelihoods under my ruling, are far better than that under the Ming rulers?”

This essay aims to discuss the statecraft of the Qing Empire. How did the Qing maintain its sovereignty, manage state affairs and react to the ever-changing socio-economic conditions? I argues that the Qing systematically instrumentalize Confucianism and ethnic identity for efficient and effective governance. The Qing Empire was flexible in its ruling and proactive to the changing social conditions.

I approach the question by examining two narratives regarding Qing statesmanship. The first narrative is the dominating sinicization view that the Qing’s success in governing China was largely due to its merging with Han culture and its development into an imperial Confucian dynasty. Frederick Wakeman is a key figure in formulating this dominating narrative (Wakeman, 1985). The second narrative, proposed by Mark Elliott, was an alternative to the sinicization view. Elliot criticized the narrowness of the sinicization view, and argues that that the legitimacy of the Qing dynasty rest on, and was understood by Qing rulers themselves to rest on, two types of legitimating discourse: one based on orthodox Chinese ideas of kingship and the other on a narrower conception of the interests of the Manchus as an alien conquest group (Elliot, 2001). Elliot’s criticism is not without ground, for if Qing was just another Confucian dynasty, how did its ruling differ from that of Ming? With hindsight, the transition from Ming to Qing was not the beginning of another dynastic cycle. Rather, the Qing brought improvements to China; its successful statecraft was proved by the unprecedented prosperity from the Kangxi to the Yongzhen reigns, and the dynasty’s prolonged ruling in China’s history. Then, what differences did the Qing, the originally barbarian tribes in the eyes of the Han Chinese, brought to the nation as compare to the Ming?

Before I discuss the statecraft of the Qing, it is helpful to refer firstly to Timothy Brook’s analysis on the Ming society. Brook begins with an analytical angle from the emperor’s vision on an ideal society, which was agrarian and immobile (Brook, 1998). Yet, despite the emperor’s wish, the society transited with time from an agrarian to a commercialized one. This brought in many social problems such as demoralization and polarizations of class. Brook points out that the fall of Ming was partly due to the empire’s failure in adjusting itself with the changing socio-economic conditions resulted from the progressive and unstoppable expansion of commerce from the late-fourteenth to the mid-seventeenth century.

The rigid governing ideology of the Ming was also portrayed by Wakeman. He sees the blindly sacrifices of Ming loyalists like Shi Kefa as an unwise decision. To Wakeman, when loyalty became a rigid abstract value in the late Ming - notably by emperor Chongzhen’s massacre of imperial family members and the state officials’ suicides when the empire fell - it would lead to the unworthy sacrifices of human lives. Wakeman is more inclined to making wise decision and following good leaders. Precisely because of this reason, he praises high the flexible governance of the Manchu. He acknowledges the Manchus’ success in completing the great enterprises to two factors: the making of the Manchus, and the collaborations of the Manchu with the Chinese.
The Manchus were originally northern tribesmen who had no ethnic identity. The lines deciding these northern tribesmen and the Chinese frontiersmen were not always clearly drawn, and assimilation on both sides was not unusual. Wakemen argues that the assimilation reflects the openness of Manchus to acculturated outsiders, including the Koreans, the Mongols, and the Liaodong Chinese. These collaborators and turncoats contributed greatly the Qing’s military victory over the Ming. Yet, along with this assimilation practice, the Manchu were constructing an ethnic identity for themselves, for both the reasons of creating a sense of unity through ethnical bonds and of legitimizing their invasion to the Central Plain. This was made possible by their declaration as the descendents of the Jurchens and the legitimate inheritors of the Jin Dynasty, the former ruler of the Central Plain. As such, the meanings of this dual-process, that is, the making of Manchu ethnic identity and the simultaneous acculturation with others, could not be taken on the surface as the desire for the search of one’s ethnical root or for making peace with neighboring tribes. Rather, they had their strategic functions in realizing the Manchu’s early military ambitions.

However, an important element was indispensable in this dual-process in the early formation of the Qing: material rewards. The various tribes were attracted to the Manchu mainly because of the material gains from military victories. The early Manchu rulers were thus constantly threatened by internal contenders who gained powers. The power struggles among the Manchu princes after the death of Niharci was a good example to illustrate the tensions within the newly formed empire. Therefore, the Qing always took the proactive role to balance the powers of, and to allocate well the resources among, different factions in the empire. The Eight Banners system was one of the institutional inventions that, on one hand, provided better control over the internal contending powers, and on the other hand, provided military protections to the empire when facing external enemies. In contrast to Ming’s rigidity in governance, the Qing was flexible enough to make changes to accommodate new threats and interests. This was particularly important when the Qing became the ruling dynasty of China.

The Qing’s wish in the balance of power and the ideological preference of harmony went well with the Confucian teachings. Both Wakeman and Kuhn suggest that the Qing society was largely Confucianized, and the Manchu qualities were not that pronounced in the society. Wakeman comes to this conclusion by showing how the Qing adopted Confucian practices in order to merge with the Han cultures; this act enhanced the minority Manchu to rule the majority Han. Kuhn, however, comes to the same conclusion by arguing that a Confucian bureaucracy was developed and worked well in the 18th century high Qing (Kuhn 1990). He analyzes the system of power between the monarchy and the bureaucrats in the Qianlong reign, and argues that the routine bureaucracy had shielded the commoners from the emperor’s arbitrary use of power. Nevertheless, Matthew Sommer provides a different look to the Qing society that makes me believe that Confucianism was only an instrument for effective governance, rather than as guiding moral principles to the Qing. Sommer argues that the paradigm shift from status performance to gender performance regarding the regulations on sexulaity was both an effort to cope with the emerging sexual anarchy, and a proactive measure to social unrest during the 18th century (Sommer, 2000). In other words, under the cover of the Confucian teachings of chastity and equality, the real concern of the Qing was to maintain social stability. By manipulating the malleability of Confucianism, the Qing was able to promote its political goals.

Despite these Confucian gestures, it seems to me that there was no real merging between the Manchus and the Han Chinese. In Susan Naquin’s study on Qing Beijing, the imperial monarch walled the capital to separate it from Han settlements (Naquin, 2000). The Inner City was left exclusive for the imperial families and the bannermen (who were mainly Manchus), while the Han Chinese were expelled to the Outer City. With the imperial palace as the centre of gravity, the capital was made to demonstrate the power of the throne. Naquin points out that the Qing intentionally eliminated social spaces in the capital, making imperial rituals the only focus of social lives. Although the Beijing people eventually turned the religious temples into social spaces, these temples were not open to everyone but accessible only by their patrons. The Manchus and the Chinese sometimes went to different temples in the city to worship the same god. Manchu-Han segregation was commonly seen in Qing China.

Elliot argues that it was essential for the Manchus to maintain ethnical distinction from the others for military reasons (Elliot, 2001). Security was a prime concerns to the Qing who was there to rule the majority Han Chinese. In the early years of the Qing dynasty, the court gained high degree of security by dispersing bannermen in the capital and the provincial banner garrisons to assert and maintain Manchu control in China in an overt way. The military networks recurrently reminded the Han Chinese in whose hands supreme authority lay, and also afforded the court an additional surveillance apparatus. The Qing further strengthened this military arrangement by ethnical bonds. Elliot argues that “[t]he companies of the Eight Banners, as the ‘native place’ of the conquering people, end up defining who those people are, making Manchus into bannermen and, conversely, making bannermen – some, anyway, after a protracted weeding-out process – into Manchus.” To make this happen, the Qing wisely adopted two strategies. First, the Manchu identity was imbricated in the banners through the imparting of a set of practices in daily life that effectively divided banner people form the Han Chinese. Second, the Qing allowed the banner status to be inherited, which was a smart move to transform the banner system as a military institution to an ethnical one. In sum, the Manchu ethnic identity was a political construct through institutionalization to strengthen the Qing’s ruling power.

The recovery of the Manchu Way, as Elliot illustrates, happened in the high Qing. This gives us some clues on the political agenda behind the construction of Manchu ethnicity. From Sommer and Kuhn’s studies, we understand that the Qing society was not that stable in the 18th century despite its economic prosperity. There were many rootless rascals that threatened social stability. It was, therefore, plausible that the Qing emperors wished to recover the Manchu Way as a proactive measure to strength military powers and to declare again the empire’s rulership.

How Confucian was the Qing Confucian society? How Manchus was the Machu? Perhaps these two questions were attractive only to the historians but not the Qing rulers, for the later consider both Confucianism and ethnic identity as mere instruments to facilitate their efficient governance and effective exercising of ruling power.

Reference
Brook, Timothy. The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China. University of California Press, 1998.

Elliot, Mark. The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China. Stanford, 2001.

Kuhn, Philip A. Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990.

Naquin, Susam. Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400-1900. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

Sommer, Matthew. Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China. Stanford University Press, 2000.

Wakeman, Frederic, Jr. The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth-Century China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.

Commodification of Environment

2006-10-08T17:25:00.000-08:00

There are many issues in this week’s readings that worth our discussions, such as the different narratives from various actors on environmental protections (Zackey, 2005 & 2006), the structural reasons behind environmental-then-labor protest (Liu, 2006), the alliance between environmental organizations and the media (Yang, 2005), and the very creative repertoires of environmental protests (Jing, 2000). Among all, I am more interested in the Yunnan case, in which Zackey shows not only the peasants’ grievances of losing their formerly rights and social subsidies, but most importantly, their grievances of unable to participate in the market and be benefited from China’s economic reform. Why the state not allows everyone to participate equally in the market? How do the state and its agencies create and maintain such unequal economic opportunity? For those who cannot, or have little opportunities to participate in the market, what will they do?

Why the state not allows everyone to participate equally in the market?
In my opinions, there are a number of reasons for the state not to allow everyone to participate equally in the market. Firstly, under the ideology of socialism, the China state monopolizes all state resources. The market reform can be considered as a process of commodification of these state resources, i.e., to circulate them, and create values, in the market. If this process is carried out too rapidly (the big bang theory), the society will be suffered from the adverse effects of rapid commodification that Polanyi and Burawoy described. To prevent this happens, the China state uses two strategies: (i) a gradual approach to reform; and (ii) an unequal opportunity to the market – Deng’s famous motto, “let a small portion [of the society] to get rich first.” Secondly, the economic reform involves huge reconfiguration on resource allocation and power structure. I could imagine there are enormous oppositions from state agencies and leaders whose formerly powers and rights are being deprived due to the reform. Thus, the state has to provide incentives (or compensations?) to them in order to gain their supports to the reform, by maintaining them certain privileges over the others. Finally, the state has to implement straight control on whom, and to what extent these people can, access to state resources in order to create a “desirable” market price. If everyone can access to the resources equally, the price will drop consequently. (Katherine Verdery has studied the case in Transylvania where the land price is reduced to meaningless.)

How do the state and its agencies create and maintain such unequal economic opportunity?
A very straight-forward answer to this question is by state policy and law – the state, through legislation, to redefine who can access to the state resources and who cannot. However, our studies in the land tenure systems in previous weeks tell us that there is always a gap between the policy itself and its implementation. One the other hand, one of Zackey’s informants complaints that the new construction industry in Wen Hai hires laborers via networks and tends to reject local workers (2006:8). This hints that the hereditary social connections in China also dictate who can enjoy greater economic opportunities.

For those who cannot, or have little opportunities to participate in the market, what will they do?
In contrast with the rightful resistances such a xinfang and litigations that we have discussed previous, the Wen Hai peasants adopt the approach of “everyday forms of resistance.” They develop their own ways to make profits, by illegal tree cuttings and by selling the timbers in black markets. This case study tells us vividly why and how black markets thrive in China: when people are not able to participate in the regular market, they create their own black market. As Zackey argues, Wen Hai’s frustrated inhabitants represent large scores of China’s population that have been disappointed by the unrealized expectations of economic reforms (2006:12). These people moralize their illegal acts by pointing to their relative economic and social place in society. In sum, China’s economy is developed at the expense of certain social groups; yet, these social groups find their own surviving strategies on the fringes of the society and the regular market.

The Manchu Way

2006-10-03T23:40:00.000-08:00

Reading response to Mark C. Elliot, The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.

In his book, Elliott aims to answer two research questions: the “minority-rule question” (How did the Qing manage to hold on to power for almost three hundred years?), and the “Manchu question” (What difference did it make to the history of late imperial China that the Qing rulers were Manchu, and not Han Chinese?) Not contenting with the usual narratives that the Manchus became wholly assimilated into Chinese society and established neo-Confucian norms of government (3), Elliot looks into the Manchu-language sources and provides his readers with alternative answers to these questions.

Regarding the minority-rule question, Elliot hypothesizes that the legitimacy of the dynasty rest on, and was understood by Qing rulers themselves to rest on, two types of legitimating discourse: one based on orthodox Chinese ideas of kingship and the other on a narrower conception of the interests of the Manchus as an alien conquest group (346). In other words, the Qing dynastic enterprise depended both on Manchu ability to adapt to Chinese political traditions and on their ability to maintain a separate identity. These two seemingly contradicting discourses worked hand in hand as the foundation of the Qing authority.

Elliot points out that Manchu identity, and ethnic sovereignty together with it, survived mainly thanks to the Eight Banners created in about 1601 (12). He argues that the companies of the Eight Banners, as the “native place” of the conquering people, ended up defining who those people were, making Manchu into bannermen and, conversely, making bannermen after a protracted weeding-out process, into Manchus (348). Thus, the Manchu identity was asserted and maintained through the banners in two broadways. On one level, the widespread presence of the banner system in China proper asserted the Manchu identity of the dynasty as a whole; on another level, the way of life imposed by the banner system upon its people profoundly affected the evolution of the Manchu ethnos in the 17th and 18th century (348).

Regarding the Manchu question, Elliot highlights three areas in which it made a significant difference that the Qing rulers came from Inner Asia and were not Han Chinese: (i) Manchu political style, (ii) territoriality, and (iii) ethnic plurality. The first area points to the Manchu political style of solidary conservatism, a tendency to close ranks and defend the status quo when threatened. The second area points to the geographical legacy of the Qing that allowed it to incorporate much of Inner Asia into the territory. It was accomplished by the Manchus’ claim as members of the traditional Chinese periphery that enable them to win the confidence of other Inner Asian people and bring them into fold (357). The last area points to the Manchus’ imagination of China as an ethnically plural polity.

In sum, this book show well, through the Manchu case, not just the degree to which ethnicity is a “mere” political construct, but also the degree to which such constructs cannot do without the aura of cultural, historical, and genealogical legitimacy (353).

Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China

2006-09-27T22:10:00.000-08:00

Reading response to Sommer, Matthew H. , Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China. Stanford:Stanford University Press, 2000.

In his book, Matthew Sommer seeks to explain the regulation of sexuality in late imperial China, especially legislation and central court practice during the Qing. His central thesis is that the organizing principle for the regulation of sexuality shifted from status performance to gender performance since the 18th century Qing dynasty. In the old paradigm, people at different status levels were held to different standards and familiar morality. As such, the debased people (jian min) were deprived of legal protection from sexual offence. Whereas in the new paradigm, a uniform standard of sexual morality and criminal liability was extended across old status boundaries and all people were expected to conform to gender roles strictly defined in terms of marriage. Because of this paradigm shift, new crimes were invented, old criminal categories were reinterpreted and expanded, and a new cast of characters emerged as objects of apprehension and regulation.

To support his thesis, Sommer looks into Qing dynasty legal case records, including the very bottom of the judicial hierarchy (the county level) and the very top (central courts at the provincial and palace levels). Sommer concludes from these records major changes in Qing legislations that shows the extension of a uniform standard of sexual morality and criminal liability: (i) elimination of the old status-based exceptions to the general prohibition of extramarital intercourse, namely prostitution and the sexual use of servile women by their masters; (ii) assimilate homosexual sodomy to the previously heterosexual category of sex offenses; and (iii) invention of new crimes against chastity, supported by an unprecedented propaganda campaign to promote female chastity (305). In sum, the regulation of sexual behavior was reorganized in Qing to uphold a gender order defined in terms of strict adherence of family roles.

Sommer argues that the legal changes were largely related to the social background of 18 th century China, in which, because men outnumbered women, patriarchal stability was perceived as under constant threat from a growing crowd of rogue males (the rootless rascals) at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. The growing number of people at the margins of society, for whom sexual behavior had come to play a basic role in survival, created a sexual anarchy that threatened the better-established householders. Thus, the paradigm shift in legislation was an effort to cope with this newly perceived danger. The Qing judicial purpose was to protect the patrilineal family order against pollution by outside blood, whether that threat took the form of rape or of the treacherous adultery of women (307). In other words, under the cover of promoting chastity and eliminating status discrimination, the real concern of the Qing state was to maintain social stability.

It is noteworthy that the Qing state's legal protection covered not only the elite but largely the peasant family, reflected by the shift of the elite gender discourse. Sommer highlights the centrality of non-elites in the Qing judicial system; he claims that the Qing legislation reflected the values and anxieties of the settled peasant community at least as much as those of the elite. Sommer's analysis allows us to better understand the social conditions of the Qing dynasty when it attained its peak in the 18th century.

Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400-1900

2006-09-21T22:17:00.000-08:00

Reading response to Naquin, Susan. Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400-1900. Berkeley: UC Press, 2000.

What happened to Peking, the former Ming capital, when the Manchu took over it in 1644 and brought in to it huge numbers of Bannerman (estimated 400,000)? In Part III of her book, Susan Naquin discusses the social, political and spatial reconfiguration of the capital city since the Manchu occupation. She places the city’s temples and their patrons at the centre of her narration and reconstructs the society in which they were embedded. She argues that the religious temples, which were prominent social space in the Ming dynasty, continue to be central to the urban life of Qing Peking.

Two contesting spatial paradigms are intertwined in this book: the enclosure of the capital as imperial domain, and the opening of the temples as public domain. The arrival of the Bannermen in 1644 expelled the min (civilians) from the northern Inner City to the southern Outer City. The Inner City was left exclusively for the Bannermen, who were composed by the Manchus, Mongols and Chinese. The geographical encapsulation of the Banner population allowed the throne to continue its high bureaucratized and collectivized governance and to strengthen the distinction between the conquerors and conquered (295). This was made possible by the construction of the walled enclaves which enclosed and demarcated the imperial domain. The high walls thus became important features in the capital, both physically and symbolically. The Qing court firstly dominated the walled imperial palace, then the Forbidden City, then the Inner City, and finally the summer resorts outside the city boundaries. With the imperial palace as the centre of gravity, the capital was made to demonstrate the power of the throne. There was apparently no public space in the Inner City. The socio-spatial reconfiguration of Peking was mean to reinforce the governance of the Qing court.

Although the wall had separated the Bannermen population from the civilians, both groups in the divided city were in fact facing parallel tasks of creating new communities for themselves. The Bannermen, who were foreigners to Peking, gone through the lengthy process of “domesticization”, making the capital as their homes. During the process, they “used religious rituals to create imagined but powerful communities of fellow believers that extended well beyond the territory directly controlled by the dynasty.” (352) Meanwhile, the boundaries between the Bannermen and the min blurred with time. The Peking locals, who were now formed by a heterogeneous population, used family, neighbourhood, native place, Banner, and religion as selective bases for association. The public sphere - place and organization such as temples, markets, theatres, tourist sights and lodges - helped the Peking people to create a homogeneous and distinctive local culture, one in which imperial Peking slipped from foreground to backdrop. (622)

By showing how the capital adjusted to the changes wrought by the Qing conquest, Naquin argues that “[i]n the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, immigrants were becoming natives, separate populations began to mix, and life outside the imperial domain developed its own culture and integrity... after five centuries [Peking] had become a diverse, self-confident, and complex city.” (450) Naquin points out that in the richness of its associational life, she sees no evidence that Peking was different from many other cities in China in this period. Thus, she concludes that the idea of Peking as the quintessential imperial capital contributed to the overemphasis on the city’s distinctiveness.

Speaking of Yangzhou: A Chinese City, 1550-1850

2006-09-14T22:22:00.000-08:00

Reading response to Finnane, Antonia, Speaking of Yangzhou: A Chinese City, 1550-1850. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004.

In her book Speaking of Yangzhou, Antonia Finnane provides a cultural study of the city Yangzhou, where she considers as a “local place with a local history.” Finnane examines the making of the city in the late Ming and Qing periods with reference both to the historiographical problem of the city’s place in history and to the semiotic problem of the meanings accumulating around Yangzhou over time. To Finnane, these two problems are interrelated: the actual construction of the city underpinned the construction of certain idea of Yangzhou, even if this idea incorporated and was enriched by earlier historical references. (15)

Thus, Finnane analyses Yangzhou both as a historical problem and a place that is historically known through the records of its past. She historicizes the Yangzhou through attention to developments in the late Ming and early Qing, traces the rise of the Huizhou merchants in Yangzhou from the late 16th century, and problematizes the history of the Ming-Qing transition with reference to the Ten-day massacre and the issue of loyalism. Finnane examines the relationship between the city and the greater Yangzhou region during the 18th century, through discussing the administration of the salt trade and water control in the city’s hinterland. The last part of the book explores the city from the perspective of gender and native place in the social hierarchy and queries the conventional description of Yanghzou as the pre-eminent site of the blurring of social boundaries held to characterize Chinese society in the 18th century (16).

The merits of Finnane’s book, in my opinion, lay on her challenges to the conventional narratives of “locality” and “loyalism” – the two notions that create the meanings accumulating around Yangzhou over time. Finnane sees the limitations to consider a city as bounded by the specificities of the locality. Yangzhou’s social, economic and cultural character was defined not by localized relationship inherent to that place and space but instead by its relationship to other places (9). Thus, she looks into the city’s history beyond its locality. An outstanding example is her narration on the rise of the salt merchants who came to Yangzhou from Shexian and Huizhou. These immigrants, perhaps outnumbered the Yangzhou locals, created a unique “local culture” in the city and exerted enormous influences to its “hinterland” – where Finnane extends from Yangzhou’s immediate surroundings to the places affected by Yangzhou’s salt trade and water control system.

Although the sojourners dominated the local society of Yangzhou, their understandings on the city were largely neglected in conventional historical narratives. Based on the “Ten-day Diary of Yangzhou” written by Wan Xiuchu, a predominant narrative on the fall of the city in 1645, Finnane compares and contrasts this memoir with other underplayed records and literatures. Through abundant primary and secondary sources, she demonstrates that the issue of loyalism anchored in Yagnzhou was in fact reconstructed by the loyalist historians and did not represent the complete scenario.

The Great Enterprise

2006-09-10T23:54:00.000-08:00

Reading response to Frederic Wakeman, Jr. The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth-Century China. Berkeley" University of California Press, 1985, vol. 1.

In his book, Wakeman narrates the process of, and the reasons behind, the fall of the Ming house and the rise of the Qing regime in the 17th century. Wakeman describes the entire transition from Ming to Qing, which took two-third of the century to be completed, as the "great enterprise" - a term to acknowledge the Manchus' efforts to gain and hold the Mandate of Heaven by ruling the "under-Heaven" (tianxia) of China. (Footnote 53) He believes that the Manchus did contribute to the reconstruction of the declining social order of the Late Ming.

Wakeman accounts the Ming social disorder to the factionalism that appearred both in the imperial court and the society at large. The corrupted eununchs, the Donglin party, the various gentry clubs, the warlords, were all examples of political factions that led to the split and decline of the Ming court. The situation did not improve in the later Nanjing regime at all when the imperial court was retreated from Beijing to the south. Interestingly, Wakeman relates the Ming factionalism to the demoralization of the literati, who used to be the social group that uphold confucian teachings. More, there was a geographical concern in the author's narration - the demoralized literati was mainly come from the relatively prosperous south, where the dynasty finally came to an end.

In contrast to the factionalism and the demoralization in the Ming court, Wakeman acknowledged the collaboration of the Manchus and the Chinese as the major factor that made the great enterprises of the Qing possible. The transfrontiersmen and the Chinese turncoats were the key actors that helped the Manchus to adjust to the political rise and to develop into an imperial Confucian dynasts. Yet, along with the great political success, Wakeman sees the moral uneasiness of these Chinese collaborators. On one hand, the Chinese adherents of the Qing dynasty gained a substantial opportunity to carry out the kinds of political reforms that they could never did in the corrupted Ming court. On the other hand, they lost the self-conviction of social idealists they had earlier admired themselves (20).

Throughout the book, the "Mandate of the Heaven" was a rhetoric for the Ming, the Manchus and Li Zicheng respectively to legitimate their sovereignty. Yet, the (re)creation of the mandate also reflects the ruler's own historiography.

The Great Transformation

2006-09-09T23:46:00.000-08:00

Reading response to Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001 (1944 first published).

In his book, Karl Polanyi looks into the political and economic origins of the collapse of the 19th century civilization. He argues that the collapse was due to the civilization’s shaky economic foundation – it was rested on four institutional systems, in which the front and matrix of the system was the self-regulating market. Polanyi’s central thesis is that it was the innovation of the self-regulating market, with the sole motive of gain, gave rise to the 19th century civilization; and such innovation, which was made possible by the development of market economy since the 17th century, led to the “great transformation” in history: economic arrangements were no longer embedded in social relations; instead, the situation reversed. Polanyi criticizes the establishment of market economy, for it subordinates human into the inhuman market mechanism, destroying the traditional rules of reciprocity and redistribution, and depriving human’s “right to live.” When Polanyi published his book in 1944, he probably did not foresee that China and other socialist polities have gone through the same “great transformation” by the end of the 20th century. Polanyi’s book thus provides useful theoretic frameworks for us to understand the post-socialist transitional economy. Two of these frameworks are particularly applicable: the double movement of self regulating market, and the commodification of the labor, land and money.

Polanyi argues that there is never a truly free, self-regulating market. There is always a double movement in which the principle of economic liberalism is balanced by the principle of social protection or interventionism. In our analysis on the post-socialist transitional economy, it is therefore necessary to discuss, on one hand how the state establishes and expands a self-regulating market; and on the other hand, how it protects the nation from the threat of social dislocation. How has the state, the society and the market shape, and was shaped, by the post-socialist “great transformation”? Polanyi raises the example that, when the market economy thrived, the power of the English Crown was transferred to the parliament led by capitalists who mobilized the commercial and industrial revolution. Similarly, will the economic reform in post-socialist states eventually lead to the political reform?

The self-regulating system functions best in One Big Economy. When the capitalists are looking for ways to expand the market into a global scale, does it implies that a global interventionism has to be developed as a counterbalance? The World Bank, IMF and WTO are institutional inventions in the 20th century supposing to serve this dual-function; yet, they bring in, other than a global market, is the global disparity and uneven developments. When the call for neoliberalism or globalization dominates the political and economic spheres, it is interesting to read Polanyi’s analysis today for he illustrates vividly that “improvement” do not necessary benefit all (e.g. the poor) in the society. (I find commonalities between Polanyi’s argument and David Harvey’s critiques on neoliberalism.) How do the post-socialist states alleviate social disparities while expanding the international market?

The disparity between classes, sectors and regions began when man and nature are being “priced.” Polanyi further analyses how labor, land and money were being commodified for sale in the market – a process that the post-socialist states are currently undergoing. Thus, we can expect the same consequences Polanyi describes, namely the dislocation of the rural society and the formation of classes, are seen in today’s transitional economy. Polanyi reaffirms the importance of state interventions to prevent the exploitation of the “fictitious commodities.” Nevertheless, after all, they are not genuine commodities and this creates the very sadness of the 19th century civilization – human, since then, is subordinated in the inhuman market mechanism, resulting in the many social problems we are now witnessing.

Urban Provocations & Protest in China

2006-04-24T01:02:00.000-08:00

This week’s readings introduce three cases of contentions happened in the residential arena of Beijing. They concern the tensions between (i) housing inequality and the emergence of gated community; (ii) the informal constructions and the urge for urban renewal; and (iii) the home-owners’ committee and the management company of private residential development. These three cases altogether illustrate the class segregation, the changing dynamics between landlord and tenant, and the new social problems arise after the housing reform when housing is no longer provided as a social benefit from the work-unit.

Youqin Huang’s article examines the dynamics of increasing housing inequality and emerging residential segregation in Chinese cities conceptually and empirically, through investigating the gated communities in Beijing. The process of social and spatial segregation that Huang analyzed is not much different from the US case that we have discussed in these few weeks. Yet, Huang highlight two points which are significant. Firstly, the housing inequality and residential segregation in China has a historical root that can date back to the formation of socialist institutions such as the household registration system and work-units. Thus they are not new inventions of the economic reform, although the market force further reinforces the disparity between classes. Secondly, the housing inequality results in spatial but not locational segregation in China; that means, residential developments for different classes, though gated and separated from each others, are sometimes located side by side.

Zhang Jie’s article investigates the informal constructions in one old neighborhood in central Beijing. He highlights the fact that these informal constructions are not only for residential purpose; they provides the space for economic activities such as retailing, restaurants or small workshop, which are vital to the neighborhood’s economy. Nevertheless, these informal constructions are under the threats of demolition under the call of rapid urban development and the urges of urban renewal. What is disappointing about Zhang’s articles is that there is no discussion on the conflicts between the residents and the authorities, when the residents have to be evacuated from these informal constructions. Where are the residents relocated? Are they being displaced to the fringe of the city, as what we usually seen in many countries? Does the authority compensate for the resident’s losses if these informal constructions are intrinsically illegal?

Benjamin L. Read’s article discusses the political effect of housing reform. He looks at the formation process of the home-owners’ committee in one of Beijing’s private residential development, which was a result of the residents’ discontent to the management company. This conflict between the two parties raises an interesting question on “who rule?” The promotion of homeownership after the housing reform makes the residents believe that they are, or should be, empowered to manage their own residences. This idea prompted the formation of various residents’ organization in Beijing. Depart from this, Read brings up the question if economic reforms and the rise of private ownership within authoritarian systems help to promote political freedom and democratization. Although in Read’s analysis, the home-owner’s organization is not getting much power at all, still it can be considered as an example of a broader trend: rights-based collective action on the part of citizens armed with an awareness of the gulf between what they are legally entitled to and what they are getting in practice.

From Zhang and Read’s articles, I am very confused about the role and function of the Neighborhood Committee and the Residence Committee. Are they managed by state officials? Are they an extension of the state’s institution in the neighborhood’s level? Zhang mentions that theses committees are responsible for the creation of job opportunities for the unemployed, manage industries and small scaled business, and help disabled in the community (91). If this is the case, what is the mechanism behind the functioning of these committees? How does the mechanism work when people become more mobile after the demolition of the work-unit system?

Entrepreneurial Vernacular: Developers’ Subdivisions in the 1920s

2006-04-18T01:05:00.000-08:00

In her book Entrepreneurial Vernacular: Developers’ Subdivisions in the 1920s, Carolyn Loeb narrates the development of suburban subdivision housing in US in the 1920s. She aims to answer the questions on how suburban subdivision housing become so widespread and why did it take the form that it did. Loeb invents the term “entrepreneurial vernacular” to highlight the nature of the suburban subdivision housings - on one hand, they are “vernacular” because they reacted to local traditions, construction methods, and circumstances rather than to the benefits of professional training; they are “entrepreneurial” because the building process involved the entrepreneurial skills that could only be provided by the realtors.

Loeb’s book is very well organized. It is divided into two parts. Part I is largely descriptive; it comprises the close-up view of three representative speculative suburban subdivisions, namely Ford Homes in Dearborn of Michigan, Brightmoor in Detroit, and Westwood Highlands in San Francisco. In each case, Loeb highlights distinctive features unique to that particular subdivision development; yet altogether these three cases provide an overview on the changing building practices in the 1920s and the tensions between various housing professionals. From the use of assembly-line and mass-production techniques that displaced the building craftsmen (the Ford Homes’ case), to the absence of architects in the housing project (the Brightmoor’s case), and then to the rise of the realtors as a profession (the Westwood Highlands’ case), Loeb narrates not only the history of subdivision development but also how these housing professionals are framed and responded to housing issues. It is interesting to know how the building craftsmen and architects redefined their professions by specializing in particular work tasks, setting up trade unions, and by creating the licensing and the accredited education system. While the craftsmen and the architects are losing their primacy in the building process, the realtors raise as a leading profession that co-ordinate the various disciplines with the use of entrepreneurial organizing skills.

Part II of the book concerns two broader historical trends in the residential construction industry. One of the trends is about the advocacy of homeownership - how the realtors joined with other housing professionals in a network of associational progressives to shape patterns of suburban development. Enjoying the sponsorship of the federal government, this network promoted single-family home ownership through a variety of private-sector programs. Another trend is about the use of architectural style to create a sense of community and continuity in the subdivisions. Loeb argues that architectural style helps reassure home owners and investors that familiar patterns of residential organization would persist.

However, Loeb does not make explicit the intricate relation between the changing building practices and the real estate market. What are the implications to the real estate market, if it is the realtors, rather than other professionals, who lead the building process? I recall few weeks ago we have discussed the exploitable relationship between the landlord and the tenant, and here the exploitation exists between the realtors cum bankers and the homeowners. If it is the realtors who lead the building process, they are able to decide what to provide in the housing market; in other words, they have the power to control over the way people live - the way of life that can generate maximum profits to the realtors. In fact, the boom of the housing market in the 1920s is largely due to two inventions from the realtors (in collaboration with the bankers and the federal government): the subdivision of land, and the mortgage and installment. Without these two inventions, the housing market will not be developed in such scale since the 1920s.

China's Worker Movement

2006-04-10T01:15:00.000-08:00

Ching Kwan Lee reveals in his three articles different aspects of the labor insurgency emerged along with China’s transition to market economy. I found one commonalty among these three articles, which is also related to what we have discussed last week: the formation of class.

In the first article (2000), Lee highlights the role of workers’ collective historical experiences of socialism as a major condition underlying the frequent labor protests in post-reform China. He points out that effective labor struggles depended on communal resources unevenly bequeathed by the old system of state socialism. Lee argues that workers’ collective memories of state socialism provided them with powerful solidarity impetus to fight for what they saw as their “class” interests.

On the other hand, Lee argues in the second article (2002) that the transition from state socialism to market socialism occasions a simultaneous radicalization of worker politics and the state’s attempt to bolster its regulatory capacity by institutionalizing a “rule by law”. He points out that the political consequences of reform may well depend on whether class conflicts, among other types of social conflicts, can in the long run be contained within the fledgling system of “socialist legality,” in a polity with a widening rift between central and local state power, and in a society rife with a contradictions between entrenched socialist rhetoric and emergent capitalist realities.

Lee further highlights in his third article (2005) that the unmaking and the making of the Chinese working class are heavily shaped by the state. Lee outlines the collapse of the institutions that defined working-class employment and entitlement under state socialism. He then traces the revamping of Chinese labor reform and worker entitlements: from the introduction of labor contracts to the promulgation of a national labor law, the demolition of work-unit socialism and its replacement with a national security system. Lee argues that this institutional collapse and revamping prompted worker’s livelihood struggle; and pressured by such livelihood needs, many workers, on seeing their legal rights and entitlements unjustly denied, become politically restive.

I try to establish the link between the labor reform discussed in these three articles and urban development in China. Apparently, the most direct result of labor reform is the huge housing demands along with the demolition of the work-units systems that used to guarantee housing provisions to the worker. The booming housing needs also contribute to the development of real estate market, which is a key revenue generator to China’s transitional economy.

More, we have already unfolded, in previous classes, the intricate relationship between housing and employment. In the case of China, this relationship is not only about how housing development are built at where job opportunities are, but also about how vast floating working population are drifted to where jobs exists, thanks to the relaxation of the household registration system. It creates a new work-housing relationship in the cities, when huge numbers of these migrant workers are living at the worker’s dormitories, which are suburban enclaves provided by the private enterprises.

Yet, besides the housing needs, the formation of class is also crucial to China’s urban development. Before the economic reform, the “class” was defined not by social status and income, but by the worker’s work-units, mode of employment, social benefits and household registration. Nevertheless, the collapse of these institutions remakes the class structure in China, as discussed in Lee’s articles. The re-formation of class and the abolition of social housing provisions, prompted the middle class to desire social class segregation. The residential developments that we have discussed last week, each with borrowed images from outside world, are good examples to show the emerging social and spatial segregation in the housing arena.

Marketing the American City

2006-04-04T01:18:00.000-08:00

John Hannigan’s book Fantasy City is about the history of the American entertaining business and its relationship with city development. He argues that the Fantasy City is the end-product of a long-standing cultural contradiction in American society between the middle-class desire for experience and their parallel reluctance to take risks, especially those which involve contact with the “lower orders” in cities. To Hannigan, the Fantasy City is created exclusively for the pleasure of the middle class, who wish to enjoy the adventurous experience without actually risking themselves; in Russel Nye’s words, what the American middle class desires is to taste the “riskless risk.” The American Fantasy City, characterized by the development of thematic Urban Entertainment Destinations (UEDs), is in fact marketed to the middle class both inside and outside the country as a controllable, predictable, safe, seal-off private environment to enjoy the faked adventures. Unlike other scholars who usually focused their efforts on the discussion of authenticity in these themed UEDs, the key merit of Hannigan’s study lies on the assertion that Fantasy City demonstrates the desire for social class segregation; and that segregation is, in fact, still persisting until today. The fantasy cities are stimulated enclaves of class and ethnicity; with ample examples, Hannigan shows that these enclaves excludes the poor by imposing either (i) geographical barrier - locates the UEDs in the suburb close to the residential development of the middle class, where people simply are unable to access without the cars; or (ii) economic barrier - locates the UEDs in the city, but everything there are so expensive that beyond the poor’s affordability.

Following his argument, Hannigan posts four sub-questions. Two of them are more important than the others: are fantasy cities the culmination of a long-term trend in which private space replaces public spaces? Do they constitute the thriving urban cauldrons out of which flows the elixir to reverse the decline of downtown areas or are they danger signs that the city itself is rapidly being transformed into a hyperreal consumer commodity? I believe the answer to the first question is an absolute “yes.” The fantasy cities are in fact private cities, not only because they are privately owned, but also because they limit the use of the environment to those who can afford. As such, those downtown redevelopment projects which involve private developers, under the glorious title of reviving the downtown and creating employment opportunities, are in reality offering the chance to privatize large tracts of public land in or adjacent to the central business core. Eventually, the public spaces in the city are replaced by the private spaces.

The second question that Hannigan posted is more difficult to answer. Hannigan points out that in the large-scale UED initiatives area created by public redevelopment agencies in join business with private partners from the entertainment industries, the private sector is more likely to dominate this relationship. He argues that the local government is losing its control over the redevelopment of the city, and it could also sway the balance between public and private space in the redeveloped city. Hannigan also challenges the equity of these redevelopment projects, and the actual economic benefits to the local communities - “for whom are we saving the cities?” I understand all these social consequences along with the transforming of the downtowns into a UED, yet, in judging if such transformations are appropriate we should first know the goals and constraints of individual case. What if the downtowns remain dilapidate without the revival projects? What if the local government is lacking of the necessary capitals for the revival projects, without the collaborations with the private sectors?

Industrialization and Suburbanization in China

2006-03-22T01:20:00.000-08:00

This week’s readings reveal different aspects of Chinese urbanization and suburbanization during the socialist and post-socialist periods. I discuss the role of the state in China’s urbanization/suburbanization process and its political capacity measured by the ability to control over resources, as well as the mechanism that the state employed.

In his article “China’s Industrialization with Controlled Urbanization”, Lin provides a concise discourse analysis from the extant literature on two different visions that seeks to interpret the Chinese experience of rapid industrial growth with controlled urbanization in the pre-reform era: (i) this urban pattern is a product of the ideology of anti-urbanism; and (ii) it is about managerial and strategic considerations such as warfare preparation. Lin argues that no single factor capable of explaining the entire picture of Chinese urbanization; rather, urban development in China is a complex outcome of dual-track urbanism which accommodates both rhetoric and pragmatism although the emphasis may shift from time to time. Lin does not give us any new insights in understanding these two theses, yet, from the discourse analysis we aware how the state, by enjoying the revolutionary legacies, was able to control over manpower and land. Through the political campaigns such as the anti-rightists movement and the Great Leap Forward, the state implanted an anti-urban ideology to the mass who are important manpower to the suburban industrialization; through the implementation of policies such as nationalization, communization, the danwei and hukou system, the state confined the manpower in suburban nationalized land. The Chinese state is able to manipulate the urban development sectorally (focus on industrial at the expense of other sectors) and spatially (decentralize the developments).

Zhou and Ma’s article on economic restructuring and suburbanization in post-reform China argues that decentralization and suburbanization did not take place until the initiation of economic reform. They point out that, as in the West, suburbanization in China has occurred after the urban core has gone through a period of sustained growth of population and economic development. There are two merits in Zhou and Ma’s articles: first, they outline the stage development of China’s urbanization from pre-1949 to the present day, showing us the heavy involvement of the state in each period. Second, they provide a comparison on the suburbanization between China and US which is helpful for us to understand how the difference in the degree of state intervention has lead to different urban patterns. In short, post-reform Chinese state is still controlling the ownership of the land; and through the various urban land use policies, the state commodifies the land and creates the land market that forms the basis of China’s suburbanization. The state reorganizes the land use pattern through manipulating the large gap in land value, land price and land tax which is the immediate cause that powerfully drives suburbanization in China.

Lin’s second articles points out that the industrial-deterministic paradigm on the underurbanization of socialist countries is inadequate to illuminate the new dynamics of economic and spatial transformation rapidly unfolding in the cities after socialism. He argues that the growth of services (the tertiary industry) has been one of the key forces driving the dramatic expansion and transformation of large Chinese cities in the recent decades. The process of economic restructuring, that is to shift from the primary sector to the second and tertiary sectors, involves heavily the intervention from the state. The state expands the tertiary sector, partly because it creates a market of consumer goods and services, and partly because the tertiary sector serves as the alternative employment outlet for those layoff workers from SOEs to ensure social stability. This reflects that the state’s intervention in urban development is not solely about economic concern, but also because of other social and political reasons.

In conclusions, the history of urbanization/suburbanization in China reveals a state-led development pattern which is very different from the capitalist paradigm of urbanism in western countries. Yet, all these articles do not touch on how the influx of foreign investments and transnational corporations along with the opening of China effect on the urban development of post-socialist cities. Our discussion on the active role of the state on Chinese urbanism will be more compelling if we can compare the influences of the state to these capitalists.

Planning and Reworking the American City

2006-03-18T23:17:00.000-08:00

Reading reponse to Greg Hise, Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the Twentieth-Century Metropolis.

The book Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the Twentieth-Century Metropolis is about the history of suburban development of California during the interwar and postwar period. The author, Greg Hise, challenges two telnets developed by previous scholars: first, the perception on the nature of post-World War II development as unplanned, chaotic sprawl; second, the narratives on the hierarchical and oppositional pairing of city and suburb. In his study on the suburbanization of California, Hise argues that the mass California builders forged a regional vision that contributed to a coordinated metropolitan system, represented through the construction of numerous integrated communities in the region. The builders did not dichotomize the urban landscape into a core and periphery, a city and suburb. Here, Hise emphasizes the involvement and contributions of various agents in the development of suburban communities, including the developers, the planners, industrialists and homebuyers. This also hints that these agents have dominated over the nation-state in shaping the urban development.

Through the case study on the urban extension of interwar and postwar Los Angeles, Hise traces a genealogy back to Ebenezer Howard’s garden city and the planned dispersion of the 19th century industrial city. He considers California as magnet that attract people from the rest of the country, partly because of the region’s expanding economy during the interwar and postwar period, partly because of people’s longing to the town-country ideal. We can see how American city expands – through annexation (that we discussed in previous class), proliferation of suburban communities and influx of immigrants. Hence, Hise labels this expansion model as “suburbanization as urbanization”. Yet, I wonder if this decentralized pattern of urban growth in California is a paradigm of postmodern urbanism as remarked by Hise, or it shows only the regional difference from the concentrate growth model of the Chicago School of Sociology.

More, how does the dispersed metropolitan system in California differ from the decentralized urban pattern in China? Although the socio-historical contexts that lead to the suburban developments in US and China respectively are very different, the outcome, that is the urban pattern, is in fact very similar in both cases, vis-à-vis the proximity of housing to the places of employments. Yet, one difference between the two cases I found is the country-city relationship. The suburb in the US case shares the equal status as the city (this is the point that Hise tries very hard to highlight); while in the Chinese case it is subordinated to the city under the bureaucratic administrative structure. Nevertheless, we cannot notice this different simply by examining the physical urban form.

Hise disagrees with many scholars’ assertions that urban expansion is solely about housing production; rather, he highlights the importance of industry that provided an economic base, jobs, and people, the foundation necessary for large-scale builders’ experiments in modern community planning. He also emphasizes the merit of community planning and large-scale neighborhood. Nevertheless, Hise does not mention the impact of suburban growth to the city core. He does not touch on the social implications, such as the ghettoization and the decay of the city center, which are major concerns to many scholars.

Local Political Regimes & State Entrepreneurs in China

2006-02-28T19:37:00.000-08:00

Reading reponse to David L. Wank, Commodifying Communism: Business, Trust, and Politics in a Chinese City. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Through the case studies on China’s southern city Xiamen, David Wank investigates how market economy emerges from a communist order. The central thesis of his book Commodifying Communism: Business, Trust, and Politics in a Chinese City is that the revival of private business in China does not lead to the decline of patron-client ties but rather to the emergence of new commercialized forms of clientelism. I found this book helpful in understanding the practice of private business in China in terms of three major issues: access to resources, commodification and clientelist ties.

Building upon David Stark and Victor Nee’s words, Wank highlight the fact that economic reform entails the redrawing of the boundaries between the state and society and shaping new patterns of transactions, mediation, and bargaining across them. (7) The subject concerned in the new state-society relationship is the various resources that are originally monopolized by the state. Economic reform, hence, involves the demonopolization of state resources and making them accessible to the private sectors. Wank termed this transformation process “commodification”, as it signifies the process by which previously unpriced resources owned by the state to be the objects of priced calculation and being transacted in the market. Commodification is therefore the transformation of institutionalized social relations of control over these resources. (29) I found Wank’s analysis fascinating as it explains many issues that we have discussed regarding China’s transitional economy, such as the emerge of private businesses, as well as how land - a state-monopolized resource - is commodified to generate revenue according to the market price calculation.

Wank continues to unfold the different dimensions of commodifying process in China’s market reform. There are three aspects of commodification: economy, network and polity. By economy, he means the commodification of state monopoly; by network, he means the commodification of patron-client network that is the legacies of the planned economy; and by means of polity, he means the commodification of the social network into an institutional element in China’s emerging market economy.

Wank makes particular emphasis on the clientelist ties (commonly know as guanxi) to the commodifying process in China. He raises high the importance of clientelist ties as a way to provide weaker parties with steadier access to resources. The clientelist ties between the exchange parties (the state and the private entrepreneurs) enhance expectations on the likely behavior of others by embedding interactions in social norms and practices. The significances of Wank’s research on clientelist ties lays in two folds: firstly, it provides a good account on how the pre-reform legacies on social network maintains, reinterprets, and commodified in the reform era, allowing the emergence of new patterns of bargaining and alliance across the boundaries of state and society; secondly, it provides an throughout analysis on the natures of clientelist ties, in which they are (i) market transactions; (ii) embodied social trust, and (iii) embodied political contestation.

Although Wank remarks that the clientelist ties have many positive effects to China’s emerging market economic, such as allowing greater clarity (as compared to the ambitrary statist mechanism), predictability (as compare to China’s ever-changing policies) and institutional flexibility (as compare to huge variations in policy implementation), I would worry that the emphasis on the clientelist ties over the development of legal and institutional structures will lead to both corruption and the failure of China to achieve a unified standard in policy implementation in the local level. Especially when there are more and more foreign investors coming to China, they may not be able to participate in the localized clientist social network. Clear legal and institutional structures will be needed for the long term development of the market economy.

Hyper-Traditions

2006-02-27T18:40:00.000-08:00

Abstract(s) submitted to 2006 IASTE Conference

Learning from Las Vegas! The Recent Development of Macao’s Mega- Casino/resorts

In his influential book on Las Vegas, Robert Venturi points out that visiting Las Vegas in the mid 1960s was like visiting Rome in the late 1940s. To Venturi, there are many parallels between Las Vegas and Rome; the only difference is that Las Vegas was built in one day - the small desert city’s short history cannot be comparable to the long history of the ancient Rome.

Ever since the publishing of Venturi’s book in 1972, Las Vegas has changed dramatically over the past decades. If Venturi considers the city as the paradigm of North American urbanism in the 1960s, then today’s Las Vegas can be considered as the paradigm of Neo-liberal urbanism. The thematic mega- casino/resorts in Las Vegas are all using mimics of historic icons to attract visitors, such as the pyramid, the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, the Venetian grand canal, and etc. Many scholars hence highlight the fact that traditions and heritages from other parts of the world are being decontextualized, mimicked and transplanted to Las Vegas. They argue that traditions and heritages are no longer place-specific. Nevertheless, few aware that the borrowed traditions and heritages have been localized in Las Vegas; it is such concentration of mimicked heritages and the commodified experiences embodied in the space of spectacle that create the unique sense of place in Las Vegas. The meaning of “place” has been problematized in this special case.

Interestingly, the borrowed heritages in Las Vegas can be further transplanted to place such as Macao, a small city in southern China. Commonly known as “Las Vegas of the Orient”, Macao is a former Portuguese colony that was handover back to China in 1999, and becomes one of the two Special Administrative Regions (SAR) in the country. Because of its colonial legacies, Macao is the only place in China where gambling is legalized. The gambling industry is the major revenue generator in the city’s economy. When Macao relaxed the restrictions on casino licensing in early 2000s, the city is following the footsteps of Las Vegas. TNCs poured into Macao and built mega- casino/resorts with themes same as those in Las Vegas. Within few year’s time, the “Las Vegas traditions and heritages” have been transplanted to Macao. Visiting today’s Macao is the same as visiting today’s Las Vegas. If Las Vegas was built in one day, then Macao was built in, perhaps, one minute.

Nevertheless, same as the case in Las Vegas, the transplanted heritages intertwined with the local heritages in Macao and localized to form a unique hyper-tradition. This paper, therefore, aims to discuss the contesting forces of globalization and localizations. Through the case studies on Las Vegas and Macao, this paper argues that:

Traditions can be decontextualized and transplants for multiple times;
In each time, the transplanted traditions are localized to form new hyper-traditions;
Along with the wide spread of globalization, it will take shorter and shorter time for traditions to be transplanted and localized.

Shenzhen: A City of Outsiders

What would a city look like if half of its population are immigrants, and its economic activities depends heavily on its neighboring city? Shenzhen, China’s first special economic zone, has grown from a fishing village of thirty thousands people into a city with a population of eight millions in the past two decades. Half of the total population is a floating population, meaning people who reside in the city for less than a year. Taking the advantage of abutting Hong Kong, Shenzhen has not only attracted huge investments but also visitors and tourists from its neighbour. How does the influx of outsiders, namely the Chinese immigrants and the Hong Kong visitors, affected Shenzhen’s local identities and shaped the city’s urban development?

Being an experimental city under China’s economic reform and open door policy initiated in early 1980s, Shenzhen has successfully transit into a city of commerce, consumption and spectacle. The high-dense city centre is packed with commercial high-rises, shopping malls, restaurants and entertaining amenities target to serve foreign investors, tourists and visitors; many of them mimic the developments in Hong Kong to give a sense of “Hong Kongness”, which is considered as a sign of modernity. Many foreign or local investors also fond of commissioning Hong Kong architects to design their commercial or retail projects, resulting in the importation of Hong Kong architecture and urban landscape. To develop its cultural tourism, the municipal government has opened eight theme parks in Shenzhen; ironically, these theme parks, notably the “Window to the World” and “Splendid China”, are not there to advocate local culture but to compress the foreign heritages and traditions into a confined exhibitionary space for not the locals but for the visitors.

Yet, the rapid development of Shenzhen’s economy is in fact backed up by the continuous supply of low-paid immigrant workers from all over China. In the outskirt of Shenzhen, rows of workers’ dormitories dominated the city’s sub-urban landscape. If not working in the sub-urban factories, these immigrants work in the service sectors whose consumers are mainly the visiting Hong Kongers. Seemingly, Shenzhen has been dominated by the outsiders and has lost its local identities.

Through studying the history of urbanization of Shenzhen since early 1980s, this paper aims to discuss how the influx of outsiders has affected the city’s local identities and urban development. It argues that the dynamic interactions between the locals and the outsiders, between the domestic and foreign culture, have created a hyper-tradition and culture in the city of Shenzhen, which is speculative, hybrid and rapid-changing in nature.

Property & the Land Market in US and East European Transitional Cities

2006-02-14T22:28:00.000-08:00

Last week in class we have discussed how land serves as a valuable resource to generate revenue. Yet, Walker’s article reveals that the value of land is not fixed. By using San Francisco Bay Area as an example, Walker illustrates how the land value is linked to the new economy of the region in the turn of the twenty-first century. The economic condition of the Bay Area directly affects the real estate market and hence, influences the shaping of its urban landscape. In this regards, the land value is not fixed; rather, it is flowing according to the socio-economic development.

The flowing land value is further illustrated by Verdery in her studies on the decollectivization of Transylvania. The lands in Transylvania devalued once they are privatized, i.e. to return the lands to their original owners before the collectivization. Last week when studying the decollectivtization of China, we agree that China’s booming economy is partly related to its ability to turn land as a dead asset into a lived asset, by using de Soto’s terms; and its institutional arrangement facilitates the circulation of the asset in both formal/informal and legal/illegal market. However, the case of Transylvania shows that simply granting private land titles does not immediately turns the dead asset into lived one. The peasants in Transylvania cannot afford the purchase of tools for cultivation, and their lands hence lose the use value as mean of production. The exchange value of the peasants’ lands also declined since the institutional and legal arrangements in Transylvania prohibit the circulation of the agricultural land in the market. The socio-economic condition in Transylvania does not provoke the turning of land from dead asset to lived asset.

Verdery also points out that property right is not just about right but also about accountability. Along with the granting of land titles to the peasants in Transylvania, there come the obligations, liabilities and risks. The concept of obligations and liabilities in property right can also be found in the leasing of land in China, where the leaser has to commit in certain conditions as stipulated in the land lease. But for the case in Transylvania, the declining land value greatly raises the risk that the land owner, land renters and land users have to bear. The land renter (which is usually more powerful in the case in Transylvania) develops various contractual arrangements with the land ower/user in order to share the risks, which in return further complicates the power relationship among the parties and limited the potential increase of the land value. The situation becomes more intricate when it involves overlapping ownership or collective ownership which are the products of socialist legacies.

Therefore, Verdery highlights that property is, instead of a bundle of rights, a bundle of powers - a term that we have briefly discussed last week. She stresses the fuzziness of property and concludes that “property” is in fact about social relations, relations among persons rather than between person and things. I doubts if her conclusion is only applicable to the case of Transylvania but not other capitalist societies, or even not to other postsocialist societies. I agree with her that the special ownership patterns of Transylvania has generated the kind of fuzziness because of its complexly overlapping rights, obligations, and claims that emerge from socialist property relations. Yet, I am still not sure if this fuzziness is due to the special situation of property arrangement in Transylvania, or if it is generally applicable to other transitional postsocialist states. Although in the case of China we also observe the same kind of ambiguity in property right, it different greatly from Transylvania in terms of out outcome: China enjoys great economic growth due to the changing land policy. I guess our picture would be more completed if we can include the former Soviet Union into our case study.

Exhibitionary Complex - The Space of Spectacle

2006-02-12T12:56:00.000-08:00

The exhibitionary complex is a good example to illustrate the influence of neoliberalism, for the complex is a decontextualized architecture where the space and time are compressed in one contained environment. The “nationalism/ history/ culture” presented in the exhibitionary complex is in fact reconstructed by the state (or other powerful agencies) to help creating a consent among the people: through educating the people in the exhibitionary complex, the state is able to implant what it believe as the “real” history or culture to the people. In addition, the exhibitionary complex provides a space of spectacle where people could see and could be seen in an ordered manner. Our experiences in the exhibitionary complex are being conditioned in a way predetermined by the state, or being commodified in which we have to pay in order to have particular experiences.

Every summer in Hong Kong, there is a bookfair held in the grand Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center. Though the people have to buy the ticket in order to enter the exhibition center, the bookfair still attracts several hundred thousands people every year. I am always curious why these huge amounts of people not simply shop in the bookstores in the city, but go to the bookfair even though they need to pay the entry fee. Now, I aware that what these people longing for is not only the books (the commodity itself), but the entire experience of joining the bookfair (the commodified experience), where they can see the books that are displayed as exhibits rather than as commodities on the bookshelves, and see the people such as the authors that stationed in the stalls.

Property politics in China

2006-02-07T18:54:00.000-08:00

This week's readings shed light on three issues that I consider essential to our discussion on the process of urbanization in China: (i) land as an important resource to generate state revenue; (ii) the power struggle in maneuvering China’s resources, and (iii) the development of an institutional structure that regulate the maneuvering of resources.

Last week, we have briefly touched on the question that, “how does China transit its economy and lead to a development that is now unstoppable?” This question is not easy to answer; yet, I am sure that two major transitions, both relate to the mean of production, have made China’s economy with tremendous vigor: (i) the transformation of huge agricultural forces in the countryside into industrial forces; and (ii) the creation of the land leasing market. Personally, I consider China's strategy to separate the land ownership with land use right as a brilliant idea. On one hand, it maintains the socialist ideology that the state is the sole owner of land; on the other hand, it allows the commodification of land tenure without privatization. The development of the land market also allows the implementation of the dual-track system, in which private enterprises are able to develop on leased land, while SOEs remain in the public land. The dual-track system is crucial to China’s gradual transition to market economy, for it not just allows the co-existences of SOEs and private enterprises; it also provokes the reform of SOEs when facing with the increased competition with the private enterprises in the market.

Yet, who is going to control and maneuver land – the valuable resource in China? In the past weeks we have discussed the process of urbanization in both US and China. The former is characterized by the concentration of development in the cities, while the latter is characterized by the decentralization of development in the country. Because of these differences, their corresponding patterns of resources extraction are also varied. To allow the development of land market in a decentralized spatial structure, the state requires the imposition of an institutional framework that is multi-layered in nature, which in return induces the power struggles among these institutional layers. This week’s readings unfold the evolution of institution arrangement in China that seeks to cater for the expanding land market, as well as its implications and consequences, such as the power reshuffling in different administrative levels (Hsing, 2006; Lin and Ho, 2005), the exploitation of peasants’ land (Cai, 2003), the variability of policy implementation at local level (Grinspoon, 2002), the variation of land policy across regions, sectors and time (Walder and Oi, 1999), and the institutional indeterminacy (Ho, 2001).

Despite all these seemingly harmful consequences, I do believe the shift in land policy is an unavoidable process in China's transitional economy. The Chinese authority is experimenting various institutional changes to cater for the ever-changing situation; and China definitely needs times to consolidate its experience and develop an appropriate institutional framework. Meanwhile, the current ambiguity in land management provides an undefined space for some privileged people to exercise power and to extract resources. These privileges are essential at this moment – they provide the incentives for people to carry out the economic reform. Hopefully, these privileges will be deprived once an institutional framework is imposed. As Deng Xiaoping said, “let's have a small group of people to get rich first! (yixiaocuo ren xian fu qilai)”

Chinese Cities & Socialist Economies in Transition

2006-01-31T19:43:00.000-08:00

This week’s readings unfold the relation of political economy and urban development vis-à-vis the urbanization of Chinese cities along with the country’s economy reform since early 1980s. I am very much agree with the two questions raised by Andrew Walder regarding the significances of studying the economic reform of China: (i) whether a similar approach to reform would be as successful outside China; and (ii) whether it is China’s specific strategy of reform, or some underlying legacy or historical advantage, that is behind its relative success. Though the two questions cannot be answered at this movement, the study of China doubtlessly grants us the understanding on an urbanization process and pattern very different from the capitalist urbanization and socialist urbanization that we come across in this week and last week’s readings.

The socialist urbanization tries to express the equality in its spatial planning, though some might argues that true equality can never be attained. China’s urban development shares this ideological character, namely the emphasis on the work-unit compounds that provide both housing and workplaces to the people in close proximity. However, unlike its socialist counterparts, China demonstrates the process of industrialization without urbanization – China’s history, location, legacies and sectoral composition heavily bias the development of the countryside, and hence favor the regional decentralization of planning when the country began to reform its economy in early 1980s.

And when Chinese economy is transiting gradually to the so-called “market-socialism” that resembles capitalism in terms of the expansion of markets, the unregulated (or less regulated) pricing system, the growing autonomy of individuals and etc., it demonstrates an urbanization pattern very different form the capitalist urbanization characterized by the exploitation of nature’s resources. Capitalist city is developed on the expense of the country through the willingly extraction of resources from its hinterland; the city is a place where the resources and labors concentrated, and where capitals are accumulated. On the contrary, the Chinese case presents, instead of a concentrated mode of development, a decentralized urban growth. Urbanization is first happened in the China’s countryside through diverting the labors and resources originally devoted in agriculture now into industry. It creates an urban agglomeration formed by a numbers of small and medium sized cities with functional specialties at the periphery of the large city that provides them with services. This model is different from the capitalist contado we studied last week in a sense that it is less hierarchical and less differentiation between the rural-urban boundary; in other words, the rural and urban areas form not a hierarchical organization of cities as in the contado model, but an agglomeration of mega-urban entities (e.g. the Pearl River Delta development zone). Yet, I am not quite sure if this model is unique to China, and if there is any difference from the model of regional development in many capitalist countries.

Although many authors highlight the success of China’s decentralized planning in reducing the gap between the rural and the urban areas, I suspect their compliments are only true to those coastal regions where the peri-urban areas around the large cities are well-developed. Rural-urban disparity (or perhaps, coastal-inner-regions disparity) catalyzed by the rigid control on individual movement is still a huge problem to China. I am not saying that the relaxation on the hukou system is the key to cope with that disparity, for following the relaxation there would be serious overpopulation and unemployment in the cities; what I want to highlight is that China’s apparently successful development model is not necessarily excusing the country from the many social and environmental consequences of urbanization. Without doubts, the efforts to improve the livelihood of the peasants, to increase the rural employments and to improve rural taxation system are major tasks for today’s Chinese political leaders.

Edifice – The power of culture

2006-01-30T19:55:00.000-08:00

Instead of reflecting honestly the preferences and desires of the majority, “culture” is in fact cultivated intentionally by the minority. Through nurturing a culture that favor the construction of a public consent, the elite classes are able to make their values acceptable by the masses and hence, legitimize their actions that reinforce the class disparity and power relationship in the society. Architecture as a cultural product is unavoidably becoming an instrument that served the powerful classes. When today’s architecture is neutralized and decontextualized, it reflects not only a shift in architectural paradigm. Rather than saying that the architects are responding to the force of globalization, I would say they are in fact manipulated by the elites to create a globalizing culture, so that the elites’ neoliberal value can be transformed into a tangible form and space that the masses can visualize and experience.

Western Cities and the Rise of Capitalism

2006-01-23T19:50:00.000-08:00

Gray Brechin’s book Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin is a story about the destructive impact of urban development. It narrates the radical environmental impact that one particular city, San Francisco, had on California and the Pacific Basin during the brief century and a half of its existence. The entire book centers on the concept of contado and resource monopolization - how the dominant city extracts resources from the contado with the use of military forces to ensure and expand the flow towards the center.

The contado is a network of hierarchically organized, yet mutually dependent cities and settlements resulting from the rise of capitalism. The implications for the formation of the contado, besides the environmental impact that Brechin describes, are the geographic and social stratifications created during the process of urban development. Geographically, the city was first rose upon the flow of surplus produced from its surrounding hinterland. The dominant city is the center where resources that are extracted from its contado accumulated. The rise of the dominant city, hence, prohibits the development of surrounding cities into compatible scales or importance to avoid competition over resources. In return, the subordinating cities in the contado depend on the dominant city for capitals to enhance their developments. Still, their developments are limited to the supply of particular resources that the dominant city needed. With the dominant city at the center that is surrounded by an outer ring of subordinating cities, an unbalanced development and a geographic stratification are hence resulted.

Socially, the rise of the city creates the hierarchy among different social classes. The city is controlled under the hands of the elites who monopolize valuable resources such as water and electricity, whereas the contado continuously supplies the labor that they needed to expand their enterprises. This creates the social stratification in which a power relationship is established, not only in terms of capital accumulation but also in terms of information access. Through the control of information and media, the elites are able to create the unifying beliefs and blindnesses in their contado.

Realizing the geographic and social stratifications, it becomes apparent to me that the expanding scale of the contado resulted from technological advancement and free trade, intensifies the destructive impacts of today’s urban development. The formation of the contado is no longer confined to those settlements in geographical proximity. The ability for those at the apex of the pyramid to control the resources remotely implies the expansion of their contado and the blur of geographic boundaries, which means more and more cities, probably underdeveloped ones, are inevitably subordinate to, and being exhausted, by the dominants. The geographical and social stratifications of the contado, therefore, expand first from a specific geographic region to the entire nation, and then expand transnationally until the effects cover the entire globe. (The classification of the “First World” verses the “Third World” is an example of geographic and social stratification in a global scale.) The destructive impact of urban development, in this regard, is not only about the harmful effects on ecology, but also the loss of one’s independence on control over the place’s development and resources.

Nationalist Nanjing: The Inheritance of Historical Legacy

2005-12-11T00:54:00.000-08:00

On the New Year day of 1912, Sun Yatsen took the train off Shanghai. On the way to Nanjing, the train passed through the stations at Suzhou, Wuxi, and Changzhou, where hundreds of people crowded on the platform; they tried to catch a glimpse of the newly elected president, while cheering “Long lives the Republic of China!” When the train finally arrived Nanjing in the afternoon, Sun was welcomed warmly by salute cannonfire and military parade, not to mention a sea of peoples, including the representatives from every province in China, foreign consulates and thousands of Nanjing locals. That night, Sun was inaugurated as the first president of the Republic of China. Following the establishment of the central government at Nanjing, the city had become the administrative center of the new republic.

Ironically, only until fifteen years later, Nanjing was designated as the capital of the Republic of China by the Nationalist party headed by Jiang Jieshi. The hundreds of people who had attended Sun’ inauguration ceremony, will be surprised to see Sun giving up his presidency few weeks later to Yuan Shikai, a deal to prevent the country from being divided by warlordism. Based in Beijing, Yuan had shifted the center of politics back to north China, leaving the city of Nanjing at the fringe of power. Nevertheless, the success of the Northern Expedition had ended the sovereignty of Yuan and the north warlords. Nanjing had regained its prestige when Jiang Jieshi’s army entered Nanjing on 24 March 1927, and declared in less than a month later that the city would served as the capital of China. To many Chinese at that time, Jiang’s announcement was a gesture to inherit Sun’s legacy.

Once again, the Nanjing locals took part in a grand national ceremony - on 18 April 1927, the whole city celebrated Nanjing as the capital of the Republic of China. In his concluding speech of the ceremony, Jiang Jieshi mentioned the reasons for selecting Nanjing as the capital: to continue Sun Yatsen’s revolutionary enterprise, to overthrow imperialism and to secure independence and freedom for the people.[1]

Among the three reasons, the fact that Sun Yatsen had selected Nanjing as the capital of the Republic was the reason most frequently stressed by the authority, as well as the most accepted one by the public deal to their respects and supports to the first president. Sun pointed out that Nanjing possess an ideal location: with high hills, deep water and plain, the city was situated on the lower reaches of the Yangtze and was the key city of fertile areas on both banks of the river.[2] Most importantly, Sun stressed that only by breaking completely from everything that stood for the Manchu regime could reform be carried through.[3] Because of this, he preferred Nanjing over Beijing as the capital of the new republic, for the former has been the capital of Han Chinese in history, while the latter represented the sovereignty of the foreigner Manchu, despite the fact that Beijing was far more developed than Nanjing at that time. Hence, once Sun assumed the presidency, he took all the officials to pay their respects at the tomb of the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, the Xiaoling Mausoleum at Nanjing, and made a speech there to call for national unification.

Additionally, Nanjing was often associated with anti-foreign struggles in history – the Southern Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty and the short-lived Taiping regime had all founded its capital at Nanjing as a base to fight against foreign invasions, notably from the north. Jiang Jieshi proclaims that, “This is the third time that a revolutionary government sets its capital at Nanjing. The first time, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the second time, the Provisional Government of the first year of the Republic, unfortunately failed. The building of the capital this third time is our last revolutionary struggle. We will live or die with it.”[4]

Jiang’s speech reveals his historiography on China’s revolutionary history and reminds the Chinese that these revolutionary efforts in history should be linked in continuum. In doing so, Jiang reinforced the party-state’s role as a legitimate inheritor of the revolutionary business, and implicitly placed himself to a position preceding the historical leaders, Hong Xiuquan and Sun Yatsen, who failed to regain China from the hands of foreigners. Only until Jiang’s leadership, Nanjing was able to reinstate its position as the capital of Han Chinese. Like Sun Yatsen who paid homage to the Ming ancestor, Jiang reinforce the party-state’s (or his own) legitimacy to rule by the linkage to history.

[1] Zhu, Hanguo ed., Nanjing Guomin Zhengfu Shi Zhi (Anhui: Anhui Ren Min Chu Ban She, 1993), pp.3.
Quoted in Lipkin, Zwia, Keeping Up Appearances: The Nanjing Municipal Government and The City’s Elements Declasses, 1927-1937, pp.13.
[2] Nanking, The Capital of China: Outline of its Activities, Nanking Municpal Government, February 1930, pp.1.
[3] Thomas F. Millard, “Will Nanking Replace Peking?” in The China Weekly Review, Vol. XLIV, No. 13, May 26, 1928, pp. 393.
[4] Zhu, Hanguo ed., Nanjing Guomin Zhengfu Shi Zhi, pp.3.
Quoted in Lipkin, Zwia, Keeping Up Appearances: The Nanjing Municipal Government and The City’s Elements Declasses, 1927-1937, pp.13.

The Creative Destruction of China: Urban Transformations of the Yangtze Regions Since 1920s

2005-12-08T22:41:00.000-08:00

How do the state and its politics shaped the urban experience of 20th century China? When the state leaders place the development of the Yangtze regions as one of their top agendas today, what they bring in, paradoxically, is not only new innovations but also vast destructions: the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, for instance, will destroy 2 cities, 11 counties, 140 towns, and 1,351 villages. For many years, the urbanization of the Yangtze regions, like many parts in China, is not defined by simple expansion and growth but rather by a vibrant state-lead process of destruction and rebuilding. The state recurrently destroy old cities to give ways for new developments; yet, in its efforts to free from the past, the state is in fact deeply enmeshed in the insistent demand of memories to the past in rebuilding the Yangtze regions. By knowing how the state and its politics shaped the urban environments in modern China, we can unfold the nature of this paradoxical modern experience and hence, grasp a better understanding to the future developments of the state’s top priority, the Yangtze regions – China’s inner regions which are still underrated by many scholars who heavily biased their efforts to coastal China.

Influenced by Karl Marx, the economist Joseph Schumpeter coined in 1942 the never-ending cycle of destroying and inventing new methods of production – a crucial fact about capitalism – with the term “creative destruction.” In the arena of urban studies, similar concept has been developed by the sociologist Marshall Berman, who studies the the creative destruction of modern cities as a result of capitalist urbanization. Although Berman et al. highlight creative destruction as an essential process of capitalism, they neglect the fact that the creative destruction of socialist states like China are perhaps more extensive than many of its capitalist counterparts. If not a result of capitalist urbanization that many scholars have suggested, how does creative destruction happen in China since 1920s, when it transit from capitalism to socialism, and to the current polity which many scholars labeled as capitalist-socialism?

Additionally, previous studies often focus on the socio-economic factors of the creative destruction process, leaving little room for the influences of politics (the intervening of the state) and cultures (the attachment to history and memory) on the transformation of place. Elaborating Marx’s words, if the modern society is a place where “all that is solid melts into air”, what remains in China is the memory of the place one has experienced.

Objectives
This research aims to explore the relationship between the state, its politics and the urban experience in modern China. Through investigating the urban transformations of the Yangtze Regions since 1920s, this research aims to unfold the two paradoxical, yet intertwined natures of modern experience in China:

The creative destruction of the urban environment as a result of state interventions;
The attempts of the state to break with tradition and the tenuous link of history and memory to the development of the new urban environment

Methodology
This research will employ the method of multiple-case studies. It will study three creative destruction cycles of the Yangtze regions that cover the most part of the 20th century:

1. Nationalist regime, 1920s-1940s
This is a short-lived period after the Nationalist Party overthrown the imperial monarchy and turned China into a modern capitalist state. The case study will be focused on the transformation of three cities along the Yangtze River, namely Nanjing (lower Yangtze), Wuhan (middle Yangtze) and Chongqing (upper Yangtze), under the state-lead capital building and beautification projects. It will analyze how the state link history and memory in planning the cities to confer its legitimacy to rule.

2. Early People’s Republic period, 1950s – 1970s
This is the early period after the Communist Party took over China and turned it into a socialist state. The case study will highlight the anti-urban bias of the state that relegates the cities to a subordinate role and dramatically decentralized and industrialized the Yangtze regions. It will evaluate the state’s attempts to separate its people from traditions, and its efforts to implant the people with new collective experiences.

3. China after reform, 1980s onwards
This is the period after the state implemented the economic reform and open door policy. The case study will discuss the transformation of the Yangtze regions by the construction of Three Gorges Dam, with focuses on the vast population displacement and the loss of historical relics. It will analyze how the project signals the state’s ambitions to place China on the global stage, and its attempts to compensate the loss of memories anchored on the relics through the construction of new memorials.

The case studies will entail both archival researches and field works. Through visiting archives inside and outside China, such as the State Historical Archives in Nanjing and the East Asia Archive in Hoover Institute of Stanford University, the research will review materials including official records, gazetteers, periodicals, newspapers, memoirs, biographies, blueprints, movies and etc., to reconstruct the process of creative destruction in the Yangtze regions. The information obtained will be verified on site and through the interviews with local people to investigate their experiences and memories about the regions’ urban transformations.

Impacts
The delivery of the research will primary be a doctoral dissertation and a number of academic papers to be presented in academic conferences such as the annual meeting of Association of Asian Study and the annual meeting of the Urban History Association. It will contribute to the understandings of the following areas:

Chinese modernity: the paradoxical nature of modern experience in urban China.
Non-capitalist urbanization: the pattern of urban developments in China which is characterized by the heavy involvement of the state.
Political and cultural influences on the transformation of place: the role of history and memory in shaping the state’s decisions in transforming the urban environments.
Evolution of the Yangtze regions: the urban landscape, morphology and history of the Yangtze regions that occupy a significant position in China’s geo-politics.

Taking Grievances Seriously

2005-12-05T23:15:00.000-08:00

My memory flies back to the beginning of this semester, when I knew nothing about contentious politics and collective actions. Yet, I have an intuitive and naïve thinking that “grievances” should be what all contentions about – a group of people are grieved for particular issues, and they want their targets to address their grievances seriously and seek ways to settle/relieve them. Nonetheless, after a semester of study, I have a feeling that many social movement theories and literatures have raised high the political opportunity structure far more than grievances. Are we really taking grievances seriously?

Disappointingly, this week’s readings do not tell us what exactly grievance is. Although the first three articles highlight three areas of grievances that prone to collective actions, they do not grant us a complete picture on the nature of grievances and its implications on social movements. Snow et al. argues that grievances are grounded in everyday experience and that the disruption of quotidian heightens prospect of collective actions; in other words, the loss (or threats of loss) of some aspects of everyday lives that the people already have. However, Snow et al. neglect those aspects of life that people expect to have. For instance, Hong Kong female villagers fight for the inheritance of land ownership, which is given solely to male villagers as a result of long time gender bias in the traditional villages. For many years, the female villagers do not have the right to inherit the land – this is not a quotidian – but as they become more educated, they are no longer silent about their grievances and fight for the right they expect to have. This example shows the limitations of the quotidian argument to explain the nature of grievances.

Chen, on the other hand, identifies subsistence crisis and managerial corruption as two critical factors that shaped worker’s sense of injustice and drove them to protest (Chen: 42). The threat to one’s survival, without doubts, is a great cause of his/her grievances; but beside subsistence, there are other elements in life that contribute to one’s identities and emotional attachments, and the crisis in identities will definitely generate one’s grievances, such as the failure in search of democracy, free speech and religious freedom, the harms to nationalism, clanship, one’s dignity and etc. Yet, Chen analyze that the laid-off workers are prepared to bend to the policies that took away much of their entitlement because of the political constraints to any open resistance and because of their faith in the ultimate outcomes of the reforms (Chen: 45), until the point that their minimal well-being was threatened, then they will take it to the street (Chen:49). It would be equally illuminating if similar researches are made on the aforementioned identity crisis – to what degree that one’s grievances accumulate, that he/she will act up and resist?

Can political opportunity structure answer this question? Chen discovers that labour protests by Chinese state workers are essentially spontaneous, leaderless and characterized by narrow and enterprise-specific claims (Chen: 62). In an interview about wage arrear that Lee conducted, the worker also mention that they just stopped work “spontaneously, no need to organize (chuanlian), without any call from anyone, without any leader” (Lee: 207) – the suspension of work happens, not because of any expansion in political opportunity, but because of the accumulation of grievances collectively.

Collective grievance is crucial to the emergence of social movement – the grievance of one single person generate sympathy, while the grievance shared by a community prone to collective actions. The sharing of grievances is reinforced by the collective memories of the community. Hurst and O’brien highlight the retirees’ inclination to make nostalgic references to better time past (Hurst & O’brien: 355). Likewise, Lee suggests that the workers’ historical experiences of state socialism form the basis for interpreting the present-day institutional changes brought about by market reform (Lee: 204). He points out that “the politics of collective memories have less to do with accurate reconstruction of reality than with the shared vision of history that memories invoke, or the challenge memories pose against history” (Lee: 214).

Hurst and O’brien highlight in their article that pension gripes are perceived by the Chinese to be more legitimate and felt more intensely than many other grievances (Hurst & O’brien: 353). It will be interesting if further investigations can be made on what sorts of grievances are more likely to provoke social movements, arouse media coverage, or to ally with elites. For example, the comparisons on movement emergence, mobilization and development, between collective actions related to subsistence crisis and identity crisis respectively. It will shed light on the relationship between grievances and outcomes.

For grievances to turn into collective actions, there must be clear targets of resistances, whether it is the SOEs, the village cadres, the provincial government officials, the state and etc. If there is no clear target - for example, in the case of nature disasters – people’s grievances, though intense, may not lead to any collective actions; unless there are mis-handlings in the process of relieving their grievances that they are expecting. In Lee’s study, for instance, the laid-off workers are not protesting again the reform or the lay-off per se, but the failure of the SOEs to implement the compensation policies.

Among all the articles assigned in this week, Li is the only one who addresses the issues of relieving grievances. He points out that villagers are more likely to turn to elected cadres to redress their grievances. Nevertheless, not many studies have been made to show how the resisters’ grievances being relieved. For example, besides the compensations, how does the state redress the grievances of the stunningly large amount of laid-off workers? Obviously, the social movement literatures have a strong bias on what the workers (the resister) have done over what the state (the opponent) has done.

An Alternative Modernity in Mao’s China

2005-11-22T00:05:00.000-08:00

Was China modernized under Mao? Meisner and Shaprio consider modernization as a process of socio-economic changes that manifested by the development of democratic political conditions and scientific and technological innovations; in other words, a phenomenon common in the context of Western development. Taking their propositions, China under Mao, without doubts, did not gone through the process of modernization. Nevertheless, it shows alternative concepts of modernity without modernization.

Modernity is about the experience of being modern; then, what was China’s experience of being modern under Mao? The cultural theorist Marshall Berman studies the notion of “modernity” by drawing on Marxist theories. Berman points out that “to be modern”, is to live a life of paradox and contradiction; it is to be both revolutionary and conservative. The modern men are moved at once by a will of change – to transform both themselves and their world – and by a terror of disorientation and disintegration, of life falling apart. They all know the thrill and the dread of a world in which, using Marx’s phrases, “all that is solid melts into air” (Berman 13-14). Therefore, this response paper aims to discuss China’s experience of being modern under Mao, characterized by a will to change the state and its people, through the destruction of the olds regimes and the creation of the new state using political tactics under the flag of “state-building” and “revolution”.

To the CCP, the greatest will of change was to transform China into a socialist state. It is a Marxist belief that lasting revolutionary success demands the thorough destruction of the political old regimes (Meisner: 64). The CCP had created afresh a new political conditions with emphasizes on four major aspects: (i) the restructuring of classes; (ii) the nationalization of properties; (iii) the increase in production; and (iv) the reinforcement of nationalism. All these four aspects have been implemented in both the urban and rural areas.

Meisner analyzes that several classes in the Chinese society were not considered as “the people” in the lens of the CCP and hence were excluded from the enjoyment of the “New democracy.” These included the landlord class and bureaucratic bourgeoisies, as well as the representatives of those classes, the Guomindang reactionaries and their accomplices (Meisner: 59). China will never fully transit into a socialist state unless these classes – the remains of the old regimes - have been eliminated in the society. To achieve this, the CCP launched three political repressive campaigns shortly after the establishment of the republic: the thought reform campaign in 1951, and the Sanfan & Wufan campaign in 1952.

The thought reform campaign, with particular emphasis on Mao’s talk on art and literature which defined the social and political responsibility of the intellectual, aimed to complete the bourgeois-democratic phase of the revolution and the building of the economic preconditions for the future transition to socialism (Meisner: 86). On the other hand, the Sanfan campaign was a movement against “corruption, waste, and the bureaucratic spirit.” It was a massive attack to bureaucracy that fell hardest on the old Guomindang officials, new Party members hastily recruited during the final years of the civil war, and older Party cadres who were corrupted by urban bourgeois influences (Meisner: 87); whereas the Wufan campaign was a movement against bribery, tax evasion, fraud, theft of government property, and stealing of state economic secrets. It was directed against corrupt practices in the urban economy, and some owners were imprisoned for illegal economic activities, while their remaining assets were depleted and their factories or firms were nationalized. (Meisner: 87).

The repressive political campaigns paved the way to the nationalization of properties, an important step to eliminate the two classes - the bureaucratic bourgeoisies in the urban areas and the landlord in the rural areas. In the cities, the industries, commercial organizations, and banks owned by the “bureaucratic bourgeoisies” were confiscated and were nationalized without compensation. Through nationalization, the state owned most of the modern sector of the economy, while the remaining private sectors were operated in tight restriction - they had to rely on the state to supply raw materials, or depended on the states’ trading organization for wholesale purchase and retail sales (Meisner: 83). A state-capitalism was hence developed.

The nationalization in the rural area, however, was more complicated. In was the CCP’s major task to destroy the old property system that permits the landlords to exploit the peasants. The CCP carried out land reform to redistribute land and grant ownerships to the peasants. Yet, the land reform had resulted in the dominance of the “petty bourgeois” formed by the peasants who now had their own private lands. Therefore, the CCP further organized the agricultural collectivization, so that agricultural productions and farm lands were fall within the control of the party-state. For both the urbanites and the peasants, their experiences of modernity were an experience of transition from individual lives to collective lives that tied to their work units.

The idea of “collectives”, when it was first introduced, brought in hopes and promises of a better life to the Chinese. Before the Great Leap Forward, the industrial and agricultural productions of China recorded unprecedented increase, largely accounted to the nationalization of properties, no matter rural agricultural land or urban enterprises. Mao believed that the agricultural collectivization would not be possible without the development of heavy industry. He insisted that the development of “a powerful industry with the state-owned enterprises as its main component” was the prerequisite to the collectivation of agriculture whereas the latter was the prerequisite for a “complete and solidated socialism” (Meisner: 108). Mao constantly emphasized that socialism demanded industrialization.

The development of heavy industry and the increase in production in the early years of the PRC had brought in pride and reinforced the nationalism of the Chinese. Although the advancements were to some degree relied on the Soviet expertise, China were finally released from the shadow of the western countries. More, the involvement in the Korean War made China, for the very first time in the 20th century, able to confront equally to the western powers. Zhuiying Ganmei (preceded Britain and catch up with America) became the wishes of every Chinese.

Yet, the industrialization in the cities was built upon the expenses of the rural areas. To remediate the social and economic disparity between the modernizing cities and the backward countryside that had driven China further away from the goal of socialism, Mao initiated the Great Leap Forward in 1958. Mao’s vision on the Great Leap Forward was to culture a permanent revolution in China, which characterized by an endless series of social contradictions and struggles which could be resolved only by radical revolutionary breaks with existing reality (Meisner: 195). The idea of permanent revolution had carried out to the Cultural Revolution that happened a decade later. China’s experience of modernity before the close of the Mao’s period, were therefore a prolonged revolutionary experience of social contractions and struggles.

In the early years of the PRC, the CCP showed the commitments and effectiveness in destroying the old regimes and building the new state, notably the mobilization of repressive political campaigns, the policy of nationalization, the use of propagandas and etc. Nevertheless, the overuse of “revolution” as the political tactics in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, had nearly destroyed the newly established state. Although China under Mao did not go through the process of modernization as its western counterparts, it experienced an alternative Chinese modernity that was cultured through a will to change both the state and its people.

Reference
Berman, Marshall, All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. New York: Peguin Books, 1982.
Meisner, Maurice, Mao’s China and After: A History of the People’s Republic. New York: The Free Press, 1999.
Shapiro, Judith, Mao’s War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Archival Research: Chongqing - Guomindang's Wartime Capital

2005-11-08T23:56:00.000-08:00

In 1937, the Nationalist government retreated to the interior of China due to the occupation of coastal cities by the Japanese army during World War II. Between the years 1937 to 1946, Chongqing, a mountainous city by the Yangtze River, was designated as the War-time capital. Did the Nationalist government launch any capital building project in Chongqing, as if it was carried out in its counterpart Nanjing, the original capital of China? How did the urban landscape of Chongqing transform since it became the wartime capital?

I try to answer these questions by looking at both primary and secondary archival materials. However, I consulted two persons before I start off researching on any archive: Professor Yeh from the Department of History whose expertise is about the history of the Nationalist regime, and Miss Wu, the librarian of Center for Chinese Study Library (CCSL). According to Prof. Yeh, the construction of government buildings did not figure prominently in the Nationalist government’s plans for creating a wartime capital in Chongqing, unlike the grand capital project in Nanjing designed by the American architect Henry Murphy. Prof. Yeh’s information greatly helps me to narrow the scope of my research. On the other hand, Miss Wu introduces me to the available collections in CCSL and East Asian Library, as well as all the electronic resources I can access through the UCB network, such as the Biography of Asian Studies and Historical Abstract of UCB. One particular useful database is the Chinese Academic Journals maintained by Tsinghua University which includes articles published in Chinese language beginning from 1994. Both Yeh and Wu help me a lot in conducting the archival researches, and hence I find that talking to someone who is familiar with the research topics is an efficient way to begin any research.

There are not many secondary resources I can find relevant to the research questions. Most of them narrate the history and reasons behind the Nationalist government’s decisions to move the capital from Nanjing to Chongqing, in terms of the development of the Anti-Japanese War and the Nationalist’s military strategies (Zhou, 1989; Liu & Fu, 1994; Huang & Zheng, 1996). Besides these materials, Huang’s book (Huang, 1999) and McIsaac’s articles (McIsaac, 2000) describe more on the urban developments of Chongqing during the war years.

Huang’s book is a volume in a series of books that collects the old photographs of Chinese cities. Few photographs show the government office at wartime Chongiqng. Huang points out that the Nationalist government, instead of building a new headquarter in Chongqing, converted a high school into the government office. Similarly, the office of the generalissimo Jiang Jieshi was relocated in existing structures. Huang supports his findings by providing information like the address of these office buildings, the contractors involved, and how the newspaper reported on the conversion works.

McIsaac’s article appears in an edited book that describes the urban history of various Chinese cities during the early 20th century. McIsaac argues that there are two reasons why the Nationalist government decided not to construct grand and impressive civic buildings like those left behind in Nanjing. On one hand, any grand office building would be a likely target for air raid; on the other hand, the Nationalist government hoped to assure citizens and foreign governments that its stay in Chongqing would be temporary.

McIsaac highlights two major transformations in the urban landscape of Chongqing during the war years. In both cases, McIsaac references extensive on two memoirs that are written during the war years (Wu, 1940; Lin, 1944). Firstly, the Shanghai merchants who fled to Chongqing had brought in new cultures to the city. Secondly, the Nationalist government had launched several campaigns to modernize Chongqing’s appearances. McIsaac’s arguments are plausibly valid since similar campaigns had been carried out in Nanjing to beautify the city’s appearances (See Lipkin, 2001, Musgrove, 2002).

To verify McIsaac’s findings, I go through the memoir of Wu (Wu, 1940), a wartime refugee who returned to Shanghai after one year in Chongqing. According to Wu, the Nationalist government improved the appearances of Chongqing by (i) road widening; (ii) sanitizing the city and killing the rats; (iii) prohibiting opium; and (iv) reducing the population of the city center.

Besides the memoirs, I also go through other primary sources such as the gazetteer of Chongqing. The gazetteer reports that even though the war was ended in 1945 and the capital was returned to Nanjing in 1946, Chongqing remained as the “peidu” (alternate capital) of China. In 1946, the government issued a 10-year plan to develop the alternate capital Chongqing. Yet, the plan was never realized since the country was taken over by the Communists in 1949.

Although I have located various primary sources, I am not able to access to every one of them due to limited time. These sources include old newspapers, maps and government documents that stored in archives in China. The reconstruction of the urban history of Chongqing would be more compelling if all these sources can be included. Nevertheless, during the research process, I also discover that before the National government moved the capital to Chongqing in 1937, it had temporarily moved the capital to Loyang (1932), Xian (1932) and Wuhan (1936). However, the Nationalist government found it difficult to defend these cities, and hence decided to move the capital to Chongqing, a city protected by the mountains.

From all these materials, I conclude that the Nationalist government did not launch grand urban projects in the war-time capital Chongqing that can compare with that in the original capital Nanjing. Many civic buildings were converted from existing structures. Instead, the Nationalist government launched several campaigns to improve the appearance of the capital cities. After the Anti-Japanese war, Chongqing remained as the alternate capital of China, until the country fell into the hands of the Communists.

Bibliography

Primary Sources
1. Chongqing Shi Zhi, Chongqing Shi Di Fang zhi Bian Zuan Wei Yuan Hui ed. Chengdu: Sichuan Da Xue Chu Ban She, 1992.
2. Spencer, J.E., “Changing Chungking: The Rebuilding of an Old Chinese City,” in Geographical Review, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Jan., 1939), 46-60.
3. Wu, Jisheng, Xindu Jianwen Lu. Shanghai : Guang Ming Shu Ju, 1940.

Secondary Sources
1. Huang, Jire, Lao Chongqing: Bashan Ye Yu. Nanjing: Jiangsu Mei Shu Chu Ban She, 1999.
2. Huang, Liren & Zheng, Hongquan, “Lun Minguo Zhengfu Qiandu Chongqing De Yiyi Yu Zuoyong”, in Minguo Dangan, Vol. 2, 1996.
3. Lipkin, Zwia, Keeping Up Appearances: The Nanjing Municipal Government and the City’s Elements Declasses, 1927-1937, Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 2000.
4. Liu, Jing Kun & Fu Bing, “Minguo Shiji De Shoudu, Peidu Yu Xingdu,” in Minguo Dangan, Vol. 1, 1994.
5. McIsaac, Lee, “The City as Nation: Creating a Wartime Capital in Chonging”, in Joseph W. Esherick ed., Remaking The Chinese City: Modernity and National Identity, 1900-1950. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999.
6. Musgrove, Charles D., The Nation’s Concrete Heart: Architecture, Planning, and Ritual in Nanjing, 1927-1937, Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, san Diego, 2002.
7. Zhou, Yongzhu ed., Chongqing: Yi Ge Nei Lu Cheng Shi De Jue Qi. Chongqing: Chonging Chu Ban She, 1989.

Repertoires of Contention

2005-10-31T19:47:00.000-08:00

This week’s readings narrate the history of contentious politics and the choices of the repertoires. With this in mind, this response paper aims to discuss the historiography of contentious politics in modern China, the significances of history and memory in the choice of repertoires, and the performing natures of repertories.

Sewell points out that the change in the repertoires of contentions from reactive to proactive is not because of the advance of capitalism that Tilly suggests; rather, it is due to the rise of the centralized, bureaucratic state. (Sewell: 530) If we employ Sewell’s perspective, we will be surprised to see how little scholarly efforts have been made to discuss the changing repertoires of contentions in relations to the political history of state building in China. Taking Sewell’s propositions that regime changes are crucial in the history of contnetious actions, whereas political events are of central importance to explain the changing forms of contentious actions (Sewell: 534), I want to highlight that two periods important to the history of state building in China, are currently being neglected from the country’s historiography of contentious politics.

The first period is about the change of regime from the Nationalist to the Communist during the late 1940s. For example, how do the repertoires in the May Fourth Movement in 1919 differ, if any, from the June Fourth Movement in 1989? Perry points out that there is change in pattern in rural unrests in socialist China between 1950s and 1980s, and she highlights that the pattern deviates from Tilly’s competitive-reactive-proactive one. I believe we can understand and verify the theories on repertoires more if we can take a step further to trace the changes of repertoires of contentions with the change of the regime.

The second period is about the Cultural Revolution that spans from the 1960s to 1970s. The Cultural Revolution is probably the largest collective contentious actions in the history of China. Nevertheless, the discussions on collective actions in China are dominated by the contentions against the state, and often exclude the Cultural Revolution from the historiography of contentious politics. There were plenty inventions in repertoires during the Cultural Revolutions, such as the public prosecutions (pidou); and inventions in rhetoric, such as the labeling of a person as “the devil of Ox & Snake” (niugui sheshen). How do these inventions in repertoires and rhetoric affect the later contentious actions in China? I understand that there are many specialties in the Cultural Revolution that makes it different from other contentious actions; yet, because of these specialties, the Cultural Revolution offers an opportunity for us to discuss the other sides of contentious politics in China and hence allows us to construct a more complete and compelling historiography.

Many scholars, instead, select the 1989 June Fourth Student Movement as the point of reference to the contentious politics in modern China. The 1989 Student Movement has three significances to the understanding of contentious politics in China. Firstly, it offers a comparative analysis to previous and later political events. Because of the many similarities of the 1989 events to previous collective actions like the May Fourth Movement in 1919 and the Student Movement in 1976, we can see how history is repeating itself in China and hence, whenever we narrate the events happened in 1989, we unavoidably link or compare it to the previous events.

Secondly, the 1989 Student Movement establishes the repertory conventions to later political events. Interestingly, these repertory conventions have influences events in both Hong Kong and Taiwan, such as the reproduction of the Goddess of Democracy and the use of similar songs and slogans as in the 1989 Student Movement. The choices of repertories also hint us the intricate ties in geopolitics among these places.

Thirdly, the 1989 Students Movements shows the dichotomy of narratives: the state narrates the movement as counter-revolutionary, whereas the students narrate it as a patriotic event to save the country. It offers a case study on how the differences in narratives affect the development of the event, for example, the vigorous reactions of the students after the People’s Daily labeled the event as turmoil. Wasserstorm also highlights the difference in narratives to the 1999 NATO protest used by the Chinese and western media.

Why is it important for us to discuss the historiography, repertory conventions and narratives of contentious politics? All these three factors affect the public’s judgments to a particular political event. Potential participants will decide if they will participate in the event by how it is references to history, what are the repertoires and how the event is being narrated. Using Tillly’s term, people will decide by the cultural meanings of the event, that is what the people do understand their actions. (Tilly: 532) The references to history are usually assisted by the repertory conventions. Using repertoires similar to those in previous events, customs or rituals can retrieve the collective memories of the people and provoke their emotions and participations in the event. For example, the performance of the funeral in Jing’s article few weeks ago has represented the discontents o f the participants. A familiar repertoire also makes people feel more safe and easy to participate since they know what is going on. As Tilly has pointed out, many possible contentious actions never occur because the potential participants lack the requisite knowledge, memory and social connections. (Tilly: 205)

Tarrow also emphasizes the emotional and cultural dimension of the repertories – he points out that all forms of contentious actions, although differ in a number of ways, are to some degree public performances with emotional and cultural content. He further elaborates that in the modern world, the contention has become a true performance for the benefit of the third party, with the development of the mass media. (Tarrow: 93, 94) Hence, the narratives of the performance are important. By narratives, I mean not only how claims are being framed, but also how contentious action is perceived by the public, including the actors, the third party and the mass media. Whether the performance is successful, i.e. whether the contentious action can achieve its goals, depends on how it address the grievances of the actors, how it gain supports from the third party and how it arouses attentions of the mass media.

For any performances, the task of performing is “to be recognized.” Therefore, the mass media occupies immense significance in the contentious actions today. One will be amazed to see how widely spread the newspaper The Epoch Times published by the Falun Gong. Last week we have slightly discuss about how the internet has changed the way of communication in China. Peter Gries, in his lecture, also mentions the importance of internet in mobilizing people to participate in the anti-Janpanese protest in early 21st century. Recently we see how the TV show Supervoice creates an interactive communication channels through text messages of mobile phones. All these events indicate the growing importance of the mass media in the collective actions in today’s China.

Reading Response: Chien Chung-shu, "Fortress Besieged"

2005-10-29T12:08:00.000-08:00

This response paper aims to illustrate how Chien Chung-shu uses the time and space to organize the narrative of his book Fortress Besieged. I argue that this organization allows the author to weave two intertwined themes into the story:
1) Geopolitics – how different geographical regions in China experience differently during the War of Resistance; and
2) Identity crisis – how the identites of the main character Fang Hung-chien being challenged along the way he travel to different geographical regions.

Altogether, these two themes reinforce the idea of the “Fortress Besieged”. Not only applies to marriage as the French proverb narrates, this idea also applies to other circumstances in life, that we as human are unavoidably trapped in a fortress besieged by various social norms and relations. I will elaborate this idea more in the following paragraphs.

In analyzing this book, I adopt the translator Nathan Mao’s structure that divides the book into four functional sequences (Section I to IV) (Chien: xvi). Each section narrates the episodes that happen in different geopolitical contexts. Mao also points out that in each of the four sections, the author emphasizes Fang’s experiences from hope through frustration to defeat (Chien: xvii).

Section I begins with the returning trip of Fang, continues with his experience in Shanghai and concludes with his decision to go to the interior. The author makes dramatic contrasts of Fang’s identities before and after he arrives Shanghai. Fang’s wealth which reflects by his affordability to occupy a 2nd class cabin in the boat while other students can only afford the 3rd class, is contrasted with his inability to get a full time job in Shanghai and relies on the supports from his father and father-in-law. Fang’s charms which reflects by how he attracts women like Miss Pao and Miss Su, is contrasted with his loss in winning Miss Tang’s heart. Fang’s knowledge which reflected by his lengthy studies in various European countries, is contrasted with his poor performance in a public lecture that makes both he and his father lost face. His prestige which reflects by the fact that his return is reported by the local newspaper, is contrasted with his deep anxiety that his fake degree will one day be known. Fang finds himself living in a fortress besieged, that all his performances in life are being observed by the social circle.

This social circle is in fact composed of people with mixed cultures. On one hand, these people such as Fang’s father, Fang’s father-in-law, the high school principal, admire the new culture introduced to China from abroad; on the other hand, they keep the old Chinese culture and criticize Fang using the traditional value systems. The author often narrates how the mix of old and new cultures happens in Shanghai, such as Miss Su’s poem that is inspired by French literature but is written in classical Chinese.

Despite all the frustrations, with the help of his father-in-law, Fang is able to maintain a life with high living standard. The author describes vividly the prosperous urban lives in Shanghai – the city is relatively peaceful before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war, and hence many people like the Fangs’ family abandoned their hometowns and flee to Shanghai. Yet, the readers can catch a glimpse of the war by how big cooperates retreat to the interior.

However, Fang’s decision to go to the interior is not because of the Sino-Japanese War but because of his own defeat in the battle of love. Fang is described by the author as someone who cannot well manage his love affairs. During his returning trip, Fang cannot resist the seduction from Miss Pao, who is someone’s fiancé, and has a sexual relationship with her. Later, Fang cannot make clear his relationship with Miss Su and hence lost the heart of his true love Miss Tang. In fact, women in this story are described by the author as persons skillful in manipulating the opposite sex. This narration is common in literatures written in the early part of the 20th century. Through the narration of the men’s anxiety about women, the author is in fact describing the men’s anxiety about modernity, that everything in the modern society including the women who use to be the subordinated gender, are now out of the men’s control.

Section II focuses on Fang’s and his buddies’ journey from Shanghai to the San Lu university in the interior. The author illustrates the geopolitics of China by describing the drastic differences in lives outside the prosperous Shanghai. The interior regions are less resourceful, where Fang and his buddies can hardly find a decent inn or restaurant. Huge amount of people are rushing to the interior; smooth traffic is impossible and this made Fang’s journey full of hardship. Beginning from this section the readers are able to smell the approaching of the War of Resistance.

In Fang’s view, the people in the interior are uncivilized – they are rude, unhygienic and always cheat. However, Fang’s ignorance is also revealed during the journey. As an urbanite, he cannot endure the hardship of the journey. Fang and Chao spend too much money carelessly in the beginning of the journey, without the awareness that money becomes immense important in an unstable political environment. In contrary, their counterparts Ku and Li are well-prepared for the journey and the lives after. As they are moving inland, Fang and Chao no longer enjoy the public’s admiration for having studied abroad; rather, people with solid working experiences and official titles like Li are more well-received by the people. Li can easily get the bus tickets by showing off his name cards.

Fang’s lack of academic qualifications and working experiences are being challenge in Section III that narrates his life in the university. Fang finds himself no expertise, for he does not have any degree; he finds himself incompetent, for he cannot handle well the classes. Besides unable to secure the professorship, Fang also shows no experience in handling the politics within the academy. There are conflicts and rumors incessantly arouse between the staffs. The interior where the university situates is described by the staffs as a remote place without any recreation. Probably because of the self-contained environment, the university is like a fortress besieged that people living there, no matter the presidents, the professors or the students, have nothing else to do besides pointing to each others’ faults.

Despite of these internal conflicts, the San Lu University is in fact situates in a peaceful location away from war. The readers can also grasp some ideas on the Nationalist government’s policies on higher education, which are reflected by the tutorial systems and the new life campaign; in contrary to Shanghai where the readers can hardly find any involvement of the Nationalist government.

Section IV details the conflicts between Fang and his wife after they retreated from the interior and back to Shanghai. After the couples leave the interior, the smell of the war reappears. The centre of politics has been shifted from the lower Yangtze to Chongqing – Chao has already started his new life there, while many people like Miss Su and her husband are flying back and fro among Shanghai, Chonqing and Hong Kong for business opportunities.

Yet, after Fang and his wife return Shanghai, Fang finally tastes the true meaning of the French proverb - marriage is like a fortress besieged: those who are outside want to get in, and those who are inside want to get out. Both Fang and his wife only present their bright sides to each others before marriage; while their dark sides are revealed after that. Two major conflicts constantly arouse between them. The first one is about the problem to get along with each other’s family. The second one is about the fact that Mrs. Fang earns more than Mr. Fang. Both of the conflicts challenge Fang’s identity as the head of the household. His sisters-in-law look down on Fang for his reliance to his father and his inability to control his wife. The irony is that both of Fang’s brother, who never been abroad and stick to the traditional teaching of the family, live a more stable lives than Fang does. A year after he returned China, Fang is no longer a prestigious returned student.

The readers may aware that the onward march of time does not bring a better life to Fang, and his frequent travel from one place to the others does not solve any problem. Yet, Fang may be the only one who does not aware of it – he is still longing for a better future by going to Chonqing.

Book Review: Remaking Beijing - Tiananmen Square and the Creation of a Political Space

2005-10-26T21:02:00.000-08:00

Wu, Hung, Remaking Beijing: Tiananmen Square and the Creation of a Political Space. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005.

There are three major gaps in the study of modern Chinese cities. The first gap exists in the period of study: most scholars focus their studies on either the imperial Chinese cities (e.g. Steinhardt, Skinner, Schinz), or on the contemporary metropolitan cities and economic zones developed after the reform era; few focus on the period between the falls of the imperial monarchy in the early 20th century to the end of the Cultural Revolution in late 1970s. Until the reopening of China to the west by 1979 when scholars can access to archival materials on the Chinese mainland, there emerge noticeable amounts of studies on China’s urban experience with modernity during the first half of the 20th century, including Remaking the Chinese City (2000) and Becoming Chinese: Passage to Modernity and Beyond (2000); yet, researches focuse on the period after the Communist occupation are still rarely found. Few exceptions are The City in Communist China (1971) and The Chinese City between Two Worlds (1974). Both of them are published in early 1970s, and since then the topic seems largely neglected by the scholars’ circle.

The second gap exists in the discipline of study: most architectural historians concern exclusively the construction and stylistic changes of urban artifacts, without situating them into the socio-political contexts. The exclusion of architecture from other disciplines in social science like sociology, anthropology and geography may account to the evolution of architectural historiography in China. The reconstruction of China’s architectural history begins in 1930s when the returned architect Liang Sicheng started off to survey ancient architectures and verified them with imperial construction doctrines. Liang’s method, which largely focuses on the stylistic analysis of architectural elements like the roof system, the timber brackets and the ornaments, has influenced the later development of the discipline.

The third gap exists in the locality of study: studies on modern Chinese cities are dominated by those prosperous cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and other coastal cities. Few studies touch on China’s inner or riverine cities. One exception is Remaking The Chinese City (2000) that intends to discuss the urban history of Chinese cities besides Shanghai.

I am therefore delighted to see Wu Hung’s new book, Remaking Beijing: Tiananmen Square and the Creation of a Political Space (2005) that shows the efforts to bridge the first and second gaps. In this book, Wu reconstructs the urban history and transformation of Beijing after it becomes the capital of the Chinese Republic in 1949. In contracts to the narrative convention that treats the constructions of the Tiananmen Square and other monumental structures in Beijing as part of the victorious and revolutionary history, Wu underscores the political agenda behind the constructions by analyzing how the party has politicalized the space (through the discussion on the urban projects) and time (through the discussion on the Hong Kong Clock). I would argue the shift in narrative conventions is influenced by the Tiananmen Square Incident in June 1989. The similarity of the 1989 incident with the 5 April Incident in 1976 makes us aware how history is repeating itself in China and how important the place to our collective memories; and that we can no longer narrate the place without referring it to the recurrent political incidents and to our collective memories.

Collective memory is the theme that runs through the entire book. It is not a new idea ever since Halbwachs first raises the argument that all personal memories are formed and organized within collective contexts, and Aldo Rossi later brings the notion to the discipline of urban study. Nevertheless, few scholars seriously situate the issue in Chinese context as Wu did in this book. As Wu argues, the notion of collective memory is particularly crucial to a country like China, where the concept of privacy virtually did not exist in the years that the book covers, and public and personal events were consistently intertwined. (Wu: 11)

Therefore, in this book, Wu tells the story of the Tiananmen Square in two parallel narratives – a historical narrative and an autobiographical narrative. The former investigates the Square as an external entity and observes its changing form and meaning, while the later recounts in the first person of the author’s encounter with the Square and reflects his own changing perception of the place. I like this experimental way of narrations that weave the author’s memory into the history reconstruction. It allows the readers to grasp the urban experiences and perceptions of the city at that time – in returns, the readers are actually sharing the collective memories associated with the city.

Wu discusses the Tiananmen Square, the most significant construction in the capital, in three sets of issues and problems: the first set relates to the Square’s physical and contextual transformation; the second set concerns the Square’s role as a primary site of public activity and expression; the last set relate to the issue of representation – the images of the Square and Mao in official propagandas. Wu argues that the Communist Party has changed the “point of reference” of Beijing from the Forbidden City to the Tiananmen Square. Wu demonstrates an interdisciplinary approach that brings the urban artifacts to boarder discussions of monumentality, politics and cultural representations. Altogether they provide a new perspective in understanding the changing cityscape of Beijing.

My final comment to this book relates to the part that discusses the recent depoliticalization of Beijing. Wu points out that there are top down depoliticalization efforts initiated by the state to the Tiananmen Square, and bottom up urges push for by the artists to empty the political influences of Mao; yet not enough discussions have been made to debunk the phenomenon. The story on the Tiananmen Square will be more compelling if Wu can discuss the phenomenon with the recent political and economic environments of China.

Creative Destruction: Urban Cycles of the 20th Century Yangtze Regions

2005-10-17T17:09:00.000-08:00

The Yangtze River is a river of incessant destruction and construction: upon the completion of the largest dam ever built, the Three Gorges project will destroy 2 cities, 11 counties, 140 towns, and 1,351 villages. Stunningly, similar processes of creative destruction had happened recurrently in the Yangtze Regions throughout the 20th century - the regions were being destroyed incessantly by natural disasters, warfare and etc; yet the state incessantly intervened and re-created the regions with new identities. How and why does this urban cycle happen? How does it shape the urban experience in the Yangtze regions? How does the state remake the identities of the regions? This study argues that, with the state’s interventions, the urban cycle of creative destruction has cultured China’s experience of modernity during the 20th century and nurtured new identities submissive to the state’s political stances.

Theoretical Framework
Each creative destruction cycle remakes the identities of the Yangtze regions. Building upon Stephen Greenblatt’s argument that the reconstruction of identity occurs at the point of encounter between an authority and an alien,[i] this study theorizes that the creative destruction cycle evolves from the interplay between the authority, the alien and the urban structure. The urban cycle comprises four phases: alienation, destruction, creation and consolidation.

Alienation is the introduction of an alien, something that contrasts and challenges the values of the authority. Destruction is the process of vast displacement of the original urban structure due to the polarities between the authority and the alien. Creation is the process of remaking the urban structure, often with the help of the state’s interventions. Consolidation is the process of intertwining the remnants of the old urban structure with the new creations, and together they nurture new identities.

Research Methods
To answer the questions on how and why the creative destruction cycle happens, I will employ the research method of multiple-case studies. Taking the proposition that the introduction of an alien and the intervention of urban projects are crucial to the creative destruction process, I have identified three urban cycles in the Yangtze Regions for study, each happened in different periods of the 20th century.

The first case is about the period under the Nationalist regime – a period between the fall of the imperial monarchy and the Japanese invasions. Shortly after the Nationalist Party united China in late 1920s, it wished to reinforce its legitimacy to rule the country through the building of a modern capital at Nanjing, a city at lower Yangtze that was vastly destroy during the revolutionary battles. Nevertheless, the capital projects were never completed: the party abandoned Nanjing because of the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War. The capital was then moved upstream along the Yangtze River, first to Wuhan, then to Chongqing.

The second case is about the period under the Communist regime headed by Mao Zedong. After the Nationalist party lost in the civil war, in 1949, China was taken over by the Communist party. The anti-urban bias of Mao relegated the cities to a subordinate role and destroyed the old urban structure. The decentralization and industrialization of the cities advocated by Mao had dramatically changed the urban landscape in the Yangtze regions.

The third case is about the period of reopening China to the West. Mao’s urban policy, collectivism and planned economy were confronted by the society’s urge for reform and openness. After Mao’s death in late 1970s, Deng Xiaoping implemented the open door policy. Later, the party reinforced the policy in 1992 by launching plenty giant urban projects, including the construction of the Three Gorges dam - the world’s largest hydro-engineering project.

In each case, I will focus on (i) the evolution of the urban cycle of creative destruction; (ii) the urban experiences in the regions during and after the urban cycle; and (iii) the region’s new identities nurtured as a result of the changing urban structure. The case studies will entail the following works:

Archival Research
This involves the review of primary and secondary materials, including official records, gazetteers, periodicals, newspapers, memoirs, biographies, blueprints and etc. Examples of archives I will visit include the State Historical Archives in Nanjing and the Sichuan Provincial Archives.

Fieldworks
This involves site documentations and observations. The information obtained from the archival research will be verified on site. I will also interview the local people to investigate their experiences and memories on the urban cycles.

Significances
For many years, the studies on modern Chinese cities are dominated by the narratives of coastal cities, whereas the inner cities or riverine cities are often underrated. Similarly, rich intellectual energy has been spent to understand China’s experience with modernity during the 20th century, particularly in the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and literature; yet employ the perspective of China’s urban development. This study wishes to fill that gap. It aims to develop an urban theory of creative destruction that explains China’s rapid urban developments in relations to its vast socio-political transformations.

[i] Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance self-fashioning: from More to Shakespeare, 1980.

City in Motion: Cultural Landscape of Lhasa Inner City

2005-10-13T19:17:00.000-08:00

Abstract of Paper submitted to VAF 2006 Annual Meeting

Why and how do the Tibetan nomads – group of people “in motion” - settled in Lhasa in the seventh century and build the first city in the territory? The story of Lhasa began in 633 A.D. when the King Songsten Gamnbo instructed the construction of the Jokhang Monastery in order to house the Buddha Statue - a marital gift from his new bride, the princess from China. From then on, Buddhism was imported to Tibet and overridden other religions. Pilgrims from all over Tibet went to Lhasa to worship. They settled around the monastery and built their own dwellings – this formed the first urban settlement in Tibet.

Though settled in the city, the Tibetans are never ceased “moving”. Until today, hundreds, if not thousands, of Tibetans circumambulate along the pilgrim routes in Lhasa, with the rolling prayer wheels in their hands, and prostrate when they see any holy object. How do these “moving” religious practices affect the cultural landscape of Lhasa? How do the city and the vernacular dwellings designed in respect to the “moving culture” of the Tibetans?

This paper argues that the Tibetan’s concept of “being in motion” has shaped the cultural landscape of Lhasa in both the city and the vernacular dwellings. It aims to provide a macro/micro reading to the Lhasa Inner City. In the macro level, I will analyze the evolution and urban morphology of Lhasa. Although the city was formed by the spontaneous settling of the Tibetan pilgrims and their vernacular dwellings, it shows an urban pattern stronger than many planned city: the city of Lhasa develops radially with the Jokhang Monastery as the centre. I will focus on how the three major circumambulation routes, namely Nangkork, Barkor and Lingkor, dictate the urban fabric of the city. In the micro level, I will discuss how the Tibetan’s concept of “being in motion” manifested in the design of the vernacular dwellings.

Reading Response:Berge, "Sun Yet-sen"

2005-09-24T19:01:00.000-08:00

Berge is very critical to the main character of her book Sun Yat-sen. To Berge, Sun Yat-sen was a person without principle. He was opportunistic, inconsistent with his political thoughts and actions, and poor in organizing the revolutionary alliance. Berge cited Huang Xing’s complaints toward his leader: “Sun has never been sincere, open, modest, or frank with others, and his way of handling things is almost dictatorial, and intransigent to an unbearable degree.” (Berge: 147) Most importantly, Berge believes that Sun in fact took no part in the 1911 Wuchang revolution that led to the collapse of the imperial monarchy.

Nevertheless, Berge believes that “in China, as elsewhere, it sometimes happened that the official president of a movement was not its principal leader but someone simply required to confer credibility and prestige upon the organization, by virtue of his presence alone, or even just his name.” (Berge:129) In light of the social, cultural and political context of early 20th century China, this response paper aims to analyze why Sun was able to confer credibility and prestige upon the revolutionary organization.

In early 20th century, China, a country frequently threatened by foreign invasions, had only two choices – a top down reform initiated by the imperial court and supported by the gentry elites, or a bottom up revolution urged by the common people. These two approaches represented the diverse opinions in the society, each advocated by different social groups with different interests. For either reform or revolution to be successful, there must be someone who was able to integrate all these social groups and balance their interests. Sun showed special talents in this respect – he was a person that gained reorganizations from both the West and the Chinese, as well as from various social groups such as the overseas Chinese, the foreigners, the missionaries, the triads, the students and etc.

Thanks to his sibling who worked overseas, Sun was exposed to the outside world early when he was a teenager. With the help of his family ties, Sun gained tremendous supports from the overseas Chinese. Having educated in the missionary school, Sun developed a cosmopolitan perspective abnormal to someone who came from a peasant family. His good connections with the outside world later proved to be crucial to his revolutionary business. For the Chinese, on one hand, were feared from foreign invasions; on the other hand, admired the power and wealth of the West. Sun was one of the few who could mediate between the West and the Chinese at that time and this allowed him to earn prestige in the community.

Yet, Sun was not detached from his Chinese bonding. Sun gained the trusts from his Cantonese fellows: his home place, Guangdong, became the base of his revolutionary career. With the slogan to overthrow the Manchu and regain China back to the Hans, Sun won the hearts of the Han Chinese. Berge points out that ever since 1903 when Liang Qi-chao had abdicated the role of guide to intellectual radicalism that had been de fato his, Sun became the most authoritative representative of the anti-Manchu opposition, which Sun had always promoted as the only legitimate expression of modern nationalism. Sun understood that only this opposition could bring together all the subversive forces at work within China and outside it. (Berge: 127)

Of course, it was impossible for Sun to gain everyone’s support. Because of his peasant background, Sun was always marginalized by those gentry elites such as Li Hung-zhang, Kang You-wei and Liang Qi-chao. Unable to enter the reformists’ circle, Sun had no choice besides revolution. Nevertheless, this also pushed Sun to develop his revolutionary career among those “invisible” groups in the political arena – the overseas Chinese, the students, and the triads. Traditionally, the Confucian teachings created a strong hierarchy in the Chinese society. The common people could hardly take part in any political commitment. However, Sun made visible these invisible groups. He was the first one to develop the connections with the overseas Chinese – the people who were far away from homes, yet concerned with its political development. During his flee to Japan, Sun aware that he could posit himself not as a rioter but a revolutionary, likewise for those triads that supported him – an attractive upgrading in social status. In additions, Sun’s talent in integrating various social groups was best manifested in his ability to bring together the triad and the students. The students Sun recruited became strong forces in his revolutionary troops.

Perhaps the active participations of the common people in Sun’s revolutionary business had made him aware of the power of the people, Sun later developed his famous “Three Principles of the People.” Although the principle was not Sun’s original thought, nor did he elaborated or substantiated it thoroughly, the principle allowed the Chinese to project a society ruled by the people, in contrary to the old belief that sovereignty was the “mandate of the heaven.” It was the very first time the notion of the “people” had been put into the political agenda, and it probably contributed to the ideological development of modern China.

Without doubts, the media helped Sun tremendously in promoting his three principles. Sun was a pioneer that aware the power of the media. Ever since his kidnap in London, Sun manipulated the media to gain public sympathy, appreciations and supports, both overseas and locally. Through the journals, newspapers and pamphlets, Sun skillfully promoted his political thoughts and presented himself to the public as a patriotic, intellectual person with modernist visions. Sun’s background, experiences, social networks and presentations had made him stand out among his contemporaries and colored his revolution with cosmopolitan favor. History showed that the urge for revolution had win over the urge for reform in early 20th century China. If it must have a leader who confers credibility and prestige upon the revolutionary organization, Sun seemed to be the only choice.

Structuring and Presenting a Research Argument

2005-09-21T18:59:00.000-08:00

Spence suggests us to begin our argument by a story that built upon a thesis, a point of view advanced by the argument, with concrete claims clearly stated. Berg, instead, reminds us the importance to know our target audiences and suggests ways to present the argument, literature review, methodology and research findings; whereas Becker recommends the use of literatures to help building our arguments. With this in mind, this response paper analyzes the structure and method of argumentation in Peter Hall, Denise Hall and James Marston Fitch’s articles.

Peter Hall states concretely at the beginning of his article that the BART system is a planning disaster, for it fails to fulfill the predictions made for it. Hall has a very clear structure of argument - he presented the original predictions on the BART systems during the decisions making stage, and contrasts them with the outcomes when the BART is in operation. Through abundant information and analysis, Hall convincingly points out that the BART system fails in terms of construction time, cost and performances.

Hall uses extensively someone else’s previous findings on the BART systems. Yet, Hall only uses those empirical results and skillfully weaves them into his own research to support his arguments. This is a good demonstration on what Becker recommends: to use the literatures to help your argument.

Without doubts, Peter Hall’s target audiences are the general public, in contrary to Dennis Hall whose audiences are the professionals in the building industry. Compare to Peter Hall, Dennis Hall’s claim is more abstract – she argues that the New Urbanism’s use of the term “community” to imply social and economic plurality is largely symbolic, disguising continued advocacy of conventional real estate development practices. Her argument is built upon Hilary’s content analysis of definitions of community in sociological literatures. Therefore, if Hall’s target audiences are the professionals in the industry who have no understanding on Hilary, she might have to elaborate more clearly on Hilary’s study and its relevancy to her argument.

Borrowing Hilary’s method, Hall analyzes the term “community” from the perspectives of architect, planners and developers as expressed in their respective trade journals and four principal books in the field. Hall’s method provides a workable way to investigate the abstract term “community”. Nevertheless, I doubt if few journals can represent the view of the entire discipline, especially when Hall does not provide information on the sample size she studied and the periods covered. Hall’s argument is hence weakened by her research method and her presentation of research findings.

Disappointingly, James Marston Fitch’s article lacks a central argument. It is a collection of various personal thoughts on how the architectural disciplines should handle the use of technology properly; yet, his thoughts are diversified, disconnected, loosely structured and lacks justifications. Fitch covers a wide range of topics including the history of technological advancement, formalism, energy efficiency of glass-wall, architect’s responsibilities, architectural educations and etc. Occasionally, he makes good points in each particular topic, but these points do not contribute to the building of a central argument. The audiences have no idea on the linkages between these topics and hence are difficult to grasp Fitch’s argument.

Finding Questions

2005-09-13T22:09:00.000-08:00

Using Creswell, and Forcese & Richter, analyze, explain and presetn the hypotheses, arguments and methods in AlSayyad, Bristol and McCracken & Gustin's articles.

In The Purpsoe Statement and Research Questions and Hypothese, Creswell emphasizes the importance of clarity in writing and in presenting the purpose statement, research questions and hypothesis. He also highlights the differences between qualitative and quantitative researches; whereas in Models, Hypothese and Theory, Forcese and Richter point out that the conceptual labels – models, hypothesis and theory – represent a system of related concepts in social science research. They explain the relationship that links these labels and suggest that such relationship is in fact an explanatory system. (Forcese and Richter: 46). With this in mind, this response paper aims to analyze AlSayyad, Bristol, McCracken and Gustin’s articles with the focuses on the ways they present their purpose statement, questions and hypothesis; and the explanation systems they employed. These three articles, which include both qualitative and quantitative researches, are selected because of their clarity in writing.

AlSayyad’s article The Islamic City as a Colonial enterprise is a good illustration on how to present the purpose statement, research questions and model clearly and concisely at the first few paragraphs. His central research question begins with “Why”, a word that suggests causes and effects – why people talk about the urbanism that the Arabs initiated as Islamic urbanism and not colonial urbanism? (AlSayyad: 27). To answer this, AlSayyad explains the causes and effects to the transformation of two Islamic cities due to Arabic colonization. His explanations are assisted with computer modelings which give vivid illustrations on the urban morphologies of these cities before and after colonization.

AlSayyad uses Anthony King’s model to understand non-Western colonial urbanism before 1500. Although King’s model is primarily dealing with the recent industrial capitalist phase of colonial expansion, AlSayyad finds the model applicable to describe the cities of Islam in their early days. He concludes that the early Islamic city may have been a true colonial enterprise. AlSayyad answers his research questions by pointing out that colonial urbanism can only be understood in its true temporal framework, and once this framework ceases to exist then its urban products can no longer be seen as colonial (AlSayyad: 41). This is the reason why people today usually refer the Arabic urbanism as “Islamic urbanism” rather than “colonial urbanism.”

Similar to AlSayyad, Bristol begins her article The Pruitt-Igoe Myth with a concise abstract that outlines her intent, hypothesis and approaches to answer her research questions. Bristol points out that the association of the project’s demolition with the failure of modern architecture has constitutes the core of the Pruitt-lgoe myth (Bristol: 183). Her article builds upon the hypothesis that the architectural design is responsible for the demise of Pruitt-Igoe, as many people including Charles Jencks suggested.

Interestingly, Bristol’s article is in fact an effort to challenge this hypothesis – she believes that the myth is being mystified. Bristol’s explanations are divided into two parts. In the first part, Bristol provides evidences that rather than architectural factors, it is the political and economic factors that contribute to the Pruitt-Igoe’s decline. Then, why the architecture community is so insistent that the failure of Pruitt-Igoe was its own fault? In the second part, Bristol point out thats the myth can be understood simply as a weapon in an ongoing conflict between different factions within the architecture profession, and the linking of the project’s failure with its architectural design successfully places the architect in the position of authority over providing low-incoming housing for the poor. (Bristol: 169-70).

Unlike AlSayyad and Bristol, McCracken and Gustin begins their article Batmom’s Daily Nightmare with their experiences and difficulties on researching Mexican free-tailed bats. This journalistic writing style is rare for quantitative research, yet it successfully drawn the readers’ attentions and curiosity.

The central phenomenon of McCracken and Gustin’s article is the mother-pup interactions between the Mexican free-tailed bats (the participants) roosted at Bracken Cave (the site). The use of the research question, “How can she (the Batmom) find her offspring among millions of squealing pups?” as the subtitle of the article allows its reader to grasp the question easily.

McCracken and Gustin challenge the belief that female bats returning to the massed pups and nursed indiscriminately. They then derive the hypothesis that the bats can recognize their own pups and seek to nurse them. Building upon this hypothesis, the authors derive three experiments to investigate (i) the nursing affiliations in relation to nursing female-pup genotypes; (ii) the location where the pair of adult and pup roost; and (iii) method of communication between the pair. Through these experiments, McCracken and Gustin provide empirical results to answer their research questions. They refine their hypothesis in the conclusion based on these results. Nevertheless, McCracken and Gustin also tell their readers the limitations of their experiments. They presented what they believe as the ideal experiment and why is it impossible to carry it out in reality.

In shorts, the readers will find it easy to grasp the research questions behind these three articles. The authors have successfully illustrated in their articles how to present the questions and hypothesis with clarity, and how to develop the explanation systems that answer the research questions.

Reading Texts: Understanding Style

2005-09-07T15:31:00.000-08:00

Using (a) Y.F. Tuan, "Language and the Making of Place," (b) Howard Becker, "Persona and Authority," and (c) Trevor Barnes and James Duncan, "Introduction: Writing Worlds" to analyse the writing style in (i) David Harvey, "Monument and Myth," (ii) Mackenzie Wark, "Tiananmen Square," and (iii) Peter Hall, "Sydney's Opera House."

Among the three approaches to linguistic place-construction that Tuan presented (Tuan: 686), David Harvey in his article Monument and Myth: The Building of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, adopts the narrative descriptive approach in reconstructing the history geography of Paris. Instead of explicitly formulate theory in his article, Harvey employs the persona of a present-time visitor who provides a narrative description to construction of the basilica.

Harvey draws on three citations crucial to the development of his narrations: (i) from the archbishop of Paris who proclaims that the site of the basilica is where the Sacred Heart must reign; (ii) the Latin motto “GALLIA POENITENS” inscribed under the immense painting of Jesus; and (iii) the letter from Saint Marguerite-Marie Alacoque about the cult of the Sacred Heart. Harvey does not explain immediately why the archbishop made such proclamation, nor does he explain the meaning of the Latin motto, yet the missing information has arouses his readers’ curiosity. The intertextuality – the association of one text to the others - provides the readers with a wide range of possible interpretations and imaginations.

Harvey begins unfolding the missing information that links the citations by changing his persona. This is an important point of transition in the entire article. No longer performs as a present-time visitor, Harvey acts as a historic geographer who reveals the association between the cult of the Sacred Heart and the reactionary monarchism of the ancien regime.

The Latin motto GALLIA POENITENS has repeatedly appeared in Harvey’s article. This rhetoric device has successfully drawn the reader’s attentions – they cannot stop asking “What is GALLIA POENITENS?” From the article we know that this Latin motto probably means “Paris repents”. The use of the motto highlights and reinforces the bloodily history presented by the author behind the creation of the city. Harvey is in fact creating a metaphor that the construction of the basilica signifies the city’s vow for repentance. In Harvey’s words, “GALLIA POENITENS was taking shape in material symbolic form” (Harvey: 221). Ironically, the basilica is seen by the city council members as “an incessant provocation to civil war.” (Harvey: 225) This irony reveals the fact that there are different readings on the same text (the basilica), which is also an idea that Harvey wants to convey.

Similar to Harvey who plays around the motto GALLIA POENITENS, Mackenzie Wark’s book Virtual Geography is all about the word “vector.” Barnes and Duncan have shown us how geographer makes place through language. Likewise, Wark makes new place by using new language. By granting new meaning to the word “vector”, Wark is able to make new place – a virtual place that exist in media.

In his articles, Wark creates a discourse that the intersection of an absence of a vector along which to represent themselves leads to the spontaneous creation of self-representation, and “one day a vector will open, that self-representation will flow” (Wark: 98). He uses the event at Tiananmen Square to explain “what one kind of vector, one kind of media speed, said about the event in terms of another” (Wark: 99). Since the idea of media speed is crucial to the framing of his discourse, Wark therefore employs a daily chonopolitics – a chronicle of the micro-events – to illustrate the issue of democracy as self-representation observed in Tiananmen Square on a daily account. This rhetoric device, together with the narrative-descriptive approach that he adopts, successfully draws the attentions of his readers – we feel like following the news in the journal day by day.

There are two transition points in his writing: (i) towards the end of Chapter Five Wark suddenly shifted his persona from a reporter on the news, to the audience of the news sitting in front of the television; and (ii) in Chapter 6, Wark departs from his narrative descriptive approach on the event at Tiananmen Square, to enter a theoretical discussion around the notions of vector and mediascape (the virtual landscape created by the media). These two transition shows that Wark’s persona is undefined in his articles – he is a journalist, a cultural theorists, an expert on Chinese politics, a historian, and at the same time a remote person sitting in front of the television in his Sydney home.

The frequent shifting in persona leads us to question his authority and moral sensitivity – instead of narrating the event at Tiananmen Square objectively, Wark has added many personal comments on how the Chinese Authority and the student bodies handle the political crisis. Is he (who suppose to be a journalist or cultural theorists) competent to make all these critiques? And most importantly, are these political critiques necessary to his writing on virtual geography?

Unlike Wark whose persona is undefined, Peter Hall employs a very consistent persona throughout his article Sydney’s Opera House: he is a professional planner, someone who is authoritative to label the construction of the opera house as a “planning disaster.” Hall’s article is a piece of critique. He is writing as if his readers already know well who he is; and he is also writing as if his readers are all involved in the building profession. Hall has employed numerous jargons and technical information in his article, which is a writing style that Becker does not encourage. I do not oppose to this writing style - it depends on what kind of readers that the author is targeting. For this specific case, Hall is clearly writing solely for the professionals in the same field.

Hall’s narrative description to the construction of the opera house is penetrated with analysis and criticisms. He tries to convince his readers (who are also professionals in the field) that the design of the opera house is not well-thought, hence leading to the subsequent delays of the construction and over budget. His authoritative tone in writing reflects what Tuan describes about the relationship between power and language, that “the right to speak and be heard is empowerment” (Tuan: 687).

Tuan believes that the geographer’s words have a perceptual effect - it draws attention to things: aspects of reality hitherto invisible become visible (Tuan: 693). Harvey’s words make visible to his readers the myth behind the city of Paris - that only the living, cognizant of history can truly disinter the mysteries (Harvey: 228); Wark’s words, on the other hands, make visible the virtual geography created by the intersections of vector of information from various media, while Hall’s words make visible the poor planning and decision-making process behind the construction of the opera house.

The Building of New China: Architectural Culture Since 1949

2005-08-29T16:38:00.000-08:00

Abstract submitted to the Second Graduate Seminar on China, CUHK

After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the whole country was looking forward to build a new China. Throughout the entire 20th century, China had experienced dramatic political and social events under the flag of reforms and revolutions. At the same time, the architectural culture in China were influenced by the paradigm shifts happened in the western world – the rise and fall of “modernism”, and the subsequent emergence of its counter thought “post-modernism”. The urge for modernity, hence, creates both the social and architectural critiques within the country. How does this urge shaped the architecture and urban landscape of modern China?

Architecture is the physical manifestation of the will of the epoch and the ideology of the society. Disappointingly, the writing of architectural history in China has little to do with political and social events underway. This paper, therefore, aims to discuss the architectural culture of China since 1949 in light of its political and social developments. It will investigate the meeting points of social and architectural critiques on the search of Chinese modernity.

The first part of the paper concerns the early republic period till the end of the Cultural Revolution. Architecture in this period serves political agenda to consolidate the governance of the party. The “Ten Projects” that built to celebrate the ten anniversary of the founding of the republic were notable example in this period.

The second part of the paper concerns the period under the motto of the Open Door Policy with the focus on how the importation of Hong Kong architects has changed the urban landscape of Chinese cities.

The last part of the paper will discuss the current architectural development in China. Special emphasis will be made on the recent trend to commission world renowned star architects for national projects, such as the National Opera House, the CCTV Headquarter, the Beijing Olympic Stadiums and etc.

Through vivid evidences, this paper concludes that the shifting architectural culture in China since 1949 reflects the ideological changes that tie closely to its political and social development.

Urban Morphology of Late Imperial Guangdong Cities

2005-08-28T16:30:00.000-08:00

Abstract submitted to 2006 AAS Annual Meeting

Guangdong, a region called Lingnan in imperial times, was often considered by the mainland Chinese as a barbaric frontier. Therefore, the planning of Guangdong cities may not strictly follow the orthodox planning principle – the Wangcheng plan. Though the Wangcheng plan has greatly influenced city-planning in imperial period, it is too simplistic to assume a single, non-evolutionary planning system in China. Disappointingly, there has not been much scholarly research devoted to the urban morphology, planning and development in Guangdong. One can note references to historic sources, such as the gazetteers and ancient maps to grasp an image of imperial Guangdong; whereas for contemporary Guangdong, scholars usually focus only on the provincial capital Guangzhou, the Pearl River Delta Open Economic Area and the Special Economic Zones. Guangdong cities beyond these areas have heretofore been neglected by scholars. This paper, therefore, aims to provide something which is still lacking in the field: a general survey of the morphology and planning of late imperial Guangdong cities.

In this paper, the evolution of the Guangdong cities in late imperial period (Ming and Qing Dynasty) is examined. This is the period during which Guangdong cities considerably develop. Through comparing over ten prefectural cities (Fu), this paper argues that the networking, siting, and planning of late imperial Guangdong cities are strongly shaped by the province’s characteristic landscape setting. At a macroscopic level, the strategic networking of Guangdong cities goes along with the region’s massive and intricate river system. The cities are sited at the most predominant location well protected by the water bodies. At a microscopic level, the flow of the water also determined the forms and fabrics of the cities.

In Guangdong, the landscape is the main determinant in giving the characters of the region – a character very different from the rest of China. Instead of rigidly or blindly following stringent orthodox planning principles, the Cantonese have given careful consideration to designing their cities within their specific landscape settings. They intelligently grasped the distinctiveness of their landscape and transformed it to benefit the cities’ development.

Erasing Memory to the Past; Creating Memroy for the Future

2005-05-08T01:58:00.000-08:00

Note: This passage is the first few paragraphs of my paper entitled Erasing Memory to the Past; Creating Memory for the Future: The Construction of the Three Gorges Dam at Yangtze River, China. It is also a response to the article "35年前秘密重建天安门".

On 21 April 2005, a news on an inconspicuous corner of the newspaper People’s Daily catch my eyes.[1] The news reported that the reddish Tiananmen Gate Tower (The Gate of Heavenly Peace) that stands in China’s capital Beijing overseeing the huge Tiananmen Square is in fact not the original one built in early Qing Dynasty (1651).[2] The entire tower has been secretly torn down and rebuilt in 1969, with no single pieces including the delicate wooden brackets and ornaments being preserved.

At that time, the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) found that the tower’s structure was endangered by a recently happened earthquake, and hence announced the secret reconstruction of the tower. The project was carried out by a carefully selected team of architects, craftsmen and construction workers who are Gen Hong Miao Zheng (with red root and proper seeds – a phase that commonly employed by the Communists to denote a person with politically correct ideology and proper family background). The team covered the entire tower with large-scaled scaffoldings and carried out the demolition and reconstruction work secretly. The People’s Daily claims that it was not merely a construction commission; it was a “political mission.” Even the Beijing locals did not know about the work - they simply think that some renovation works were undergoing to the tower. For 35 years long, the Chinese authority successfully covers the truth until it was disclosed today, probably with the state’s permission.

I am angry while reading this news – I feel being deceived. Instead of challenging the missing attempt for authentic preservation of the Tiananmen Gate Tower, the party owned newspaper boosted the efficient reconstruction works, the masterly crafts and the careful planning of the project.

Lots of questions are wandering in my mind. Why the state did not preserve the original Tiananmen Gate Tower? Is it because the Chinese do not have the necessary skills and technologies in preservation, or because they do not raise high the value of historic architecture? Then, why the state not simply demolishes the old tower but to rebuild a fake one? Is it because the loss of the Tiananmen Gate Tower, a place where Chairman Mao Zedong proclaimed the establishment of the People’s Republic and where his portrait is hang today, will harm the symbolic sovereignty of the state? Most importantly, why the state has to hide the reconstruction project? Is it because it was carried out in the peak of the Cultural Revolution, and the reconstruction of the tower in exactly its original form will be contradictory to the party’s advocates for the massive destruction of “all things old” which are said to be the signs of the feudal society?[3]

The dilemmas appeared in the Tiananmen case reflect only the tip of the iceberg. The Chinese, on one hand, wishes to transmit the memory of their glorious past so as to affirm the legitimacy of their present; on the other hand, they repeatedly destroy the physical environment representing the past to give way for new developments. These dilemmas have created the alternative modernity for China – a modernity that different from the Euro-American contexts.

[1] The news was reported in the People’s Daily Overseas Edition on 21 April 2005, see http://www.people.com.cn/GB/paper39/14581/1296140.html

[2] Tiananmen is the front gate of the Forbidden City. It was constructed in early Qing dynasty in the year 1651.

[3] The Cultural Revolution is a comprehensive reform movement initialed by Chairman Mao Zedong in the period 1966 to 1976 to eliminate counterrevolutionary elements in the country's institutions and leadership. One of the themes of the Cultural Revolution is to fight against “all things old” to symbolize the victory over feudal system. This led to disastrous destruction to the antiquities in China. Many ancient structures, literatures, artworks are destroyed in this period.

35年前秘密重建天安门

2005-05-06T15:07:00.000-08:00

《人民日报海外版》 (2005年04月21日第八版) http://www.people.com.cn/GB/paper39/14581/1296140.html　　

据史书记载，天安门始建于明永乐十八年（1420年），建造时完全模仿南京的承天门，故命名承天门。明朝天顺年即1457年7月，承天门遭火灾，城楼焚毁。1465年明宪宗派工部尚书自圭重修承天门，由牌坊式改建成宫殿式，基本上有了现在天安门的规模。1644年，承天门又毁于兵火。第二年再次重修承天门，6年后竣工，从此正式改名为天安门。　　

邢台地震后天安门城楼损坏变形严重
具有550多年历史的天安门城楼，由于兵火战乱，长期失修，建筑结构已严重坏损变形，主体已严重下沉。新中国成立后虽经多次维修加固，但未能彻底解决问题。1969年河北邢台地区发生了6到7.5级强烈地震，使天安门城楼损坏变形更甚。1969年底国务院决定：彻底拆除天安门城楼，在原址、按原规格和原建筑形式重新修建天安门城楼。　　

按部队编制组成了施工队伍天安门城楼结构复杂，工艺难度大。中共中央和国务院组成了由总参、北京卫戍区、北京市革命委员会等有关部门参加的“天安门城楼重建领导小组”。被指定承担这项任务的是北京第五建筑工程公司（现北京建工集团五建公司）。　　

北京第五建筑工程公司选派了一批根红苗正、政治可靠、技术过硬的精兵强将，其中大部分为党、团员，他们按部队编制，组成了木工连、瓦工连、彩油连、架子工连和混合连5个施工队，当时的八级木工姚来泉就是木工连的组长。　　

8天搭出一个世界上最大的施工“天棚”
天安门城楼长66米、宽37米、高32米，要将这么大的建筑物整个罩起来，难度可想而知。如果用钢管搭架，需一个月。架子工人用杉蒿绑在一起，层层连接，用苇席搭起天棚，除留出送料的循环马道外，整个城楼被包裹得严严实实，丝毫不露。搭起这个堪称世界之最的“天棚”，仅用了8天时间，这在当时是绝无仅有的。他们又在中山公园内临时建起一座锅炉房，上下水管道直通城楼，苇席四周铺设了几层取暖管，尽管隆冬，棚里仍然温暖如春。　　

为严守秘密，不仅北京市市民不知道，就是近在咫尺的中山公园的工作人员也不知被苇席围起的天安门里在干什么。所有参加重建的人员更要严守秘密，不准和任何人说，甚至家人，这是政治任务。　　

脊瓦正中宝盒里藏着金元宝、红宝石、朱砂和五彩粮
天安门城楼除底座是砖混结构外，整个城楼为木结构。姚师傅带着两个人登着杉蒿绑起的梯子，爬到天安门最高的脊瓦处。按指挥部命令，他要找出正中的脊瓦，至于干什么，不知道。他让两个工人分别从东西两侧往中间数脊瓦数，他则站在大约中间的位置，当两人各数到43块时，还剩5块。于是他在中央脊瓦作了记号，便赶紧向指挥部汇报。　　

指挥部领导、专家、公安及警卫人员立即登上楼顶。中间黄色的琉璃脊瓦厚60厘米、宽80厘米，两个人根本抬不动。姚师傅用撬棍连撬带砸，瓦碎了，露出一个30厘米见方的木盒，上面清晰地显露出一对精美的二龙戏珠雕刻图案。领导示意姚打开。姚师傅用撬棍轻轻一戳，木盒酥了。　　

姚师傅伸出手臂，拿出一块“铜疙瘩”。尽管光泽不那么亮了，但却实实在在是个金元宝。接着摸出块拇指大的红宝石。再摸出来的是一粒粒像红铅笔头似的东西，手指一捻，变成朱红色粉状物，是朱砂。此外还有五彩粮：黄豆、高粱、黑豆、谷子和玉米，当然有的已分辨不清了。　　据说，金丝楠木盒里的所有东西后来全部上交国库。　　

所有城楼柱子全部用进口木材
天安门城楼有60多根柱子，最粗的直径1.2米，最小的也有0.6米，每根12米长，重7吨以上。当时曾在海南岛和西双版纳原始森林找到了质地较好甚至更大的原木，但因运输问题而改从加蓬和北婆罗洲进口。这种木材，质坚、颜色为红或黄，遇火不着，只冒烟。干了多年木工的姚来泉说，从没见过这么好的木材。　　

按照国务院“建筑材料全部更新”的要求，木构件由北京光华木材厂加工。新做的全部木柱和木梁均用整体木材，所有木构件都作了防腐、防虫、防火的化学处理。　　

西山墙中拆出了7枚炮弹
在拆除西山墙时，一名工人取出一颗直径9.5厘米，高约45厘米的完整炮弹，指挥部立即指示公安部门连同周围的土全部取走研究。　　

后来在拆除中又先后起出6颗规格相同的炮弹，这7颗炮弹始终是个谜。鉴于当时“以阶级斗争为纲”的政治环境，此消息绝不可外传。现在这7枚炮弹存于何处，无从知晓。　　

贴金箔用去6公斤黄金
木工活毕，油漆彩画上，所有描龙画凤都经过严格的1麻5灰13道工序。菱花格扇过去是手工操作，费时费力，这次反复研究，试制成了菱花格扇加工机，提高工效150倍。最后是贴金箔，重修的城楼共用去6公斤黄金，金箔全部为进口。油工们小心地用竹夹一张张夹起，敷在未干的油漆上，再用细毛笔一点点捋平……　　基于当时的政治气候，工程完毕，指挥部又成立了9人组成的检查小组，用探雷器按所有图纸顺序检测。探雷器非常敏感，有一次当测到一个斗拱时，探雷器突然鸣叫，图纸显示此处并无任何钉铁钉的记录。最后斗拱被拆开———取出了一只木工扁铲。是别有用心还是疏忽大意？在场的人谁都说不清。当时是否为此成立专案组，是否查出了责任人，都不太清楚。　　

后来探雷器测到东楼梯时又不断鸣叫，平整的水泥地面有什么问题呢？马上砸！结果什么也没发现。后来化验那些水泥碎渣，原因是此石料含铁量比较高。　　

112天秘密重建竣工后天安门再放光彩
重建天安门城楼工程，自1969年12月15日正式开工，到1970年3月7日竣工，整个工期112天。这项工程仅琉璃瓦就制作了近100种规格，10万余件。在底座墙镶了一层砖，外墙打了50厘米水泥。重修的天安门城楼比原来“长高”了87厘米，这是因为天安门多年下沉，根据史料记载，可以说天安门恢复了原始的高度。重建的天安门城楼，完全保留了它原有的外形、尺寸和结构布局，并按9级抗震能力设防。东西卷棚和城台加高、女儿墙减薄、标语板更换、安装电梯，增设了供电照明、上下水、热力暖气、电话、电视广播、新闻摄影等现代化设施。据统计，有中央和全国21个省市的216个部门参与，施工高峰用工达2700多人，整个现场施工速度之快，质量之高，举世罕见。　　

之后，悬挂毛主席彩色画像，将天安门底座两侧的“世界人民大团结万岁”和“中华人民共和国万岁”标语牌改为玻璃钢材料，外包铁角。“天棚”拆除后，展露在世人面前的是一座金碧辉煌雄伟壮丽的天安门。　　

姚来泉家现在还保存着“重建纪念”的镜框，里面是一幅重建后的天安门彩色照片，下面是毛泽东的烫金手书：精心设计，精心施工，在建设过程中，一定会有不少错误、失败，随时注意改正。　　
俞珉文　摘自《北京纪事》

Housing, Globalization, Tourism and the New Virtual World

2005-05-04T23:39:00.000-08:00

In the era of globalization when the world seems to be homogenized, AlSayyad argues that cultural experience will likely become less place-rooted and more information-based. Each person carries multiple identities shaped by various cultures. However, what are the implications of this placeless culture and multiple identities to housing development? I have identified three implications that concern with the transnational development, multiple functions and new programmatic requirements of housing.

Firstly, housing will no longer be a localized commodity; rather, it will be opened up for the international market. The Conard Pacific Place in Vancouver, for example, is a huge housing development with Hong Kong investment, and is targeted for the market of the entire Pacific Rim with potential clients mainly from Hong Kong immigrants. In contrary, the high-end luxury housings in Hong Kong attract the speculators from mainland China and this boomed the Hong Kong real estate market recently; whereas many Hong Kong people purchased the single family houses in the gated communities in China as second homes or vacation houses. Housing, in this case, becomes commodities that can be traded and speculated in the international real estate market.

Secondary, housing will no longer serve single function solely for the accommodation of the people. Many cases show that housing developments have become tourist spots. The Great Wall Commune in Beijing is an anthology of famous architects’ works that attracts many tourists and architects. Furthermore, many gated communities in China employ thematic designs such as “Venetian water towns.” Housing has becomes part of the invented landscape that blurred the boundaries between “living” and “traveling”.

Finally, new types of housing are emerged. The widespread of the studio flats is a response to the advocates of gentrification or increasing privacy; it also reflects the changing family structure in the society – more and more people no longer live with their families. On the other hand, there are growing demands for service apartments in Hong Kong nowadays, for many overseas businessmen and professionals have to find short term accommodations for business reason.

Designing Community: The Utopia of New Urbanism

2005-04-27T22:49:00.000-08:00

The search of Utopia is a normal human desire: everyone wants to lead a better life; everyone wants to live in a better place. The emergence of the suburban new towns under the call of the New Urbanism are dream-homes for many Americans – to live in a well protected community with pleasant landscape, welcoming neighborhood and spacious single family houses. However, the suburban new towns reflect larger questions on our society that we should not ignored.

Firstly, it reflects people’s detestation to the city. People abandon the city center and escape to the suburb to look for their ideal living places - The city is no longer a “livable environment”. The gated communities in these suburban new towns, with self-sufficient facilities and services, reflect the people’s fears and reluctance to interact with the outside world.

Secondly, it reflects the people’s resistance to the heterogeneous nature of the city. The suburban new towns guaranteed a homogenous community – the residents are all with similar income level, probably all White Americans who have similar way of lives, not to mention the monotonous architectural expression in the towns. This exaggerates the social and spatial segregations in the city.

Thirdly, while people living in these suburban new towns believe that they have secure ideal living environment, their way of lives are in fact controlled and confined by the gated communities. How they interacts with their neighbors, how they access to the facilities, how they spend their leisure time, are all pre-designed by the architects and planners (or the developers to be more explicit). The stringent controls implements by Walt Disney Cooperation onto its real estate development Celebration is an astonishing example.

There is no problem for one to search for his/her ideal way of life, the utopia. However, we should not neglect the need to regenerate our city centers, remedy the living condition of the urban poor and mitigate the problem of social segregation. Otherwise, the prophecy will eventually come true - that our society will one day composed of multiple segregated suburban new towns around an empty poorly-conditioned city.

Vernacular Traditions

2005-04-25T21:38:00.000-08:00

The emergence of the study on vernacular tradition involves the definition and legitimacy for the discipline – scholars try to differentiate their studies from other disciplines like architectural history, anthropology and sociology. One significant distinction of the discipline from the others is its emphasis on the study of the built environment created by the layperson. Bruskill, for example, differentiate vernacular from polite architecture by who designs the building – “vernacular architecture will have been designed by amateur, probably the occupier of the intended building, and one without any training in design”. He raises an interesting point that “many surviving buildings provide a continuous thread until a point in time when suddenly all evidence in the form of surviving buildings comes to a stop”. The extinction of a particular vernacular build form is probably due to the emergence of the design professionals and new building materials. People now rely on professionals to design their buildings, while new building technology and materials enable a variety of built forms. In this modern era with sophisticated division of labours and technology advancement, the act of building by laypersons may come to an end. In this regards, how should the discipline reacts?

Similarly, AlSayyad also raises the question if we are approaching the end of tradition. AlSayyad aims to problematize the preconceived notions of tradition. He argues that tradition must not be interpreted simply as the static legacy of the past but rather as a model for the dynamic reinterpretation of the present. He points out that the notion that tradition must be associated with place and is specific to a certain group of people has been significantly modified by scholarship on globalization in fields from Anthropology to Geography. Alsayyad concludes that identity and tradition, in the era of globalization, are likely to become less rooted in place and more informationally based.

AlSayyad’s conclusion challenges two fundamental preconceptions on the notion of tradition – place specificity and authenticity. However, he also opens up other possibilities for the discipline to further explore. According to AlSayyad, tradition in this modern era will be handed down not in the form of authentic physical construct but as an “imagined community”. When tradition is no longer rooted in any specific places, it allows the transformation in its expression and the transplantation to other contexts. This inevitably involves a shifting focus and redefinition of the discipline – the study should no longer be confined on the built environment created by the laypersons only; rather, to involve the invented landscape that reflects the multiplicity of the modern era, as well as to study the tensions between the specificity of local culture and their attempts to mediate global domination. In this case, the theories and research methods that we use to examine the vernacular environment may not be applicable anymore and need further explorations.

Urban Renewal and Gentrification

2005-04-20T23:03:00.000-08:00

Gentrification is different from urban renewal that it indicates not just an improvement to the physical environment; rather, it implies that through the process of urban renewal, to re-grant the area with a new urban life-style favored to the middle-class. In many places, gentrification is a solution to cope with the problem of urban deteriorations, and to attain the potential ground rent. One example is the gentrified area Xin Tien Di (The New World) in Shanghai. A developer brought an intact historical area and turns all the old houses into high-class boutiques, fine-dining restaurants and designer show houses. The area now becomes one of the major tourists’ attractions in Shanghai. Many Chinese sees Xin Tien Di as a successful project that bind architectural preservation, urban renewal and development.

However, just as we understand that housing policy (in America for example) is not aim at accommodating the urban poor; gentrification is also not aim at improving the living condition of the local residents who live in the deteriorated urban areas. Local residents are inevitably and unwilling be displaced to other areas, for they probably unable to afford the increased housing costs due resulted from gentrification. The displaced residents are socially and spatially segregated – they are marginalized from the city.

In this case, is gentrification a dirty word – a question raised by Neil Smith? Before answering this question we have to consider what if no gentrification is carried out to a deteriorated urban area. Will it results in an urban slum – a scenery that the City of the Dreadful Night depicted? Will the local residents able to upgrade the area without the subsidization from the government? If we believe that the state is responsible to help the urban poor to secure decent housing, will the state able to support the high welfare expenses? The questions are highly related to the housing and welfare policies of the state.

Therefore, if gentrification cannot be avoided, the state should manage well the resettlement of the local residents to avoid exaggerating the social problems. In the case of Hong Kong, legislation is implemented to govern the compensation of the local residents if their properties are surrendered due to urban renewal. The Hong Kong government is able to afford the high compensation costs, for it will gain great profits by selling the surrendered land which has already equipped with proper infrastructure. The land value will be further increased after the government releases the allowable built areas and height limits. Although not all the households are able to purchase another property in the same area, it does not result in the marginalization we seen in many Euro-American contexts. Spatial segregation between classes does exist in Hong Kong but territorial stigmatization is not obvious. However, every place has its own unique situations and should be reviews individually according to its socio-economical contexts.

History of Architectural Theory

2005-04-18T00:02:00.000-08:00

This week's readings cover the history of architectural theory of the 20th century - from modernism to post-modernism, then to the current challenge to “criticality” and the emerging "projective architecture". From these readings, I notice three conditions crucial to the evolution of architectural theory. Firstly, the theoretical shift is a response to the changes in socio-economic development. Secondly, new theory is developed in oppositions or resistances to mainstream practices. Finally, the shift is induced by the urge to redefine the architectural discipline. I would like to situate these three conditions in our present time.

The socio-economic development in early 20th century, notably the outbreak of industrial revolution and the dominance of capitalism, has lead to the world-wide spread of Modernism. Architects like Groupius and Le Corbusier seek to develop architectural models that can apply the practice of mass production, and this changed the builtscape dramatically. Similarly, if globalization, transnational development and global division of labors are the current/future development trends, what are their implications to today’s built environment? Although we have not yet formulated the school of thoughts regarding the architectural implications to the shifting global development trends, we already notice that plenty architects are now working transnationally. Taking Beijing as an example, in the past decades the urban landscape of the capital city is reshaped by the influx of Hong Kong developers and architects. And the real challenge yet to come - in the very soon future, the city will be dominated by the built works of globally renowned architects, such as the disc-like opera house by Paul Andreu, the twisted CCTV headquarter by Koolhaas and the bird-nest Olympic stadium by Herzog and de Meuron. The differences in the builtscape among nations will inevitably dissolve in near future.

Postmodernism is an attitude against the ideology of Modernism. In this case, the architectural journals occupy immense importance in advocating this oppositional attitude – they are sites for architects to criticize the mainstream practices and nurture new theories. However, architectural journals today no longer serve as the “battlefield” for intellectual debates; instead, most of the journals simply compose descriptive reports of architectural products. Architects now convey their design ideas through their works rather than through their words. The architect’s monograph has replaced the architect’s manifesto in promoting one’s design philosophy. It is more difficult for today’s architect to develop a coherent force to challenge the mainstream practices – even the most provocative architect today, Koolhaas, said that “there is in the deepest motivations of architecture something that cannot be critical”.

Today, the discipline develops a growing emphasis on the collaboration between the architect’s and his/her patrons. We see the close tie of Frank Gehry and the Guggenheim Museum, likewise for Koolhaas with Prada. There is increasing involvement for particular client in shaping the urban landscape of particular city, ever since the success of the Guggenheim Museum that changed the entire city of Bibao. Even the Hong Kong government is trying its best to secure the collaborations with renown museum co-operations like MoMA , Guggenheim and Centre Pompidou for the city’s mega-project - the West Kowloon Cultural District. Another example is the young developer SOHO, who has gradually establishing its fame for innovative architectural and urban projects in contemporary China. In this regards, I agree with Somol and Whiting’s recommendation for the new approaches in the architectural discipline: projection, performativity, and pragmatics.

Public Housing: European Experience

2005-04-14T21:32:00.000-08:00

In the past few weeks we talk about social problems and their implications to housing. This week, in contrary, we talk about how housing as a mechanism to create social problems – it becomes the indicator of social ranking. In his article, Wacquant provides a comparative study between the Black Belt in America and Red Belt in France. He highlights the major similarities and differences between the two developments – both of them are socially and spatially excluded from the city (the majority); and yet in the American ghetto it is the racial aggregation and segregation that contribute to such exclusion, while in the Parisian cite it is the class segregation that displaced the working class from the city center. Nevertheless, in both cases, where the people live dictated their status in the society – the territorial stigmatization goes hand in hand with the public housing project. This reminds us the paradox we have discussed before:

“Are people poor so they live in the ghetto? Or are they poor because they live in the ghetto?”

I have two questions in mind. The first question is: could this social and spatial exclusion be solved by the built environment, and how should we, as planner and architect involve in it? In the case of Cabrini-Green, the government tries to reshape the built environment to resolve the social problem. However, as Matthew Murray remarks at the beginning of the news feature, the clearance of the horizontal slum only results in the construction of the vertical slums – the public housing in the ghetto. And now the government official believes that living in proximity of the “normal” people will inspire the urban Black poor to find job and lead a normal decent life. Therefore, the government demolishes the public housings and replaces them with townhouses to attract “normal” people into the area. Will this gentrification process really help to solve the social-spatial exclusion problem, or will it simply results in the displacement of the urban poor and the formation of another ghetto elsewhere?

The second question relates to what we have repeatedly asked in class regarding transnational studies: why this happens here but not elsewhere? Seemingly, the racial segregation in America and the class segregation in Europe do not happened in Singapore and Hong Kong. Although public housing in the Asian countries also serves as an indicator to the income level of the residents, it does not results in any stigmatization as in their Euro-American counterpart. The differences between the Euro-American housing policies to that of the Asian countries reflect the constant debate between “housing as commodity” and “housing as welfare”. The bifurcation of housing policy reflects different political interests of the state, as what Castells concludes in his article, that “housing policy, like any public policy, must fulfill the fundamental political interests of the state to be given priority in its implementation.” I am not trying to jump to the conclusion that the provision of public housing as welfare in Asia is a better-off or can solve the social-spatial exclusion problem we seen in Europe and America. However, I do believe that the state cannot disclaim its responsibility in creating such exclusion in Euro-American context. I agree with the argument in Kleinman’s article, that it is important to deal with housing and social problems together, and to see housing as one element in a complex arrangement of social and economic relationships.

Theory of Architectural History

2005-04-11T00:39:00.000-08:00

Greig Crysler situates the founding of the Journal of The Society of Architectural Historians (JSAH) in relation to a wider changes in the status of architectural history in higher education at mid-century in the United State, and argues that the marginalization of history in architectural education by modernist agendas leads to the redefinition of the boundary of the discipline. This redefinition includes three-folds. Firstly, architectural historians seek to secure the social legitimacy of the discipline of architectural history. Secondly, they pull in theories into the discourse of architectural history. Finally, they tie the architectural history with the discipline of preservation. Nevertheless, as reveals by various articles in JSAH’s selections on architectural education, the discipline of architectural history is not yet widely included into the compulsory curriculum of architectural schools in many parts of the world.

To me, architectural history is not necessarily to be a legitimate stand-alone discipline. It can be researched by architects who would like to reference to the past, or by art historians, sociologists, anthropologist, geographers and archaeologists who would like to reference to architecture. Interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary research, without doubts, occupies the most significant role in current intellectual arena to understand the world with ever-increasing complexity. And as Crysler suggests, in the globally interdependent conditions in the 21st century metropolis, we should rethink the relationships between disciplines. I supplement this with an emphasis on critical examination and authenticity in architectural historical research, and the relevancy of the historical examples used by researchers in various disciplines.

Personally, I support the involvement of theory into the discourse of architectural history. As Mark Jarzombek points out, the intensification of the history-theory discourse brings modern architecture up to speed with its own critical modernity, allowing for a fuller exploration of issues relating to context, gender, and politics than can be accomplished today in studio teaching. “Theory” is the way we interpret the world. Studying architecture, or in a broader sense, the built environment, is a lens we use to understand the intricate world; while architecture history is only one approach we employ to understand the built environment. Architectural history, therefore, should not be limited to the study of stylish changes; rather, it should be understood with its context (either social, cultural, political, economic, or most likely, the combination of all). The history-theory discourse provides us with a wholistic picture on why and how particular things happen on particular context, and enable us to challenge our current situations critically. I encourage the recent proliferations on the concern of “territorial understandings”, for there are immense potentials and needs to research on the diverse contexts outside the American-European realm.

The tie of architectural history to preservation is a measure to maintain the “use value” of the discipline, for there is a seemingly split between architectural production and advance intellectual production. Some people would also argue that there is a gap between architectural history and design studio. I am not insist in the bridging of this gap; rather, I believe that when students acquire in-depth understanding on history and the critical thinking behinds theories, they will be able to internalize the knowledge for their own use in architectural design.

The Genesis of American Housing Policy

2005-03-30T21:35:00.000-08:00

The two articles by Kenneth Jackson reveal two important concepts about the American housing policy: (i) the aim for the housing policy is not to improve the living conditions of the urban poor, but to respond to the market crisis; and (ii) the State intervenes not by building accommodations, but by providing subsidies and insurances to encourage homeownership. The consequences for the federal housing policy are the dramatic changes to the mortgage system and the establishment of a sophisticated appraisal system on property values. Most importantly, as Jackson proclaims in his articles, the federal housing policy has huge impact on how and where the Americans live.

The federal housing policy affects people’s way of life in several dimensions. Ideologically, the State is implanting a “model of living” to its people - the “American dream house” should be a detached single-family house in the suburb white community, with garage, front and back yard. The change in mortgage system makes owning a house possible to many people, but at the same time it required them to work hard for the repayment of loan for significant length of their lifetime. The drastic increase in percentage of monthly housing installment to the average income in recent decade shows that people devote more and more on housing themselves and their families.

Moreover, the appraisal system on property values creates a racial and class segregation in the society. This is not only an ideological problem but also reflects in urban spatial structure. The middle class move away from the city which results in inner city decline. The black cannot penetrate to the white community and can only stay in the city or even worse, the ghetto. The spatial segregation, together with the mass constructions of highways and monotonous housing developments changes the urban landscape of America. People now live in suburb houses with similar design and commute long distance from the suburb to the city to work.

We see the two sides of the same coin – although the federal housing policy alleviates the problem of market crisis and unemployment, it creates other problems like racial and class segregation, inner city decline and decentralized development. If the State can help the middle class to secure homeownership, can it also help the urban poor to secure decent housing? The answer is definitely yes – it only depends on if the State really wants to do so. The development of the housing policy in American tells us that the State does not have such intention to help the urban poor, and ghetto and homelessness continues to become common phenomena in America.

歌林多後書 12:9

2005-03-13T12:33:00.000-08:00

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
他對我說、我的恩典夠你用的．因為我的能力、是在人的軟弱上顯得完全．所以我更喜歡誇自己的軟弱、好叫基督的能力覆庇我．

My Ice-cream Award

2005-03-12T15:09:00.000-08:00

Praise to the Lord for his abundent supply!
I come across some difficulties in getting the air-ticket back HK. I have ask few travel agents and none of them has ticket available. Its full. They can only place me into the waiting list of Cathy, which cost something around US$700. (The usual rate for United Airline to HK is around $550). Luckily, I find one agent at last who can offer me an UA return ticket that cost US$600.

Wait a minutes, US$600? This is exactly the same amount for an award I have applied here last month. Yes, praise to the Lord, the Department of Landscape Architecture notify me that I have been selected as the recipient of the Stephen Lenci Award. God has provided what I need with no more or no less.

The award is given to graduate student who are pursuing a cross discipline of study bridging landscape architecture and architecture with an emphasis on history. I submitted my M.Phil. thesis which argues that landscape is a powerful memory cues to retrieve the collective memory of Guangdong cities. Guess who is Stephen Lenci, the patron of the award? He is the boss of the ice-cream brand "Dreyer"! His personal interest, can't believe it, is the preservation of old houses in California! To honor him, I decided to eat more "Dreyer" in future!

I begin to taste the true meaning of the scripture of Phil. 4:19 - a scripture that Jeff Kan sent me after I passed all the written papers of HKIA exma,
"But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus."

Self-help Housing

2005-03-10T01:48:00.000-08:00

Burgess clarifys that "self-help" is not a new idea but a very old one. The capitalist divison of labour provides the new idea that people do not and should not build their own houses. Therefore, in the context of capitalist society, if Turner question who decides and who does what for whom with respect to housing provision, he should also apply the same question to every practices in our daily life. Questioning how the architect know what I want, is like questioning how the fashion designer know what I want to dress myself. Certainly, I have freedom to choose - I can choose among hundreds of boutiques for the clothing best suits my taste, likewise for housing. However, the agenda behind the freedom of choice is, can I afford it?

Therefore, it is not the problem of how much the professionals understand the urban poor's needs. Rather, it is a problem of affordability: whether the urban poor can afford the housing cost. In this case, the State take a crucial role in raising the affordability of the urban poor. The State's assistance can be manifested in various ways, such as redistributing the wealth in society and providing affordable public housing or subsidizations - it depends on the degree and ways for the State's intervention. It relates largely on the State's political goals and fiscal conditions.
Self-helping housing provides accomodations affordable to the urban poor. One important point that Turner forgets to mention when he advocate his self-help ideas: the merit of self-help housing lies not on the feasibility of design that suits the urban poor's personal tastes or needs, but the flexibility for them to build according to their affordability - they can always upgrades their accomodations later on when they can afford. Nevertheless, I agree with Turner's argument that if people are provided with means of ownership, they are more likely to become involved.

To me, self-help housing is a better solution than the formalization of squatter areas that we discussed last week, for it offer better planning controls. I am less comfortable to reverse the process of planning-services-building-occupations that the formalization of squatter areas implied. I found two major deficiencies in it: (i) it prohibits the investment of land, for the investors have no gurantee if their land will be invaded by the squatters one day; and (ii) if the land invaded by the squatters are privately owned, it creates arguments on land ownership and violates the concept of free property market. In this regards, self-help housing can avoid these problems, for it is built on a designated land under the planning control of the State.
The debate between Turner and Burgress on the use value and exchange value of self-help housing will not have a definite answer. Whether self-help housing can be a kind of commodity depends largely on the State's visions - the State can always encourage it, or discourage it, by the making of policies on subsidization, land ownership and transaction.

約翰福音 8:31-32

2005-03-02T01:30:00.000-08:00

耶穌對信他的猶太人說、你們若常常遵守我的道、就真是我的門徒。你們必曉得真理、真理必叫你們得以自由。
Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

腓立比書 4:19

2005-02-28T18:56:00.000-08:00

我的　神必照他榮耀的豐富、在基督耶穌裏、使你們一切所需用的都充足。
But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.

Material Culture

2005-02-28T01:43:00.000-08:00

This response paper aims to review the different theories and methods associate with the study of artifacts as suggested by three authors, namely Prown, Kopytoff and Upton.

Prown approaches the interpretation of the artifacts under the lens of other people in other time and space. Prown devises three steps to analyse the artifacts - it proceeds from description, to deduction, then to speculation. Description is restricted to what can be observed in the object itself. It records the internal evidence of the object through sustantial analysis, contextual analysis and formal analysis. Deduction is the interpretation of the interaction between the object and the perceiver by sensory engagement, intellectual engagement and emotional response. Speculation frames hypothese and questions which lead out from the object to external evidence for testing and resolution. It requires the formulation of theories and hypotheses and the development of a program of research for validation. Prown's methodology allows an objective analysis to the artifacts and eliminate cultural biases. However, this descriptive techniques that Prown borrow from art history and archaeology, though objective, also means less information, such as the changing value of the artifacts though time, will be conveyed from the artifacts itself. As Prown confesses, although artifacts are excellent and special indexes of culture, concretions of the realities of belief of other people in other time and places, ready and able to be reexperienced and interpreted today, they are disappointing as communicators of historical fact.

If we take Prown's objective and descriptive approach to artifact as the point of departure, we will be surprised to see the theoretical concepts proposed by Upton and Kopytoff which is totally different, if not contradictory, from Prown. Upton emphasizes the relation between the artifacts and person, and argues that it is precisely the connection between person and artifact that needs closest scrutiny. Unlike Prown, Upton concerns the intentions of the person behinds the creation of the artifacts. Considering city as artifact, he believes the application of material culture methods to the city would be to raise different questions about the relationship between the object and individual maker. This artifact-intention-perosn trial formulates the central argument of his article. Here, Upton highlighted a crucial element to the study of the city - the experience of the self in space, through sensories including visual, arul and odour. Not only through the artifiact itself, Upton believes the analysis of the physical remains in terms of their surviving representation can also say something about the ways selves constructed themselves in space. This is contradictory to Prown's approach, as one's experience must to some extent confined by his own cultural interpretations.

Unlike Prown who insists to look at the artifacts as if at the time they are created, Kopytoff suggests a different approach to look at the biography of things through time. Through the study of an artifact's biography, he argues that the same artifact has both the exchange value and the value given by the individual; and the same artifact can change its status through commodization and singularization. He identified three spheres of exchanges - (i) the sphere of subsistence items, (ii) the sphere of prestige items, and (iii) the sphere of rights-in-people - and argues that it was possible to move between these spheres. The merit of his research lays on the crucial idea that an artifact is not statics; instead, it transform in values and status through time.

Urban History

2005-02-28T01:41:00.000-08:00

This response paper aims to review the work by Sitte, Lynch and Hall in respect to (i) their hypothesis on city planning, and (ii) building upon such hypothesis, the substantiation of their arguments with reference to cities in history.

Sitte criticizes that modern city planning ignored the artistic aspects of the city. He proposes to look into ancient Greek and Roman concepts of city planning based on an hypothesis that the artistic qualities embeded in these cities are more pleasant to human. Sitte employs the method of typological study: he analyze many city plans, the composition of plazas, the positioning of monuments and dominating structures during the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Hence, he deduces the design principles that contribute to the artisitc qualities of the city. The major deficiency of Sitte's work lies on its sole reference to European examples without taking into considerations the cultural diversities in other parts of the world. For example, Sitte rasies high the artistic quality of the irregular plazas which is absolutely unmatch to the context of ancient China, where urban spaces are organized hierachically and orderly. Nevertheless, Sitte's work serves as a good reminder that we should not focus only on the functional aspect of city planning. Rather, we should devise the artistic principles that culturally specific to a particular city.

Unlike Sitte, Lynch tries to make a general statement about the good settlement, one relevant and responsive to any human context, and which connects general values to specific actions. Lynch employed many examples of world cities to support his hypothesis that there are values embedded in various city forms. To Lynch, the answer to the questions of "What make a good city" lies in the development of a normative theory which relates the value of a city to its spatial characteristics. But he himself admits that it is only a partial theory that ignores the discussion of how a city works with statements about its goodness. The merit of Lynch's work lies on the translation of intangible spatial qualities into measurable criteria - the "performance dimensions" . Nevertheless, Lynch does not show us how he jumps to the conclusion of the five performance dimensions. It is disappointing that Lynch includes only few examples to sustantiate his selectioin of these performance dimensions.

Hall's approach is totally different from Sitte and Lynch. His book is a critical history of planning in theory and practice from late 19th century to the entire span of 20th century. Hall's work was based on the hypothesis that planning movement in this period are stemmed from the anarchist movement, when few visionaries were emerged with the idea of an alternative society. To me, Hall's hypothesis are rooted on solid ground - he has substantiate it with the social and economic context, the background and thinking of the key visionaries and a cross-comparision with different cities engaging with similar problems. Build upon this hypothesis, Hall asserts that the planning of city is to solve the problems of the city. I like the way Hall organize the urban history into a recurrent processs of stimuli and responses. Only when he organizes the urban history in this way, we are able to understand the reason behind his criticisms to Le Corbusier's authoritarian planning ideas: it is an inappropriate response to the particular stimulus at that specific time. Le Corbusier's planning concepts, though innovative, ignored the problems of the cities.

Informal Settlements

2005-02-24T01:50:00.000-08:00

This week's readings reveal two eminent truths about informality: (i) it is not necessarily marginal nor it ties to the activities of the poor; (ii) it exists not only in underdeveloped counties, but also in different contexts with different stages of development. Nevertheless, I believe the emerge of infomality is not solely a responsive action from the people against the formality. Rather, it emerges under the auspices of the State. Whether the State retraints it or promotes it, it depends on various cultural, economical and political reasons. In a logical sense, there should be fewer restraints to informal sector in underdeveloped countries so as to facilitate economic growth and to resolve problems like unemployment. However, this is not always true. The State have its own agenda behind the seemingly-logical development path.

Likewise in the issue of housing: the informal housing, or the squatter, provides a low-cost shelter option to those people who cannot afford the cost of formal accomodations, as well as those who desire the flexibility offered by the informality. In Cairo, the villagers refuse to be relocated to decently-built public housing, because it is remote from the tourist spots and does not have agricultural land. [1] From this experience, we learnt that it is not only the provision of housing that people concern, but also the opportunities to develop the associated economic activities. In the context of third world countries where informal activities contribute a very significant part to its economy, the State should seek to establish a mechanism that embrace both the housing of the people and the associated informal economic activities - like the "quasi-formal homestead subdivisions" suggested by Peter Ward.

Now, when more and more people begin to aware of the significances of informality to the third world, we are expecting this awareness to be turn into any kind of development strategy and housing solution. However, in reality, the success lays not merely on the strategy but more on the intention of the State - how the State wish to posit its relation with the informal sectors to fulfill certain political goals. Taking the same example from Cairo, it is the intention of the State to isolate the informal sector from the tourists in order to create what the State believe, a more prestigious national image. And as we can see from many examples in Latin America, the State turned the squatters as an organizational weapons to gain supports. Whereas in the case of Calcutta, the State make use of the people to develop new land through the continuous eviction and relocation of squatters. More, the Left Front enjoys the unclear "unmapping" status of the land for it ensure a constant negotiability regarding land rights, property titles and land use. In sum, the State have its own agenda and hence we have to review the issue of informal housing case by case according to different cultural, economic and political context.

[1] Mitchell, Timothy, "Making of the Nation: The Politics of Heritage in Egypt", in AlSayyad, N., ed., Consuming Traditon, Manufacturing Heritage: Global Norms and Urban Forms in the Age of Tourism.

My Journey

2001-09-03T17:59:00.000-08:00

In the sumner 1998, I stood on the rooftop of a small inn at Lhasa. Looking around me, I asked my Lord why there are so many lost-souls in China. He revealed to me His love to this country,

耶和華說、這蓖麻不是你栽種的、也不是你培養的．一夜發生、一夜乾死你尚且愛惜．何況這尼尼微大城、其中不能分辨左手右手的有十二萬多人、並有許多牲畜、我豈能不愛惜呢。
But the Lord said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight adn died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thoudsand people who cannot tell their right hadn from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great citiy?" - Jonah 4: 10-11

This starts my journey to research on China - my motherland; and I believe, is my Lord's blessed land.

In the summer 2001, when I am overwhelmed by the pressure of my M. Phil. thesis, I nearly forget my motive to study. In those difficult days, my Lord promises that His Grace is sufficient for me. He tells me that,

No one from the east or the west or from the dessert can exalt a man. But it is God who judges: He brings one down, He exalts another. - Psalms 75: 6-7