The Habitable City in China: Urban History in the Twentieth Century 宜居之城 :20 世纪中国的城市史研究

Transcription

1 The Habitable City in China: Urban History in the Twentieth Century 宜居之城 :20 世纪中国的城市史研究 Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences 上海社会科学院 Room 503, Conference Room No.2, 5th Floor, No.2 Building No.1610, West Zhongshan Road, Shanghai 社科国际创新基地 5 楼第 2 会议室 Funded by British Academy under the International Partnership and Mobility Scheme The Office of International Cooperation of SASS Urban History Group of Innovation Project of SASS 英国学术院 上海社会科学院城市史创新团队 上海社会科学院国际合作处共同资助

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3 Conference Program Thursday 2 nd July 6 pm Pre-conference dinner, the Restaurant of SASS Address: No. 1 Building, No. 1610, West Zhongshan Road, Shanghai Friday 3 rd July AM opening ceremony Chair: Xu Tao (Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences) Speaker: Xiong Yuezhi (Vice president, Association of Chinese Historians) Huang Renwei (Director of History Institute, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences) Wang Jian (Deputy Director of History Institute, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences) : Introduction Toby Lincoln (University of Leicester), Xu Tao : Coffee Panel 1: The City and Safety Chair, Xiong Yuezhi Discussant, Huang Xuelei (University of Edinburgh) Aaron Moore (University of Manchester) - 'A Hard Knock Life? The Urban / Rural Divide through the Eyes of Modern Chinese Youth' Christian Hess (Sophia University) - Protecting the Nation, Securing the City: Militarization and Urban Development in Lüshun and Dalian, Xu Tao- The Chinese Corpsmen in Shanghai Volunteer Corps Lunch, the Restaurant of SASS Address: No. 1 Building, No. 1610, West Zhongshan Road, Shanghai

4 PM Panel 2: The City Consumed Chair, Jiang Jin (East China Normal University) Discussant, Andrew Field (Duke University Kunshan) Felix Boecking (University of Edinburgh) - Looking beyond Shanghai: prices, wages, and living standards in comparison, Chang Ning (Academia Sinica) - Shanghai and leisure consumption in the Republican period Robert Cliver (Humboldt State University) - Second Class Workers: Gender, Industry and Locality in Workers Welfare Provision in Revolutionary China coffee Panel 3: The City and the Environment Chair, Wang Min (Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences ) Discussant: Denise Ho (Chinese University of Hong Kong) Isabella Jackson (University of Aberdeen) - Habitability in the Treaty Ports: Shanghai and Tianjin Leon Rocha (University of Liverpool) - Urban planning and the garden city Toby Lincoln- Urbanization and Nature in Twentieth Century China Conclusion and Roundtable Discussion Karl Gerth (University of California, San Diego) All Contributors and other participators: Gijs Mom, Zhang Xiaochuan, Zhao Jing, Shao Jian, Tong Weijing, etc. 6 pm: Dinner,Rong Gang Seafood Restaurant ( 榕港海鲜酒楼 ) Address: No. 2588, Kaixuan Road, Shanghai. Evening: Drinks

5 会议日程 7 月 2 日, 星期四, 晚 6 点 : 欢迎晚宴 上海社会科学院分部食堂 地址 : 中山西路 1610 号 1 号楼瑞裕宾馆大堂处 7 月 3 日, 星期五 8:45-9:15 欢迎仪式 主持人 : 徐涛 ( 上海社会科学院 ) 发言人 : 熊月之 ( 中国史学会副会长 城市史学会会长 ) 黄仁伟 ( 上海社会科学院副院长 历史研究所所长 ) 王健 ( 上海社会科学院历史研究所副所长 ) 9:15-9:45 项目介绍 Toby Lincoln( 莱斯特大学 ) 徐涛 9:45-10:15 茶歇 10:15-11:45 分组讨论第一场 : 城市与安全 主持人 : 熊月之 评论人 : 黄雪蕾 ( 爱丁堡大学 ) Aaron Moore ( 曼彻斯特大学 ): 艰辛人生路? 近代中国青少年眼中的城乡分野 Christian Hess ( 上智大学 ): 保卫国家与卫戍城市 : 旅顺和大连的城市发展与军事化进程, 年徐涛 : 上海万国商团中华员群体研究 11:45-13:00 午餐, 上海社会科学院分部食堂

6 13:00-14:30 分组讨论第二场 : 城市与消费 主持人 : 姜进 ( 华东师范大学 ) 评论人 : Andrew Field ( 昆山杜克大学 ) Felix Boecking( 爱丁堡大学 ): 价格 工资和生活水平 : 上海与中国其他城市的定量比较研究, 年张宁 ( 台湾中研院 ): 民国时期的上海与休闲消费 Robert Cliver ( 洪堡州立大学 ): 二等工人 : 革命时代中国因性别 工业 属地而不同的工人福利研究 14:30-15:00 茶歇 15:00-16:30 分组讨论第三场 : 城市与环境 主持人 : 王敏 ( 上海社会科学院 ) 评论人 : 何若书 ( 香港中文大学 ) Isabella Jackson( 艾伯丁大学 ) : 中国口岸城市的宜居性 : 上海和天津 Leon Rocha ( 利物浦大学 ): 都市规划与花园城市 Toby Lincoln :20 世纪中国的城市化和自然 16:30-17:30 圆桌会议 支持人 Karl Gerth ( 加州大学圣地亚哥分校 ) 所有与会者, 包括 : Gijs Mom, 张笑川 赵婧 邵建 童巍菁等. 18:00: 晚餐 榕港海鲜酒楼 地址 : 凯旋路 2588 号 Title and subtitle

7 The Habitable City in China: Urban History in the Twentieth Century Brief description of project s scope and content China, the world s most populous nation, is its newest urban society. While the pace of urbanization has been particularly rapid over the last three decades, it began to increase in the late nineteenth century. Since then, new industries, infrastructure technologies, ideas on urban planning, architectural styles, and ways of living have transformed the lives of hundreds of millions across the country. At the same time, cities have been profoundly affected by a host of problems such as war, revolution, pollution, and social inequality. Throughout, as the individual chapters written by a diverse group of scholars from China, Taiwan the United States and the UK make clear, intellectuals, officials and urbanites of all social classes sought to make their cities habitable. The idea of urban habitability ties the chapters in this volume together and has two main components. Habitable cities are places that provide the necessities of life such as food and shelter. Beyond this, they are places where people seek quality of life. This can be attained in many ways, such as by improving the urban environment or spending money and time on leisure activities. Using the concept of habitability to explore the urban history of China offers a fresh perspective, and although the individual chapters engage with existing approaches, they are not limited by them. This is partly because in concentrating on habitability, the volume as a whole highlights continuities across the Republican and Maoist periods. Works on the first half of the twentieth century tend to 1

8 focus on urban modernity, while those that describe changes after 1949 address the impact of the Communist Revolution. 1 The chapters in this volume explore how elements characteristic of early twentieth century cities survived into the Maoist era, and consider the importance of the Anti Japanese War of Resistance as a formative context in urban development. Beyond highlighting continuities in time, the volume draws attention to connections in space. While scholarship on the urban history of China now includes works on cities outside Shanghai, the former treaty port still dominates discussions. 2 This volume takes a national perspective, and so emphasizes how the challenges of rapid urban development have been felt in cities across China. Following an introduction, which explains the concept of habitability, the volume is divided into three sections, each with its own theme. Organizing the book in this way helps to clarify the various components of urban habitability, and allows individual chapters, which are all case studies in their own right, to speak to other themes in Chinese history. This increases the audience for the book, because scholars and students can engage with individual chapters, sections or the volume as a whole as they see fit. The first section addresses the city and safety, and the chapters explore how conflict has shaped urban life from the end of the nineteenth century through to the Maoist period. In placing the city at the 1 Monographs and edited volumes that deal with the Republican and Maoist periods, as well as those that trace the history of individual cities across the twentieth century are listed below in the section on competitors. 2 See list below for a representative sample of monographs on cities outside Shanghai. Works that explore multiple cities across China for the Republican and Maoist periods respectively are: Joseph W. Esherick ed., Remaking the Chinese City: Modernity and National Identity, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000); Piper Rae Gaubatz, Beyond the Great Wall: Urban Form and Transformation on the Frontiers (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996). 2

9 heart of their analysis they speak to, but stand out from scholarship on the warlord period or the Anti Japanese War of Resistance. The second section explores urban consumption, and the chapters look at how rich and poor alike spent their money on necessities and luxuries, as well as considering the complexities of worker welfare provision in Maoist China. The chapters in the final section look at experiments in urban planning across the country and consider the changing relationship between the natural and built environments. 3 The volume ends with a short reflective conclusion on the nature of habitability, and how some of the challenges of contemporary urbanization may be addressed by drawing on lessons from the recent past as well as urban experiments around the world. Content Please attach a chapter by chapter synopsis of the project s planned content and main argument(s). We appreciate that this is bound to be provisional in some respects but in order to make a fair assessment of the project s potential, your initial presentation needs to be as detailed as possible (we would therefore suggest at least half a page per chapter). If you have some sample material available, we would be pleased to consider this as well. 3 We know most about Shanghai s wartime experience. See for example: Yeh Wen-hsin ed., Wartime Shanghai (London: Routledge, 1998); Yeh Wen-hsin and Christian Henriot eds., In the Shadow of the Rising Sun: Shanghai under Japanese Occupation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). On consumption see for example: Karl Gerth, China Made: Consumer Culture and the Creation of the Nation (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003); Sherman Cochran ed., Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial Culture in Shanghai, (Ithaca N.Y: East Asia Program, Cornell University, 1999). Many of the works listed below explore urban planning, but see also: Charles Musgrove, China s Contested Capital: Architecture, Ritual and Response in Nanjing. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2013); Wang Jun, Beijing Record: A Physical and Political History of Planning Modern Beijing (World Scientific, 2011). 3

10 Introduction: Toby Lincoln, Xu Tao The introduction explains how the concept of habitability offers a fresh perspective on Chinese urban history. Writers on Chinese cities throughout the twentieth century explored their rapidly changing nature, and focused on modernity or the impact of socialism. However, urban planners, architects, engineers and other professionals also sought to explain the nature and quality of urban life. In doing so, they were often speaking about how to make the city habitable. Evidence for this comes from writers during the Republican period such as Sun Fo, the brother of Sun Yatsen, and Dong Xiujia, perhaps the most prolific publisher on urban planning. Moving into the Maoist period, Liang Sicheng, China s most famous twentieth century architect, and Wan Li, the head of the Urban Construction Bureau, also discussed the changing nature of the city. The introduction also surveys laws on urban planning and development from the Nationalist and Communist governments. This highlights how ideas on urban habitability influenced policy makers and guided the development of cities throughout the twentieth century. Focusing on how Chinese have thought of cities as habitable spaces and how these ideas have been enshrined in law provides an excellent introduction to the volume that engages with existing approaches to Chinese urban history and makes connections across space and time. The editors then introduce each section of the book, and in doing so draw out the main themes of the individual chapters. They explore safety, consumption and the management of the urban environment in turn, and explain how they are part of what makes a city habitable. They then 4

11 expand on the main themes of each chapter and make connections between them. Part one: City and Safety Xu Tao, Assistant Professor, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences The Chinese Corpsmen in Shanghai Volunteer Corps Safety is an important aspect of urban development, particularly in China where the ravages of war have touched much of the country. Many cities have faced the ruin of continuous wars, but since the opening of the treaty port in 1843, Shanghai remained an isolated island of peace for one hundred years. This made it somewhat unique, and people of all persuasions flooded into the city attracted by the fact that it was safe. It is widely recognised that the International Settlement in Shanghai was not a colony and was not occupied for a long time by either Chinese or foreign troops. So the question remains how was safety in Shanghai guaranteed? Investigating the Shanghai Volunteer Corps helps us to understand how it was an important factor in explaining Shanghai s development. The Shanghai Volunteer Corps was important in maintaining the security of the International Settlement, but the idea did not originate in the city. The practice began in the United Kingdom and afterwards militia emerged in South Africa, Mumbai and Calcutta in India, Hong Kong, Singapore and Penang in Malaysia. However, the Shanghai Volunteer Corps was different from other militia organizations since its history depended on many local factors. The most important of these was the Chinese company of the 5

12 Shanghai Volunteer Corps. Formerly known as the Sport Association of Chinese Businessmen, it was established in 1905 after the Mixed Court Riots, and in 1907 the Shanghai Municipal Council permitted it to become part of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps. Scholarship on the Chinese volunteer corps has been influenced by the history of the Communist Revolution in China. Initially it was seen as a counter revolutionary army, but more recently has been understood as a method of extending the reach of foreign Imperialism into Shanghai. This chapter provides a more textured analysis, and argues that the relationship between Chinese and foreigners within the corps was complicated and benefitted both. As the Chinese were increasingly incorporated into the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, they became a key part of ensuring that the city remained safe and habitable. Aaron Moore, Lecturer in East Asian history, University of Manchester Aaron.moore@manchester.ac.uk 'A Hard Knock Life? The Urban / Rural Divide through the Eyes of Modern Chinese Youth' Young people in China have been the subject of scholarly attention recently, but few studies examine documents that children and teenagers composed. By looking at published and manuscript diaries, letters, and autobiographies (zizhuan), this paper will focus on how urban modernity, and everyday life in the nearby country towns, were described by China's Republican generation. It examines accounts from Kunming, Shanghai, Nanjing, Chongqing, Beiping, and Shijiazhuang in order to get a broad view of how young people viewed the urban/rural divide at the first half 6

13 of the twentieth century. Electrification, the emergence of a large service industry, rapid transit, shopping, and other elements of urban modernisation captured the imagination of young people, who largely embraced these changes as vehicles for new possibilities while they approached adulthood. Nevertheless, the city was also a repulsive entity, full of suspicious people, unhygienic street food, and dangerous adult conflicts, including war. This produced a yearning for country life that was only partly a construct of bourgeois Romanticism and literary nostalgia. While some portraits of the countryside by urban youth were influenced by pre modern Chinese arts such as poetry and landscape painting, others depicted simpler pleasures such as games, pets, good food, and, perhaps most importantly, freedom from modern disciplinary regimes such as state schools. At the very least, the encounter with Chinese urban modernity encouraged the embrace of rural life by children and youth, even if it was romanticised. Christian Hess, Assistant Professor, Sophia University, Japan. cahess@sophia.ac.jp Protecting the Nation, Securing the City: Militarization and Urban Development in Lüshun and Dalian, This chapter examines the impact of long term militarization on city life and its connections to urban development and the nation building project in Northeast China under Russian, Japanese and Chinese regimes. Throughout the course of the twentieth century the military and commercial ports of Lüshun and Dalian on the Liaodong peninsula were among the most urbanized and militarized spaces in China. They provide 7

14 a window to explore how regimes with a military agenda dominated the area and left a deep impact on the industrial and economic development in the region. In terms of everyday city life, the militarized environment meant restrictions on people s movement, disruptive readiness drills, rationing of food and material resources, and from the 1930s through the 1960s, the linking of the labor regime to larger issues of geopolitical security and military protection. The chapter argues that the main way these former colonial communities are reclaimed and linked to the new nation is through a militarized discourse on their geopolitical significance in the emerging Cold War order in East Asia. This thread of a certain form of urban modernity, woven through the transition from empire to nation, is an understudied theme in studies of Chinese modernity and urban development. Part Two: City Consumed Felix Boecking, Lecturer in Modern Chinese Economic and Political History, University of Edinburgh felix.boecking@ed.ac.uk Looking beyond Shanghai: prices, wages, and living standards in comparison, This chapter adds a quantitative and comparative dimension to the volume by quantifying the difference in prices, wages, and living standards during the Nanjing decade between Shanghai and other Chinese urban centres for which quantitative data exists. The economic history of republican China is not dominated by a Shanghai bias to the 8

15 same extent as social and cultural history, but in this sub field, too, there has been reluctance so far to connect the dots, and to ask just how different the Shanghai experience was from the rest of China, and what that means for our understanding of China s economic history during the republican period. That quantitative comparison also speaks to one of the major questions of China s economic history of the first half of the twentieth century, the question of when China developed a unified national economy in place of several regional economies. It also has implications for recent studies in China s cultural history (e.g. Lee (1999), Stapleton (2000), Dong (2003), Carroll (2006), which are dominated by studies of the rise of urban consumer cultures, and recent examples China s social history, which have engaged with questions of wealth and poverty (e.g. Lu (2004 and 2005), Lipkin (2006), and Chen (2013)). Having quantified the price and wage difference between various urban centres, this chapter will offer a comparative perspective on the rise of urban consumer cultures, arguing that this period saw a convergence of prices and wages, and thus the emergence of consumer cultures of more than regional significance. At the same time, the rise of quantitative social surveys gave a new, scientific dimension to the study of the age old phenomenon of poverty in China. Here, the study of wage trends is especially important, as it allows us to put a quantitative definition on meanings of poverty. Chang Ning, Associate Professor, Academia Sinica, Taiwan njchang@gate.sinica.edu.tw 9

16 Shanghai and leisure consumption in the Republican period China s rapid urbanization and commercialization started in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In addition to the traditional walled city with strong administrative purposes, seventy seven treaty ports, mostly towns along waterways and along the coastline, were selected to open to foreign trade. Western municipal governance and city infrastructure were transplanted to the foreign settlements in these ports and this began a transformation of what it meant to be urban in China. The growth of trade not only attracted continuous flows of people from the countryside, but expanded the urban space. Shanghai, Tianjin, Hankow, Chongqing and Canton tore down their city walls and developed into mega cities with more than one million people. Shanghai, especially, grew by leaps and bounds. The growing populations of rapidly developing cities had ever larger consumption needs, particularly leisure. This chapter takes Shanghai, the most important city in China in the twentieth century, as an example. It argues that the prosperity of Shanghai created a huge base for the growth of the middle class. These people desired more recreation other than the old pastimes such as opium smoking, gambling and visiting the courtesan houses, so consequently looked for something new and modern something that was more compatible with the new era and yet affordable at the same time. The city responded to their demand by combining different amusements together, as well as by popularizing the pastimes initiallymeant for only the elite. By examining the cases of the appearance of the amusement parks in the 1910s, the popularity of taxi dancing in the 10

17 1920s, and the rise of foreign imported games including horse racing, greyhound racing and hai alai in the 1930s, the chapter will demonstrate how the city made continuous efforts in creating places for entertainments for all its habitants. By doing so, it not only earned the reputation of a habitable city with ample fun but sustained its growth throughout the twentieth century. Robert Cliver, Associate Professor, Humboldt State University, USA Robert.Cliver@humboldt.edu Second Class Workers: Gender, Industry and Locality in Workers Welfare Provision in Revolutionary China The Communist takeover of China in 1949 produced diverse outcomes for working class people depending on factors such as locality, industry, factory regime, and the characteristics of the workforce including age, skill and gender. In the context of the Yangzi Delta silk industry, suffering from years of occupation, war and economic crisis, two groups of urban silk workers experienced very different revolutions. Shanghai silk weavers, overwhelmingly male, well paid, and politically connected benefitted greatly from the Communist seizure of power in China s most industrialized city, accomplishing many of the labor movement's goals of the previous thirty years. In contrast, silk filature workers in Yangzi Delta cities such as Wuxi and Huzhou, overwhelmingly young and female, and fiercely independent, found that goals such as provision of welfare benefits, improved working conditions, and liberation from abuse and oppression from shopfloor managers, eluded them for years under the institutions of New Democracy and Communist Party rule in the 1950s. 11

18 This chapter, based on archival research and oral histories, compares the experiences of Liberation of these two different groups of workers in regard to working conditions, welfare benefits (especially healthcare and childcare) and democratic management. In this way the chapter highlights the diverse experiences of revolution and liberation among the silk workers of the Yangzi Delta, revealing the scope and limitations of revolutionary transformation under Communist Party rule in China. These diverse experiences highlight how the new emphasis on industrial production did not benefit all workers equally. Despite the claims of the new regime, just as before 1949, for the poorest in society, access to those goods and services that made the city habitable remained problematic. Part three: City and the environment Isabella Jackson, Helen Bruce Lecturer in Modern East Asian History, University of Aberdeen Habitability in the Treaty Ports: Questioning Shanghai s status as a model settlement in Tianjin This chapter explores the assumption, frequently repeated by Shanghai s foreign residents in the treaty port era, that the International Settlement was a model for other urban administrations on the China coast to follow. The concept of the model settlement is defined in terms of maximised habitability for residents through town planning, encompassing 12

19 everything from clean water and sanitation, through electricity and transport infrastructure, to a pleasant living environment with green spaces and parks. These measures of habitability were based on a global standard which held western cities, particularly, for Anglophones, those in Britain and the USA, as the most desirable models for urban development. Shanghai was commonly identified as the most modern or westernised city in Asia by this measure, with frequent comparisons made to urban centres in the west. But how far did other treaty ports really look to practice in the International Settlement at Shanghai as a model? This chapter addresses this question with reference to the British Municipal Council (BMC) at Tianjin. This Council was ambitious for its municipality and drew on practice in Shanghai in its bureaucratic structure, in its policing such as in employing Sikh constables and in many of its governmental activities. It took on, however, a greater control of public utilities than the laissez faire SMC, particularly in its purchase of the hitherto private Waterworks Company in Overseeing the supply of clean water was the most important function a municipality could perform to ensure the habitability of the city, and in this Tianjin was arguably ahead of the supposed model of Shanghai. In access to open spaces it was also more habitable than its southern counterpart, enjoying much more acreage per resident and lacking the notorious ban on Chinese admission to its public parks. It was the middle classes which had the most access to green spaces, so this chapter highlights the class differences inherent in urban habitability. There were crucial differences in the political and colonial structures of Shanghai and Tianjin, and these go some way to explain the differences in 13

20 access to the habitable urban environment. As the most important treaty port after Shanghai, Tianjin offers an ideal test case for examining the degree to which the International Settlement at Shanghai truly acted as a model to other treaty port administrations. Through this comparative study drawing on the records of each municipal council and local newspapers and commentaries, this chapter critically examines what was seen to entail habitability in the treaty port world and who had access to it. Leon Rocha, Lecturer in Chinese Studies, University of Liverpool leon.rocha@liverpool.ac.uk Urban planning and the garden city The terms garden city (huayuanchengshi 花园城市 ), city beautification (chengshimeihua 城市美化 ), and combination of towncountry (chengxiangheyi 城乡合一 ) dominate the discourses on urban design and civic administration in contemporary China. One thinks of, for instance, the Dalian Garden City project, which was explicitly modelled upon Singapore and Kitokyushu, and was initiated by Bo Xilai 薄熙来 during his tenure as mayor in the 1990s. The Guangdong cities Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Zhanjiang, as well as Xinyang in Henan Province, had all been labelled garden cities. There was also the case of the Songjiang One City, Nine Towns project ( ), which involved plans to develop a series of nine garden cities, each with its own theme, to relieve the population and environmental pressures on Shanghai. The most famous of these Songjiang garden cities is Thames Town, modelled upon a Victorian market town and now providing a backdrop for 14

21 the wedding photographs of many Chinese couples. Ebenezer Howard s To morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform (1898) was translated into Chinese in 1980 and published in 2000, and according to the translator Jin Jingyuan 金经元, the book is most urgently needed by the Chinese people today. The reception and appropriation of the Garden City Movement in China stretch back to the Republican period. One can follow the travels of the idea of a Garden City through the publications of Republican intellectuals such as Pan Gongzhan 潘公展 ( ) and Zhang Jingsheng 张竞生 ( ). Pan Gongzhan translated William Ravenscroft Hughes 1919 work The New Town in 1924, while the infamous Dr Sex Zhang Jingsheng published in the mid 1920s two texts entitled The Aesthetic Outlook of Life (Mei de renshengguan 美的人生观 ) and The Method of Organisation of the Aesthetic Society (Mei de shehuizuzhifa 美的社会组织法 ), in which he laid out his utopian blueprint for a Beautiful China (Mei de Zhongguo 美的中国 ) and in which influences of the Garden Cities Movement could be discerned. Republican magazines like Eastern Miscellany (Dongfangzazhi 东方杂志 ), specialist journals such as Review of City Administration (Shizhengpinglun 市政评论 ) or City Administration Periodical (Shizhengqikan 市政期刊 ), as well as ABC guides on urban planning from the 1930s, discuss the need to aestheticise all cities by combining town and country. This Chapter traces some of the genealogies and circulations of garden cities in China. 15

22 Toby Lincoln, Lecturer modern Chinese urban history, University of Leicester Urbanization and Nature in Twentieth Century China Throughout the twentieth century, cities in China have grown in size, while urbanization has transformed the countryside. Factories, residential compounds, roads, railways and airports have been built on what were once green spaces. The countryside, quite literally, has become the city. Even amidst such rapid expansion, planners, officials and urban residents have taken pains to preserve the natural environment through the building of parks, the planting of trees and the promotion of natural scenic sites as tourist destinations. This means that even as the countryside has been sacrificed in the search for ever larger cities, nature has remained part of what has made the city habitable. This chapter uses guidebooks, accounts of tourist visits and urban plans to expose the tensions between increasingly rapid urbanization and the importance of preserving the natural environment. It focuses on Lake Tai in the heart of the Lower Yangtze Delta, which historically has been China s most densely urbanized region. I argue that in the first few decades of the twentieth century, the lake was ever more closely identified with the rapidly expanding Wuxi City. The development of the lake shore for tourism required new infrastructure, while lakeside gardens altered the natural environment. This meant that in the minds of planners, local officials and visitors, Lake Tai was seen as part of what made an increasingly industrial city habitable. Despite a hiatus during the 16

23 Japanese invasion and occupation, development continued after the war, but the lake was now beginning to be seen as part of an urbanizing region. The Communist Revolution of 1949 derailed these plans, and although the number of tourists declined, the lake remained important as a site of rest and recuperation even as its exploitation of its natural resources was stepped up. Tourism has returned in the reform era, but visitors to the lake now have to contend with factories as well as parks along its shoreline, while the polluted water attests to how the lake, which throughout the twentieth century has been seen as important to making the city habitable, is itself becoming inhabitable. Conclusion Karl Gerth, Professor and Hsiu Endowed Chair in Chinese Studies, Unviersity of California San Diego kgerth@ucsd.edu

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26 Hotel Information( 宾馆馆信息 ): The hotel is inside the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences compound. 地址 : 上海市市中山西路,1610 号 Address: No. 1 Building, No. 1610, West Zhongshan Road, Shanghai Rui Yu Hotel ( 瑞裕宾馆 ) No.5 Entrance, Yishan Road Station, Line 4 Shanghai Metro 上海地铁 4 号线宜山路站 5 号出口