Beijing : city of spectacle, city of dust

Abstract

As the capital of the People's Republic of China, Beijing has become an increasingly important emblem in the new story of China's rise, both domestically and internationally. This is not, however, the first time that the city has had such symbolic importance. Rarely in the history of China has a city been made to manifest world-making and world-transforming power as Beijing. With only rare exceptions, it has been the central motif of political power and authority since it was first built in the thirteenth century. This political and symbolic life has had profound consequences for the unfolding history both of the place and for those who have lived there. Each new era in the unfolding history of Beijing required, in one way or another, the city and its peoples to engage with the complex heritage of its past, and this palimpsest itself now forms part of that very heritage. It is a heritage with which the reconstruction of contemporary Beijing has had to engage and negotiate. This study examines the relationship between Beijing, a symbol of one or other totalising vision over the course of its modern history, and the physical and figurative 'dusts' both of its past and present. It offers a series of historical and contemporary 'images' of place, weaving together different views and representations of Beijing from on high, and impressions of the city at street level, as a way to explore how these two worlds have engaged with each other over time. Utilising a diverse range of sources, from accounts by historians, historical memoirs and archival materials to sketches and models, official plans, and first-hand accounts of contemporary Beijing, it engages with some of the dialectics and tensions that have emerged from the city's problematic doubling both as a space for the spectacular inscription of power, and a lived-in, constantly remade and contested urban environment. In particular, it examines the design, development and reconstruction of Beijing in dynastic China; western travel writings from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the physical and moral cleaning up of the city following its 'Peaceful Liberation' in 1949; Mao Zedong's war against the Old City, the building of the socialist capital and its subsequent transformation under Deng Xiaoping; the problematic re-emergence of and re-emphasis on the city's heritage in the reform era; and narratives of the future existent during the city's Olympic reconstruction. Undertaken in large part as a negation of its dynastic and imperial past, the transformation of modern Beijing has nonetheless been carried out in its shadow. Furthermore, the city's life as a symbol of power has made it subject more than most Chinese cities to statist concerns regarding physical and figurative hygiene, to efforts to mould and fashion its street life, and to police the historical, social and physical dust that constantly threatens to becloud and disrupt the state-sponsored image of the city. Show more