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WALL AND MARKET: CHINESE URBAN HISTORY NEWS

Volume 4, Number 2, Fall 1999. ISSN 1086-4393
(c) 1999 Chinese Urban History Association

A special issue of The Journal of Urban History arranged by the Chinese Urban History Association will focus on China. Watch for it during the summer of 2000.

The Chinese Urban History Association will sponsor a roundtable at the AAS meeting this March. See Conference Announcements section at end of this file for full information.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Subscribing to Wall and Market

Contributing to Wall and Market

Urban Genesis in China: A Brief Reevaluation of Wheatley's City-As-Temple
Thesis Walburga Wiesheu

In the Archives: A Conference Report on Archives and Beijing History
Mingzheng Shi, University of Hawaii

What's New in Urban History Research

Abstracts of Recent Dissertations in the Field

New Publications

Conference Announcements

WALL AND MARKET

Wall and Market is published twice each year by the Chinese Urban History
Association. Editorial board: Lee McIsaac, University of Vermont;
Mingzheng Shi, University of Hawai'i at Manoa; Kristin Stapleton,
University of Kentucky; Kohama Masako, Ochanomizu Women's University; Liu
Haiyan, Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences. Managing Editor: Gregory Epp.
Please send address changes to: chengshi@pop.uky.edu. Telephone:
16062571357. Facsimile: 16063233885.

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CONTRIBUTING TO WALL AND MARKET
Submit essays, reports on conferences or archives, and notices of events
or new publications to Kristin Stapleton (contact information above). To
review a book or suggest a volume for review, contact Lee McIsaac, Dept.
of History, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405, USA (18026564499;
fax, 18026568794; email, mmcisaac@zoo.uvm.edu). Send dissertation
abstracts and workinprogress reports to Mingzheng Shi, Dept. of History,
University of Hawai'i, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA(18089568098; fax,
18089569600; email, mingzhen@hawaii.edu). Items may be submitted in
English or in Chinese. Submission of an electronic file (either on disk
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request.

URBAN GENESIS IN CHINA
A BRIEF REEVALUATION OF WHEATLEY'S CITY-AS-TEMPLE THESIS
Walburga Wiesheu
National School of Anthropology and History, Mexico City

In his comparative study entitled The Pivot of the Four Quarters, Paul
Wheatley1 stated that pristine cities, that is those cities that developed
out of purely local conditions, took the shape of the ceremonial center,
which he considered a necessary functional and developmental stage in the
evolution of fully developed urban forms. Wheatley explicitly dismissed
alternative theories of the origins of cities, like those that favor
technological, ecological, military, or economic factors. His notion of
urban genesis out of ceremonial contexts implies that cult centers and
their ritual displays acted as a focus for the agglomeration of the
population around the sacred enclaves. The geographer Harold Carter called
this type of explanation of urban genesis by way of the causal impact of
religious factors in primary city formation the theory of the growth about
shrines or the city astemple thesis.2

A process traced back to the existence of tribal shrines, the ceremonial
paradigm of urban trans formation considers the first cities as typically
ritual or temple centers associated with an essential theocratic
organization dominated by priestly roles and religious sanctions. This is
opposed to a later phase of secularization of the ceremonial center
connected with the rise of kingship and an increasing incidence of warfare
and militarism.

China served as the primary example from which Wheatley derived the
idealtype construct of the ceremonial center as the earliest form of the
city.3 Wheatley pointed out that in this nuclear area of primary urban
development, the first cities appeared in the Central Plain or Zhongyuan
region of North China during the second millennium B.C.E., when the urban
settlements of the Shang dynasty emerged. He described the Shang cities of
Zhengzhou and Anyang of the middle and late Shang periods, respectively,
as morphologically similar in that each of them comprised a ceremonial
core inhabited mainly by priests, a few attendants, and some selected
craftsmen. In this view, at Anyang, the last capital site of the Shang
dynasty, a centrally located enclave served as a ceremonial and
administrative focus for a group of scattered residential and workshop
sites. These dispersed sites constituted, as a whole, a web of
functionally specialized nodes surrounding the central sacred precinct.

In addition, as a terrestrial image of a celestial archetype, the earliest
urban form of the ceremonial center is conceived essentially as a material
expression of a religious and cosmic symbolism deeply imprinted on the
physiognomy of the Shang cult centers. Adopting astrobiological concepts
as well as the notion of the symbolism of the center, as elaborated by the
historian of religion Mircea Eliade,4 Wheatley contended that the Shang
ceremonial centers were designed as an axis mundi, an omphalos that
incorporated a powerful centripetal order. In its primary role as an
instrument for the creation of effective space, these centers of ritual
and ceremonial were established according to specific urban planning
principles that followed diverse elements of a magic and cosmic symbolism.
He was convinced also that the ancient Chinese "cosmicized" cities were
built only after an array of geomantic considerations were applied.

Thus, in Wheatley's elucidation of urban genesis in China, the Shang
dispersed cities of the first millennium B.C.E., built according to
cosmomagical features expressed in urban design, are viewed as merely a
necessary prelude to the fully developed urban forms that evolved in the
succeeding Zhou dynasty. In contrast to Eastern Zhou compact (and thus
"true") cities, the prototypical ceremonial centers of the preZhou
contexts are conceived as rather empty sacred precincts with few permanent
residents, filled only on occasion of periodic rituals or seasonal
festivals.

It is my view that, as of now, the hypothesis of a religious origin of
Chinese urban centers finds little support in the archaeological data
coming from the Central Plain cultural region of North China. Here, at the
cradle of Chinese civilization, there is little evidence of a predominance
of ritual elements or, in general, of items of ceremonial importance and
religious function. Rather, these elements seem to come from diverse
Neolithic cultures that developed on the periphery and that were
incorporated later into the cultural system of the nuclear area of Chinese
civilization. In earlier papers,5 I have categorized the Shang political
organization as mainly secular in character and suggested that state and
urban society crystallized prior to the Shang, at least as early as the
period of the Erlitou culture, which is believed to contain the
archaeological remains of Xia, China's first dynasty according to received
literary tradition.

I suspect that the image of the first Chinese cities as being of the
ceremonial center type might be the result of the lack of systematic and
intensive surface surveys as well of the quite eclectic diggings that have
led to a probably erroneous description of early Chinese urban centers as
forming a dispersed network of localized and functionally specialized
sites dotting the landscape. And while Wheatley still considered the Shang
capital sites as the earliest examples of city development in China,
recent archaeological discoveries have centered our attention on the Late
Neolithic period, at least one thousand years earlier than the Shang
cities of Zhengzhou and Anyang. As stated by Keightley, to start the
analysis of urban genesis in China only with the middle Shang period city
of Zhengzhou, as Wheatley did, is "...to omit the first part of the
story."6

Due to the fact that in Chinese terms a city is defined by the presence of
walls,7 a whole series of recently discovered walled settlements, most
located in the middle and lower course of the Yellow River and dating back
to the Late Neolithic Longshan period or even earlier, are now considered
to represent the initial stage of urban evolution in China. It is held
that the walls of these fortified areas "castle sites" (chengbao yizhi),
as they are called more specifically in Chinese archaeological literature
had a basic defensive function and that an emerging Neolithic elite took
refuge in these walled settlements. As yet, the urban condition of these
castle sites of the Neolithic period is still to be determined. Indeed,
several scholars question their urban status, mainly because they are of a
quite modest size, like the tiny Wangchenggang twin city with its two
adjoining walled compounds. On the other hand, this site of less than
10,000 square meters is believed to be an early royal seat of the initial
Xia rulers, who in historical accounts were credited with having built
China's first cities.8

It seems possible to suggest that these small fortified Longshan
settlements were only sort of embryonic centers or headtowns of paramount
chiefly places of political entities that anthropologists include under
the chiefdom type. Nevertheless, these Longshan chiefly centers formed the
cultural matrix from which the first true urban centers emerged in
dynastic times. Characterized by a predominantly defensive political
sphere, the rise of the first urban and state societies in North China
took place against a background of interpolity conflict. Population growth
may perhaps have triggered this, something that certainly could be
inferred from the dense clustering of archaeological sites in central and
western Henan province where the first royal capitals were established.

Besides, the scenario of intergroup warfare in a context of competitive
interaction between Longshan political entities seems to be testified to
not only by the erection of walls but also by the proliferation of a
variety of weapons and the indications of violence in human skeletons.
There is no evidence of an evolution from sanctuaries to temples as
predicted by Wheatley's growthaboutshrines or cityastemple perspective of
urban origins. No altar or temple complex has been identified in Longshan
culture sites, and the nascent monumental buildings were most likely
public structures or elite residential precincts erected on stamped earth
platforms.9

Actually, I am convinced that the fortified chiefly centers of predynastic
times may have physically segregated and protected only these sorts of
buildings belonging to a socially and politically privileged sector,
whereas the commoner population probably lived outside the walled areas.
This is clearly suggested by sites like the Wangchenggang twin city, where
outside the tiny walled precincts an as yet unexcavated occupation of up
to 20,000 square meters in area has been noted, dating to the same
Longshan period. Hopefully, archaeologists will soon explore more
intensively the areas lying outside the walls, where we should expect to
find not only the remains of houses of the non elite sector but also of
diverse production activities and of burial sites.

The Longshan period might be seen as a genuine formative stage of the
constitution of an urban society in China. City genesis occurred with the
transition of chiefly power into institutionalized kingship. The latter
reinforced the military function of the secular leadership of the
antecedent competitive political entities. Simultaneously, the inception
of the dynastic period gave rise to the primeval palace complexes, as
evidenced by the earliest palatial buildings in the Yanshi county sites of
Erlitou and Shixianggou, respectively considered by most as late Xia and
early Shang state capitals. In these, the central palace buildings
constituted the embryonic foci around which the urban community took
shape. It was the institutionalization of kingship and the establishment
of a state political organization that activated this process.

Hence the emergence of urban settlements was basically associated with
elements of a secular nature. I might conclude that the cult or ceremonial
center was not the urban prototype from which cities developed and that
religious factors cannot be substantiated as the catalyzing force in urban
genesis in China.

Also, a critical review of early Chinese historical sources seems to
indicate that some of the ritual symbolic elements associated with the
design and location of ancient Chinese cities should be seen as the
product of post hoc theorizing within a normative and prescriptive
idealization of urban planning principles that was elaborated from Zhou
times on and systematized by the Han Confucianist philosophical synthesis.
As noted by Arthur Wright, it was only in Han times that certain
emblematic numbers acquired a major symbolic significance and that most of
the cosmological features of the Chinese cities, among them the geomantic
principles, appeared and when a new syncretic world view was formed.10
Only the last imperial capitals manifested the most canonical cosmology
for the Chinese city as the result of an imperial ideology centered on the
emperor as the pivot of the four quarters of the universe.

In summary, the religious paradigm of the first cities as ceremonial
centers and projected images of the cosmos is not supported by the Chinese
early urban experience. New archaeological data permit us to reject the
ceremonialtheocratic or cityastemple thesis and the idea of a primary
causal role of religion in city evolution in the nuclear area of Chinese
urbanism.

Endnotes

1. Paul Wheatley, The Pivot of the Four Quarters. A Preliminary Enquiry
into the Origins and Character of the Ancient Chinese City (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1971).

2. Harold Carter, "Urban Origins: The General Case," in An Introduction to
Urban Historical Geography (London: Arnold, 1983), 117. The religious
hypothesis of urban genesis actually extends back to Fustel de Coulanges'
La Cité Antique, first published in 1864. Carter refers to specific
alternative explanations of city formation, terming the military theories
of the city "strongpoint" theories and the economic theories of the city
"market place" theories.

3. Based on his analysis of the ancient Chinese city, he generalizes his
religious explanation to include all instances of primary urban
development. However, I believe that Wheatley's interpretation of the
Chinese evidence was deeply influenced by the Mesopotamian sequence; the
latter indeed includes an evolution of shrines into temple compounds and
is taken by many as the prototype of the rise of an urban civilization.

4. See Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane (New York: Harcourt
Brace, 1959).

5. See Walburga Wiesheu, "El problema del origen del Estado en China,"
Estudios de Asia y Africa 81 (1990): 105115 and "El origen del Estado y de
la civilización en China: el caso de la Dinastía Xia," Master's thesis
(Center for African and Asian Studies, El Colegio de México, 1991).

6. David N. Keightley, "Religion and the Rise of Urbanism," Journal of The
American Oriental Society 93 (1973): 527538. I agree with Keightley that
in Wheatley's account of urban genesis in China there is a striking
absence of any mention of the Erlitou site in Yanshi county, which was
already known in the 1960s.

7. As has been observed by numerous scholars, walls have been so central
to the Chinese idea of a city that the traditional word for city and wall
are identical.

8. For detailed discussion of this site and of the nature of Longshan
culture walled settlements, see Walburga Wiesheu, "China's First Cities:
The Walled Site of Wangchenggang in the Central Plain Region of North
China," in Emergence and Change in Early Urban Societies, ed. L.
Manzanilla (New York: Plenum, 1997), 87105.

9. Ceremonial sites with altar and temple buildings together with abundant
ritual objects are clearly present in coastal Neolithic cultures like that
of Hongshan or Liangzhu, but not in the nuclear area of the Zhongyuan
cultural region of North China where the first urban civilizations
developed.

10. See Arthur Wright, "The Cosmology of the Chinese City," in The City in
Late Imperial China, ed. G. W. Skinner (Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 1977), 3374.

Profile
Walburga Wiesheu is currently writing a doctoral dissertation on the topic
of religion and politics in the constitution of urban society, which
includes research on urban origins in China.
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IN THE ARCHIVES: CONFERENCE REPORT
ARCHIVES AND BEIJING HISTORY
Mingzheng Shi, University of Hawaii

Sponsored by the Beijing Municipal Archives and a host of other Chinese
academic institutions, the International Symposium on Archives and Beijing
History was held in Beijing on 1619 August 1999. More than a hundred
scholars attended the conference, including about a dozen from the United
States, Japan, England, France, the Netherlands, and Korea. The theme of
the conference was the economic, social, and cultural dimensions of modern
Beijing history. An opening ceremony was held on the first day, followed
by a general meeting in which three papers were presented. Cao Zixi
(Beijing Academy of Social Sciences) spoke on the past and future of
Beijing studies, Fang Xu (Beijing Municipal Archives) on the utilization
of archival sources, and Mingzheng Shi (University of Hawaii) on studies
of Beijing's history overseas. The main body of the symposium was divided
into plenary sessions where selected papers were presented to all
participants in one setting and group meetings that focused on the topics
of politics and society, city building, culture and education, and
religion and Chineseforeign cultural exchange, respectively.

Archival Sources
A number of papers dealt with archival sources for the study of Beijing's
history. Chen Qiangyi (First Historical Archives, Beijing) introduced
archives related to Beijing's history in the Qing Dynasty at her
institution. Yoshio Hosoya (Northeastern College, Japan) discussed Toyo
Bunko's collections on the Bordered Red Banner of the Qing Eight Banners
system. These archival materials, written primarily in the Manchu
language, cover a period of 200 years from the first year of Yongzheng to
the fourteenth year of the Republic (17231925). Two papers introduced
archival sources dealing with civil law and legal cases in the Qing and
Republican periods from the Beijing Municipal Archives and from China's
First and Second Historical Archives. Finally, Liu Jingui's paper focused
on the collection of real estate contracts at the Beijing Municipal
Museum.

Field Trips
In addition to formal meetings, participants also paid visits to the First
Historical Archives and to the Beijing Municipal Archives, where a book
exhibit was held. Specially prepared to coincide with the symposium, the
book exhibit showcased both rare collections and recent publications on
Beijing's history from more than a dozen Chinese archives, libraries, and
publishing houses. Two other trips were also organized during the
conference, one to the newly renovated Dongyue Temple in eastern Beijing
and the other to the Yunju Temple and the archeological site of Shang and
Zhou dynasties in the suburbs of Beijing.

Final Observations
This conference was organized in a typical Chinese format. The organizing
committee took care of everything: airport pickups, hotel registration,
local transportation, all meals and site visits, sightseeing, book sales,
and even entertainment. The venue, a threestar hotel located near
Jianguomen in downtown Beijing, was more than adequate; it exuded comfort
and convenience. All participants were housed in the hotel, with easy
access to conference and dining facilities in the same complex. Each
participant not only received a program and all paper abstracts but the
papers themselves, numbering about one hundred! Foreign participants must
have felt pampered during the entire fourday meeting.

The group meetings took place concurrently in three sessions during the
conference. The organizing committee assigned participants to one of the
four group meetings based on their special research interests or the
topics of their submitted papers. Although discussion time was set aside
following presentations in each group meeting, there were no discussants
or commentators. The group meetings thus resembled the roundtable format
in Western scholarly conferences. On the other hand, the plenary sessions,
which were held several times during the symposium, allowed no discussions
at all. As far as Chinese conferences are concerned, the hardest part for
Western scholars to get used to is perhaps the lack of freedom to choose
panels to attend and the lack of discussants in group meetings. On the
whole, however, the meeting was fruitful and successful. By bringing
together Chinese archivists and scholars interested in the local history
of Beijing from around the world, the symposium played a positive role in
demystifying archival collections and in promoting research in the history
of China's capital city.

Selected Papers
Political and Social Development
"Crime and Punishment in Early Republican China: Beijing's First Model
Prison, 19121922" (Frank Dikotter, School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London), "The Political and Cultural Status of Beijing
during the Republican Period" (Li Tiehu, Beijing Municipal Museum), "The
Activities of the Southern Manchurian Railroad in Beijing" (Yang Shaoming,
Liaoning Provincial Archives), "The Migrant Population of Beijing since
the Qing" (Yuan Xi, Beijing Academy of Social Sciences), "Fragments of
Nostalgia: The Construction of 'Old Beijing' in the 1920s and 1930s"
(Madeleine Yue Dong, University of Washington), "Birth and Death in Early
Republican Beijing: A Case Study of Midwives and Geomancers" (Yang
Nianqun, China People's University)," Ban on Opium Smoking and Trade in
Republican Beijing" (Huang Yi and Fang Lifei, Beijing Municipal Archives),
"The Social Surveys of Beijing in the Early Republican Period" (Wu
Jianyong, Beijing Academy of Social Sciences), "The Decline of the Huiguan
of Beijing in Modern Times: A Case Study of the Guangdong Huiguan" (Liu
Zhenggang, Jinan University), and "The Establishment and Evolution of the
Eight Banners Garrisons in Beijing (Han Guanghui, Peking University). City
Building
"A Bird's Eye View of Beijing in the Fifteenth Century" (Lao Yunxing,
Beijing Academy of Social Sciences), "Evolution of Urban Space in Late
Qing and Early Republican China" (Mingzheng Shi, University of Hawaii),
"The Beginning of Capital Construction and Planning in New China,
19491955" (Dong Zhikai, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences); "A
Preliminary Exploration of the Relationship Between Beijing and Tianjin"
(Ren Yunlan, Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences), "Protection and
Demolition of Beijing's City Walls" (Shen Yurong, Beijing Institute of
Urban Planning and Design, and Wang Yong, Beijing Municipal Archives), "A
Great Municipal Project: Reconstruction of the Protective Walls of the
Zhengyang Gate and the Building of a Circular Railroad in Beijing, 1915"
(Zhang Fuhe, Tsinghua University), "Construction of Dongyue Temple and the
Social and Political Development in Beijing" (Yuan Bingling, Leiden
University), and "Preservation and Development of Historic Cities in the
Globalization Process: A Case Study of Beijing" (Fang Ke, Tsinghua
University, and Zhang Yan, Chinese Academy of Urban Planning and Design).

Culture and Education
"Beijing's Elementary and Secondary Schools under the Japanese Occupation,
19371945" (Sophia Lee, California State University at Hayward)," The
Rockefeller Foundation and Peking Union Medical College" (Zhao Zhiheng,
Inner Mongolia Normal University), "The Sinification and Secularization of
Huiwen Middle School" (Yang Daye, Beijing United University, and Wang
Xing, Beijing Municipal Archives), "Special Characteristics of the Urban
Culture of Beijing" (Hu Guangming, Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences),
"Imperial Cuisine: Beijing's Contribution to the World" (Liu Gengsheng,
China People's University), "The Outer City and Peking Opera" (Wang Dan,
China People's University), "The Westernization of Social Customs in
Beijing during the Republican Era" (An Qingfu, China People's University).

Religion and ChineseForeign Cultural Exchange
"The Holy City of Beijing" (K. M. Schipper, Leiden University), "Beijing
and the Cultural Exchange between China and the West in the Seventeenth
and Eighteenth Centuries" (ChiehHsien Chen, National University of
Taiwan), "Christian Church Culture in Beijing during the Ming and Qing
Period" (Tong Xun, Beijing United University), "Archival Value of
Inscriptions on Stone Tablets: A Look at Baiyunguan Temple's History" (M.
Pierre Marsone, France), and "Traditional Religion and Beijing Guild
Organizations in Modern Times" (Xi Wuyi, Beijing Academy of Social
Sciences).
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WHAT'S NEW IN URBAN HISTORY RESEARCH

The newly published issue (vol. 1718) of Chengshi shi yanjiu (Urban
History Research) contains the following articles by Chinese and foreign
scholars (articles are in Chinese; titles are translations):

Wang Jun et al., "The Spatial Features of Urban Society in Modern Beijing:
>From the Perspective of Population Distribution"; Kwan Man Bun, "Order in
Chaos: Tianjin's Hunhunr and Urban Identity in Modern China"; Ren Yinmu,
"The Formation of the Social Character of the People of Qingdao,
18971922"; Xie Fang, "The Distribution of Civil Industries in Modern
Chinese Cities, 18401927"; Li Yu, "Economic Development of Changsha during
the New Policies Period in Late Qing"; Yim Chi Hwan, "Factions in the
Financial Market of Tianjin during the Late Qing and Early Republican
Periods"; Chen Zifang, "Forces Shaping the Development of Modern Chinese
Cities: The Case of Hangzhou"; Guo Wuqun, "Comparing Urban Cultures
between Modern Tianjin and Shanghai"; Mo Zhenliang, "The Unique Character
of the Urban Culture of Tianjin"; Zhou Junqi, "Superiority and Inferiority
of the Urban Culture of Tianjin"; Luo Shuwei, "Cities, Urban Theories, and
Urban History"; Zhao Ke, "Studies of Regional Urban History in Recent
Years"; Xu Yongzhi, "Chinese and Foreign Surveys and Studies of Towns and
Villages in Tianjin City and Hebei Province in the Twentieth Century";
Mingzheng Shi, "Writing the History of the Chinese Capital in the West."

To subscribe to Urban History Research, send subscription information and
check (made payable to Urban History Research) to Urban History Research,
c/o Mr. Zhou Junqi, Institute of History, Tianjin Academy of Social
Sciences, 7 Yingshui Road, Tianjin 300191, China. The price for volumes
1718, 1516, and 1314 is US$15.00 each for individual scholars and US$30.00
for institutions; volumes 112 cost US$5.00 for each copy.

ABSTRACTS OF RECENT DISSERTATIONS IN THE FIELD

Mark S. Eykholt, Living the Limits of Occupation in Nanjing, China,
19371945. Ph.D. diss., University of California, San Diego, 1998.
Advisors: Paul Pickowicz and Joseph Esherick.

The attack on Nanjing by Japanese troops in December 1937 and the ensuing
Nanjing Massacre symbolize the brutality of war between China and Japan.
As a result, the everyday life of citizens in Nanjing after the conquest
has been ignored. This dissertation uses periodicals, newspapers,
interviews, diaries, and archival materials to examine that life.

Nanjing recovered a semblance of its prewar vitality within a year of the
Massacre, and citizens did their best to bring order to their urban lives.
Aggressive health services, an efficient police force, and a rapidly
recovering education system made life livable once more. However, gambling
and opium increased under government support, and soon people were
suffering from inflation and shortages. Under such circumstances and with
no rescue in sight, people lacked the resources to resist but were loathe
to collaborate. Hence, patience and survival defined life, and people
learned that cooperation created a space of autonomy between themselves
and their Japanese overlords.

Ideologically, puppet governments in Nanjing made sure to emphasize
Chinese development under the guidance of Japan. The response of Nanjing
citizens varied. Workers spent most of their energy trying to earn livable
wages, and their subversive tactics differed little from subversion in
past decades. With a decline in young men, women faced added burdens as
both mothers and breadwinners. This created a debate on the role of women
in society with a misogynist backlash. Only students had the latitude and
organizational potential to question and participate in the rhetoric of
national development. As Japanese control weakened, students openly
protested against social evils brought by the Japanese and the Chinese
government. When the war finally ended, the Guomindang returned to
Nanjing, but the people of Nanjing once more faced discrimination and war.

Jin Jiang, Women and Public Culture: Poetics and Politics of Women's Yue
Opera in Republican Shanghai, 1930s1940s. Ph.D. diss., Stanford
University, 1999. Advisor: Lyman P. Van Slyke.

Women's Yue opera was a popular theatrical form in which all roles were
played by actresses for a largely female audience. The opera first started
as an all girl theater in the countryside of Shengxian, Zhejiang Province,
in the early 1920s. It became extremely popular in Shanghai in the 1930s
and 1940s and then spread throughout the mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan
in the 1950s and 1960s. In the course of a half century, a "traditional"
art form was reshaped by "modern" conditions to become an important part
of an emerging urban mass culture. One of the most important factors in
the formation of such a modern culture in republican Shanghai was women's
entrance into the cultural market. Women's entrance into the opera market,
both as consumers and producers, was central to the transformation of the
maledominated opera culture of the Qing dynasty to a femalecentered one in
the twentieth century. Women's opera was the single most important case of
women's entrance into the urban entertainment market. Tracing the
emergence and transformation of women's Yue opera in the context of
revolution, war, and nation building, this dissertation examines women's
views and experience in a rapidly changing semicolonial urban society and
women's roles in shaping the public culture of modern Shanghai. Chapter
one describes the rise of the actress in the period's cultural conflict
between a traditional popular eroticism focused on the public women's
sexuality and a reformist ideology that considered the cleansing of this
popular eroticism to be part of the modern nationbuilding task. Chapter
two examines the poetics of women's opera developed in a dynamic of social
and political changes in urban Shanghai. Chapter three studies the
formation of a mass audience of popular entertainment and the female
audience and patrons of women's opera. Chapter four investigates the
relationship between women's opera actresses and the leftwing
intellectuals and the transformation of the actresses into mainstream
media heroines in postwar Shanghai. In the conclusion, I return to themes
concerning the rise of the actress in a changing urban public culture to
highlight the social and cultural changes in republican Shanghai.

Luo Ling, A Study of the Construction of the Modern City of Nanjing. Ph.D.
diss., Nanjing University, 1997. Advisor: Cai Shaoqing.

This dissertation uses the angle of Western cultural influence to examine
the basic process of development and change in the city of Nanjing during
the modern era. The study begins with the features of Nanjing in ancient
times and employs the methods of history, sociology, statistics,
psychology, and architecture to explain the process of modernization in
Nanjing.

This dissertation consists of six parts. The first chapter traces the
evolution of Nanjing's design. A summary of traditional concepts of city
planning in China reveals the emphasis placed on development and shows how
designing a plan for modern Nanjing became necessary. The chapter then
analyzes the Capital Plan, with all its merits and deficiencies, as the
guiding document of Nanjing's development and traces the many changes it
generated in the form of the city.

The second chapter shows the process of change in ideas about urban
governance and their realization. Theories and modes of management in the
West and in China are compared to elaborate the necessity of planning
urban management. The importance of systematic guidance becomes clear
through a detailed description of the establishment of a mode of
governance in Nanjing.

The third chapter discusses the development of the city of Nanjing from an
architectural point of view. A considerable difference emerges from a
comparison of Western and Chinese architectural theories and traditions.
The designers of modern Nanjing combined ideas from both sources to add to
a varied and colorful urban landscape.

The fourth chapter examines the creation of Nanjing's infrastructure from
the angle of municipal administration. The development of Nanjing's system
of municipal administration is traced through a narration of the changes
in the management of water, electricity, roads, communications, pollution,
etcetera from ancient times to the present.

The fifth chapter describes the changing character of commerce in Nanjing.
The role of commerce in the city's transformation is analyzed after a
discussion of the course of development of modern business in Nanjing.

The sixth chapter uses customs and fashions to examine changes in social
trends in Nanjing. A comparison with the features of Nanjing society in
ancient times brings out the numerous changes in the modern city. This
picture, when laid against the broad background of modern Chinese society,
shows the critical role of social trends and customs in the modern
development of Nanjing.

The thesis concludes with a theoretical examination of several problems in
the modernization of the city of Nanjing and suggests some practical
implications.

Tobie S. MeyerFong, Site and Sentiment: Building Culture in
SeventeenthCentury Yangzhou. Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1998.
Advisor: Harold L. Kahn.

This dissertation explores the processes of physical and cultural
reconstruction that occurred in the Chinese city of Yangzhou between 1645
and 1700. Largely destroyed in 1645 during the Qing conquest, the city
emerged as a prosperous mercantile center during the mideighteenth
century. While the city's later economic and cultural successes have
received much scholarly attention, the period of recovery has been almost
entirely ignored.

Throughout the thesis, I focus on the values associated with the physical
construction and cultural use of buildings. Therefore, this project is
about one kind of recovery, the reassembling of the sites and
sensibilities that were meant to mark the distinctiveness of elite
culture. It is a study of the effects of catastrophe on a society and the
rapid cultural reactions that respond to rupture and loss. It charts the
emergence of a sense of community among local elites, travelers,
officials, and refugees. It is thus an exploration of the selfconscious
building and rebuilding of community and culture expressed symbolically
through physical reconstruction.

Each of the three central chapters focuses on a particular site. The
second chapter explores the emergence of Red Bridge as an important site
through the intervention of the young Qing official Wang Shizhen. This
chapter addresses the formation of patronage networks through which Qing
officials supported Ming loyalists and other political outsiders. In
chapter three, I look at the construction of the Tower of Literary
Selection (Wenxuan lou). This site was the temporary home of Deng Hanyi
(1617 1689) as he compiled the Shiguan (Poetic Views), an anthology of
contemporary poetry. The chapter explores the parallel functions of the
site and the anthology. Both commemorated and provided context for elite
literary and social activities. The fourth chapter deals with the
reconstruction of Pingshan Hall at the behest of Wang Maolin, a project
that symbolized elite reconciliation and recovery. In the final chapter, I
explore the changing relationship between the imperial court and the
locale, highlighting the impact of the Kangxi and Qianlong emperors'
Southern Tours on the local landscape.
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Contact Information

Mark S. Eykholt, MIT Intern Programs, MIT, 292 Main St., E38755,
Cambridge, MA 02139.

Jin Jiang, Box 168, Department of History, Vassar College, 124 Raymond
Ave., Poughkeepsie, NY 12604 (jijiang@vassar.edu).

Luo Ling, 5502 97 PL, Corona, NY 11368 (emilyluo@yahoo.com).

Tobie S. MeyerFong, History and Art History, MSN 3g1, George Mason
University, Fairfax, VA 220304444 (tmeyerf1@gmu.edu).

NEW PUBLICATIONS

The Chinese City in Space and Time: The Development of Urban Form in
Suzhou, by Yinong Xu, will be published this spring by the University of
Hawaii Press. The book aims to separate history and myth in an examination
of urban transformation in Suzhou throughout the premodern era. Dr. Xu
obtained the Ph.D. degree in Architectural and Urban History from the
University of Edinburgh and is presently Joukowsky Postdoctoral Fellow at
Brown University.

Hanchao Lu's monograph Beyond the Neon Lights: Everyday Shanghai in the
Early Twentieth Century (University of California Press, 1999) examines
the daily lives of the inhabitants of Shanghai through documentary data,
ethnographic surveys, and interviews. More information about Beyond the
Neon Lights can presently be found at
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/8279.html.

European Journal of East Asian Studies

A group of European scholars is launching a new academic journal. The
European Journal of East Asian Studies is based at the Institut d'Asie
Orientale, in Lyon, France, but it enjoys the support of nine other
European research institutions. It will be published and distributed by
Brill Academic Publishers. The first issue will appear in early 2001.

The sole purpose of the initiators of this project is to create a new
intellectual arena that will publish the best contributions of European
scholarship on contemporary East Asia, without excluding contributions
from other parts of the world. We believe in intellectual competition and
stimulation. The journal will, therefore, welcome highquality research,
whatever its origin.

The journal will be interdisciplinary in nature, dedicated to the
publication of scholarly research across the range of the social sciences
as well as modern history (meaning approximately the last 200 years). The
journal will be devoted mainly to original research based on the firsthand
study of primary materials and/or fieldwork. It will also welcome
theoretical essays that offer new, synthetic visions and perspectives from
the field.

Editors: Christian Henriot, Institut d'Asie Orientale, Lyon, France; Paul
Waley, School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds, Great Britain;
book review editor, Philippe Pelletier, Institut d Asie Orientale;
Editorial secretariat, MariePierre Fuchs, Institut d'Asie Orientale.

Contact: EJEAS, Institut d'Asie OrientaleISH, 14 av Berthelot, 69363 Lyon
cedex 07, France; Phone: 33 (0)472 72 65 40; Fax: 33 (0)472 72 64 90.
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CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENTS

Roundtable: The Future of Chinese Urban History Studies
Sponsored by the Chinese Urban History Association as part of the Annual
Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies. To be held in San Diego, CA
on Thursday, 9 March 2000, 7:00 9:00 PM.

Participants: Sherman Cochran (Cornell University), Linda Grove (Sophia
University), Liu Haiyan (Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences), Lee McIsaac
(University of Vermont), Mingzheng Shi (University of Hawaii), Michael
Tsin (Columbia University). Chair: Kristin Stapleton (University of
Kentucky).

Abstract: Chinese urban history has become a dynamic field of study in
recent years. This roundtable will address the theoretical issues and
practical problems confronting scholars today. What goals should be set
for the study of Chinese urban history? How has the development of Chinese
cities over the past hundred years affected regional divisions in Chinese
economic and social life and China's connections to the outside world?
What characteristics do Chinese cities share based on the divergent
experiences of individual cities? What approaches, paradigms, and
methodologies are being adopted by scholars in studying Chinese cities?
How can we best tap into Chinese archival and other primary sources to
support the study of Chinese urban history? This roundtable discussion
will bring together prominent scholars from the United States and East
Asia, who have worked on individual Chinese cities in different historical
periods, to explore these and other questions. More than a stateofthefield
review, the roundtable will produce a blueprint for future work on
comparative studies in Chinese urban history.

Structures of Power: Architecture and Authority in Qing China
A panel to be presented as part of the Annual Meeting of the Association
for Asian Studies. To be held in San Diego, CA on Friday, 10 March 2000,
10:45 AM to 12:45 PM.

Papers: Cary Liu (Princeton University Art Museum), "The Archiving of
Empire at the Qing Imperial Summer Villa at Jehol"; Philippe Foret
(University of Oklahoma), "The Kangxi Emperor's Letters from Mongolia
(1696): The Imperial Heterology of Landscape Perception"; Michael Chang
(UCSD), "Back in the Saddle Again: Imperial Touring and the Material Forms
of Manchu Authority in the High Qing"; Tobie MeyerFong (George Mason
University), "Rendering the Locale Imperial: The Transformation of
Yangzhou During the Qianlong Emperor's Southern Tours." Discussant:
Maxwell K. Hearn (Metropolitan Museum of Art).

Redefining Urban Space in Republican China
A panel to be presented as part of the Annual Meeting of the Association
for Asian Studies. To be held in San Diego, CA on Saturday, 11 March 2000,
10:45 AM to 12:45 PM.

Papers: Peter Carroll (Center for Chinese Studies, UC Berkeley), "Guji and
National Subjectivity in Suzhou's Republican Modernist Urban
Reconstruction"; James Carter (St. Joseph's University), "Preserving the
Future and Planning the Past in 1920s Harbin"; Bill Sewell (University of
British Columbia), "A Beacon to the World: The Modernist National Project
in Changchun (Shinkyo)."

Chair: YiLi Wu (Albion College).
Discussants: LungKee Sun (University of Memphis), Ronald Knapp (SUNYNew
Paltz).

Capitalism with Socialist Characteristics: China's Wartime Economies in
Transition Sponsored by the Chinese Business History Group, as part of the
Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies. To be held in San
Diego, CA on Friday, 10 March 2000, 1:003:00 PM.

Papers: Linsun Cheng (University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth), "Economic
Planning and the Initiation of China's Planned Economy: The National
Resources Commission and Its Industrial Activities (19321949)"; Yasutomi
Ayumu (Nagoya University), "The StateControlled Economy of Manchukuo and
Its Wartime Inflation, 19371945"; Linan Bian (Auburn University), "The
Making of the Administrative Factory State Enterprises during the
SinoJapanese War: The Case of the Dadukou Iron and Steel Works"; Elisabeth
Koll (Case Western Reserve University), "Restructuring Control and
Ownership: Mangerial and Financial Reforms in the Chinese Textile
Industry, 19371949."

Commentator: Parks Coble (University of Nebraska).
Chair: Andrea McElderry (University of Louisville).

Abstract: Recent research on twentiethcentury China has called for
crossing conceptual and territorial boundaries and better integration of
local histories with the national narrative. In direct response, this
panel seeks to address the influence of state intervention on China's
economic development in the 1930s and 1940s through interregional
(occupied and unoccupied China, Manchukuo) as well as interdisciplinary
(historical and economic) approaches. Two papers deal with state control
on a macroeconomic level; one describes the policies of the National
Resources Commission, a Nationalist government planning agency, and its
legacy in postwar China; the other examines Japan's control of the money
market in Manchukuo and the simultaneous emergence of a Chinesecontrolled
black market. The two other contributions consider the issue of state
intervention on a microeconomic level; both show how state agencies and
their representatives gradually introduced managerial reforms and
administrative restructuring in large industrial enterprises before and
after 1945. By exploring the trajectory of various forms of state control
in China's wartime economies, all papers argue that the state's
involvement facilitated the centralization of the economy and the
transformation of private into state enterprises after 1949. The papers
are based on recent archival research in China and Japan and present the
work of four young scholars at the beginning of their academic careers.
The group brings together two Chinese, one European, and one Japanese
scholar teaching in the US and Japan, respectively, who in their ongoing
research combine Chinese business, economic, and social history.
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EACS Conference: The Spirit of the Metropolis
To be held at Villa Gualino, Turin, Italy from 30 August to 2 September
2000.

Urban life has enjoyed increasing attention in Chinese studies, as
elsewhere, in recent years. This is why "The Spirit of the Metropolis" has
been chosen as the general theme for the Thirteenth EACS Conference. It is
particularly suited to the place where the conference will take place, as
the Chinese characters for Turin are those for "capital city" and
"spirit." The deadline for receipt of paper proposals (abstracts) is 1
February 2000. The latest date for notification of acceptance of paper
proposals is 10 March 2000. The registration deadline is 20 March 2000.

For further details about the conference and registration procedures, see
the conference website (address below). Abstracts should be sent both to
the conveners by email (see below) and to the Organization Committee via
the website.

Contact:
Dr. Stefania Stafutti
OCEC
Via Pietro Micca 20
10122 Torino, Italy
Phone: +390116703604 (Mon. and Thurs. 912 AM)
Fax: +390115171050 (answering machine switches to fax)
Email: eacs.con@cisi.unito.it
Web: http://hal9000.cisi.unito.it/eacs.con

International Academic Symposium on History of Chinese Society
To be held 2024 August 2000 at The Center for Academic Exchanges, Central
China Normal University (CCNU). Sponsored by The National Association for
the History of Chinese Society.

Theme: The Historical Change of Social Structure and Social Consciousness
1) Economic Development and Change of the Social Structure 2) Folk Belief
and Mass Consciousness 3) The Relationship between Town and Country in
History 4) Retrospect and Prospects for the Research on the History of
Society

Honorary Chair: Prof. Feng Erkang, CCNU
Chair of the Symposium: Prof. Zhang Kaiyuan, History Department, Nankai
University, Tianjin Chair of the Organizing Committee: Prof. Ma Min, CCNU

Contact:
Prof. Yan Changhong
Historical Research Institute
Central China Normal University
Wuhan, 430079, China
Phone: 02787673309
Fax: 02787863340

International Academic Symposium on History of Chinese Economy
To be held 1518 August 2000 at The Center for Academic Exchanges, Central
China Normal University (CCNU). Sponsored by The Research Center for
Chamber of Commerce at CCNU and Wuhan Economic Development Zone and by The
National Association for Chinese Economic History Studies.

Theme: Commercial Organizations and Market Development
1) The Construction, Functions, and Effect of Chinese Traditional
Commercial Organizations.
2) The Development and Evolution of Chinese Traditional Commercial
Organizations in Modern Society.
3) Study of Chamber of Commerce and Commercial Organizations in Modern
China. 4) Study of Guilds in Modern China. 5) Study of other Economic
Organizations in Modern China. 6) Various Foreign Economic Organizations
in Modern China. 7) Study of Chamber of Commerce and Commercial
Organizations in Other Countries. 8) The Breeding and Development of
Market in Chinese Traditional Society. 9) The Establishment of Modern
China's Market Network and its Characteristics. 10) Study of Modern
China's Regional Market and National Market. 11) The Activity and Effect
of Commercial Organizations' Opening Market. 12) Other Relevant Subjects.

Chairs of the Symposium: Prof. Zhang Kaiyuan, CCNU
Prof. Jing Junjian, China Social Science Academy
Other Members of the Organizing Committee:
Chen Zhengpin, China Social Science Academy.
Ma Min, CCNU.
Zhu Ying, CCNU.

Contact:
Prof. Ma Min
Historical Research Institute
Central China Normal University
Wuhan, 430079, China
Tel: 02787673309
Fax: 02787862368
E-mail: mamin@mail.ccnu.edu.cn