Urban Spaces in Contemporary China

Urban Spaces in Contemporary China PDF Author: Deborah Davis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521479431
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
Explores the impact of post-Mao reforms on the economic, social and cultural dimensions of China's cities.

Urban Spaces in Contemporary China

Urban Spaces in Contemporary China PDF Author: Deborah Davis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521479431
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
Explores the impact of post-Mao reforms on the economic, social and cultural dimensions of China's cities.

Writing Beijing

Writing Beijing PDF Author: Yiran Zheng
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498531024
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
One of the oldest cities in the world, Beijing was an imperial capital for centuries. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Beijing became not only the political center of the new communist country, but also the signifier of socialist ideol-ogy and revolutionary culture. Now, in the 21st century, Beijing embodies global conflicts and global connections. Over the course of the last century, then, Beijing moved from the quintessential “traditional” capital to the symbol of communist urban form and finally to a cosmopolitan metropolis. These three stages in the history of Beijing and its shifting representations are the topic of this study. Like other capitals, Beijing is much more than its physical entity. It also functions as a concept, a representation. As city planners have (and continue to) present Beijing to the world as a model, the fluctuating images of Beijing have become solidified in urban space. Today, the urban form of Beijing juxtaposes diverse spaces that span centuries, embodying the various representations of the city by its planners in different eras. These representations of space also provide possibilities for writers to rethink and rebuild the city in their literary works. Chinese writers and filmmakers often essentialize those urban spaces by making them symbols of different urban cultures, the old houses representing “traditional,” “patriarchal” Chinese culture while soviet-style buildings reflect revolu-tionary culture. Finally, the more recent sprouting of apartments, condos, and townhouses stands for the invasion of western modernity and provides evidence of global capitalism in contemporary China. Inspired by Henri Lefebvre, this study establishes a framework that connects urban spaces (representations of space) to writers and literary productions (representational space). I analyze the three major urban spatial forms of traditional, communist, and glob-alized Beijing and examine what these urban spaces mean to Chinese writers and filmmakers as well as how they use them to configure particular images of Beijing. I argue that these different configurations are actually the projections of those writers and filmmakers’ own cultural imaginations; they provoke a form of emotional catharsis and also produce alternative visions of the cityscape.

China Urban

China Urban PDF Author: Nancy N. Chen
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822381338
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
China Urban is an ethnographic account of China’s cities and the place that urban space holds in China’s imagination. In addition to investigating this nation’s rapidly changing urban landscape, its contributors emphasize the need to rethink the very meaning of the “urban” and the utility of urban-focused anthropological critiques during a period of unprecedented change on local, regional, national, and global levels. Through close attention to everyday lives and narratives and with a particular focus on gender, market, and spatial practices, this collection stresses that, in the case of China, rural life and the impact of socialism must be considered in order to fully comprehend the urban. Individual essays note the impact of legal barriers to geographic mobility in China, the proliferation of different urban centers, the different distribution of resources among various regions, and the pervasive appeal of the urban, both in terms of living in cities and in acquiring products and conventions signaling urbanity. Others focus on the direct sales industry, the Chinese rock music market, the discursive production of femininity and motherhood in urban hospitals, and the transformations in access to healthcare. China Urban will interest anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, and those studying urban planning, China, East Asia, and globalization. Contributors. Tad Ballew, Susan Brownell, Nancy N. Chen, Constance D. Clark, Robert Efird, Suzanne Z. Gottschang, Ellen Hertz, Lisa Hoffman, Sandra Hyde, Lyn Jeffery, Lida Junghans, Louisa Schein, Li Zhang

China's Urban Champions

China's Urban Champions PDF Author: Kyle A. Jaros
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691190739
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
1. Introduction: Picking Winners in Space --2. Spatial Policy in China --3. The Multilevel Politics of Development --4. Hunan: The Making of an Urban Champion --5. Jiangxi: The Politics of Dispersed Development --6. Shaanxi: Uneven Development Redux --7. Jiangsu: Shifting Tides of Spatial Policy --8. Rethinking Development Politics in China and Beyond --Appendix A. Analyzing Outcomes across China --Appendix B. Cross-National Extensions to Brazil and India.

Visual Arts, Representations and Interventions in Contemporary China

Visual Arts, Representations and Interventions in Contemporary China PDF Author: Minna Valjakka
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789462982239
Category : Art, Chinese
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book offers a multifaceted investigation of the dynamic interrelations between visual arts and representation interdependent to urban spaces in China.

The Urban Generation

The Urban Generation PDF Author: Zhen Zhang
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822390000
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 459

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Book Description
Since the early 1990s, while mainland China’s state-owned movie studios have struggled with financial and ideological constraints, an exciting alternative cinema has developed. Dubbed the “Urban Generation,” this new cinema is driven by young filmmakers who emerged in the shadow of the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989. What unites diverse directors under the “Urban Generation” rubric is their creative engagement with the wrenching economic and social transformations underway in China. Urban Generation filmmakers are vanguard interpreters of the confusion and anxiety triggered by the massive urbanization of contemporary China. This collection brings together some of the most recent original research on this emerging cinema and its relationship to Chinese society. The contributors analyze the historical and social conditions that gave rise to the Urban Generation, its aesthetic innovation, and its ambivalent relationship to China’s mainstream film industry and the international film market. Focusing attention on the Urban Generation’s sense of social urgency, its documentary impulses, and its representations of gender and sexuality, the contributors highlight the characters who populate this new urban cinema—ordinary and marginalized city dwellers including aimless bohemians, petty thieves, prostitutes, postal workers, taxi drivers, migrant workers—and the fact that these “floating urban subjects” are often portrayed by non-professional actors. Some essays concentrate on specific films (such as Shower and Suzhou River) or filmmakers (including Jia Zhangke and Zhang Yuan), while others survey broader concerns. Together the thirteen essays in this collection give a multifaceted account of a significant, ongoing cinematic and cultural phenomenon. Contributors. Chris Berry, Yomi Braester, Shuqin Cui, Linda Chiu-han Lai, Charles Leary, Sheldon H. Lu, Jason McGrath, Augusta Palmer, Bérénice Reynaud, Yaohua Shi, Yingjin Zhang, Zhang Zhen, Xueping Zhong

Original Copies

Original Copies PDF Author: Bianca Bosker
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824837835
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
A 108-meter high Eiffel Tower rises above Champs Elysées Square in Hangzhou. A Chengdu residential complex for 200,000 recreates Dorchester, England. An ersatz Queen’s Guard patrols Shanghai’s Thames Town, where pubs and statues of Winston Churchill abound. Gleaming replicas of the White House dot Chinese cities from Fuyang to Shenzhen. These examples are but a sampling of China’s most popular and startling architectural movement: the construction of monumental themed communities that replicate towns and cities in the West. Original Copies presents the first definitive chronicle of this remarkable phenomenon in which entire townships appear to have been airlifted from their historic and geographic foundations in Europe and the Americas, and spot-welded to Chinese cities. These copycat constructions are not theme parks but thriving communities where Chinese families raise children, cook dinners, and simulate the experiences of a pseudo-Orange County or Oxford. In recounting the untold and evolving story of China’s predilection for replicating the greatest architectural hits of the West, Bianca Bosker explores what this unprecedented experiment in “duplitecture” implies for the social, political, architectural, and commercial landscape of contemporary China. With her lively, authoritative narrative, the author shows us how, in subtle but important ways, these homes and public spaces shape the behavior of their residents, as they reflect the achievements, dreams, and anxieties of those who inhabit them, as well as those of their developers and designers. From Chinese philosophical perspectives on copying to twenty-first century market forces, Bosker details the factors giving rise to China’s new breed of building. Her analysis draws on insights from the world’s leading architects, critics and city planners, and on interviews with the residents of these developments.

The Consumer Revolution in Urban China

The Consumer Revolution in Urban China PDF Author: Deborah Davis
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520216402
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
This wide-ranging collection of essays by leading sociologists on the new consumerism of post-economic-reform China is an important contribution to our understanding of Chinese society and culture.

Social Space and Governance in Urban China

Social Space and Governance in Urban China PDF Author: David Bray
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804750387
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
The danwei (workunit) has been the fundamental social and spatial unit of urban China under socialism. With particular focus on the link between spatial forms and social organization, this book traces the origins and development of this critical institution up to the present day.

China's Urban Space

China's Urban Space PDF Author: Terry McGee
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134072139
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
China’s urban growth is unparalleled in the history of global urbanization, and will undoubtedly create huge challenges to China as it modernizes its society. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this book presents an overview of the radical transformation of China’s urban space since the 1970s, arguing that to study the Chinese urbanization process one must recognize the distinctive political economy of China. After a long period as a planned socialist economy, China’s rapid entry into the global economy has raised suggestions that modernization in China will inevitably result in urban patterns and features like those of cities in developed market economies. This book argues that this is unlikely in the short term, because processes of urban transition in China must be interpreted through the lens of a unique and unprecedented juxtaposition of socialism and the market economy, which is leading to distinctive patterns of Chinese urbanization. Richly illustrated with maps, diagrams and in-depth case studies, this book will be an invaluable resource to students and scholars of urban economics and policy, geography, and the development of China.