Places Of Memory In Modern China

In the last decades, the scholarship on issues of national and cultural identity of China has been constantly on the rise. This edited volume aims at addressing these issues by applying Pierre Nora’s approach of places of memory (lieux de mémoire) to the Chinese context. The volume assembles a number of articles that focus on the most significant places of memory in modern and contemporary China, ranging from Qin Shihuang’s Terracotta Warriors to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. The genesis and nature of these places are discussed in detail by combining approaches of both cultural and historical sciences. In addition, issues of cultural memory and politics are addressed in order to question the ideological construction of these places.

This book offers a cultural history of modern China by looking at the tension between memory and history. Mainstream books on China tend to focus on the hard aspects of economics, government, politics, or international relations. This book takes a humanistic look at modern changes and examines how Chinese intellectuals and artists experienced trauma, social upheavals, and transformations. Drawing on a wide array of sources in political and aesthetic writings, literature, film, and public discourse, the author has portrayed the unique ways the Chinese imagine and portray their own historical destiny in the midst of trauma, catastrophe, and runaway globalization.

Whether we think of statues, plaques, street-names, practices, material or intangible forms of remembrance, the language of collective memory is everywhere, installed in the name of not only nations, or even empires, but also an international past. The essays in Sites of International Memory address the notion of a shared past, and how this idea is promulgated through sites and commemorative gestures that create or promote cultural memory of such global issues as wars, genocide, and movements of cross-national trade and commerce, as well as resistance and revolution. In doing so, this edited collection asks: Where are the sites of international memory? What are the elements of such memories of international pasts, and of internationalism? How and why have we remembered or forgotten "sites" of international memory? Which elements of these international pasts are useful in the present? Some contributors address specific sites and moments--World War II, liberation movements in India and Ethiopia, commemorations of genocide--while other pieces concentrate more on the theoretical, on the idea of cultural memory. UNESCO's presence looms large in the volume, as it is the most visible and iconic international organization devoted to creating critical heritage studies on a world stage. Formed in the aftermath of World War II, UNESCO was instrumental in promoting the idea of a "humanity" that exists beyond national, regional, or cultural borders or definitions. Since then, UNESCO's diplomatic and institutional channels have become the sites at which competing notions of international, world, and "human" communities have jostled in conjunction with politically specific understandings of cultural value and human rights. This volume has been assembled to investigate sites of international memory that commemorate a past when it was possible to imagine, identify, and invoke "international" ideas, institutions, and experiences, in diverse, historically situated contexts. Contributors:Dominique Biehl, Kristal Buckley, Roland Burke, Kate Darian-Smith, Sarah C. Dunstan, David Goodman, Madeleine Herren, Philippa Hetherington, Rohan Howitt, Alanna O'Malley, Eric Paglia, Glenda Sluga, Sverker Sörlin, Carolien Stolte, Beatrice Wayne, Ralph Weber, Jay Winter.

What has contemporary China inherited from its revolutionary past? How do the realities and memories, aesthetics and practices of the Mao era still reverberate in the post-Mao cultural landscape? The essays in this volume propose “red legacies” as a new critical framework from which to examine the profusion of cultural productions and afterlives of the communist revolution in order to understand China’s continuities and transformations from socialism to postsocialism. Organized into five parts—red foundations, red icons, red classics, red bodies, and red shadows—the book’s interdisciplinary contributions focus on visual and performing arts, literature and film, language and thought, architecture, museums, and memorials. Mediating at once unfulfilled ideals and unmourned ghosts across generations, red cultural legacies suggest both inheritance and debt, and can be mobilized to support as well as to critique the status quo.

Transposed Memory explores the visual culture of national recollection in modern and contemporary East Asia by emphasizing memories that are under the continuous process of construction, reinforcement, alteration, resistance, and contestation. Expanding the discussion of memory into visual culture by exploring various visual sites of recollection, and the diverse ways commemoration is represented in visual, cultural, and material forms, this book produces cross-cultural and interdisciplinary conversations on memory and site by bringing together international scholars from the fields of art history, history, architecture, and theater and dance, examining intercultural relationships in East Asia through geopolitical conditions and visual culture. With contributions of Rika Iezumi Hiro, Ruo Jia, Burglind Jungmann, Hong Kal, Stephen McDowall, Alison J. Miller, Jessica Nakamura, Eunyoung Park, Travis Seifman, and Linh D. Vu.

Focusing on the non-Western context and case studies, this book explores theories of interdisciplinary architectural thinking and the construction of urban memory in Chinese cities, with an emphasis on contemporary architecture and the diversity of agencies. China has undergone one of the fastest urbanisation and urban renewal processes in human history, but discussions of urban memory in China have tended to be practice-oriented and lack theoretical reflection. This book brings together interdisciplinary architectural scholarship to interrogate the production of urban memory and examine experiences in China. The 14 chapters explore different processes, projects, materials, architecture and urban spaces in different Chinese cities by analysing cityscapes such as temples, bridges, conservation projects, architectural design, historical architecture, memorial hall, market street, city images, custom bike, food market and so on. The book deals with different agencies and methods, tangible and intangible, in the construction of memories aimed at promoting hybridised multiple identities, and explores the interplay of different versions of memory, i.e. state, public, regional, local, individual and collective memory. This book will be essential reading for scholars and students of architecture and urbanism, cultural studies and China studies, as well as architects, urban planners and historians interested in these fields.

The relationship between the Chinese nation and its recent past has been fraught with contradictions and tensions. This collection aims to make sense of this complex relationship and challenge the prevalent state-centric and nation-centric modes of history writing on modern China. It explores alternative representations of the past and the salience of political conflicts and competitive histories in China, highlighting the paradoxical similarities in such representations of the past from the late nineteenth century to the present. Ultimately, this book contributes to the ongoing discussion on the politics of interpreting the past and its many manifestations in both China and other societies. “This volume will contribute to the scholarly debate on the use of the past in national history.” Tze-ki Hon, City University of Hong Kong “Alternative Representations of the Past presents a collection of essays that critically examine the ways in which the contradicting and contested enterprise of history has been politicized in China. As ‘memory is past made present’, the meticulous re-evaluation of Chinese history by the contributors of this volume promises to offer readers valuable insights into contemporary China.” Chang-Yau Hoon, Associate Professor and Director, Centre for Advanced Research, Universiti Brunei Darussalam

From the cross-disciplinary perspective of urban management and planning, geography and architecture, this book explores the theory and methods of urban memory, selecting Beijing's historic buildings, historic areas, central areas and city walls as research cases. It is divided into three parts: factors analysis, modeling and practical application. It lays a scientific foundation and provides practical methods for the management of historical spaces, residents’ and commercial activities, optimizing the layout and structure of the historic spaces, updating the protection of old buildings, promoting the organic growth of historic sites and the sustainable development of urbanization with new concepts.