The Concrete Dragon: China's urban revolution and what it means for the world

THE

CONCRETE DRAGON CHINA'S URBAN REVOLUTION AND WHAT IT MEAN S

FOR THE WORLD

Thomas J . Campanella

PRINCE ION ARCH I II CTURAL f'RESS

N(W YORK

CONTENl S

Fo,. Trm11 cy Lee

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F'lll>h~by

Lthv;mth StreJ~t

C•laiOf:'"ll'" PubtrCl.ltoon O.tl.t C'mtt..Jnell.,, Thomu J.

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Nt ... YOt~, N~w Yo"' tOOOJ

lhtt eoru:•t!.e dr.::.gon .. Ch·na--s utbal1 ,evofuhon n..,d

Thunder from the South

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wh~tll me~n• for the worlcl/lhoma~ J. CamJI'ItiCH;t

Fo1 a lr011 t atalog ol boQ\s, c.lll 1.800.7 WIIOII ol Ptu~~lon Archol«lut.ol Pr•·
tank on Chang'an Boulevard in June 1989. I relate this story because it touches on so many essential themes related to city making and urban redevelopment in China's post-Mao era- an age of unprecedented economic growth and societal transformation that has shaken both China and the world.

China has indeed redefined the meaning of Joseph Schumpeter's muchquoted phrase "creative destruction," razing more urban fabric n its twenty-

To write about China's urban revolution is to traffic in superlatives. Over the last twenty years, the People's Republic has undergone the greatest: period of urban growth and transformation in history. Since the 1980s, China has

redevelopment projects in rhe 1990s displaced more people than thirty years of urban renewal in the United States.3 Not even mountains can stand in the way of China's urban ambition. In 1997, a Lanzhou entrepreneur named Zhu

built more skyscrapers; more office buildings; more shopping malls and hotels; more housing estates and gated communities; more highways, bridges, sub-

Qihua launched a campaign to remove 900-foot Big Green Mountain, located on the outskirts of town, so that winds could flush clean the city's heavily pol-

ways, and tunnels; more public parks, playgrounds, squares, and plazas: more

luted air. As one city resident, cheered by Zhu's bold scheme, put it, "If remov-

golf courses and resorts and theme parks than any other nation on earth indeed, than probably all other nations combined. The number and size of cities alone is staggering. There were fewer than 200 cities in China in the late 1970s; today there are nearly 700. Many of these

ing that mountain can do the trick, chen get rid of the mountain. Get rid of them all." In the summit's stead would be built a 500-acre industrial park.• Indeed, in terms of speed and scale and sheer audacity, China's urban revolution is off the charts of Western or even global experience. China is in the

are simply reclassified towns and counties, but even the smallest among them are immense by American standards. Forty-six Chinese cities passed the onemillion mark since 1992, making for a national totaJ of 102 cities with more

midst of a wholesale reinvention of the city as we know it, forcing urbanists worldwide to recaJibrate their most basic tools and assumptions and develop a whole new vocabulary for describing and critiquing urban phenomena. In

than a million residents. In rhe United Stares we have all of nine such cities. There are scores of Chinese cities most Americans have never heard of that rank with our largest. Guiyang and Jinan, for example, are roughly the same s ize as Phoenix and Philadelphia, and Hefei and Wuxi- middling cities in China-each exceeds Los Angeles in population. What makes this all the more

China precedents and practices may be borrowed willy-nilly from other cultures, but they undergo a process of transmutation that renders them both familiar and thoroughly Chinese at the same time. The only place remotely

extraordinary is that: only about 38 percent of the Chinese population is currently urban, as opposed to 8o percent in rhe United States. An equivalent

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year building binge than any nation in peacetime- and easily surpassing the losses, human and physical, of urban renewal in America. In Shanghai alone,

comparable to China today is Dubai, which, thanks to our addiction to oil, has been growing by leaps and bounds in recent years. But Dubai is a tiny city-state of just over a million people. China is a hundred Dubais, with a thousand times

So percent of the total-would mean more than

its ambition. The numbers speak for themselves. In 2003 alone, China put up 28 billion square feet of new housing-one eighth of the housing stock of the United

In other words, China's urban revolution is just getting under way. Bigness and supersized sprawl may have once been American specialties, but that monopoly has been usurped. China is now home to the world's biggest airport and largest shopping mall, as well as some of the planet's tallest buildings and longest bridges; it boasts the world 's largest automobile showrooms and the

States.5 In che year 2004 alone, some $400 billion was spent on construecion projects in the People's Republic, nearly the total gross domestic product (GOP) of sub-Saharan Africa that year. 4 There were virtually no modern highrise office rowers in Shanghai in 1980; today it has more than twice as many as New York City.7 According co the Shanghai statistics bureau, some 925 mil-

biggest gated community; it has built the most expansive golf course on earth and the biggest bowling alley, and even the world's largest skateboard park. The controversial Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River makes Boston's

lion square feet of new building floor space was added to che city between 1990 and 2004, equivalent to 334 Empire State Buildings. By the end of the 1990s, Shanghai had more than 23,000 construction sites scattered across the city. Nationwide, China's construction industry employs a workforce equal to the

urban population in China one billion city dwellers.

Big Dig look like child's play-a mega project that displaced more than one million people and destroyed nearly a dozen cities.•

population of California.8 Nearly half the world's steel and cement is devoured

THE CO N CRETE DRAGON

THE URBA N IS M OF A M BITION

by China, a level of demand that sends shock waves through the global build-

be the world's largest producer and consumer of cars by 2020 with total car

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ing-supply chain. Much of the world's heavy construction equ1pment IS 1n

ownership exceeding even that of the United States.'• The number of cars in

China, and the tower crane is such a ubiquitous presence on the skyline char

Shanghai jumped from a mere 212,000 to 1.2 million between 1990 and 2003;

people call it China's national bird (a particular irony, given the esteemed place

and Beijing swept past the million-car mark in the spring of 2002, when more

of cranes- the feathered sort- in classical Chinese painting).

than 1,000 new cars were being added to the ciry's streets and highways each

9

China had a mere 180 miles of modern mororway in the 1980s; today

day.'5 Today there are more automobile brands in China than in the United

its National Trunk Highway System spans nearly JO,ooo miles and is sec-

States, and while the total number of cars is still small in comparison, keep in

ond in length only to America's interstate system. By 2020, China will likely have 5J,OOO miles of national-level highway, surpassing the United States as

mind that there were virtually no private automobiles in the People's Republic as late as the 1970s.

the most freeway-laced nation on earth.'0 Even Mr. Everest is being scaled by

The motorization trend has profound implications for the form and struc-

the hydra of Chinese asphalt. In June 2007, plans were announced for a 67-

ture of China's cities. It is helping drive a complex process of land conver-

mile, $20 million highway winding up from the foot of the mountain to a base

sion on the urban fringe that yields a uniquely Chinese kind of urban sprawl.

camp at 17,000 feet. The finished road will be part of the 2008 Olympic torch relay (itself the longest in Olympic history, encompassing five continents and

Sprawl in China is very different from its American cousin, but no less land

85,000 miles), but is also designed to make it easier for "tourists and moun-

tural land were lost to development in China- equivalent to the combined area

taineers" to consume the once-remote peak." Other roads have been ham-

ofall of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire,

mered through some of the most dense and populous urban neighborhoods in

and half of Maine.'8 Due to such losses, the People's Republic is no longer self-

the world, forcing the relocation of tens of thousands of families. Again, the

sufficient in agricultural production; for the first time in its history, China has

American urban experience is quickly exceeded here. In Shanghai, the con-

become a net importer of food. '7 The situation is more than a little reminiscent

struction of a single section of the Inner Ring Road, through the Luwan and

ofT11e Good Earth, in which the land Wang Lung worked all his life- that nur-

Huangpu districts-a mere two-mile run-displaced an estimated u,ooo

tured and enriched his family· is pawned off by his profligate sons. The extent

people-many more than were displaced along the entire route of the much-

of Chinese sprawl is readily evident from space, much the way the Great Wall

lamented Cross Bronx Expressway in New York, the first major American

was long rumored to be.

highway built through dense urban terrain. '• How unsettling to see the most

hungry. Between about 1980 and 2004, nearly 44.000 square miles of agricul-

LANDSAT images of China's coastal

cities from the early 1980s and today

egregious, much-studied monuments of Western planning practice suddenly

reveal an outward expansion of urban matter reminiscent of a colossal stellar

rendered insignificant! Robert Moses at his megalomaniacal max is tame in

explosion. While the Chinese suburban landscape is very different from that

comparison to China. In his entire master-builder career, Moses constructed

of the United States, it is no less catalytic in enabling a car-dependent life-

some 415 miles of highway in the New York metropolitan region; Shanghai offi-

style of commuting and big-box consumerism. Most housing on the urban

cials built well over three times that amount in the 1990s alone.'J

fringe consists of mid- and high-rise condominium estates

much denser

Given all these new roads, its hardly surprising that China is the most

than anything in suburban America. Yet their outlying location and the lack of

rapidly motorizing society in the world today. The People's Republic was long

public transportation has encouraged high rates of automobile owner-

a nation of bicycles, but now the two-wheelers are in decline: the number of bicyclists in China's cities dropped 26 percent between 2001 and 2006, and

ship among residents. Mixed among these housing estates are also tracts of single-family homes virtually identical in spirit· and often in architectural

they are now even banned outright on many city streets. The domestic motor

appointment-to "McMansion"-sryle gated communities in the United States.

vehicle market, on the other hand, is booming, and second in size now only

Other artifacts of American sprawl and "strip" culture have also appeared,

to that of the United States. Industry analysts forecast that China may well

albeit tailored to local (or at least Chinese) needs and tastes. These include

THE CO N CRETE DRAGON

THE URB ANI S M OF A M B I T I O N

drive-through fast-food restaurants like KFC and McDonald's; big-box retail giants such as Lotus and Wal-Mart, IKEA, Costco, and an Anglo-Chinese

The primary motive force behind China's urban revolution is, of course, the explosive growth of rhe Chinese economy over the last thre decades. Not

Home Depor knockoff called B&Q; shopping malls with expansive parking lots our front; colossal supermarkets; even budget motel chains and that vin-

only did Deng Xiaoping's market reforms stimulate free enterprise at homeunleashing "a tidal wave of long suppressed entrepreneurial energy and ambition," as Li Conghua has written but his "open-door" campaign brought a flood ride of money from foreign investors hungry for a piece of the Chinese

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tage icon of American suburbia, the drive-in cinema. What makes these and other facers of the new Chinese landscape so extraordinary is their sharp contrast with what came before. Scarcely a gen· eration has passed between the Cultural Revolution and the present, yet what epochal change those three decades have wrought! The shopping malls and subdivisions, the cars and color TVs, the theme parks and golf coursesall unthinkable a short time ago. The dull blue-gray world, of Mao suits and rationed goods is long gone; China today is a 24/7 frenzy of consumerism and construction. The birthplace of the Chinese Communist Parry is now parr of an exclusive shopping district in Shanghai, only steps from a Starbucks and upscale martini bars. Golf is a required course for business students at Xiamen University; and even the celebrated commune in Shanxi Province that cadres were implored to study in the 196os-"In agriculture, learn from Dazhai!"has struck out on the capitalist road, turning its famous name into a lucrative (and copyrighted) brand. The saga of transition from Maoist scarcity to full-blown consumerism

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pie.'8 Foreign direct investment flowed first to China via a series of special economic zones established for that purpose, initially from Hong Kong and the Chinese diaspora communities across Southeast Asia. Bur before long, investors from the United States, Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ausrralia, and Europe were also pouring millions into joint-venture projects in the People's Republic. China's economic engine stirred to life in the early 1980s, and then launched into the longest period of sustained economic growth in modern times. Between 1980 and 1990 the Chinese economy grew faster than even the vaunted "East Asian Tigers" (Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea) during their exuberant early years in the 1970s and 1980s. By 1994, the People's Republic accounted for fully 40 percent of rhe world's GOP growth; today irs GOP represents 13 percent of global output, making it second in productivity only ro the United Stares. China's economy has be-en expanding

was driven home for me in 1999 by a television advertisement, of all things, for an upscale housing estate in the Pearl River Delta. I was at a restaurant in

an average 9 percent per annum since the start of the reform era, a rate three times the growth of the American economy over the much-ballyhooed dot-com boom of the nate I990S.

Zhongshan with Wallace Chang, as guests of a ream of local planning officials for whom we were doing some consulting work. The television was play-

Nor is it showing any signs of slowing: China overtook the United Kingdom in 2005 to become the third-largest economy in the world, and it may well soon

ing silently in our private dining room, and a program came on that I rook at first to be a historical drama about the hardships of life during the Cultural Revolution. The film was shot in black and white, and showed a young peasant

eclipse Germany. In 2006, China's GOP increased ~y nearly u percent, the fastest growt:h rate in more than a decade. And as economist Pam Woodall has pointed out, China's growth is "real''-the result of real productivity growth

working the fields and struggling to feed his family. The same man was then depicted as a foreman in a village factory, bicycling off now in the morning with an attache case. Finally, the fi lm turned full color, and the former peasant was now a well-groomed executive stepping confidently out of a suburban

rather than rhe funny-money gains of overvalued stock or inflated real estate. (As Woodall puts it, "rising house prices do not .represent an increase in wealth for a country as a whole. They merely redistribute wealth to home-owners from

villa (at the advertised development, of course), waving goodbye to an adoring family before heading to the office in his late-model BMW. Here was, in effect, the creation story of post-Mao China, a rags-to-riches fable celebrating the economic miracle unleashed by Deng Xiaoping in the early 1980s.

non-home-owners who may hope to buy in the furure.")'9 China is also now history's greatest exporter and churns our most of the world's televisions, ste· reos, OVD players, microwave ovens, vacuum cleaners, computer equipment, cameras, photocopiers, laser printers, telephones, tools, home furnishings, shoes, motors, and toys. Of course, just how long China can sustam this breakneck pace of growth is anyone's guess, and a subject of intense debate among

HIE CONCRETE DRAGON

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THE URBANISM OF AMBITION

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economists. Unchecked environmental degradation, rising unemployment, a growing dependence on foreign oil and other resources, and a swollen property market are just some of the many issues that threaten to derail the growth locomotive. None, however, is more menacing to China's internal stability and continued growth than the widening gap between haves and have-nots, both within cities and between regions. Capitalism in the People's Republtc

IS

in a brutally efficient early stage,

largely unfetter~d by unions, workmen's compensation laws, well-enforced environmental regulations, and other inconveniences to capital accumulation. The economic juggernaut has crushed many a soul. While an estimated 300 million Chinese have ~en lifted our of poverty by economic growth in the last quarter century, such blessings have not been spread evenly throughout the nation. China's coastal cities and provinces have been the chief beneficiaries of the surging economy, a coastal swath not unlike the Boston-to-Washington, or "BosWash," corridor along the Atlantic seaboard. Official residents of Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Dalian, and other cities enjoy an average income significantly higher than the national average. In their midst, however, is a vast "floating population" (liudong renkou) of migrant workers who receive few of rhe perks and privileges of full urban cit-

Artost's rendenng. Country Garden houSing estate. Guangdong Prov•nce, 1999.

izenship. The disequilibrium between booming coastal cities and poor inland

COV"TU~

COIJ!I,jTAY GARDEN

provinces has prompted as many as 2.25 million peasants- roughly the population of the United States-co flock ro China's cities in recent years in search of jobs and a better life. In 1998 alone, twenty-seven million rural migrants

gears of China's economic engine, migrant workers are an unappreciated lot.

made their way to China's major metropolitan centers. That equals the sum

They have little or no access to health care, educational opportunities, or good

rota! of all European emigration ro the United States between 1820 and 1920. Even the "Grear Migration" of African Americans from the rural Sourh ro

housing; they are blamed for nearly every social ill and literally live on the margins of society.

northern cities after the Second World War-a demographic shift that helped

Far at the other end of fate's spectrum is rhe self-made millionaire,

shape contemporary American culture- pales in comparison to internal

the folk hero of the new China. This one-rime land of Red Guards and little red

Chinese migration in recent years. Migrant workers in Beijing alone outnumber all the African Americans who migrated to the urban north between 1940

books is churning our more new millionaires than any country in rhe world. In a nation where a bicycle will set you back all of $15, a millionaire has the

and 1970.'0

spending power of a billlonai re in the United States. The legendary exhorta-

How ironic that China's urban revolution is so deeply indebted to the coun-

tion often attributed ro Deng Xiaoping-"to get rich is glorious"-has reha-

tryside. Chinese cities are built by fa rmers. Men from impoverished rural villages put up the posh malls and glittering skyscrapers and six-lane express-

bilitated wealth and affluence in China. Capitalists were once excoriated as "running dogs" of Western imperialism; now they are heaped with encomiums

ways, while rheir sisters and daughters work rhe mills and assembly lines that

and can even join the Communise Parry. On May Day 2005, several such self-

have made China the workshop of rhe world. But even though rhey turn rhe

made millionaires were feted as "model workers" by the Chines~ Communist

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THE URBANISM Or AMBITION

THf CO N CRU £ DRAGO N

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Parry (so was Houston Rockets star Yao Ming, who first thought such awards were for "ordinary people who worked tirelessly ... without asking for anythtng in return," but then allowed that perhaps he was "a special kind of migrant worker").2 ' Like the Hearses, Vanderbilts, and Rockefellers before them, Chma's merchant elite has a penchant for arriviste extravagance. Beijing property mogul Zhang Yuchen, who made a fortune in the 1990s building single-family suburban homes, celebrated his arrival by replicating the Chateau de MaisonsLaffirre on a windswept site north of the Chinese capital. The nouveau chateau was crafted using Fran~ois Mansart's original drawings from 1650 and constructed with the same Chantilly stone, this time shipped halfway across the globe. Unforrun:uely, ~orne Boo peasants raising wheat on the land had to be forcibly evicted lo make way for the trophy house-a particular irony given Zhang's membership in the Communist ParryY Other magnates have built simulacra of Beverly Hills mansions or even the architectural landmarks of American democracy. On the outskirrs of Hangzhou, Chinese tourism tycoon Huang Qiaoling built a

Zhang Yuchen 1n front of h1s replica Ma1sons·Laffltte on lhe outsk1rts of Be111ng. 2004.

$10

million full-scale replica of the White House, complete with a portrait gallery of American presidents, an Oval Office, and a Blue Room. Outside is a miniature Washington Monument, along with a one-third scale ver-

not just a summer house for mom and dad. Architecture students in Shenzhen

sion of Mount Rushmore (quarters for his employees are nearly tucked

in the 1980s helped build that overnight city, working on real commissions

behind). What inspired Huang's building spree was a glossy New Year cal-

alongside their studio assignments. By the 1990s Chinese architects had five

endar of American landmarks that his peasant parents received when he

times the volume of work of their Amencan colleagues, who outnumbered

was a child.

them nonetheless by a factor of ten. This relative scarcity has made Chinese

In

2002

Huang was surprised with a visit from none other

than George W. Bush, who was himself delighted to see a knockoff of the

architects the most influential in the world, if influence be measured by bricks

White House in China. Another tycoon, Li Qinfu, took the Washington trope

and mortar. The great demand for sk.tled designers led to a surge in the num-

a step further by erecting a mini U.S. Capitol in the Shanghai suburbs, the

ber of architecture students in the last decade. Today, architecture ranks with

headquarters of his textile and manufacturing conglomerate. The building is topped with a three-ron statue of Li himself, a former Red Guard, and now one of China's richest men.'~

computer science and economics as one of the most competitive fields of study

China's roaring economy has also enriched professionals in the building,

and architects in China enjoy considerably higher occupational prestige than

design, and development fields

from quantity surveyors and construction

in China; admission to a top-Aight architecture program, say at Tsinghua or Nanjing universities, is statistically equivalent to getting into Harvard or Yale, do their counterparts in the United States.

managers to real estate brokers, architects, engineers, and urban planners. Architects have been especially nimble in riding the zeitgeist of the building

To architects overseas, China ts nothing short of the Holy Grail. Foreign design and planning firms fall all over themselves for a piece of the action,

boom, and many have become fabulously rich in the process. Young architects

and for good reason: the great Chinese building boom has made the skills

still in their rwenties often have several built projects in their portfolios, and

and expertise of design professionals in demand as never before. There are

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THE U llB ANIS M OF' AMBIT IO N

TH E CO N CRETE DR AGO :-.

25

architects and planners from Virgima to California whose previous contact

than human beings

or of simply building too big. A new emphasis on

with rhe Chinese world was limited to rhe local take-out, who now have half

sustainabiliry impels us to rethink the way we make architecture and assem-

a dozen projects on the boards in Shenzhen, Beijing, and Shanghai. This is

ble cines. In short, our values have changed. BU[ with wisdom has also come

not the first rime foreign professionals have helped shaped China's future, of

timidtty. We are a suburban nation in tweedy middle age, cautious and con-

course; Americans and Europeans left a rich legacy of architecture and urban

servative, no longer smitten with audacity. Our architecture and urbanism is

design in China in the first half of the twentieth century. But that early work

retrospective, measured, and sane. We build new towns that look old, shop at

was often related to missionary or philanthropic endeavors, or commisstoned

Restoratton Hardware and bury-like the Central Artery- the very icons of

by foreign companies busily exploiting China. Today, foreign architects build

modernity we once celebrated. In America today, the notion of penning verse to a piece of infrastructure ts a little laughable. Just as it once crossed the

in China at China's pleasure, and save for a handful of global superstars Koolhaas, Foster, Herzog & de Meuron, and the like

rhcy may well soon

find themselves displaced by twenty-something Chinese kids. There is a bewitching consonance between the American urban experience and the transfigurauon of China's cities today. Chtna's drive, energy, and ambition

its hunger to be powerful and prosperous, to be a player

on the global stage

is more than a little reminiscent of America in its

youth. Henry James's descriptions of lower Manhattan in 1904 -of the "multitudinous sky-scrapers standing up to the view, from the water, like extravagant pins in a cushion already overplanted" Shanghai's Pudong District

today.• 6

could well describe

We gazed in wonder ar promise-

filled miniature metropoles like Norman Bel Geddes's Futurama exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair, just as Chinese today pore over spectacular models of tthe Shanghai- or Beijing-to-be. We were China once, and Europe was us. In spirit at least, China is like the United States of a century ago

punch-drunk with possibility, pumped and reckless and on the

move. Americans invenred the modern metropolis, and the world looked to us with wonder. It was on the blustery shores of Lake Michigan that the modern office tower was born, in the wake of the Great Chicago Fire, and in New York that the skyscraper city achieved its finest early form. We wrote poems once to our bridges and roads. We dreamed, like Moses King or Hugh Ferriss, of cities studded with impossible towers and airborne streets. Given wheels by Henry Ford, we scarrered across the landscape and created a new kind of semiciry in places like Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, and Phoenix. Of course, much of this ended badly. We got urban renewal and lost our past; we got the Cross Bronx Expressway and lost our homes. But the West End and the South Bronx did not die in vain. We are older and wiser now, more responsible, aware of the problems of building for automobiles rather

Atlantic, the urbanism of ::unbirion has crossed the Pacific; Hart Crane has gone to Chtna.

CHA P TER ONE

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Thunder from the South

The south China city of Shenzhen has an official theme song. one that captures the spirit of the place as fully as Frank Sinatra's paean to the Big Apple, "f\.ew York, New York." It has an unlikely ride- "Story of Springtime" (Chun Taan De Gu Shi). Written by Jiang Kairu and composer Wang Yougui, the piece was originaJJy recorded by a popular People's Liberation Army vocalist named Dong Wenhua, who belts out the lyrics against a mighry choral backdrop reminiscent of Maoist anthems from rhe Cultural Revolution: '"In the spring of 1979 An old man drew a circle On the southern coast of China And ciry after ciry rose up like fairy tales I And mountains and mountains of gold I Gathered like a miracle."• "Story of Springtime" played over and over in south China in the 1990s, on the radio and TV and in pubs and bars; it even became a popular song for visiting foreigners to learn for their obligatory turns at the karaoke microphone. And though it sounds much like a Communist anthem, "Story of Springtime" celebrates a revolution of a very different sort

the miracu-

lous economic growth unleashed by Deng Xiaoping that, in a few short years, made good at last Napoleon's hoary dacrum-"When China wak-es, the world will tremble." And tremble it has, to the incessant drumbeat of pile drivers and Jack-hammers. In effect, "Story of Springtime" became the overture to a spectacular production

the greatest bualding boom in history. Thas production

stirred to life in south China, and Shenzhen was ground zero. It was actually on December 13, 1978- rwo years, three months, and four days after the death of Mao Zedong- rhar Deng Xiaoping drew that circle around south China, after which "city after city rose up like fairy tales." That day the Chinese premier delivered a speech ro the closing session of the Chinese Communast Parry's Central Work Conference, which had dragged on Deng X•aop'"g ~•II board. Shenzhen. •999. PHOtO ey •UlHOfl

ZB

T H E CO N CRETE DRAGON

29

THU N DER FROM THE SOUTH

now for more than a month. In it he outlined, among other things, a program of policy reform calling for the decentralization of economic activity to provincial and local authorities and- more radically- to rural and village collectives and work-unit enterprises, even to individual laborers and farmers.' A "responsibility system" should be adopted to reward productivity and create incentive for effort and innovation; rather than receive the usual "iron ricebowl" handouts from the state, Deng thought people should be encouraged to "vie with one another to become advanced ... working hard and aiming high." He realized such competition would put some ahead of others, creating inequality. But Deng also understood that this itself would act as a powerful incentive: "Allowing some regions and enterprises and some workers ~nd peasants to earn more and become better off before others, in accordance with their hard work and greater contributions to society," he argued, "will inevitably be an impressive example to their 'neighbors,' and people in other regions and units will want to learn from the them. This will help the whole national economy to advance wave upon wave."3

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The speech, and the weeks of debate and discussion leading up to it, effectively pur China on a trajectory of economic renewal and rebirth. As Jiang

~~~--

Map of the Pearl Rover Della. CO\JRTESv or JOHO..AP$.COM

Zemin later described it, rhe speech was a "declarattion for charting a new course," one that forged a "new theory of building socialism wirh Chinese char-

the way a promising but potentially deadly new source of energy might be first

acteristics."• The phrase stuck, and came to denote the unique blend of social-

tested safely distant from the laboratory and its staff. But there were other fac-

ism and free-market capitalism that enabled China ro transform its economy

tors, related to both geography and history, that made Guangdong ideal for

without "shock therapy" and the kind of socioeconomic chaos that followed the

a vanguard role in China's liberalization drive. Guangdong-a vast province

fall of the Soviet Union. At the Third Plenum of the mh Parry Congress, which

equal in size to many nations-is culturally different from the rest of China,

convened a few days after the Work Conference, Deng's proposed reforms were

almost a Cantonese-speaking subnation whose lan~uage, customs, and kin-

reviewed and approved. Bureaucracy aside, these meetings were of momen-

ship networks have more in common with Hong Kong and Southeast Asia than

tous historical significance and have been described as "the forry-one days

most of the People's Republic.

a new era of Chinese engage-

Historically, the remoteness of the province, its sheer physical distance

ment with the global community, setting in motion an era of development that would soon make China the fastest-growing economy on earth.

from the various seats of imperial authority over the cenruries- Chang'an,

Deng Xiaoping thus opened China's door to the world, but not the front

Guangdong people. Far from the imperial cats, the mice could safely play; or

door, with red carpet and concierge; it was really the nation's back door tlhar he

as an old south China adage puts it, "the mountains are tall and the emperor

left unlatched. Though the economic reforms came from Beijing, the nation's capital, they were effectively field-tested far from the center of power, in China's

is far away." It was in Guangdong, after all, that the Chinese forcefully resisted

that changed the fare

of China."5 They launched

Hangzhou, Nanjing, Beijing- had bred a fierce spirit of independence in rhe

British opium trafficking, leading to the First Opium War in 1840. This in turn

southernmost, semitropical Guangdong Province- specifically that parr

helped seed the Taiping Rebellion, which also stirred to life in Guangdong a

centered about the Pearl River and irs water-laced delta. This was done much

decade later, largely among the ethnic Hakka people led by Huadu narive Hong

30

T H E CONCRETE OR AGO N

THU N DER FRO M T HE SOUTH

31

Xiuquan. Hong came to believe that he was the younger brother ofJesus Christ,

oriented to defending their own interests."• This spirit remained alive through

destined to found a utopian "heavenly kingdom" in China. In fact, the ven-

the Communist era and even the Cultural Revolution. An annua trade exhi-

ture ended badly, with some twenty million people killed by the time Hong's

bition

the Canton Fair- was launched in Guangzhou in 1957 and is still

army was defeated near Shanghai (by a Yankee adventurer named Frederick

going strong. Known today as the Chinese Export Commodities Fair, it was

Townsend Ward). 6 It was around then, back in the Pearl River Delta town

for years rhe only officially sanctioned opportunity for foreign trade with the

Cuiheng, that Sun Yat-sen was born; he would later lead a successful revolu-

People's Republic. The Cantonese have often been compared to the Jews of Europe; skilled

tion against rhe Qing Dynasry and establish rhe Chinese Republic in 19ll. Guangdong has also long looked outward to the larger world, its people among the earliest in China to trade with "foreign barbarians" from the

civil unrest in the region have forced millions to find new lives elsewhere over

West

rhe years

an activiry that was, again, tolerated by imperial authorities because

distance and geography insulated the throne from the alien interlopers.

traders and merchants, they are also a diasporic people. Famine, Aoods, and throughout Southeast Asia, in Hong Kong, and in the United

States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. A large percentage of

Guangdong's minglings with the outside world began as early as the Han

Chinese Americans trace their roots to Guangdong Province, which is one rea-

Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), when Arab traders journeyed to the region in search of spices prized for preserving food.7 Physical access was easy; the Pearl

son the Chinese cuisine most familiar to Americans is Cantonese. Many of

River Delta's dendritic drainage system provided a network of navigable water-

ing home money and stories of life abroad. This yielded a vast kinship net-

ways from the South China Sea deep into the region's hinterland. By the end of

work connecting Guangdong to the prosperous Chinese diaspora around the

the Tang Dynasry (AD 618-907), trade routes connecting the Pearl River Delta with Southeast Asia and the Middle East were well in place.e

world-another factor that gave the region an enormous competitive advan-

The first Europeans on the scene were the Portuguese, who secured permission to establish a settlement at Macau in 1557

these migrants maintained close ties to kith and kin in the old country, send-

tage in the reform era, making it the best launch pad for China's economic reform and "opening up" (gaigt kaifong) to rhe greater world. "The homeland

a toehold they would maintain

of an international network of overseas Chinese," writes Mihai Craciun, "the

until1999. By 1699, the British had set up a trading base at Guangzhou (anglicized as Canton), the provincial capital. From the 1760s until the First Opium

Pearl River Delta could provide the foreign capital needed to fuel open-door economic reform while the region's mercantile background could serve as the

War, Guangzhou was the only Chinese port open to foreign traders. Then in

foundation of a new socialist market economy."•o Thus did Beijing officialdom,

1841, the Union Jack was raised on the sparsely populated island of Hong Kong

from over the mountains and far away, allow Guangdong "to walk one step

just off China's southern coast. Famously dismissed as a " barren rock," Hong

ahead" of China, and strike a path toward reform. The economic giant that now stirred to life soon made its mark upon the

Kong grew steadily and was soon siphoning away trade and commerce from Guangzhou. The economic geography of the Pearl River Delta gradually tilted

landscape. Given the vast urbanization that the post-Mao economic reforms

in Hong Kong's favor, eventually making this dinanr outpost Britannia's most

set into motion, it is odd that the earliest and most visible physical transfor-

lucrative colonial possession. The ultimate entrepot, Hong Kong flourished as

mations did not occur in cities, but in the countryside around Shenzhen and

a broker of trade and commerce with the Chinese mainland. It was both the world's window into China and China's portal ro the world-a legacy that was

Guangzhou and nearby towns throughout the Pearl River Delta-Dongguan, Jiangmen, Foshan, Nansha, Zhongshan, and others. This was largely the

foremost in Deng Xiaoping's mind when he mapped our a strategy for China's economic liberalization.

result of an early reform-era economic experiment known as the "Household

Centuries of engagement with the outside world rhus gave the Cantonese

Responsibility System," introduced to boost agricultural production and increase peasant income. Farm families were allotted land and required to meet

a flair for trade and commerce and a reputation as "worldly men of affairs,

a certain production quota, but after this they were allowed to sell what they

shrewd bargainers, knowledgeable in technology, frank in criticism,

could on the open market. This incentive system dramatically increased the

32

THUNDER F"ROM THE SOUTH

THE CONCRETE DRAGON

33

efficiency and yield of agricultural production, culminating in a great bumper harvest in 1984. As supplies of meat and produce increased, commodity prices fell, and food became more plentiful than it had been in decades. Farmers prospered, especially those whose land was close to big city markets. Peasants, paradoxically. were thus among the first in Guangdong co gee rich, and they soon acquired the coveted trio of household appliances- refrigerator, washing machine, and television set. The farmers also built new homes, roomy two- and three-story peasant villas often proudly emblazoned with their year of construction. Such new development was so extensive on the outskirts of Guangzhou chat entire rural farming villages went through a process of in situ urbanization within a few shore years. gaining many of the amenities, institutions. and even cultural practices usually associated with city life.•• By 2000, farmers in Shenzhen were reaping a per capita annual income of nearly 1o,ooo yuan, about four times the national per capita annual income of rural families. •J The household responsibility system was followed by policy encouraging the development

Shennan Boulevard 1n Shenzhen, lookma west, 1982. ••orouR••H ev JJA~G '"·o•o

of "township and village enterprises." The ensuing grassroots entrepreneurial ism had, by the early 1990s, become one of the main drivers of economic growth in China and the engine of a regional development phenomenon that

Province; Shanghai (a provincial-level city); Nantong and Lianyungang in

would turn the rice fields and banana groves of the Pearl River Delta into the

Jiangsu Province; Qingdao and Yanrai in Shandong Province; Tianjin (also a

workshop of the world.

provincial-level city); Qinhuangdao in Hebei Province; and Dalian in Liaoning

It was only after the successful implementation of rural and village-level

Province, not far from the North Korean border.'4 Nearly all of these cities were

reforms that similar policies were developed for China's cities. In the summer

former "treaty ports" conceded to Britain, Japan, and an alliance of Western

of 1980, legislation based on an initiative Deng Xiaoping made the previous

powers in a series of"unequal treaties" following the Opium Wars (Shanghai,

year-"Provisional Regulations on Promoting Economic Cooperation"

autho-

Fuzhou, Xiamen, Guangzhou, and Ningbo were the first, established by the

rized "special economic zones" in several Chinese cities. The first four zones, or

Treaty of Nanking in 1842). The chief purpose of the treaty ports was to make

"SEZS," as they came to be known in English, were in southern China: three in

it easier for outsiders to extract China's wealth, hence their coastal location. By

Guangdong Province and one in Fujian Province just to the north. Shenzhen, the first, was then still a small agricultural city just over the border from Hong

definition oriented to the outside world, the treaty ports soon shifted China's economic locus to the sea.•5

Kong's New Territories. There was also Zhuhai, a small city across the border

Though forced open by the West, the treaty ports also worked in reverse;

from Macau; Shantou, farther north along the coast in Guangdong; and the

that is, rhey came to play a seminal role in China's modernization, especially

old Fujian port city Xiamen, once known as Amoy. Four years later the special economic zones were joined by Hainan Island (Iacer granted full provin-

in the 1920s and 1930s (and nowhere more powerfully than in Shanghai). Leveraging this historical function, Dcng Xiaoping turned the treaty ports

cial status in 1988) and fourteen "coastal open cities," including (from south to

inside out; che old outposts of foreign exploitation would now be agents of

north) Beihai in Guangxi Province; Zhangjiang and Guangzhou in Guangdong

Chinese renewal, fuel injectors of foreign capital that would prime China's eco-

Province; Fuzhou in Fujian Province; Wenzhou and Ningbo in Zhejiang

nomic engines. The act was rich with symbolism: China had fully transcended

THE CONCRETE DRAGON

34

THUNDER FRO M THE SOUTH

35

the humiliations of rhe past; trade and commerce would now rake place on

it become a mainland version of the freewheeling capitalist emrepot. This was

irs terms. But the open cities and special economic zones were much more than retro-

of course the very reason Deng had tapped the former fishing vi. ~ge for such weighty duty- and also the very same reason Mao largely spurned the area

fitted treaty ports. Because Mao had isolated the People's Republic from most

during the Cultural Revolution, making Shenzhen part of a "political defense

of the globe-eventually even from its onetime Socialist mentor, the Soviet

frontier," the very antithesis of an open economic zone. During the Cultural

Union- China had fallen far behind the developed world. By the 1970s it

Revolution, Red Guard youth even staged demonstrations along the Shenzhen

lacked even basic technologies and expertise. The special economic zones and

River to incite their capitalist brethren and carry the spark of revolution to

open cities were intended to remedy this, to serve as portals through which capital, ideas, and technology from overseas could be filtered and selectively

HongKong.'8 As China's door opened wider, the once-right border became increasingly

admitted. As Ezra Vogel has put it, the SEZS were meant to be "laboratories

permeable. More and more people began moving between Hong Kong and

for the contained unleashing of capitalism," experimental zones where deter-

Shenzhen. In the 1970s only a handful of Hong Kong residents crossed each

minations could be made about "which Western practices were most suit-

year into Shenzhen. By the late 1980s more than ten million people a year were

able for China." The cream of the world would be skimmed here and passed

making the trip, the vast majority of whom were Hong Kong residents visit-

on to the rest of the nation, while anything deemed morally corruptive would

ing mainland family in ancestral villages, particularly during the Qingming

be rejected. Like Guangdong itself, the initial set of SEZS were sufficiently

Festival and Lunar New Year holiday. The border crossers were agents of

removed from the seat of power in Beijing to make such experimentation safe;

modernization; they carried to their poor China relatives television sets, ste-

if a cultural "virus" got in, so to speak, the zones could be effectively sealed off

reos, kitchen appliances, Canropop cassettes. Along with the material goods

8

came also new tastes, new values, and new ideas. With these incursions and

and quarantined.' Of course, this was of little interest to most foreign investors; what lured

a steady influx of foreign capital, the once-quiet border village (known best

them in droves was the host of inducements available only in the economic

for seafood and lychee fruit) became a raging boomtown. In its first five years

zones-reduced land-use fees, capital gains and income tax concessions, turn-

as a special economic zone, Shenzheo's industrial output rose from sixty mil-

key factory sites, simplified customs and immigration procedures, and a gener-

lion yuan to more than 2.5 billion yuan, while irs total GDP jumped from 270

ally streamlined bureaucracy. Labor was plentiful and cheap, and nearby Hong

million yuan in 1980 to 79.6 billion yuan in 1995.'9 Per capita GDP also rose

Kong and Macau offered easy access to global markets, technology. and infor-

dramatically, from 6o6 yuan in 1979 to 23,381 yuan in 1995. making Shenzhen

mation. Foreign investors who had been cautiously circling China ever since

one of China's most affluent cities. Population soared as well. The old town of Shenzh.en was home to 27,366

Richard Nixon's epochal visit in 1972 now had a place to land. Capital began flowing into China, merely trickling at first, then up to 54 billion in annual

people in 1978. Even counting the adjacent rural districts that would larer

actual investments in 1991, and surging to $41 billion by 2000. Guangdong

become part of the SEZ and extended metropolitan area, Shenzhen still had a

never lost its early lead; between 1986 and 1999 the province accounted for

population of only 68,166- making it roughly rhe size of Chapel Hill, North

fully 28 percent of all foreign direct investment in China.'7 All of the new economic incubators were successful, bur none more so than

Carolina, today. Seven years Later the population of the greater Shenzhen met-

Shenzhen. Of the four originall SEZS, Shenzhen enjoyed competitive advan-

mid-1990s and seven million by 2000. 20 In April.wo6 Shenzhen's population

tages that made it the darling of the reform era. Not only was Shenzhen phys-

ropolitan area broke the one-million mark; it clocked in at four million by the

ically larger than any of the other zones, but its proximity to Hong Kong was

was reported robe 8.27 million, putting it ahead of New York City. Shenzhen effectively grew from a Chapel Hill to the Bmg Apple in less rhan a genera-

lightning in a jar; it had at its !fingertips a wealth of world-class technology,

tion-a pac.e of growth we haven't seen in North America since Chicago in the

managerial expertise, market capital, and kinship networks that would help

nineteenth century. Shenzhen's spatial growth has been just as astonishing.

THE CO N CRE TE D RA GO N

THU N DER FRO M THE SOUTH

The special economic zone, officially designated a ciry in rhe 1990s. today occupies some 772 square miles of land, more than 6oo rimes the size it was in the 1980s.••

christened "Shenzhen tempo." It is only appropriate that another Shenzhen rower, the s ixry-seven-s rory Land King (Diwang) Tower would shatter rhe record. Workers on Land King completed a floor every rwo and a half days in the mid-1990s, thanks in part to an additive that made the concrete

31

The transition from fishing village ro metropolis also meant a cataclysm of construction: between 1982 and 1996 Shenzhen erected more than 6oo major buildings, dramatically altering the local landscape in the process. ' 2 It was the

37

cure faster.

• • •

People's Liberation Army, ironically, rhar helped do much of this first-round construction. In the early 1980s the Army Engineer Corps was still helping rebuild Tangshan in north China after an earthquake leveled the ciry in 1976

By rhe early 1990s, the Trade Center's rotating aerie provided a stunning

(at the rime this was the largest urban consrrucrion effort in China). As that

introduction to the vast work-in-progress that was Shenzhen. I will never

work wound down, some 20,000 Corps officers and soldiers were transferred to Shenzhen to assist wirh public works in the nascent SEZ. These men and women formed the core of Shenzhen's civil engineering staff, and with demo-

forger peering out the restaurant's windows on a steamy afternoon in June 1992, one of the first stops on my first visit to the People's Republic. I was one of a group of rather cocksure MIT and Harvard urban planning students on our way to Beijing, and local officials had taken us to lunch. By the time we

bilization in 1983 many rook jobs as foremen and project managers in the more than a hundred construction companies operating in the SEZ at the time.<J One of the buildings that former Corps personnel helped erect was the International Foreign Trade Center, Shenzhen's first skyscraper and, when it was completed in 1985, the tallest building in China. The rower was topped by an architectural cunosiry first seen in Seattle at the 1964 World's Fair a revolving rooftop restaurant. By the 1970s, the rotating restaurant had become the sine qua non symbol of urban progress and prosperiry in the United States- a "must-have weapon in the civic arsenal of every latter-day Babbitt," as Tom Vanderbilt pur ir.•• Now the rotating restaurant was embraced in China, and for much the same reason; well into the 1990s, a skyscraper topped with a revolving restaurant was essenrial for every mayor on the make, a perch from which the unfolding metamorphosis on the streets below might be shown proudly to YIPs and foreign guests. In the early reform era, foreign trends and practices often made their way to China via Hong Kong, and this is precisely what happened with the revolving-restaurant craze. Shenzhen's Foreign Trade Center was modeled after an earlier structure in

sat down to eat, most of us had been awed into silence; we had stolen a furtive glimpse into the birch chamber of a new age. As the restaurant moved steadily through its orbit, it revealed scenes worthy of a Ridley Scott film. Bright red upturned earrh was being dug and hauled and piled at hundreds of construction sites. Larval buildings rose all around us, each wrapped in a cocoon-like husk of bamboo scaffolding (the hand-tied sticks are still used to erect even the most modern buildings in south China). In the middle distance, clusters of new buildings were etched against a pastoral scene of oxen and rice paddies- perhaps unchanged for hundreds of years. Farther away on the horizon, mountains bore bright quarry scars where hillsides were literally being blown apart to provide fill for lowland building sites. The explosions reverberated across the landscape all day, and often well into the night. Only several months before we came to Shenzhen, a more illustrious visitor had surveyed rhe ciry from the same aerie- Deng Xiaoping. His visit to the rotating restaurant was one of the storied stops on a trip that changed Chinese history. From the Trade Center lookout on January 19, 1992, Deng effectively

Hong Kong-Gordon Wu's sixty-six-story Hopewell Centre, completed in

gave his blessing ro Shenzheo, refreshing the city's commitment to leading

1980 and for a time the queen of the Hong Kong skyline. The building type rapidly replicated throughout China over the next decade or so first to Shenzhen, then Guangzhou (Garden Hotel), Beijing (Beijing International Hotel), and elsewhere. Even more famous than its revolving cap was the speed at which the Foreign Trade Center was erected: one floor every rhree days, soon

China into a free-market future. It was two weeks before the start of the Lunar New Year Festival. An auspicious eighty-eight years old (in Chinese, "eight" is homophonous with the word for wealth or prosperiry) and officially retired, Deng then held no formal position or title; the trip could well have been an old man's last holiday sojourn. But, of course, he was still the most powerful man

31

THUNDER FROM THt SOUT H

from an even more reactionary cohort that blamed him for having helpedhowever inadvertently

bring about rhe protests. More iro 'c still is that

Oeng would go to the Chinese people for support. Not 'lurprisingly, he went where people had most benefited from his reforms

south China, especially

Shenzhen. By the early 1990s, Shenzhen was more a sensation than a city, already one of the most prosperous cities in China. Shenzhen was the flagship of China's post-Mao economic revolution, poster child of Deng's vision of an affluent, modern, competitive, globally engaged People's Republic. This was well understood by the city's residents, to whom Deng Xiaopmg was no disenfranchised octogenarian but a patron saint, a god of wealth whose golden sheen couJd never be tarnished. The return of this city-god, at the start of the Year of the Monkey, was auspicious indeed. It was doubly so for reasons that reach deep into China's imperial past. When word got out of Deng's intended sojourn, it was immediately compared to the celebrated tours- known as Toppong-oul ceremony. lnternahonal For.,gn Trade Center. Shenzhen, September 4, og84

tion journeys,"

nnnxcm,

or "southern inspec-

undertaken over the course of a century by the Emperors

Kangxi and Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty. The first of Kangxi's six southin China, the nat ion's de facto paramount leader. A mumbled word from the

ern rours began in the fall of 1684, and his imperial grandson Qianlong continued rhe tradition by undertaking six journeys of his own, the last of which

Little Helmsman could make markets rise or fall, sending shockwaves around

was in 1784.• The inspection tours were nominally administrative, enabling

the globe. And now Deng had a lot to say. His month-long t rip, to Shenzhen

the emperors to oversee key hydraulic works, but they also clearly had a polit-

and several other cities in south China, was no idle junker but a cool political

ical purpose and were meant ro strengthen the emperors' power throughout

move, one meant to rehabilitate his standing in China, solidify his power base,

the realm. The emperors' subjects thought rhe tiAilXIm brought fortune and

and make sure that his economic reforms

the blessings of heaven. All along the imperial route, cities and towns were

and his legacy-were not thwarted

by events and actors beyond his control.

decked out in splendor in anticipation of rhe Son of Heaven. The scenes were

Deng Xiaoping had already survived several purgings in his extraordi-

captured in magnificent scroll paintings produced for each tour. ' 0 With a Lirde

nary career, but his handling of the Tiananmen Square protests-and the sub-

imagination, the scrolls might well convey the spirit and atmosphere of Deng

sequent bloodbath-nearly finished him politically. Leftist hardliners, none roo pleased with the radical changes he had made over the years, seized on

Xiaoping's arrival in Shenzhen on his latter-day ttmiXIIIl. As a political strategy. Deng Xiaoping's na11.X11n worked like a charm. Deng's

Tiananmen as proof that the old man was no longer fit to lead. Not satisfied

enemies miscalculated how highly regarded the man was among the people, in

with his resignation as premier in the weeks after June 4• 1989, Deng's politi-

southern China especially. Here was a man who had already lifted hundreds

cal enemies moved to roll back his reform agenda, which they felt encouraged

of millions out of poverty-more than any nation or leader had done before.

social unrest and a new willingness among the Chinese people to voice their dissansfaction with the Communist leadership.

To the Chinese people, Deng was a hero whose standing was undiminished even by the catastrophe ofTiananmen. It soon became clear that reversing

How ironic that this man, responsible for a massacre of students and work-

Deng's economic reform agenda was nor an option, especially c •nsidering that

ers at Tiananmen just three years earlier, would now be defending his legacy

he also enjoyed the allegiance of the People's Liberation Army. The hardliners

40

THE CONCRETE DR AGON

THUNDER FRO M THE SOUTH

began to backpedal. A news blackout on Deng's travels was lifted, and word

landscape a "sprawl of cheaply constructed factories and worker dormitories"

quickly spread of the new nanxun. On March 26, while the Nanona I People's Congress was meeting in Beijing, a Shenzhen newspaper ran a flattering frontpage feature on Deng's sojourn, entitled "An Eastern Wind Brings Spring-

where wages were lower and industrial accidents far more freque 1t.211 As more and more newcomers flooded into Shenzhen, native people became minorities in their own home. But many locals also became rich as a result

Reports on Comrade Deng Xiaoping in Shenzhen City." The article was reprinted widely, and the state television station, CCTV, broadcast excerpts

of Shenzhen's rapid metamorphosis. Because t he ciry grew so quickly, entire villages in the surrounding countryside were soon engulfed by Shenzhen's

to a nationwide audience. Nearly everything Deng said on the trip, including homey anecdotes and off-the-cuff comments, was eventually published in a series of special "red banner" documents (hong tou wenjie) and added to the

expanding footprint. Nevertheless, the villages were still sitting on land officially designated as "rural." While the government could easily condemn the farmland that once sustained such communities, the villages themselves

already large body of"Deng Xiaoping thought.''Z7

with aJI their houses, shops, markets, schools, and other improvements- were much more costly to condemn, as villagers had to be compensated fairly for all improvements. As a result, Shenzhen grew around and about these nucleated villages, leaving them marooned in a fast-rising urban sea. Their rural livelihoods gone, the villagers embarked on a process of urbanization themselves. They tore down the old one-story farmhouses and built taller and taller tene-

All told, the Little Helmsman's legacy was not only preserved, it was kicked into overdrive. China's economy had been growing steadily since the early 1980s at a pace three times the world average. But the nanxun sparked a new surge of economic activity throughout the Pearl River Delta and propelled China into one of the greatest periods of sustained economic growth the world has ever seen. China's gross domestic product jumped an astonishing 14 percent in 1992 and enjoyed double-digit growth for several years to come. Deng

ments, which they rented out at rates far below those in the city proper. By 2000 there were some 240 so-called urban villages (cheng zhong cun)

Xiaoping's nanxun was a threshold moment in the shaping of contemporary China.••

in Shenzhen, encompassing more than sixteen square miles of the city and accommodating a population of more than two million people.30 Village urban-

Explosive growth in Shenzhen drew people from far and wide. Ambitious strivers from all over the People's Republic flocked to the "overnight city" in

ization has not only enriched village residents but has also been a major source of affordable housing for the migrant labor force- in Shenzhen and many

search of jobs and career opportunities available nowhere else in the People's Republic. Shenzhen became the New York of China: if you can make it there, you might well make it anywhere. Like the typical New Yorker, most Shenzhen

other cities. Any effort to get rid of these villages- and there have been numerous arrempts by municipalities in recent years- will also have to make up for the lost low-cost housing. Shenzhen's urban villages are nor without problems, and have been much criticized as unsafe, overcrowded warrens where building

denizens were from someplace else. Migrant laborers, especiaiJy, rushed to the upstart city, and today make up more than So percent of Shenzhen's population, more than in any other major Chinese city. The special economic zone drew so many economic migrants that the government decided to physically cordon it off from the rest of Shenzhen and neighboring Bao'an County. The new barrier bifurcated the geography of the region, literally and fig-

and health codes are routinely disregarded. They have also become havens for crime and prostitution, and in this respect are more than a little reminiscent of Hong Kong's infamous Kowloon Walled City, one of the densest slums in the world by the rime it was demolished in 1993 and "the closest thing," one critic argued, "to a truly self-regulating, self-sufficient, self-determining modern city

uratively, and in the end proved counterproductive; as costs escalated within

that has ever been built."J•

the fence, factories simply set up just beyond, where land was cheaper and laws more lax. "The Shenzhen area became divided into two worlds," writes Peter Hessler, "which were described by residents as guannei and gucrnwai'within the gates' and 'beyond the gates"' phrases used long ago to describe

The controlled anarchy of the urban villages contrasts vividly with the order and discipline that has characterized Shenzhen's development in recent years. As China's vanguard experiment in urban modernization, Shenzhen quickly became a kind of laboratory where a number of bold iniuatives in land

the Great Wall. Outside the gates, life was more dangerous and difficult, the

management and urban planning were first launched. It was in Shenzhen

42

TH E CO N CRETE D R AGO N

THU N DER FRO M 1 H l

SOUT H

43

that the formation of a residential property market was first tested in China,

Complicating the planning process was another signal innovation of the

and there that the first extensive commodity housing was built, largely by

special economic zones- a land tenure system that separated land-use rights

experienced pnvare developers from Hong Kong. By 1995, these builder:; were

from land ownership. Prior co reform, all land in China was "administratively

supplying nearly half the coral housing stock in Shenzhen.

allocated" rousers by the central government free ofcharge. Now foreign inves-

1'

Shenzhen was also che beneficiary of extensive urban planning, and was

tors could lease the righe to use a parcel of land for a specified period of time

developed according co a comprehensive master plan for infrastructure and

(usually between forty and seventy years). They held no title co the property

utilities.J3 Urban planning activity actually began a year before che special eco-

in a fee-simple sense- an China all land is still owned by the state· but were

nomic zone was created, in the Shekou Industrial Zone, bur was later carried out by the planning department of the quasi-governmental Shenzhen SEZ

granted comforting new legal assurances char the land would nor be arbitrarily taken away. Shenzhen was the stte of the first property auction in the People's

Construction Company. This agency created both a land-use master plan and

Republic when, on December 1, 1987, use rights to a parcel of land were sold for

more detailed layout plans for districts charted for development in che master plan. The aim of urban planning at Shenzhen was as simple as it was vision-

residential developmenr.J7 Thus safely tested in the SEZ "laboratory," the new land tenure system

ary: co create a "perfect environment for investment." From the scare, how-

became national policy in 1988.38 Only five lots were sold in 1987; within a

ever, planning Shenzhen was more a game of catch-up chan course setting. The

decade the national number of land transactions was up to 105,473·39 All this

planning process, by nature sluggish and cumbersome, simply could not keep pace with the maelstrom of development; scare-of-the-art plans, reflecting the

Yeh, creating a virtual real estate market in which land-use rights, rather than

"opened a new era of lawful urban land transactions" in China, writes Anthony

in pur of the most skilled planning professionals in the country, were obsolete within months.

fee-simple property, could be bought and sold. The system allowed Beijing to

Moreover, master plans had no legal teeth at the rime; "any proposal for

proprietary interest in the land itself. The sale of land rights also enables cit-

have its cake and ear it, too; it would profit from the leases, yet never relinquish

development not conforming co the master plan," writes Anthony G. 0. Yeh,

ies "to capture revenue from land which, in turn, can be used to develop infra-

had robe dealt with "mainly by persuasion." In other words, lack of enforce-

structure to enhance land value"•' elsewhere. This self-seeding system, where

ment mechanisms meant chat there was nothing co assure char development

land development breeds more land development, is known as yi di yang di-

would progress as planned. A variety of forces quickly altered whatever vision

and is one of the principal drivers of urban sprawl (explored in Chapter 7,

was puc co paper. In the early 198os, for example. a Hong Kong real estate

"Suburbani2arion and the Mechanics of Sprawl"). Put more accurately, China

company took an interest in developing Shenzhen's Furian District and relayed char interest to authorities in Beijing; Beijing in turn forced che Shenzhen

has a dual land market, with both administratively allocated land meted out

planning department to adjust irs population cap for Futian ro accommodate

taxed by local municipalities.•,

under the old system and land leased to developers in exchange for a fee and

the new project. •• But more chan any other influence it was simply the rapid growth of the ciry chat forced plans to be "cons candy modified, adjusted and

• * *

substantiated," making the act of planning in Shenzhen analogous ro sweeping leaves in a hurricane.H Impotent in the face of a raging marketplace,

As the Shenzhen miracle spread throughout the Pearl River Deha, a new par-

planners were largely relegated to a nursemaid role. As Mihai Craciun has

tern of regional urban development began ro take shape. Instead of concen-

puc it, "the confrontation between market and planning consistendy canceled any obvious continuity between coday's realities and tomorrow's goals: it humiliated vision." 16

trating in existing urban pockets, development sprawled across the once-rural landscape, largely following an expanding regional network of roads and highways. Unlike later limited-access expressways with spe~o:ific points of

45

THE CO N CRE T E DRAGO N

THUNDER FROM THE SOUTH

egress, most of these early roads stimulated a continuous band ofdevelopment,

limited-access motorways in China, the expressway has been a catalyst for extensive development in the eastern half of the Pearl River D ·ta since its

""

"corridor urbanization," along their routes. Just as the railroads were a kind of "metropolitan corridor" in nineteenth-century America, extending city ways into the hinterland, the delta highways carried a variety of urban spatial forms and socioeconomic practices deep into the countryside. 42 Corridal dev~lopment, oriented to the asphalt arterials, also created a kind of "town-village blending" (chengxiang yitihua) that blurred traditional boundaries between hinterland communities. • Once a new road was completed, or simply widened or otherwise upgraded, land all along its flanks developed rapidly into a hodgepodge of roadside retail and commercial uses a sinofied 3

opening in July 1994. The road was built by Hong Kong engineer and property baron Gordon Wu, who recognized that the future of both Hong Kong and the greater delta region depended on an efficient conduit from the mainland border and Shenzhen north to Guangzhou. The Guangzhou-Shenzhen Expressway is today the jugular of China's most economtcally vital region, a mainline arterial analogous in many respects to Interstate 95 along the Boston-to-Washington (BosWash) corridor in the northeastern United States. Indeed Gordon Wu modeled the Guangzhou-Shenzhen Expressway on part of 1-95

the New

version of the American highway "strip." The motorways acted like freshets of water flowing across a once-dry field, causing urban seeds to sprout along the way. Throughout the Pearl River Delta, ancient villages can be seen peering from behind the new roadside development. The contrast between the twO

Jersey Turnpike. Just as the New Jersey Turnpike set into motion the mechanics of suburban sprawl that would reconfigure New Jersey's pastoral landscape, the Guangzhou-Shenzhen Expressway stimulated extensive, low-density indus-

spaces is striking: the densely packed, centuries-old gray brick dwellings of the village, with an entrance often still marked by a colorful ceremonial arch (pailou), now cringing behind a rampart of neon-lit, white-tiled buildings of

trial, commercial, and residential development in towns and cities all along its route. Wu expected this and positioned himself to capture some of the eco-

the new commercial strip. Of course, the Pearl River Delta is not the only region that has seen its economic geography reshuffled by roads. When the 171-mile Huning Expressway

interchanges, where he planned to build ingenious multilevel shopping malls tucked under the on- and off-ramps of the interchanges themselves. The malls

nomic benefits. He retained ptions to develop each of the expressway's many

was completed between Nanjing and Shanghai in 1996, the long-dormant city Changzhou regained overnight the economic potency it once had as a way sta-

were also meant to seed development nearby- forming the nuclei of vast new suburban settlements along the route. Though the interchange-malls were never constructed, the Guangzhou-Shenzhen Expressway did stimulate exten-

tion on the Grand Canal. The expressway plugged Changzhou into a regional system of Bows much the way the canal had done more than a thousand years

sive development along its flanks. This is immediately evident in aerial and satellite imagery of the eastern delta, in which Wu's seminal road and all the

earlier. Within months, just off the expressway ramp, office towers, apartment complexes, and hotels sprouted.•• Not far away, in suburban Shanghai, studies have shown that towns blessed with a highway interchange reap m~asurable economic benefits, while those bypassed by the infrastructure often go down-

building it unleashed sprawls like a mighty dragon across the landscape. The Guangzhou-Shenzhen Expressway was only the first strand of an

hill a contemporary Chinese version of a pattern seen in the United States in both the railroadl age and the interstate-highway era.•5 Because the Pearl River Delta was the earliest regional economy to boom

arterial tapestry Wu hoped to weave out of the greater Pearl River Delta. This meant building a circumferential highway around the delta itself by connecting the Guangzhou-Shenzhen Expressway to a second road that would carry traffic back south from Guangzhou along the west side of the delta, eventually into the Zhuhai SEZ at the border with Macau. ln the north, the two rutes would be

in the post-Mao period, road-driven urbanization there has been particularly extensive, and it can be easily detected in satellite images of the area. Perhaps the most dramatic example is the development unleashed by the completion

fused together by a twenty-four mile ring-road halo around Guangzhou (completed in 2002). To the south, across the gaping mouth of the Pearl River itself, Wu proposed that a causeway be constructed, thus forming the east-west bar of

of the Pearl River Delta's most important single stretch of road- the Guangzhou-Shenzhen Expressway. One of the first modern, high-speed,

a great letter "A" inscribed upon the delta. The road across the sn would run from Zhuhai and Macau across open water to Hong Kong's Lantau Island, itself

46

THUNDER FROM THE SOUTH

THE CONCRETE DRAGON

rhe site of Hong Kong International Airport and a hub of extensive highway and rail links (nor ro mention Hong Kong Disneyland). The Chinese penchant for numerology quickly suggested a name- "one bridge, three connections" (Hong Kong, Zhuhai, and Macau). As with the Guangzhou-Shenzhen Expressway, Wu's grand design was inspired by landmarks of American engineering

the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel and rhe even longer Lake

Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana. As he pointed out in an interview, if the Bridge-Tunnel were pulled taut and superimposed on the Pearl River Delta, ir would fit almost perfectly between Zhuhai and Hong Kong.

By 1997 Wu had already helped build a smaller road bridge berween Nansha and the Humen district of Dongguan, one of the delta's leading boomrowns. The ten-mHe causeway sports a main span 888 meters (2,91~ feet) in length. The Humen Pearl River Bridge is still the largest bridge on the Pearl River and one of the longest suspension bridges in the People's Republic. The transdelta causeway, on the other hand, has been rhe subject of controversy and debate for years; for all irs merits, iris still nowhere near being built. In 2000, Wu was

Guangzhou-Shenzhen Expressway, 1999. ""oroa•M'H av AUTHOR

appointed chairman of Hong Kong's powerful Port and Maritime Board, giving him a bully puJpir from which ro promote the project. He was aided by a study at the Chinese University of Hong Kong that estimated the bridge could boost

provincial citjes of Cixi (part of Ningbo) and Jiaxing for a total run of 22.4

the entire Pearl Delta economy by some US$14 billion- much to Hong Kong's

miles-a crossing originally envisioned nearly a century ago by Sun Yat-sen.

benefit. 46 ln 2003 a team of researchers led by regional economist Michael].

When completed, the Hangzhou Bay Bridge will be the world's longest trans-

Enright published an influential study of Hong Kong's position in the Pearl

oceanic road crossing. The project has presented immense engineering chal-

River economic constellation. The report showed that the western delta was

lenges due to Hangzhou Bay's powerful tides and vulnerability to typhoons.

developing at a slower pace than the east side, largely due to the larrer's "bet-

With six lanes in two directions and a midpoinr traveler's oasis, the crossing

ter linkages to Hong Kong." For example, in 2001 Shenzhen and Dongguan

will reduce the distance between Ningbo and Shanghai by seventy-five nliles.

had seven times the combined exports ofZhuhai and Zhongshan. The Enright

Like so many major projects in China, the Hangzhou B~y Bridge is expected to

team determined chat Wu's bridge was begging to be built, and chat its long-

open in rime for the Olympic Summer Games in 2008. 48

term value to the region would dwarf all estimated costs. 47

While less demanding in terms of engineering, the Pearl River Bridge pre-

By this time, two equally ambitious sea-crossing bridges had been undertaken ar rhe mouth of the Yangtze Delta, both promising clear benefits to the

sents a greater political challenge due to the many jurisdictions involved- two

Pearl River Delta's chief rival-the greater Shanghai region. The Donghai

nomic zones (Shenzhen and Zhuhai), the Guangdong provincial government,

(Eastern Sea) Bridge, completed in December

special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau), two special eco-

connects Shanghai

and, above all, China's national government. The administration of such an

to irs offshore deep-water port at Yangshan; at 20.2 miles it is currently rhe longest sea-crossing highway in the world (the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway

infrastructure would require a higher degree of cooperation, coordination, and transparency among the various parties than currently exists. The exact

is longer, bur it crosses fresh water). A second transocean linkage was

jurisdictional balance depends largely on the route of rhe bridg..: itself. Four

under construction nearby, across Hangzhou Bay, connecting the Zhejiang

different alignments have been explored and debated over the last decade,

2005,

T HE C O N CRE TE D RA GO N

TH UN DER FRO M THE SOUT H

including Gordon Wu's original Y-shaped south alignment linking Lantau to Zhuhai and Macau; a more diplomatic "double Y" configuration that con-

Xiang River and the transportation hub of Hunan Province (the Xiang flows into Dongting Lake, which is in turn connected to the Yangtze R ver by canal).

nects also to Shenzhen; a northern alignment dashed between Zhongshan and Shenzhen, and a twin-bridge scheme, proposed by MIT professor Tunney Lee.

From there the highway would beat a path due north, terminating at the city of Yueyang on the eastern shore of Dongting Lake, a stone's throw from the

This alignment would have separate parallel crossings between Zhongshan and Shenzhen andl Zhuhai and Hong Kong- a scheme that can be implemented in stages and has rhe added benefit of redundancy in the event of a catastrophic failure. •9 All of these options trigger a panoply of funding and environmental issues. For one, rhe west side of Lanrau Island-where the causeway would

Yangtze itself. The road, to be called the Guangzhou-Yueyang Expressway, would be China's missing "fourth river"-a six-lane, 6oo-mile-long asphalt

make landfall in several of the schemes- is home to the 8oo-year-old fishwhite dolphin. Even if the Pearl River crossing is ever realized, it is unlikely that Gordon Wu will build it. Hopewell Holdings nearly went bankrupt after the Asian eco-

provide access to resource-rich lands all along its route, but by tapping into the Yangtze River it would enable Guangdong Province- and, of course, Hong Kong-to capture a share of the riches flowing toward Shanghai. This interregional raid was in fact drawn from the playbook of another American landmark-New York's Erie Canal. Long before the age of asphalt, the Erie

nomic meltdown in 1997, and it has struggled to gain its balance ever since, even taking on local school construction projects to keep afloat. Wu was able to build only a small portion of the vast highway system he envisioned for

Canal reconfigured the economic geography of the United States. The water highway, stretching 363 miles across central New York, linked the Great Lakes to the Hudson River and, thus, to the port city and the river's mouth. The

the Pearl River Delta. But in subsequent years, many ofWu's intended roads have been built by provincial and municipal authorities in the region, and so has part of an even grander scheme he conceived to put Guangdong Province within reach of rich regions beyond its borders. Though the Pearl River Delta is blessed with fertile land and easy access to the sea, it is separated from the rest

Erie Canal not only tapped the rich hinterlands of upstate New York, but also put New York City a barge-ride away from the great agricultural and naturalresource wealth of the upper Midwest. The canal's opening in 1825 put New England's agricultural economy on the skids and helped moved New York ahead of Boston and Philadelphia, its chief rivals, making it the most impor-

of China by a belt of mountains ro the north. Wu reasoned that if a highway could be punched through this barrier, the booming Pearl River Delta could

tant economic center on the eastern seaboard. Wu was convinced the Guangzhou-Yueyang Expressway would do for

rap a much Ia rger hinterland; the highway would be, in effect, an asphalt river

Guangdong and the Pearl River Delta what the Erie Canal did for New York, bringing large areas of Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangxi, and. even Sichuan Province

48

ing village Tai 0 and serves as breeding grounds for an e?dangered species of

draining a vast economic watershed. This is just what he had in mind. The Chinese land mass is drained by three

48

tributary hacked through a mountain range and spanning the administrative boundaries of scores of townships and municipalities. The plan was as outrageous as it was ingenious. Not only would the road

into its economic orbit-a region with a combined population of some 300

Pearl River (Zhu Jiang) is part. Bur not all of China has been equally blessed

million people. When Gordon Wu first proposed this road in 1982, it was dismissed as a fantasy that could never be built without a mandate from heaven. But like so many ofWu's highway visions, it eventually became reality. Guangdong authorities adopted Wu's route and eventually constructed an

by these life-giving waters. The vast country south of the Yangtze, north of Guangdong, and east of the Yunnan Plateau, for example, is unserved by any major sea-bound rivers. Wu thought this shortcoming of geography could be

expressway to the northern boundary of the pro.vince. Hunan Pro.vince picked up the baron and built their section of the highway to Hengyang, a project funded in part by the World Bank. Today, the entire route from the Guangzhou

rectified with a strategic deployment of infrastructure: a superhighway running north from Guangzhou to Hengyang, the southernmost navigable point on the

ring road to the Xiang River at Hengyang and on to the Hunan provincial capital, Changsha, is part of the National Trunk Highway System.

great river systems: the Yellow River (Huang He) through the north China plains; the Yangtze (Chang Jiang) through the heart of the nation, emptying near Shanghai; and, to the south, the West River (Xi Jiang)- of which the

THE CO N C RETE DRA G ON

!iO

T H U N DER FRO M T HE SOUTH

51

A seemingly endless convoy of container trucks plies the asphalt arter-

But regional development theory is hardly needed to see this in action; a

ies of the Pearl River Delta today, the blood cells of China's most important

rrip to the local Wai-Mart will do. Today, the Pearl River Delta is the workshop

regional economy. The greater Pearl River Delta has, in the last rwo decades,

of the world. Millions of people in the United States, many who might never

evolved from a largely rural landscape of farms and rice fields into one of the

have even heard of Guangdong Province, know well the fruits of this extraor-

most rapidly urbanizing places on earch

a polycentric regional conurbation

dinary industrial cornucopia. Americans may brisrle at all the manufacturing

of immense scale that is already one of the world's leading "megacices," home

jobs lost to China in recent decades, bur we relish the new affordability of so

to a population that will likely top thirty million by 2020. As Manuel Castelis

many consumer goods made there. Most of the stuff that stocks the shelves of

has argued, megacides are the primary spatial forms of the new global econ-

Target, Costco, Wai-Mart, Toys"R"Us, Home Depot, and other big American

omy, nodes that concentrate "directional, productive, and managerial upper

retailers comes from China, and the lion's share is made in factories in the

functions all over the planer."so One of the distinctive features of megacity

Pearl River Delta. The Chinese economic miracle, driven largely by Guangdong

urban form, according to Cas tells, is their externalized connection to a global

Province, is why we can buy an air conditioner for $79·95 when a similar unit

space of Aows, and simultaneous "discontinuity" with panerns and Aows that

ten years ago cost three times that, or why a powerful desktop computer can

once prevailed Locally. In his analysis, the greater Pearl River Delta region

be purchased for under $500. A large percentage of the decorative goods that

what Cas tells has termed the "South China Metropolis"-will likely emerge as

flood American stores around the holidays are manufactured in the Pearl River

"one of the preeminent industrial, business, and cultural centers of the rwenty-

Delta, never more visibly than at Christmas. In 1999. some ten million arti·

first century."$•

ficial Christmas trees and 128 million wired light sets were imported to the

Just as Deng Xiaoping had envisioned, proximity to Hong Kong's managerial and technical expertise and capital enabled the region to jump to life. As

United States from China, enough to turn all of Staten Island inro a plastic forest and string lights from the earth to the moon.6•

Castells points out, in the ten-year period berween 1985 and 1995. "Hong Kong

There is hardly any manufacturing sector that China, specifically

industrialists induced one of the largest-scale processes of industrialization in

Guangdong, does not dominate. As Michael Enright and Edith Scon found,

human history in the small towns of the Pearl River Delta. By the end of 1994.

the Pearl River Delta currently produces "roughly a third of the world's foot-

Hong Kong investors, often using family and ancestral-village connections,

wear, a third of the world's consumer electronics, a third of the world's micro-

had established in the Pearl River Delta 10,000 joint ventures and

wave ovens, half of the world's toys, rwo thirds of the world's watches, and

20,000

processing factories, in which were working about six million workers."•'

sizeable shares of world production in garments, plastic products, other home

In terms of spatial structure, Castells has argued that this South China

appliances, mobile and cordless phones." If import quotas are lifted, delta gar-

Metropolis is wholly unlike the "traditional Megalopolis" described by Jean

ment manufacturers could take up as much as a third of the global production

Gonmann in his srudies of the BosWash corridor of the eastern Unired Stares,

share in the textile industry, while furniture production in Dongguan alone

which consists of functionally autonomous "successive urban/suburban units";

has been "almost single-handedly responsible for a reduction in employment

it is rather a "new spatial form" in which a range of regional units operate with

in the U.S. furniture industry by about a third."5 $ North Carolina, once a major

a high degree of both interdependency and global connectivity. What distin

producer of furniture in the United States, has been hammered hard by all this.

guishes this new kind of city, Casrells observes, are the "internal linkages of

The city of High Point, about an hour west of Chapel Hill, is still famous for

the area and the indispensable connection of the whole system to the global

its biannual furniture fair. But today much of the furniture sold there is actu-

economy via multiple communication links." It is the ultimate space of flows.

ally manufactured half a world away in the Pearl River Delta. Remarkably, it

Castells was prescient in anticipating, more than a decade ago, that the South

is cheaper to ship Appalachian hardwoods to China and back again as tables,

China Metropolis might well become "the most representative urban face of

chairs, and sofas than to turn the raw material into furniture loci! lly.

the rwenty·first cenrury."~3

THC CONCRETE DRAGO N

THUNDER FROM THE SOUTH

Like Dongguan, delta towns and cities have each developed rheir own manufacturing specialties, and successful local industnes often become the very identity of such places. Xiaolan is known for locks, Shaxi is the Casual Garment City, and Dafen, a village near Shenzhen, from which much of the world's knockoff art comes, advertises itself as the Oil Painting Village. Shenzhen, Dongguan, and Huizhou are home to vast computer and electronics plants. One of the largest is the manufacturing complex in Shenzhen's Longhua District for Taiwanese-owned Foxconn, manufacturer of Apple's Macbook and iPhone and a supplier of components for seemingly every brand of computer and cell phone in the world. The plant, which came under much cricicism in the Western press for substandard working conditions, is rumored to employ more than 20o,ooo people on site (imagine all of Reno, Nevada, working for a single employer). Foshan manufactures most of China's "sanitary ceramics," such as sinks, lavatories, and toiler bowls. Jiangmen is a center for textiles and garments. Chencun is known for turf grass and ornamental fish, Panyu for toys and sporting goods, and litde Guzhen is China's Lighting Capital. A town in the northwest section ofZhongshan City, Guzhen is home to some 2,000 lighting factories, most of which are small- or medium-sized family operations that began as township and village enterprises in the early reform era. By the 1990s the growing agglomeration of manufacturers in the area displaced Zhejiang Province as China's number one lighting producer. Today, Guzhen's products dominate the domestic marker and exports-

...

. .- \•.. ~

to over 100 countries-bring in $300 million annually. Most of the lights for sale in American home-improvement stores come from Guzhen. Lighting is Guzhen's very raison d'etre and it dominates town life-hardly surprising given that the industry generates 70 percent of local GDP and employs half the population. Jusr off Lighting Square is Guzhen's main drag, Lighting Street, lined with more rhan a thousand showrooms. Every year the town hosts the China International Lighting Fair, one of the largest in the world; and at the event in 1999 town officials announced plans to erect a mighty symbol of Guzhen's native industry- the world's biggest lamp. The idea came from none other than the chairman of the Guzhen Communist Parry, Wu Renfu, who felt that the town "needed a tangible icon that spoke of Guzhen as much as the Eiffel Tower spoke of Paris," one that mtght also "serve as a totem for the people ... a reminder of the source of their livelihoods and prosperity." Thus were hatched plans for Lamp King Tower (Dtng Wang), the height of which was

Artist's renderona of Guzt..n's lamp King Tower. COUOtrlsv aoo CKAO'Al N, TOWN o• CIU2H£"

53

THE CONCRETE DRAGON

THUNDER F"ROM THE SOUTH

ratchered up each year as the town's exports swelled. From a relatively modest 125 feet it grew, in turn, to 453 feet, 682 feet, and 702 feet, before finally top-

fortunate enough to be legal residents (as opposed to the many migrant workers laboring in its factories) enjoy some of the highest incom(~ of any city in

ping ouc at a colossal 833 feet· nearly three times the height of the Statue of Liberty. In October 2004 a seventy-foot model of the big lamp was unveiled, and a year later ground was broken on the thing itself. Chairman Wu realized that Guzhen's icon should be "universally recognizable as a lamp." Thus the

China, which helps explain why Dongguan enjoys the highest per capita automobile ownership in the nation. Dongguan's wealth and ambition can be readily observed in the built environment: hundreds of high-rise residential housing rowers encircle the horizon. The city's spectacular new administrative complex features a 230-acre plaza anchored by a high-rise city hall and sur-

colossalluminaire is not a rarefied Chinese antique or trendy torchiere, but "the world's only architecture shaped like a huge western classical oil lamp," as pro-

rounded by a stunning collection of public buildings- a theater, museums, a conference center, and library. Not far away a high-tech new town- Songshan

motional materi.al describes it. The s38 million structure will contain 430,560 square feet of a rea on forty-eight floors, with an immense glass chimney on which an array of images will be projected at night from inside. An observation deck will be incorporated into the chimney, and the "base" of the lamp will contain shops, restaurants, and a museum to document "humanity's quest

Lake Pioneer Park- will expand the city's skilled workforce by more than 300,000 people.57

for light against darkness." Town officials hope that the Lamp King Tower will put Guzhen on the tourist map, drawing visitors from nearby Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Like the Hangzhou Bay Bridge, the Lamp King Tower is scheduled to be illuminated in time for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.~6

*

* *

The vast new wealth generated by these new industrial giants-former agricultural centers like Zhongshan, Panyu, Nanhai, Foshan, and Shunde-is also evident in extraordinary civic architectural works, infrastructural improvements, and other "image projects" undertaken by city officials. Vast public squares and plazas, well-appointed libraries and city halls, museums, exhibition centers, and concert halls have sprouted in once-poor cities around the delta in recent years. Dongguan is perhaps the best example; it has been a spectacular success story in the reform era, every bit as lauded in post-Mao China as was Dazhai by Mao during the Cultural Revolution. A once-sleepy town halfway between Shenzhen and Guangzhou, Dongguan is now one of the most affluent cities in the People's Republic, its new status best symbolized by irs South China Mall, currently the largest shopping mall in the world (see Chapter 9, 'Theme Parks and the Landscape of Consumption"). Dongguan is one of the manufacturing engines of the Pearl River Delta, with an annual growth rate of 23 percent and exports trailing only those of much-larger Shanghai and Shenzhen. Those

Of course, the Pearl River Delta is not the only boom region in China; several hundred miles to the north, the deltaic landscape of another great riverthe Yangtze- has itself been the site of extraordinary economic growth and, at Shanghai especially, ofeven greater efforts to reinvent urban terrain.

C HA P T E R T W O

Reclaiming Shanghai

If you Ay to Shanghai via Googlc Earth, you will be set down in a vast space at the center of town known as People's Park (Renmin Guangchang). Here, on a former British racetrack turned into a public park after 1949. four major ctvic buildings have been erected in recent decades. They sit proudly in the p3rk 3nd glow at night like ch3liccs on 3 gmnd metropolimn 3ltar. The first rwo erecr.cd were City Hall and the Shangh3i Art Museum. Jean-Marie Charpentier's Grand Theatre, easily the most spectacular, followed. Bur none of the buildings is more expressive of the zeitgeist of China's urban revolution than the Shanghai Urban Planning Exposition Center (Shanghai Chengshi Guihua Zhanshiguan). With five floors of exhibits dedicated to nearly every aspect of

city planning and design, it is a temple of urban futurism, like nothing seen in the United Stares since rhe Futurama exhibtt a lifetime ago. Entering the lobby of the Expo Center, a visttor is greeted by a monumental gilded sculpture of the city's icomc butldmgs, a kind of architectural golden calf thar slowly rotates on a pedestal. Aooded worshipfully with lights. The

piece is a kaleidoscopic a ssemblage of Shangh3t 's urban architectural history. compressing a century's worth of butldmgs inro a single work of art. A Ao ck of seagulls enctrcles 311 the buildtngs, as tf to consecrate this union of past and future. Skyscrapers of recent vintage

the Pearl of the Orient TV Tower,

rhe Jin Mao Tower, and the Work! rinanci31 Center

dominate rhe group.

while gathered at their feet arc a number of landmark structure:. from Shanghai's neocolonial past, most conspicuously the former headquarters of the llongkong and Shanghai Banking Corpor3tion, the clock-towered Customs House, and Victor S3ssoon's vener3ble Peace Hotel. These 3re relics

A gathtmng ol symbols; lobby sculpture, Shangh:u Urban Plannong E•posohon Centeo, 2007. ,NOt

AAPH fn A tttOfl

T HE CO N CRETE D RA GO N

RECL A I M I N G SHA N GH AI

of Shanghai's century-long tenure as rhe principal treaty porr on rhe China

shippers; and a nerwork of Chinese smugglers and corrupt Qing officials who

coast- a well-oiled resource extraction machine designed ro keep China stoned

grew far allowing the drug into their midst. Opium was so profitable to the

and drooling while foreigners spirited away much of her wealth. Bur here, the

British Crown that it not only tolerated its trade, despite the manifold iniqui-

hoary landmarks ofWesrern imperialism look small and insignificant, huddled

ties therein, bur even committed irs military forces to assure rhar rhe opium

humbly ar the feet of New China's architectural giants. The onetime masters a re mendicants now, their very survival contingent and provisional. Whether

trade Aourished. 2 Thus irwas addiction to a potent narcotic

it was meant to be or not, the gilded sculpture is a symbol of triumph over the

led to the forced opening of the Chinese coast, and to the rise of what would

past and its humiliations. Shanghai may have long 'been an imperial outpost dominated by foreigners, bur ir is now rhe flagship of Chinese ambition.

become the first modern cities in China. The first five treaty porrs- "shrewdly chosen," writes Fairbank, "as points of entrance into the avenues of Chinese

Shanghai's urban landscape has long been contested terrain, at least since

maritime trade which already existed"

and the profits it yielded- that

included rhe ancient trading cen-

British imperialists set their sights on the place in the mid-nineteenth century.

ters ofXiamen (Amoy), Fuzhou (Foochow), Ningbo (Ningpo) , and Guangzhou

In 1843, after a contentious a nd lopsided year-long process of rreatymaking

(Canton) , as well as a relative upstart named Shanghai.3 Set on rich alluvial

berween China and Britain, five ports were officially opened to foreign traders

lands at a bend in the Huangpu River, fifteen miles south of its confluence

along rhe coast, conceded in reprisal for China's ill-fared attempt, several years

with the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang), Shanghai had been a small trading cen-

earlier, to end the opium trade- an act that led to the First Opium War. Prior

ter and marker rown for several centuries, viral but far less important chan

to the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, British and other foreigners seeking access to

nearby Hangzhou, Suzhou, Yangzhou, or Quanzhou. Bur Shanghai grew rap-

Chinese tea, silk, porcelain, jade, and other valuables were largely confined

idly after it was formally opened as a treaty pore in November 1843, and soon

to Guangzhou, where all business was channeled through strictly monitored Chinese brokerage houses, or godowns, known as rhe Thirteen Factories. Trade

a nineteenth-century, quasi-colonial version of Shenzhen. • By 1900- barely

it outranked all regional rivals in terms of population a nd economic power-

with the "foreign barbarians" was prohibited within the city proper, and move-

rwo generations after ir opened as a treaty port- Shanghai was already ranked

ment of rhe aliens in general was highly circumscribed. Bur the antiquated

with Paris, London, and New York as one of the world's great metropolitan

Can ron System, as it became known, quickly fell apart with rhe advent of the

centers. The city's population, about 500,000 in 1843, topped one million by

opium trade. Opium was addictive ro both merchant and user. British traders were desperate for a commodity valuable enough in China to balance steep

t88o and reached four miLlion in 1935.s Shanghai also became rhe subject of myth a nd fable in the Western imag-

demand for Chinese rea and silk back home. While Indian cotton answered

ination, in turn celebrated as the "Paris of rhe East" and excoriated as a bas-

this need for a time, opium quickly displaced it. In the brutal logic of the mar-

tion of immorality- the "Whore of Asia." Visitors could easily validate either

ketplace, opium was the perfect commodity- plentiful. easy to ship, and very

version, and invariably found Shanghai both exotic and oddly familiar- an

profitable, with addictive properties guaranteed to stoke demand: instead of

Eastern city whose architecture and urbanism was similar in many respects

becoming saturated, the market for the narcotic steadily increased as more and

to rhar of New York or Paris. Also familiar to Western visitors, especially

more people became dependent. While the British may have masterminded the opium trade- what John

those from England and rhe United States, was the structure of governance

King Fairbank called "one of the longest-continued international cr imes of

in China at rhe rime. Before it became a treaty port, Shanghai was little more

modern times"- it involved a truly multicultural cast of characters.' These included esteemed British trading houses; Scots mer

88

8!1

Farther to the south is Fengcheng, rhe Spanish-rhemed town, which began

• • •

as a coastal stronghold in the late fourteenth century. Relics from Fengcheng's early history, including defensive walls, are now accompanied by a number

If Pudong is rhe ground zero of a reclaimed Shanghai, a rather different cho-

of Catalan references, such as a replica of the Ramblas, a Gaudi-inspired cui-

reography is unfolding on the c ity's outskirts. There, transplanted urban

rural center, and a Catholic church- Shanghai's second. Gaoqiao, the Dutch-

geographies from rhe West give form and spirit to a series of nine new resi-

rhemed town, is an old fishing village at the confluence of the Huangpu and Yangtze rivers, founded during the European Middle Ages; its new

dential towns on the urban fringe. Situated in a vast ri ng around the city, the nine towns will eventually house a population of more rhan 500,000 people.

manifestation will evoke suburban Amersfoorr, with canals inspired by

Hand-picked foreign a rchitects have designed the towns, each meanr to evoke

Amsterdam and a varie1ty of other elements meant "ro formulate a visually

rhe urbanism of a different Western nation, including Italy, Spain, England,

Dutch town," as a competition brief put ir.7J Ironically, an even older settle-

the United Stares, Sweden, rhe Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, and

ment, Fengjing, with a history extending back 1,500 years, was chosen for rhe

Germany. Known as "One City, Nine Towns," the project began as a pipe

suburban villas of the American town. Pujiang, the Iralian-themed town, was

dream of former Shanghai Communist Parry Secretary Huang Ju, who con-

laid out on a Roman grid by Gregorri Associari International of Milan, with a

ceived of rhe rhemed rowns as a way to celebrate Shanghai's history as a global

palazzo and a system of nco-Venetian canals. For some reason, the developers

city. It is somewhat ironic rhar a city once subjugated by Western imperialism

chose to also include a sampling of American elements, surely making Pujiang

should choose to build simulacra of Western cities as part of a regional growth

the only Italian-American theme town in Asia. The Australian town, Buzhen,

strategy, especially since many o f the towns selected for redevelopment are

located on Chongming Island in rhe Yangtze River, is planned to be a mod.el

themselves many rimes older than Shanghai itself. Bur this can also be inter-

of ecologically sensitive development (it lies just upsrream of Dong rang, sire of

preted as a claim-laying of sorts, a triumph over hjsrory and its humiliations.

the planned ecological city discussed later in this book).

Such an act couEd only be undertaken by a society supremely confident in itself and irs future, if also somewhat confused about irs emergent idenrjty.

Most compell ing of all is Songjiang, the English town southwest of rhe city center. As several local universities will eventually be relocated there, it is

Best-known of the nine towns is German-themed Anting, wher,e Weimar-

expected the town will be home for numerous faculty and staff. One place rhey

styled Faclllvcrkhause- half-rimbered houses- lie a short distance from

may reside is Thames Town, completed in the fall of 2006, the first residential

Shanghai International Automobile City, home

rhe manufacturing works

community at Songjiang. Laid out about a medieval town square by Paul Rice of

churning out China's popular Volkswagen cars and also the sire of China's first

the British firm Atkins, 'fhames Town's cobbled lanes, Tudor homes, Georgian

Formula One racetrack. Both Anring New Town and International Automobile

townhouses, and Victorian warehouses squeeze "soo years of British architec-

City were planned by German urbanist Albert Speer Jr., whose work in Beijing

tural development into a five-year construction project." 7• At the center of rown

is discussed in Chapter 4 , "Capital Improvements." North of Shanghai is a Swedish-flavored new rown at Luodian, close ro Volvo's China headquarters.

is a church copied from one in Clifton, Bristol. There, couples may experience "exotic marriage customs in which you exchange vows in front of a pasror.''75

Luodian itself dates to rhe Ming Dynasty, and the Swedes hired to plan irs neo-

They may afterward enjoy a pint at the requisite English pub, which also serves

Nordic reincarnation based rheir scheme on Sweden's oldest town: Sigtuna,

as a brilliant example of the hazards of im itation. Chinese architects touring

to

north of Stockholm, founded in 980. The developers later decided to interpret

England to find prototypes for Thames Town's buildings evidently snapped a

the Nordic theme more loosely. Along with the medieval architecture of Sigruna

photograph of a picturesque seaside pub and chip shop at Lyme Regis, Dorset,

and rhe Nobel Science and Technology Garden, they tossed in a building

which was then used to create a nearly identical set of buildings ar Thames

II£ CLAI M INO SHANOHAI

world). The ep•cenrer of the model is formed by Lujiazui's rising clurch of skyscrapers- the hub about which the rest of rhe minimetropolis appears to orbit. Across the river, dwarfed now to the size of tissue boxes, are the neocbss•cal buildings of the bund. Farther out, the Nine Towns orbit in the ciry's Van Allen Belt. amidst a dizzying sprawl of office towers and housing estates. The model explains well Shanghai's grand urban ambition, but to feel the real pulse of the emergmg city requm!s a srroll along the Huangpu riverfront :n night. Looking out across the water from the bund, with one's back turned upon the a rch itecture of the past, one sees an awesome spectacle unfold. T he view is analogous to that lauded by foreigners a century ago, of rhe bund itself viewed from Pudong. If China on.ce gazed in wonder at the monuments of foreign capitalism along the bund, now the West gazes. with an odd mix of fear and fasci narion. at the rising metropolis on the orhc r side, already the signature skyline of the Chinese urban revolution. There Lujiazui's gathered rowers are washed with floodlights or radiate with moving images like immense television screens, Coly model. Shanghao Urban Plannong E•posollon Cenler. 2007. ,...o•oc••••.. e• •uT..o~

while laser beams pulse and dance across the sky as if to telegraph a message to the heavens: Make way for the Chinese century.

Town. News of this eventually reached the pub's owner, Gail Caddy. who was understandably indignant that her establishment had been replicated without permission on the other side of the globe. ''We are rhe only fish and chip shop next to a pub on a river mouth in England," Caddy complained to the Telegraph, "and they have given it the same from and back, in an identical pos ition but on the mouth of the Yangtse." The developers were unfazed, pointing out that such copying violated no Chmese law, and that the neighboring municipality ofMinhang had JUSt built itself a replica of the White House. 76 It is a challenge indeed to absorb both Pudong and the orbiting Nine

Towns in one rake; doing so requires Olympian perspective. And for this it is best to head back to the Shanghai Urban Planning Exposition Center. Sprawling across the building's third floor, in the Master Plan Hall. is a highly derailed, 6,400-square-foot model of metropolitan Shanghai in which nearly every ciry street, block, and building has been dutifully represented in miniaturized form. " The Huangpu River here is the width of a small creek; the Jin Mao Tower is about rhe height of a Hoover upright. The breathtaking scale of Shanghai is s uddenly, finally, manageable here (though even this miniShanghai is itself a record breaker, the largest urban planning model in the

CHAPTER THR E E

The Politics of the Past

Shanghai is, of course, nor alone in irs ambition to lead China into a gloriou'i urban future. However spectacular it may be, however vibrant irs culture and nightlife, Shanghai will always have a w:uchful uncle up north- Beijing- with no small will of its own and a single colossal advantage: it is China's capital. Unlike its merely economic brethren, a capital city is a symbol of a nation's values, ideologies, and aspirations. A capital must invariably project an image of power, prestige, and authority to domestic nationals as well as a global audience. Capital city architecture and urbanism are doubly tasked with serving practical needs as well as those related to representation and symbolic diplomacy. When one nation reaches out co another in peace, it sends envoys to the foreign capital. In time of war, seizing a capital city strikes a severe blow to a nation's standing and self-esteem. Even if its ports and economy a re still functioning, the occupation or destruction of a nation's symbolic center may well lead to capitulation- in spirit, if not in fact. Indeed, "symbols are che choicest targets,'' writes Anthony Piech, "for those who would make war or instill terror." This is precisely what British troops had in mind when they invaded Washington DC during the War of 1812., strategically limiting their vandalism to structures of paramount symbolic importance co the upstart republic- the Capitol and White House.' If it means to stay around, a new regime will often attempt to tap the latent symbolic power in the architecture and urbanism of a seized capital. Doing so legitimizes the authority of the new regime while making a clear statement about supremacy and succession. Beijing was retooled and retrofitted for capital service by several dynastic regimes over the centuries. And when Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding

Chaorman Mao revoows plans for l ho now c:apolal C:•ly. ca. 1950.

94

T H E CO N CRETE O R ~ GO N

of the People's Republic of China on October t, 1949, he did so from a place

T H E P OLITICS OF THE

P ~ ST

95

steeped in significance- the balcony of Tiananmen, rhe Gate of Heavenly

polestar, apparently motionless in the night sky while all orhers circle worshipfully about, was a symbol of the emperor himself.7

Peace. The city Mao looked our upon on chat day was virtually unchanged in

Highly specific design guidelines- an exalted urban design code, in

form and structure since the Ming Dynasty- an almost perfectly preserved

effect- assured rhe city's fitness as a grand altar for the imperial liturgy. These

example of imperial Chinese urbanism. or as Wu Liangyong has pur it, "rhe

principles were already more than a thousand years old by the time of rhe Ming

ultimate crystallization of classical Chinese city planning and design."• After

Dynasty and had been used earlier to plan Dadu during the Yuan Dynasty.

the collapse of the Mongol Yuan Dynasry. China was again ruled by native

Design guidelines for Chinese royal cities were first set forth in rhe Kaogong ji

Chinese. The third Ming emperor, Zhu Di, having made the decision to relocate the Chinese capital from Nanjing to Beijing, set about creating on rhe ruins

( Record ofTrades)

of the Mongol Dadu, Beijing's predecessor, a new city that would fu ncr ion as

Dadu closely followed the Kaogong ji, Beijing was an even more exquisite man·

a vessel for the ri tuals, rites, and ceremonies essential to imperial rule- what

ifestarion of irs key principles. which included orientation ro the cardinal com-

Jeffrey Meyer has called the "vast imperiallit:urgy."

3

part of a Confucian text from the Eastern Zhou Dynasty

(770- 476 BC) known as the Zhorr Li (Rituals of Zhou).8 While rhe plan of

pass points; symmetrical rectilinear layout wirh a palace complex at the center;

In rhe traditional Chinese worldview, the emperor was a moral exemplar

a north-south cardinal axis or "rirual way"; a gridiron of streets and blocks;

and universal father figure, as well as rhe exalted Son of Heaven (Tian Zi). He

and a defensive wall wirh gates positioned along each side.GIn essential, dia-

occupied a position at the very center of the universe, a kind of pivot of the cos-

grammatic form the imperial city plan, an enclosed square pierced with a cen-

mos mediating between the earthly and celestial realms. This power was nor

tral axis, calls to mind one of the most important Chinese characrers- zftong

given outright, bur was conditional upon a "heavenly mandate" predicated on

('f). used! in the name of China (Zhong Guo, o/ 00) and rhe Chinese language

the sovereign's able discharge of imperial duties and rituals. As Meyer writes, "rhe harmony in what we call the natural world, rhe cycles of the seasons, the

(zhong wen.'f j:,), Chinese imperial urban design made no provision for a grand architec-

proper amounr of sun and rain, hear and cold, and rhus rhe success of rhe

tural climax at rhe very center of the otherwise centripetal capital city. From

yearly harvest, depended upon rhe virtue of his administration." An incompe-

the south, Beijing's central axis passed through the front gate of rhe outer city

tent or corrupt emperor could bring ruin upon the realm, while "the influence

(Yongdingmen) and that of the inner city (Zhengyangmen, also known as

of good emperors could be felt everywhere in the realm and even attracted well-

Qianmen). Ir entered rhe amperial City through the Gate o f Heavenly Peace

disposed barbarians ro their sway.''4

(Tiananmen), and rhe Forbidden City through the Meridian Gate (Wumen).

Like earlier imperial seats, Beijing was no mean ciry of men bur an axis

Once inside, the axis passed through a variety of courts, halls, and pavilions,

mundi- a conduit ''through which the power of Heaven was focused and chan-

each of which was dedicated to specific imperial functions. The most important ceremonies rook place jn the Hall of Perfect Harmony (Zhonghe Dian) and

nelled."S lrs layout was based, writes Meyer, on "a cosmic pattern derived from the positions and motion of the heavenly bodies which, if realized on earth,

rhe Hall of Supreme Harmony (Tiahe Dian), in which the emperor's rhrone was

[would] ensure the strength and continuity of the capital and the empire.''6

located. Bur nowhere along this grand procession was the observer confronted

The Chinese imperial city was, in effect, a transcription of heavenly order in

with rhe kind of architectural piece de resistance rhat such cenrriperality might

urban form. Many of irs key elements had astral counterparts. Beijing's central

suggest. After :\ll, the pivot of the Chinese imperial cosmos "was nor a place,"

axis replicated the celestial meridian, while the Forbidden City- its full name

writes Meyer, "bur a person, the Son of Heaven."•o So iris only fining char,

is "Purple Forbidden City" (Zijin. Cheng)-referred tO a royal constellation

within the Forbidden City, Beijing's grand processional ended nor with a mon-

near the polestar known as the "Purple Hidden Enclosure." Other star group-

umental edifice, but a relatively modest residential sanctum sa nctorum known

ings were evoked in the names of city gares, while rrhe placid centrality of the

as rhe Inner Court (Nei Ting).

THE CO N CRE 1 E DRAGON

lUI

T H( POLiliCS OF THE PAST

This tranquil compound, rhe actual home of rhe emperor and his fami ly, was no different in basic form and function from rhe lowly siltcycmn (courtyard houses) char carpeted the city beyond the palace walls. A certain nested log ic rhus governed this metropolis of courtyard and enclosure, like a matryosltkr1 doll in the form of a city: Beijing was a courtyard complex in the larger landscape; the Imperial City was a courtyard complex within Beijing; rhe Forbidden City within the Imperial City; and rhe Inner Courrwirhin the Forbidden City." One can even map rhis in rhe orher direction and imagine all China as a space enclosed by the Great Wall, much of which itself was built or r-econstructed during the Ming Dynasty. What distinguished imperial Beijing, then, was nor exalted individual temples or palaces, but the totality of irs composition. lt was a singular work of urban design wirh a universal srructurallogic evident in irs grandest and lowest parrs. The lare ciry planner Edmund Bacon, who spent n year working in China during rhe Grear Depression, described Beijing as "possibly rhe greatest single work of man on the face of rhe earth." lr was no exaggeration.•)

. ..

..

Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communists saw things rather differently; co rhem imperial Beijing was a relic of China's feudal past. A new Chinese nation was about ro be born, and rhe detritus of lost empires would be t olerated now

only if it could serve rhe new political order. On October 1, 1949. Mao mounted Tiananmen, the old imperial gate, and from irs balcony proclaimed rhe founding of the People's Republic of China. "No other gesture," writes art historian Wu Hung, "could more effectively prove rhe newness of rhe Communist leadership and no ocher act could more convincingly seal the title of People's Republic."•J By this act, Mao supplanted the pasr, yer did so in a manner deferential ro irs larenr symbolic power. The Communists did nor raze Tiananmen, after all; rhey repurposed ira nd made ir their own. The momenr of national birth was rendered for the ages, and with appropriate graviras, by the painter Dong Xiwen in his Focmding of the Nntion (1953). Dong used liberal arrisric license to amplify rhe historic moment. He turned what was an overcast day inro one of bright blue skies and racing clouds, and elevated Mao "at least half a head railer," writes Wu, chan a ny of rhe orher men or women on the dais. Whar in reality was a small, crowded balcony became an exalted plarform wirh a

•Pekonaand II$ Envorons."

Col.

ogo2. The Old Cory foes wothon the wall& (hea"Y dashed lo~e):

lhe lale< ·ouler c.oty• 1$lhe llalleo, woder rec.lanale al bollom. rRQ\4 -''~·MOUt "5 GlliOf liOO~tSt~OI'f~["'NC:k,I>IA., tHE \3

People's Republic. This was rhe core principle of the first of two planning proposals born

The archaic language and obscure t erminology at first baffled Liang.

our of rhe Soviet planning collaborations of 1949- 1951. The scheme, credited

Moreover, derails regarding the size and configuration of timber bracket sets,

ro Zhu Zhaoxue and Zhao Dongri, called for building the new administrative

columns, and other structural elements were usually written in code, to protect

center right in the heart of Beijing's Old City. It made almost no mention of

the trade secrets of various craftsmen. u But after decoding a similar manual

the historic city and irs significance. It didn't need to. "The idea underpinning

from the Qing Dynasty a nd field checking against surviving Song-era build-

this proposal," writes Wu Liangyong, "was that making way for a new world

ings, Liang and Lin eventually deciphered the Ying Zao Fa Slii. Working in a

required destroying rhe old." The second proposal was altogether different.

small office in Tiananmen under the auspices of the Institute for Research in

21

102

T HE CO N C RETE DR AGO N

TH E POLITI CS OF THE PA ST

103

Chinese Architecture. Liang annotated an important secrion on srrucrural car-

Liang and Chen argued that it would be "impossible to lind land with the

penny and illusrrated it with exquisite drawings; this document, numerous

proper location and sufficient size for such construction within the city wall."28

articles, and rwo manuscripts on traditional buildings in Chinese and English

Erecting a proper complex for the new government would reguire an "arrange-

established Liang as the preeminent authority on C!hina's architectural history.

ment and sequence" of buildings that could never be realized "sandwiched

He also helped establish the modern field of architectural studies in China,

berween ... the a ncient buildings in the old city.''29 There, new construction

founding departments at Northeast and Tsinghua universities and mentoring

would be "subject to extreme and unreasonable limitations, which might itself

the first generation of China-trained architects and urbanists, including Zhang

lead ro chaos and decentralization."Jo In addition, the grearly enlarged popu-

Jinqiu, Zhang Bo, and Wu Liangyong.•s Liang's knowledge of Chinese architectural culture and passion for history

lation would cause an unbearable level of residential density in the Old City, while vast new ministry bu ildings erected along principal arteries would

broughr him accolades and honorary degrees; it also eventually earned him

"immediately raise the flow and complexity of traffic. sharpen the chaos of the

the enmity of the Communist Parry. Liang had high hopes at first for Mao's

cars coming to and fro and ... lead to more traffic accidenrs."l•

new regime. Shordy before Beijing was liberated in February 1949, the archi-

Liang made an equally compelling case for conservation. Beijing- "this

tect was contacted by an advance unit of the People's Liberation Army that had

solemn and beautiful ciry"- expressed "excellent characteristics of our native

infiltrated the area near Tsinghua University, where Liang was then teaching.

national tradition.'':!> He argued that "we must consider Beijing's original style

As Wilma Fairbank put it in her 1994 biography of Liang a nd Lin , "An offi-

of layout: and physical form when planning new construction," and strive ro

cer brought Sicheng a map of the city and explained that Professor Liang was

"protect the essence of Beijing.''l 3 For this urban landscape possessed "char-

asked to designate areas where precious buildings and cultural relics must be

acteristics ... rare and unmatched even throughout the world."34 "Beijing is an

preserved if artillery should be called into acrion.''26 Earlier, during the Second

ancienr capital and a famous historic city," Liang wrote. "Many old buildings

World War, Liang and one of his students, Wu Liangyong, had produced a

have bec,o me commemorative cultural relics today. Not only are their physi-

study of historic sites with the Chinese Commission for the Preservation of

cal bodies beautiful and worth protecting, bur rhe orderly disposition of their

Cultural Objects in War Areas. It was this work, which evidendy came to the

larger environmental setting makes this famous city even more magnificent."

anention ofZhou Enlai, that brought about the officer's requestY

The integrity of the whole should nor be destroyed by mixing in "unharmoni-

That a revolutionary army should be so concerned with antiquities obvi-

ous things."35 The fate of rhe city was in their hands. Deciding where and how

ously impressed Liang. And, indeed, once the new government was in place a

to build the new governmenr complex would have immense implications for

sense of order and purpose did come to the capital: streets were cleaned and

the future of the metropolis. "Ifwe make errors in principle," cautioned Liang,

accumulated debris removed; inflation was halted and a new spirit of national

"a series of irremediable mistakes will surely occur."36

pride swelled forth. Liang. who had earlier represented China on the design

To help sway the Soviet advisors, Liang cited examples from the Soviet

ream for the United Nations' headquarters in New York, was appointed vice

Union, in which their own planner-comrades had rebuilt and "reoccupied his-

director of rhe Municipal Town Planning Commission. But the honeymoon was short. Liang's vision of t he new capital was antithetical to nearly every-

torically valued cities taken by the German invaders in 1943.''J7 Liang quoted the esteemed Soviet architect and historian Nikolai N. Voronin, whose work

thing the Soviets were pushing and that Mao himself demanded. Liang was

emphasized the "special problems ... faced in reconstructing fa mous historical

outraged at the prospect of rurning Beijing into a city of smokestack industry.

cities such as Novgorod, Kaliningrad and Smolenska." Voronin stressed that

He believed that the Forbidden City should be preserved as a national mon-

in planning a city, "the living history of irs people and their architeCtural tra-

ument, and, most importandy, that the sear of the new national government

ditions" must always be honored.J8 Citing the case of Novgorod- an ancient

should be built on a spacious new site outside the city center, not forced into

Slavic city in northwestern Russia- Voronin described how the city's rede-

the fragile and congested Old City.

velopment was planned by architect Alexey Schusev, whose appreciation for

104

T H E CO N C R ETE DRAGO N

T H E POLITICS OF THE PAST

106

history led him ro create a modern metropolis "in accordance with the sys-

attempt ro negate Tiananmen, the country's political centre cherished by the

tem of irs ancient urban plan." Modern improvements were added, of course,

revolutionary people."•6 Of course, the Liang-Chen Plan was not perfect, bur

bur nor ro rhe detriment of old landmarks, which were themselves surrounded

like many missed opportunities in history, itt has been hallowed and glorified

by "gardens serving as a foil for people to view and admire rhe ancient build-

by remorse. There were aspects of rhe proposal that were of dubious viability at

ings."J9 "We should learn from Schusev's principle of reconstructing Novrogod

the time. Economic realities, for example, would have made rhe ground-up con-

ro design our Beijing," urged Liang. "We should never harm our beautiful

snuction of a new capital district impossible, especially after the outbreak of

Beijing with hundreds of new architectural forms ... [but rather] select the most

the Korean War in 1950. 47 In retrospect, however, these and other challenges

beautiful architecture of dynasties past and create space surrounding them for

seem to pale in comparison with rhe litany of planning nightmares- ever

tTees and grasses, and turn them into gardens for the people."•o

mounting in complexity and scale-that have plagued Beijing in rhe decades

None of rhis swayed either Mao or rhe Sovier advisers. A conservative pro-

since Mao's fareful decision. As Wu Hung wrires, 'The consequences of Mao's

posal made to revolutionaries, the Liang-Chen Plan was doomed from rhe

decision cannot be exaggerated: all rhe subsequent destruction and construc-

start. To Mao and the Parry elite, Liang seemed more interested in preserv-

tion of Beijing were fundamentally determined at this momenc.... In short,

ing the past than assuring the success of the socialist utopia. Mao led a revo-

Beijing's fate was sealed by locating t he government in the old city."48

lution into Beijing after all, which demanded that the new supplant the old,

The Old City was SOO·n in a frenzy of demolition and construction.

not settle for a nexr-best place alongside ir. Creating a new capital district west

Chang'an Avenue, a mere forty-nine feet wide in 1949, underwent a series of

of rhe Old City may have been good urban planning, but it offered none of rhe

expansions that eventually produced a grand thoroughfare more than 260 feet

triumphant symbolism achieved by retooling the architectural remains of the

in width. Chang'an was the new prime meridian of Beijing, supplemencing

ancien regime to serve a new political order. Liang was maligned and misinter-

the old north-south axis of the imperial city. In the past, the axis mu11di of the

preted. He was accused of wanting to turn Beijing into a "museum city," when

Celestial Empire ran through the emperor's throne in rhe heart of the Forbidden

in fact he had no objection rousing historic buildings for low-impact cultural

City; now Chairman Mao commanded both rhe old axis and the new one that

or administrative functions. ••

passed in fronr of his portrait hanging on the facade ofTiananmen. Widening

Worse, his proposal was haunted by a similar plan dating from the Japanese

Chang'an meant the destruction of numerous historic gates, ceremonial

occupation of 1937 ro 1945. In anticipation of rheir permanent colonial rule

archways (pai/ou), and other relics.•v But an even more spectacular trans-

in the region, Japanese officials drafted a simple gridiron plan for a new

formation was in s tore- the making of Tiananmen Square. Pr ior to Mao's

administrative city about five kilometers west of Beijing, slightly farther our

intervention, the square had evolved from a long, narrow space lined since

rhan Liang would later place his center. •• The Japanese site was apparently

the Ming Dynasty with timber structures known as the "Thousand-step

considered in the Soviet-led planning sessions, for in the very first sentence

Porches," behind which we!l"e ministries andl bureaus of rhe imperial govern-

of Liang's own proposal he dismisses it as unsuitable as a capital district: "the

ment. The Porches were demolished in the early rwenrieth cenrury, around the

new urban area in rhe western suburbs, carved out in the reign of the Japanese

time the Republican government opened the Forbidden City to the public. But

puppet regime, is roo far away from the downtown area." He did, however, suggrowth.• 3

rhe wall behind the Porches remained, and at the time of the founding of the

In any case,

People's Republic in October 1949, it defined the extent of the square.so The

the memory of Japan's plan for rhe western suburbs "was enough," writes Wu

modern political use of the space had begun in earnest in 1919, wirh rhe ral-

gest the area might be useful to accommodate future

Liangyong, "ro discredit Liang's scheme ro a cerrain degree."•• The Liang-Chen Plan was rejected, and within a year Mao "personally

lies that launched the May Fourrh Movement, but it was only after 1949 that Tiananmen Square came into its own as China's superlative political space.

decided," writes Wu Hung, "ro locate rhe government in the old ciry."•s Mao

Public squares were an important element of Chinese urbanism and politi-

ridiculed Liang as a sentimental antiquarian a nd censured his plan as "an

cal culture in the Mao era. As Wu Hung writes, "Every city, town or village had

106

THE POL I TICS OF THE P A ST

THE CO N CRETE DRAGO N

107

ro have a square for public gatherings on imporranr (rhus political) occasions-

was originally advanced as a solution to inevitable future pressures of traffic

holiday parades and pageants, announcements of the Party's instructions,

congestion and overcrowding, which soon became a reality once the Old City

and struggle rallies against enemies of the people.''5• T he mother of all these

was made the seat of the new government- just as Liang Sicheng had warned.

squares would, of course, have to be in Beijing, at the heart of the nation's capi-

The walls were precisely rhe kind of "old architecture" that Mao condemned

tal. By 1959, the old walls around Tiananmen Square had been removed, along

as obsolete and the Soviets warned would "constrict the perspective of devel-

with the gatehouse to its south and scores of official buildings and residences.

opment" of Beijing- one of six guiding principles they had built into the 1953

Extensive clearing of this historic fabric eventually yielded a space large enough

master plan.ss

to match Mao's ego-thirty-eight American football fields' worth of space for mass rallies and meetings.s•

Walls are an essential component of classical Chinese urbanism. The very meaning. of "city" in Chinese culture is bound up, literally, with the notion of

Flanking Tiananmen Square were two immense new buildings- rhe Grear

walled enclosure. One im[plies the other; for, as Sen·Dou Ch ang has written,

Hall of the People on the west, and the Museum of Chinese History on the east.

"there was no such thing as a proper city without a waii."S6 This symmetry of

These brearhtak ing structures, every bit equal in scale to the square itself, were

meaning is well illustrated by the Chinese root character for "city"- cheng (JA),

part of a "Ten Grear Buildings" campaign (Shi Da Jian Zhu) launched at the

which indeed also means "wall." Early city walls were simply made of rammed

outset of the Great Leap Forward in 1958. Construction of the Grear Buildings

earth, sometimes covered with reeds to protect them from weathering; later,

was itself conducted like a revolutionary campaign; 1,000 architects and

bricks and stone blocks were used to form a more du rable surface.

engineers and 10,000 craftsmen and artisans from all over the country took

Though walls had enclosed Chinese settlements since the dawn of rime,

part. 53 All ten Great Buildings were completed in less than a year, an astonish-

the greatest period of city wall construction began with the overthrow of the

ing achievement that galvanized the nation. They opened just as Tiananmen

Mongol regime (Yuan Dynasty) in 1368Y T he Mongols, a nomadic people,

Square was also completed, in rime for China's tenth anniversary celebrations

were unaccustomed to walled settlements; Yuan records suggest that in the

on October 1, 1959· ArchirecturaUy, the structures drew from a range of styles.

early period of their rule the Mongols even prohibited city walls to discourage

The Great Hall and the Museum of Chinese History were neoclassical with

insurrection and facilitate colonial administration. Eventually, however, they

Chinese decorative motifs, while the Military Museum emulated the wedding-

too adopted this ancient Chinese practice and erected an extensive system of

cake form of the early Soviet Union Exhibition Hall (1957). Most of the Great

walls at Dadu. The early Ming rulers rebuilt and extended city walls through-

Buildings, however, employed a so-called National style characterized by big

our the country. The walls ofNanjing, Beijing, Xi'an, and other cities all date

roofs and upswept eves, a historicist mode that Liang Sicheng helped develop

principally to the Ming Dynasty, as does t h e Great Wall as we know it today.

and would later be excoriated for (rhe Cultural Palace of Nationalities and

(The Mongols had lirtle use for the Grear Wall, for their homeland was on the

Beijing Railway Station are examples) . The vast scale of the Great Buildings-

other side.) 58

"gigantic, cemenr structures such as the city had never seen before"- was just

The north wall of Beijing was erected around 1370, forty feet high and fifty

what Liang feared would come to the Old City once it became the symbolic cen-

wide at the cop. 1t was built across the center of old Dadu, its perfect walled

ter of the new nation.s•

rectangle leveled after being conquered two years earlier. The old east and west walls of D adu were rebuilt ro serve the new dry at twice their original width.

* * *

Fifty years later, after Beijing had been made China's northern capital by the Emperor Yongle, the walls were clad with great clay bricks and fortified with

These projects- the Great Buildings, Tia nanmen Square, and Chang'an

bastions, gate towers, and massive defensive works known as "barbicans.''

Avenue- brought dramatic change to Beijing. But it was the razing of Beijing's

Moats, typically constructed in tandem with the walls, ran in front of the ram-

great defensive walls that destroyed rhe city's soul. Eliminating the city walls

parts (the moats were excavated to build up the walls, an ancient example of

THE POLIT I CS OF T H E P A ST

THE CO N C R E T E DRAGO N

108

1 011

balancing cut and fill). ~e Finally, around 1553, a new set of walls was built incorporating the suburbs south of the city, near the Alt ar of Heaven- an "outer city" appended to the " inner city" to the north. 60 Thus encircled by rwenry-five miles of walls and moats, Beijing achieved its full urban architectural glory. It was a superlative example of a classical Chinese walled city. As Sen-Dou Chang writes, "Towers were erected at the corners and over the gates. The corner rowers were fortified on their outer faces, and were built of brick and loopholed for cannon. The gate rowers, designed like three-story pagodas, but of rectangular form, were built largely of wood and had tiled roofs. These rowers, which were usually the most .striking features of the ciry's architecture, were intended to serve as living quarters for soldiers on duty at the gate, and as posts for archers in rimes of war."&• The viral role of walls in Chinese urban history did not prevent their frequent destruction- particularly at the hands of would-be modernizers, as we have already seen at Shanghai. Mao Zedong was hardly the first to consider city walls an impediment to urban progress, nor the first to build modern

Xoboanmen, c;.a. 1928.

roads in their place. Youthful reformers in the republican era- many of whom, like Liang Sicheng, had studied in the West on Boxer Indemnity Fellowships came home convinced that ramparts were a curse. In the 1920s and 1930s Chinese planners and engineers urged the demolition of cirywalls to ease traf-

Department, and by 1919 more than six miles of the city's ramparts and fifteen

fic flow and make way for modern streets and motorways. In his 1930 mas-

gates had been replaced by a broad new boulevard paved with recycled wall

t ers thesis at Iowa State

"Design of Streets and the Use of City Wa lis in the

bricks- the old literally pressed into the service of the new. The Guangzhou

Development of Highway Systems in the Municipalities of China"- Han-Veng

elite was soon on the move, having "taken rapidly to the use of automobiles,"

Woo concluded that Chinese city walls were medieval structures "valueless in

according ro a report by the American Trade Commissioner in Shanghai (in

the modern world." Not only had the wall "lost irs original significance," but it

1919 there were two motor vehicles in Guangzhou; by 1921 the number was up

was "a hindrance to the traffic movement, city growth, or the development of

to 175).65

62

highway and street sysrems." Nonetheless, Woo showed how Nanjing's mean-

By 1931, U.S. Departmem of Commerce analysts studying the China marker

dering walls- the most extensive in the world- could be modernized into an

for American automobiles happily reported that more than two dozen Chinese

elevated "loop highway," complete with access ramps and separate lanes for local and through traffic. 5 3

cities had razed their old w:·dls for modern roads, or were planning to do so. 66 The Good Roads Association of China, founded in Shanghai, itself urged rhar

Elsewhere, walls made way for modern streets. By 1914 new avenues and

"all the city walls ... be demolished to construct loop highways."67 Chinese walls

t ramways had replaced the walls of Shanghai's Chinese city. ln Changzhou,

did eventually fall to roads engineered with American expertise, and even ro

Jiangsu Province, ramparts were sacrificed to build ten miles of new streets

American motorcars. To the enterprising American auto salesmen in Beijing in

"surfaced with granite slabs seven inches thick, taken from the city walls.''5•

the 1930s, the city's mighty ramparts became a medium for proving the mettle

The 8oo-year-old wall enclosing parts of Guangzhou was dismantled on

of their motorcars. On a visit to China in 1932, the Reverend Hewlett Johnson,

the advice of the American-educated director of the city's Public Works

Dean of Canterbury, reported observing American car dealers conducting

l

TH[ POLITICS OF THE PAST

TH( CO N CRETE DRAGO N

110

111

demonstrations by driving their vehicles "up che steep angle leading to the wall surrounding the city of Peking."68 A more fantastic juxtaposition of symbols- of East and West, past and future- can hardly be imagined. The destruction (with American help) of Chinese walls for modern motorways was strangely presaged in one of rhe great hoaxes of rhe lace nineteenth century.

I njun~

1899. newspapers across rhe United Stares ran a story about

American businessmen bidding for rhe conrracr co demolish rhe Grear Wall of China and build a road in irs place. The Qing government had conceived the project, ir was said, ro stimulate foreign investment and modernize irs infrastructure. A Chicago firm, responding ro rhe opportunity, was sending 3 renm of engineers to China to conduct initial surveys. The group, allegedly stopped in Denver en route to the coasr, were in fact four mischievous Denver reporters who, bored with the lack of news, had concocted the story in a local saloon. Within days it was front page news from coast to coast. Even the New York

Times was duped: "WILL CIIINA'S WALL COME DOWN" frened a headline on June 27, 1899; "Several Syndicates Are Said to Be After the Contract." The article reported that "According to Frank Lewis, a Chicago civil engineer ...

Coty wall as elevalcd hoahway, wolh aecess ramps. fRO-M t4A.~ twli'\GV.:)O. -t~rsu:,~. Dr Slfi([IIAI'\D fH[ U${ OJ (11

T

't\o.\UIIN flU ()(~(LOf M{ ~I Of' HIQh'lt'A'I' I"StlV

lMl .t.t• •;J(tr AUti(S Of' at '•l• (\I••PiJOLI"••lO Y''S1tR$ Tt4U1

~

IDYl A .,All COlUO( tVJO

the Chinese Government contemplates the destruction of the ancient Chinese wall." Lewis, representing "a syndicate of Chicago capitalists" (back~d by none ocher than Marshall Field and the Armours) was "en route to China to assist in rearing down the famous structure." The story gained startling new facts along

Right Bank the walls were replaced with a tree-shaded promenade. the Grand

the way; one East Coast daily even quoted a prominent Chinese businessman

Boulevards which ran from the present-day Place de Ia Madeleine to the Place

who confirmed the story as true. The Grear Wall hoax itself spawned a second

de Ia Republique. Vienna's Ringstrasse is an even better-known example of

that the imminent demolition of the beloved wall sparked no less than

the walls-to-boulevard metamorphosis. Foreshadowing Mao by a century.

hoax

the Boxer Rebellion, which led to the deaths of thousands of foreign mission-

Emperor Franz Josef issued a famous decree in 1857-"Es ist mriu Wille" (lt

aries. That story was larer traced ro a 1939 article in rhe North Amet·ictm Review,

Is My WiJI)

bur nor before it was featured in countless Sunday sermons, parental lectures,

wall and glacis, Franz Josef specified that a grand boulevard, the Ringsrrasse,

and even Paul Harvey's popular radio program, n1e Rest ofthe Story. The Grear

be built, along which a range of civic and institutional buildings and new hous-

Wall hoax had become, ironically, a morality rale on the evils

of fibbing. 69

rhat brought down the city's medieval ramparts. In place of rhe

ing for the city's rising middle class were erected.''

The practice of replacing city walls with roads has an even older pedigree

The modern deconstruction of Beijing's imperial walls actually began long

in Europe. In Paris and other cities, the earliest boulevards ran alongside or

before Mao ascended T iananmen. The Nationalist government removed the

on top of defensive perimeter walls, or in the space they once occupied; rhe

walls of the Imperial Ciry berween 1917 and 1927; in orher places the massive

French term bo11lcvard in fact derives from bolwerk, the Dutch word for bul-

barbican e nclosures of Chaoyangmen and other gates were destroyed ro allow

wark, which is why. originally, boulevards encircled a city while avenues radi-

a circumferential rail line to slip around the city." Liang Sicheng's defense of

ated outward from the center.7° Louis XIV began razing the medieval walls of

the enceinte also had precedent. In 1930, his last year reaching at Northeast

Paris in 1670, shortly after the start of the Qing Dynasty in Beijin g. On the

University, Liang struggled to convince Shenyang's mayor to spare the city's

112

THE CO N C R ET E D RA G ON

I H( POLITI C S Of T IH P"ST

113

magnificent Drum and Bell rowers, scheduled for demolition in a bid to improve traffic conditions. "Demolition is easy, preservation is difficult," Liang wrote. Shenyang's rowers fell nonetheless.73 This failure was no doubt in Liang's mind when the subject of razing Beijing's walls and gates was first broached in the Soviet-dominated planning consulrarions of 1949 and 1950. Liang again moved into action. In April1950 he drafted an argument that weighed the merits of preservation against those of demolition. He tried ro convince Mao and the Parry that Beijing's walls were nor impediments to progress but a treasure of Chinese civilization that could easily be turned into an amenity. "Far from impeding rhe ciry's evolurion," Liang argued, ''the city wall would help rather than hinder the development of Beijing into a modern city if preserved ... irs existence will enrich the life of people in Beijing as well as enhance our precious environment in the long run.''74 The broad glacis between wall and moat, then used for a circumferential railroad, could become a greenbelt and linear park, he a rgued, and the moat itself used for boating. fishing, and skating in winter. But the real treasure was the ramparr itself. Upon the wall, Liang wrote,

Scxlrh wall or BeiJing's Inner City. looking wuttoward Chongwonmen and Olanmen. ca. 1928. Porhons here surv1ved M ao's ontlaughl and were re.tored recently as M1ng C1ty Wall Park. JR(!.~.U~tli uo~u""'" :lfw -.a D.& 'I ClSIC:Hf OCR J U D I( Al atAfliS ~Htl.,t.~ IV1'8)

"beds can be laid, shrubs like dove and rosebush planted, a bit of turf spread, Aowers planted and benches installed.'' There, in summer, people could "stroll about and enjoy the cool air. On balmy autumn days, by climbing to the top of rhe city wall, gazing into the distance and overlooking the whole city. the vast

an argument was misleading and narve: "Was not the Imperial Palace the pal-

Western Hills in the northwest and the boundless plains in the southeast, city

ace of emperors? It is now rhe People's museum. Was not Tiananmen Square

people can meld with nature, and expand and refresh their minds.'' The gate

the forecourrof the Imperial Palace? The birth of rhe People's Republic of China

rowers and watchtowers could even be transformed into galleries and rea rooms

was proclaimed to the world by Chairman Mao on Tiananmen. We should

for the enjoyment of all. "Such a round-the-city cultural and recrearional area

never forger that these relics ... are masterpieces created by countless ancient

and three-dimensional park would be unique in the world .... En circling rhe

working people, a nd although they once served emperors and were used exclusively by rhe elite, they have now become rhe common property and are our national monuments.""

city, rhe wall is waiting ro serve the people, relax their tired bones and muscles, cultivate their taste and enrich their lives with national cultural relics and nat-

As he had done earlier, liang summoned up an example of enlightened

ural scenery."'~ Even with all this, the wall could still serve irs original defensive purpose;

urban planning from the Soviet Union that should have given the Moscow

for as Liang added, ir "can serve as a good ami-aircraft gun base if needed for

advisors pause. He pointed ro Smolensk, whose seventeenth-century wall was

national defense. The ancient fortification can fu lfill its hisLOrical task once

nor only spared by the Soviets, bur meticulously reconstructed after sustain-

again!" Accommodating increased traffic, another argument against the old walls, could easily be achieved by opening more gates; why destroy the whole

ing heavy damage in the Second World War. rf Smolensk's modest wall, barely more than four miles long, was t he "Stone Necklace of Russia," shouldn't

system, Liang asked, when only selected thoroughfares needed to pass beyond

that make Beijing's ramparts

rhe walls?'& finally, regarding the "feudal relic" issue, Liang charged that such

older- rather a more precious artifact? Evidently rhe Soviets only considered

nearly seven rimes longer, more massive, and

114

THE POLITICS OF THE PAST

I H E CO N CRETE DR AGO N

Russian walls worth preserving. Liang suggested Beijing's walls were not only

115

destroy the "Four Olds" (si jiu) -old customs, culture, habits, and ideas

the "Necklace of China," but the "Necklace of the World." This all fell on deaf

declared war on history and the past. Red Guards at Beijing's Number Two

ears. It was Mao's will that the walls come down, and so they did.

Middle School did so literally, posting a "Declaration of War on the Old World"

78

As Liang had sadly predicted, dismantling the walls was slow, hard work

around the school in August 1966 ... Tsinghua University, where Liang had

and consumed the labor of thousands of men and women. Liang calculated it

established the Department of Architecture and taught since 1946, was a par-

would take eighty-three years to level Beijing's walls. On this he was wrong:

ticular horbed of Red Guard rampages. The elegant stone gate from Tsinghua's

it took less than twenty years, and would have gone much more quickly had the

early years as an American missionary school was smashed and defaced. Red

Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution not inrervened. Wall bricks were used for construction projects ranging from factories to pigsties. Many were

Guards terrorized the campus searching our "counrer-revolutionary" professors and staff or anyone accused of being a "rightist" or indulging in the "Four

carted off to build squatter villages on rhe edges of the city. Or hers were used

Olds" purged by Mao.

79

for the construction, beginning in 1965, of rhe city's first subway line, which

As a prominent intellectual, historian, and scion of a distinguished family,

ran directly beneath the former location of the inner city's southern wall. The

Liang was targeted for especially brutal treatment. lie was paraded about cam-

subway was acrually conceived as a means of swiftly and secretly moving troops

pus with a black placard labeling him a "reactionary academic authority," his

into the city in the event of war, and it did not open to public use for years.

name crossed out below. Posters hung in the architecture department accused

After the Sino-Soviet split and increasing tensions between the rwo nations

Liang of various thought crimes and political infractions. He was charged with

in the 1960s, Mao was consumed by fears of a nuclear strike from Moscow.

having cultivated ties to Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, for hadn't he

This also led him to construct- again using wall bricks- hundreds of bomb

advised them on cultural heritage preservation matters during the war? He was

shelters and air-raid runnels beneath the city. As Jianying Zha has observed, in

excoriated for participating in the design of the United Nations headquarters

building rhese subterranean defenses, Mao simply "replaced the old walls with

in New York. He was even condemned for having greeted with a kiss, in the

winding underground walls."80 The imperial ramparts that the Soviets helped

European manner, the female leader of a delegation of French architects sev-

destroy would now, in pieces, help defend China against Soviet expansion-

eral years earlier. More damning still. Liang was accused of having opposed

ism. More visibly, the now-cleared footprint of the old inner-city wall became

Chairman Mao on matters related to urban planning. 8 3 Liang's home was

the first in a ser ies of circumferential highways, or ring roads, that now loop

pillaged and his second wife, Lin Zhu, was beaten repeatedly (Lin Huiyin had

around rhe capital. The second ring road (Er Huan Lu) is a ghostly negative of

succumbed to tuberculosis in 1955, and Liang remarried in 196.2.). His books

the vanished ramparts, its sentry-like gates recalled in the names of overpasses

and papers were burned or sold for scrap. lr is a miracle indeed that Liang's

and highway exits. The destruction of Beijing's walls surely ranks among the grea rest acts of

most precious work survived, eventually to be published as The Collecwl

urban vandalism in history. The ramparts made the city, and their removal changed forever the essence and character of Beijing. "For those who knew and

bling pathetic self-criticisms, in the meager hope that he would be "rehabilitated" by rhe mob that tormented him. Liang Sicheng died a broken man in

loved old Beijing," writes journalist Orville Schell, "it was the wall, more than

January 197.2..84

Writings of Licmg Sichcng. Liang, now seriously ill, spent his lasr few years scrib-

anything else, rhar gave the city its identity." To Schell and countless others,

In the four decades sin(e Beijing's walls were destroyed, the capital has

Beijing was now a city "purged of its past, its sense of itself and, indeed, of its

been transformed from a city steeped in history to a "perpetually provisional"

beauty.''8' In tragic symmetry, the fall of rhe enceinte panlleled Liang Sicheng's own

place, to paraphrase Henry James- a city constantly torn apart and rebuilt, that has not only rubbed out its past but increasingly now seems to have "no

demise. The Grear Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966,

credible possibility of time for history," as James once wrote of Manhattan. •s

made Liang's life a living hell. Red Guards, dutifully following Mao's orders to

Yet even in this contingent and provisional city, the past lives on in haunts and

118

THE CONCRETE DRAGO N

traces- and in a number of virtual reconstructions. The world will never again see rhe magnificent walled complex that was Beijing before Mao, bur it may at least get a glimpse of Ming Beijing, in somewhat diminished form, in the southeast suburbs of the capital. About thirty miles from Tiananmen, in the town of Xianghe, Hebei Province, there is an extraordinary place called Grand Epoch Ciry ( Di Vi Cheng. literally "The First City"), a multilayered leisure landscape that includes a 540-acre horel, conference and exhibition center, and golf resort as well as a spectacular rhree-story Buddhist temple. Nearly all of Grand Epoch's facilities are contained within a one-sixth scale replica of Beijing's mighty enceinte and irs original barbican gates, bastions, and defensive towers. Even at this scale, rhis mini-Beijing is hardly small: irs rhree miles of walls make ir very nearly the size of a petit-Peking built by the Kangxi emperor at Yuanming Yuan in the eighteenth century (see Chapter 9, "Theme Parks and the Landscape of Consumption"). It is only at this curious theme park chat we can finally get a (one-sixth) sense of whar imperial Beijing was like in its architectural glory. Like irs imperial predecessor, Grand Epoch City is the pivor of an empire

this

rime a sports and entertainment empire built by former People's Liberation

Yongdongmen reconstotul od at one·\oxth sc31e as the ""''" g3le ol Grand Epoch Coty.

Xoanghe, Hobeo Pro•once, 2oo6. rotorOOA••H e• •iiT...,

Army soldier and Xianghe native Li Shilin, who made a fortune as an entrepreneur in the early Deng Xiaoping era and owns the popular Guoan Football Club, Beijing's answer ro Manchester United. Grand Epoch City actually began in 1992 as a small hotel built near the

space enclosed by rhe city walls, rather than a teeming metropolis, is a cham·

Xianghe fields his footballers practiced on. As the facility expanded, Li saw an

pionship twenty-seven-hole "Golf Garden." The course, with nine holes in

opportunity to both develop a world-class leisure facility and give C hina back

the old inner city and eighreen holes in rhe outer city, was the site of the 2003

something taken from it decades before- the old walled city of Beijing. ln

Bob Hope Chrysler of China PGA Golf Tournament, and has been ranked as one of Asia's besr.••

doing so he consul red ex peres on Chinese classical city planning and employed scores of traditional craftsmen ro produce an authentic replica. Of course, old

The pro shop for Grand Epoch's golf course is located in a reconstituted

Beijing's ramparts were six times larger and solid, made of rammed earth and

Deshengmen, a gate tower originally on the north side of Beijing. Ironically.

sheathed with massive bricks; those ar Grand Epoch City are hollow and con-

Deshengmen is one of rhe few pieces of the real city wall rhat survived Mao's

rain restaurants, banquet halls, shops, fitness centers, a natatorium, squash

onslaught, even if it lives on as a glorious traffic island. There are other survi-

courts, a bowling alley, a Topgun laser-tag shooting range, an indoor rock·

vors. Zhengyangmen, the old front door to the ciry, though long ago deprived

climbing wall, and "the biggest indoor sea-view entertainment center in Asia"

of its barbican section and marooned now in a sea of traffic, remains. So do rhe

(complete with palm trees, sandy beach, and artificial surf), along with 430.556 square feet of exhibition and conference space and 1,000 hotel rooms. Many

southeast and southwest corner rowers of rhe old inner city, Dongbianmen and Xibianmen. And a short walk south of Beijing's main rail s tation lies a 4,000-

of rhe gates are in fact the lobbies of Grand Epoch's five hotels, led by a five-

foor-long fragment of the wall itself, running from rhe southeast corner rower

star nagship facility at Zhengyangmen, once the front door of Beijing. The

at Dongbianmen ro where Chongwenmen

the Gate of Esteemed Culture-

118

THE CO N CRETE DRAGO N

THE POLITICS OF THE PAST

Mrng Clly Wall Park, 2oo6. PHOTOG~•"" e• A\HHOR

Feng Baohua's recovered wall bncks, 2002. PHOTOGRAPH e• AUhtOR

once stood. A Ming Dynasty artifact and a Mao-era survivor, the Chongwen

11!1

Nor far from Ming Ciry Wall Park another fragment of rhe past was

wall section is doubly a relic. It only survived because a colony of squatter

resurrected several years ago, this one from the ground up, using all new

shacks had been erected alongside it in the 1950s by workers on the Beijing

material. Yongdingmen, demolished in 1957, was the front gate of the outer

Railway Station and the city's first subway line. Bricks cannibalized from

city and rhe starring point of the great central meridian- the axis nwndi of

adjoining wall sections became part of small shacks and sheds, many of which

both Beijing and the Chinese universe. Like the Ming City Wall Park, irs recon-

actually incorporated the city wall into their structure; for dozens of families

struction was carried our under the so-called Humanistic Olympics Cultural

living along the remnant rampart, the city wall was a Iso the kitchen wall.

Relics Protection Program, itself parr of a larger capital improvement campaign

ln 2002, the hodgepodge structures were bulldozed and several hundred

aimed at readying Beijing for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. The Relics

families relocated so that the wall could be restored as the centerpiece of the

Protection Program- which also included comprehensive rehabilitation of the

new Ming City Wall Park. Because so many bricks had been removed over the decades, rebuilding to the original height required a city-wide search for the

and Altar of the Sun- was conceived to "restore the historical image of Beijing

long-lost building material. Municipal authorities issued a call for their return.

as an ancient capital," to salvage what little remained of Beijing's long and sto-

One elderly resident, Feng Baohua, took it upon himself ro relocate and return

ried past.88 Yongdingmen, in particular, was needed to anchor u-he south end of

as many of the forty-four-pound, 400-year-old blocks as he could find, forag-

the central axis, now extended north of the Old City to incorporate the main Olympics s ite.

ing around demolition sires throughout the city and earring his redeemed loot to the construction site night after night on a tricycle. A retired chemical plant worker, Feng had played on the wall as a child and wanted to help bring back a fragment, however small, of the city's lost heritage. 87

Forbidden City, the Altar of the Moon, Temple of Heaven, Altar of the Earth,

CHAPTER FOUR

Captiallmprovements

For nearly a decade now, .1008 has been spun in the popular imagination as China's an nus mirabilis

a year of miracles and all things good. The reason, of

course, is rhe Games of the XXIX Olympiad, an event that looms like a glorious beacon on China's nation:~ I horizon. ror two weeks in August 2008, Chinn will be at rhe center of global nncnrion as it hosts whar mny well be the most expensive, mosr watched, :~nd most attended Olympics in history. Most Olympic Games are a city's shining moment. The 1984 and 1996 Summer Games were great achievements for, respectively, Los Angeles and Arlanra. But they were hardly signal events in American history. The 2008 Olympiad, on rhe ocher hand, belongs nor just ro a dry, but to a nation; as such, ir could only be hosted by the Chinese capital. For rhe People's Republic and irs ruling Communist Parry, rhe political symbolism of the 2008 Games is beyond calculation. Winning rhe Games back in 2001 was, for China, proof positive of its arrival on the world stage. No nation in recent years has wanred the Olympics more desperately rhan Chma, nor been more needful of rhe global prestige it promises. The world has stood in awe of Chinese accomplishment in recent decades. It has watched wirh envy, fear, and admiration as China has built vast new cities, lifted millions of lives out of poverty, :tnd flooded rhe globe wirh newly affordable appliances, electronics, furniture, wys, clothing, and a thousand orher things

destroying, in the process, entire industries in other coun-

tries. The People's Republic has :..urely arriveJ. Yet China still hungers for the sanction of rhe world community, like the parvenu wirh his mansion and selfmade wealth who yer longs for the legilim:~cy of rhe country club. Now rh:n rhe invirarion has been extended, Chin:t is determined ro awe rhe world and in the process purge rhe manifold humiliations of the past. The 2008 Olympiad will Tho B11d's Nus I. 2007. PHoroo••Ml 8• Clonc;t lt ..

122

T HE CO N CRE TE DR AGO N

C A P I TA L I M PROVE M E N TS

12 3

be China's great coming-out parry, its official debut, the capstone event of its three-decade economic miracle. In breadth and scale, China's Olympic ambition is simply wirhour precedent. In terms of population alone, no Olympiad in history has meant more ro more people- 1.3 billion people, to be precise. J was in Shanghai with a friend on the night of July 13, 2001, parr of an immense throng rh.at had gathered in People's Square before a Jumbotron broadcast of the rnrernarional Olympic Committee meeting in Moscow. 1 will never forger rhe ecstasy unleashed when Juan Anronjo Samaranch uttered rhe word "Beijing." It was a scene of collective release- and this was nor even Beijing! Imagine New Yorkers, crowded into Times Square, cheedng the announcement thar Washingron had won the Games! As rhe city around us erupted in wild celebration, I was left with the nagging sensation rhar, somehow, rhe klieg lighrs of history had just shifted a bit further to the East. Needless to say, China pulled out all the stops to ready itself- and irs capital- for rhis momentous event. Within weeks of being awarded the

2008

Games the city launched the mos t ambitious urban construction effort in Olympic history. The rota! bill for these capital improvements may well rop $40 billion, which would make the

2008

Summer Games rhe most expensive in

O lympic history by far. The acrual competition venues themselves- nineteen purpose-built facilities and a dozen or so refurbished and expanded existing facilities, most located in the Olympic Green and the Wukesong Culture and Sports Center- are only parr of this massive capital improvement. Beijing's regional highway and rail infrastructure has also been extensively upgraded. including two new ring roads, numbers five (known as "Olympic Avenue") and Conlemporary map or Beojong. COURIUY OF JOHOU•P$ COM

six, with a combined length of nearly 142 miles; eight new subway lines; and a ninety-six-mile light-rail system. Even a new house numbering system and multilanguage street and highway signs have been ordered.• To accommodate the expected 250,000 foreign visitors and more than two million domestic tourists, a major expansion of Beijing Capital International Airport was begun in 2004. Already one of the busiest in Asia, the recenr completion of Terminal Three has made Beijing's the largest airport in the world. The new facility was designed by British a rchitect Sir Norman Foster, one of several foreign s uperstars tasked with helping Beijing revamp its image in advance of 2008. Urbanist Deyan Sudjic, visiting the terminal construction sire in the fall of 2005, described it as "a medieval barrie field conceived on

125

THE CONCRETE DR AGO N

C A PITA L I M PROVE M E N TS

the scale of a Japanese epic" where "swarming warrior armies cluster around

built a new airporr, roads, and a rwelve-mile Metro extension to an "Olympic

giant cranes, more than 100 of them, ranged like ancient siege engines across

Park.''• For the host city, then, the Olympic Games is nor just a chance to play

12~

a frontline almost rwo miles long." Additionally, there are thousands of major

but, as Brian Chalkley and Stephen Essex write, "a means of achieving inter-

commercial and government projects, both in Beijing and throughout China,

national prominence and an instrument for promoting physical and economic

not directly related to the Games but scheduled nonetheless for completion by

regeneration.''5 And though it is an Olympic virgin, Beijing has extensive expe-

2

the mythic date, August 2008. So many big projects ending with the arrival of

rience reinventing itself as a setting for politically charged events. It is, after

the Olympic torch may well cause a hiccup in the global economy, as demand

all, China's capital city, and thus a symbolic political space as much as a work-

for cement, steel, and other construction materials suddenly falls. Of course, Beijing is hardly the first metropolis to hitch its dreams to

ing metropolis of nearly fifteen million people. Beijing hosted two major events in the 1990s that anticipated the

an Olympic star. Cities have long looked to the Games as a kind of wonder-

Olympics. The fi rst was the mh Asian Games in 1990, shadowed by the trag-

working genie, and international superevents, beginning with rhe world's fairs

edy ofiiananmen just a year before. The st-cond and more significant event

and expositions of the nineteenth century, have endowed cities with land-

was the grand celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the People's Republic of

mark buildings and other improvements. 3 The Great Exhibition of 1851-

China on October 1, 1999. Preparations for this national birthday bash ranged

really the first modern world expo- left London with the Crystal Palace; Paris

from the noble to the draconian. The good work was substantial and deserves

got the Eiffel Tower from the 1889 centennial commemoration of the French

praise. Landmark buildings such as rhe Grea.t Hall of the People and the Beijing

Revolution; and San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts was built for the 1915

Railway Station were scrubbed and restored. Automobile emissions controls

Panama-Pacific Jnrernarional Exposition. Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in

were established to reduce air pollution, and older, high-polluting vehicles such

New York, home of Shea Stadium and the U.S. Open, was the site of world's

as t he tin.y Xiali taxis and mia11bao (bread loaf) microvans were banned from

fairs in both 1939 and 1964. But the Olympics is the mother of all global super-

major routes. Billboards on Chang'an Avenue and around Tiananmen Square

events. None has greater prestige. or draws more attention and more viewers.

were ordered removed. Citywide landscape improvements created acres of

The Athens Summer Games in 2004 set TV audience records as some four bil-

new parks and green space; public art was commissioned and 2,000 new park

lion people tuned in worldwide to watch at least par t of the events. T h is level

benches installed. More than one million t rees were planted, the largest green-

of global exposure means incalculable publicity and marketing opportunities

ing operation in the city's history. Mature specimens were used for immedi-

for a host city. For decades now, the Games have been used as a catalyst for

ate effect; streets became leafy thoroughfares overnight, as planting typically

leveraging a grear range of urban improvements, often with the support of the

took place in the evening, when traffic was minimal. 6 Even more extraordinary

national government.

were improvements aimed at the skies above. For several days prior to October

The first in this regard was Rome, host of the 1960 Olympiad, where

1,

military aircraft seeded the clouds over Beijing, producing torrential rains

!highway, airport, and urban landscape improvements were implemented in

the night before the big event. National Day dawned crystal clear, dry. and

advance of the event. For the 1964 Summer Olympic Games, Tokyo built two new underground rail lines, expanded its metropolitan highway nerwork, and

sunny- a perfect day.

implemented long-planned improvements of its public housing, sewer infra-

example of authoritarian extremism. More Orwellian still was the restora-

s tructure, and harbor facilit ies. Munich's Olympic Village was designed to be a

tion of China's political center-of-centers, 'fiananmen Square. The year 1999

community for moderate- and low-income residents after the Games, and hosting the ill-fared 1972 Games was the impetus for restoring the historic city cen-

was one of several major anniversaries in China. Well before the nation's

That even the weather was disciplined for National Day was nor rhe only

fiftiet h anniversary in October was the eightieth a nniversary of the May

ter and constructing new roads, hotels, a major shopping center, and a variety

Fourth Movement (1919) and, more significant still, the tenth anniversary of

of public transport facilities. Monueal, host of the 1976 Summer Olympiad,

the Tiana.nmen massacre on June 4. 1989. To circumvent any commemorative

1211

THE CO N CRETE DRAGO N

C A P I T A L I M PROVE M E N TS

gatherings that might make it lose face, the Communist Party closed Tiananmen Square for renovations a full year in advance of National Day. Behind an impenetrable screen of steel construction barriers, Tiananmen

127

Bur the Ping'an project ran into unexpected opposition. To complete this scheme, a large number of historic buildings would have to be destroyed, including the homes of well-connected and politically savvy residents who

Square was itself transformed into yet another kind of walled Chinese space;

took their fight ro rhe intern:uional press. One of these was Zhao Jingxin, an

inside, scores of workers carried our a comprehensive facelifr. Broad lawns

elderly professor who struggled to save his home of fifty years from demolition.

were installed and the old meter-square concrete pavers were replaced with

After a long court battle and considerable press coverage, a judge ruled rhar

heavy granite Ragging- one of the most durable materials available for urban

rhe old homestead had "no historic value," and could be razed. On rhe morn-

hardscaping. While the national significance ofTiananmen Square certainly deserves rhe best materials, some critics saw a sinister side to the choice of

ing of demolition 200 police and government officials showed up to make sure no one interfe red with irs destruction; reporters were ordered to leave and

granite; the South Chinn Mol'ning Post, for instance, branded rhe new surface

photography was prohibited. Zhao, an octogenarian, was forced to relocate to

as "tank-proof p:wing."t Tiananmen Square's once dull field of concrete block

an unheated, unfinished Aat beyond the fifth ring road, a forry-minute walk

was rhus transformed into a dazzling expanse of pink granite trimmed with

to the nearest bus srop.'0 Zhao's campaign failed, bur it did result in a num-

well-groomed lawn panels- an appropriate metaphor for China's metamor-

ber of broad concessions from both the city and the developers. In its final

phosis from monochromatic Maoism to the polychromy of affluence and

iteration, Ping'an Avenue was reduced in width from 230 feet to as "little" as

arrival. Many of the old concrete pavers became parr of a parking lot at China's first drive-in movie theater.

92 feet in some places. The roure was shifted here and there to avoid landmark buildings, and new construction along its flanks subjected to height

Other National Day image improvements had a more direct- and neg-

limitations. A number of historic structures were indeed spared, including the

ative- impact on the built environment and people's lives. In the year before

former home of a daughter of the Emperor Qianlong and the house where Sun

October 1, 1999, several major avenues were widened as part of rhe Beijing

Yat-sen died."

Environment Improvement Project, ostensibly to ease traffic congestion.

In other places, street widenings in advance of National Day were moti-

The widening of an avenue in Xuanwu District consumed scores of historic

vated more by politics than transportation planning; they were part of a city-

sihcy1m11, courtyard houses, including a complex in which Sun Vat-sen had

wide effort to eliminate environments- and people- considered unsightly

once lectured and the Hundred Days' Reform was launched in 1898 (in part by

or problematic by the central government. Such interventions have a long his-

Liang Sicheng's father). In spite of being declared a historic site- and marked

tory in Beijing, and ofren targeted rhe so-called peasant enclaves that began

1998.8

Closer to the Forbidden City, Ping'an Avenue was transformed from a narrow,

forming in rhe ciry as the economy surged in the 1980s. By the early 1990s there were a number of enclaves scattered throughout Beijing serried by

crowded street to an eight-lane thoroughfare. Broadening this road, which

migrants from Xinjiang, Zhejiang, Anhui, Henan, and Fujian provinces.••

as such with a plaque- the building was turned to rubble in September

parallels Chang'an Avenue, had been discussed as early as 1957 as a means of expediting cross-town traffic through the Old City. Lacking the funds for

In October 1995, bustling and populous Zhejiang Village was razed; the gov-

such a costly upgrade, the ciry gave developers priceless land Ranking Ping'an

ernment considered it an eyesore and potential source of political unrest only three miles from Tiananmen Square.•3 Before that, thousands of mjgrants from

in exchange for widening and improving the street. The strategy was dubious

Zhenjiang and other migrant enclaves were expelled in advance of rhe 1990

ar best, for all rhe new development- shopping centers, apartments, offices-

Asian Games, and again in 1992 and 1993 for rhe benefit of visiting officials

would likely make the new road just as congested as the old one.GRegardless, an ample corridor of land, home ro some 2o,ooo families, was condemned and

in town to evaluate Beijing's candidacy in its failed bid for the 2000 Summer Olympic Games.••

handed ro the developers.

In the months prior to National Day, Xinjiang Village in Ganjiakou District fell into the gun s ights of officialdom. Located on Beijing's west side, the

128

IHE: CO N CRETE DRAGO N

C A PITAl IMPROV[Ml N TS

1211

community was inhabited by a large number of Muslim Uighur (Uygur) immigrants from Xinjiang Province in northwestern China. Xinjiang has been a trouble spot for rhe Chinese government for decades, the source of a menacing separatist movement. Xinjiang Village was a busy place, popubr with both foreign b3ckpacker tourists and students from nearby universities, who enjoyed barbecued lamb, Rat-breads, and other Muslim specialties ( hashish and heroin were also said ro be available). The neighborhood was congested, bur hardly a slum. Local merchants had in fact invested substantial funds in improvements: "In recent years," reported the Los Angeles Timrs in 1999, "concrete sheds with corrugated rin roofs have given way to Arabic-style minarets, plastic grape vines, and wall rapesrries depicting rhe Turkish seaport Istanbul." Because many of the neighborhood's food stalls, shops. and res tau rants occupied illegal additions that crowded Zengguang Street, a simple road-widening project would inAicr a punishing blow to rhe community and irs source of sustenance. This was precisely what authorities had in mind. On rhe morning of March 15, 1999, bulldozers began advancing on the street as police chased off

Zongguang 61teo1sc.pe cleared ol merehanls' s1.1lls, •999 ""0'0l ROAD

"No B•cycle," Dahan, Xongh~o Oo5trocl, :>006 (03han World

Brochure olluWatoon lor Hangzhou Automobolo Coty. 200A OU._rfln' lUO P '• ) HIJA ua•,GZHOU AIJT(!V08ll£ att

r"OlOQJt.AJ'~ tn

221

E•PO and Convenhon Center rn ba.tilground),

AU1HO"

had 500 instructors on staff in the late 1990s (one boasted to a reporter, ''I've

distinguished Chinese srrectscapcs. Guangzhou authorities even ancmpred an

trained many killers!"). Between January and April 2002, more than 90,000

outright ban on bicycles in rhe center ciry in rhe 1990s. bur ourraged residents

would-be Beijing motorists, many of them graduates of driving academies, sar

turned the measure back. Shanghai officials also toyed with a center-ciry all-

for their driver's-license exam. A popular radio program launched t n Beijtng

bike ban that was to rake effect by 2010, though wisdom prevailed rhere, roo;

m the 1990s advised motorists on the ins and outs of owning and operating a

transportation experts were able ro convince authorities that such a ban would

car in the capital. Onginally hosted by Wang Liang, the program was a kind of

only increase traffic congestion as more people rook cars and taxis.' More

sinofied verston of N PR's Cm· h1lk

recently, Guangzhou enacted a ban on motorcycles, ostensibly to reduce rraf-

"all cars. all day on AM 92.7.""

Not surprisingly. China's automobile boom has come at the expense of

fic congesrion and improve air quality; m reality it was more about keeping up

other, greener forms of transportation. Bicycles may still be the vehicle of

appearances- the machines arc popular wirh poor migranr workers and associated with thieves and criminal gangs.'~

choice for millions of city folk. but they arc increasingly shunted aside ro m:tke way for all the cars. There were an estimated 540 million bicycles in China in l(he 1990s

rhar's two for every person living in the United Stares. Beijtng,

with eleven million bikes in 2001, had more rhan any city on earth. At the our-

Bur bike bans are hardly necessary; rhc number of bicyclists in Chinese cities has plummeted in recent years

dropping by 26 percenr between 2001

and zoo(). This is partly because more people arc driving, bur also because

set of the reform era Deng Xiaoping even famously promised "a Flying Pigeon

rhe growing number of cars makes cycling more difficult and dangerous. Most

in every household"

amateur mororisrs in Chinese cities (and many professionals) are relatively new

a reference to rhc venerable Chinese bicycle brand

Feige.' Bur today bicycles

and the popular b:mery-powered "c-bikes"

are

ro the road and ofren lack basic driving skills. Moreover, a culture of courtesy

banned on major thoroughfares in Shanghai, Beijing, and orher c•ties, and

and eriquerre

new roads arc often laid our without the generous bike lanes rhat have long

pur it kindly. Chinese drivers rarely give way ro pedesrrians in a crosswalk, for

especially toward nonmororists

has yer ro form in China, to

THE CO N CRETE DR AGO N

DR IV I N G T H E CAPITA LI ST ROAD

example. Drivers will often push their way through a crowded intersection.

elevated expressways, even flyovers and cloverleaf interchan ges, are widely

with most pedestrians hustling passively our of the way. In New York or Boston

hailed as icons of progress and modernity. Popular full-color folios are often

such rudeness would result in a fight or a broken windshield. Each year, thou-

published to celebrate a new piece of infrastructure. One such book, Bridges of

sands of Chinese cyclists are killed or maimed by automobiles; injuries are

the Omtwy, was published in 1994 to commemorate completion of rhe first rwo

often terrible, as bicyclists almost never wear helmets. Fully one-third of the

spa ns across rhe Huangpu River between Shanghai and Pudong- ro "eulo-

estimated 8),000 traffic fatalities in China in :2.000 involved bicydists.'5

gize the se!Aess devotion of the bridge builders" much rhe way the builders of

222

223

Image is also conrributing to the bicycle's demise. For many Chinese, the

the Brooklyn Bridge were cheered in 1888. Another, Higltway lnterclwngcs of

bicycle is an antiquated relic and a symbol of poverty and underdevelopmentthe anrirhesis of its image in rhe West as an icon oif sustainability and physi-

Beijing, is filled wirh two-page photo spreads featuring cloverleaf intersections on the capital's outer ring roads. These arrerial appliances are indeed st rikingly

cal firness. As one Beijing cabbie pur ir ro a reporrer from the Washington Post:

beautiful. and often arrfully landscaped. A hefty rome published in advance of

'"What kind of country would we be if we were all still riding bicycles? This is

rhe fiftieth anniversary of the People's Republic of China in October 1999-

progress. This is development.... Who wants to ride a bicycle when you can

Tremcndous Chonges in tit!' An6ent Cflpitrt/- offers a visual record of Beijing's half-century metamorphosis into a "comprehensive metropolis" and features Aarrering aerial photos of the city's eighr-lane ring roads and interchanges. Yet

drive a car."•6 Precisely the opposite set of questions is asked these days in Chapel Hill, Cambridge, and other progressive communities. A car is only as useful as the roads available ro it, and toward that end

another tea-table rome, Mm·vclous

WflJS

in the West, commemorates highway

China has launched the greatest road-building campaign since the American

building in Tiber and China's remote wester n provinces. T hese books are nor

Interstate Highway System. Even into the !are 1980s, China's highway sys-

specialized trade publications, bur the equivalent of American gift books cele-

tem consisted of less than 200 miles of modern high-speed, limited-access

brating, say, Cape Harreras, puppies, or a New England autumn.

mororway; by 2006 the National Trunk Highway System spanned 25,480

Of course, Americans went through a similar phase of infrastructure wor-

miles. making it second in length only to that of the American inrerstates. The

ship in rhe past; the United Stares was, after all, rhe first sociery to be smirren

pace of consrruction is also nearly that of the American interstate construc-

with motoring. A quick perusal of eBay will reveal numerous vintage souvenir

tion program at its peak, when some 41,000 miles were built between 1957 and

books, pamphlets, postcards, pennants, ashtrays. dinner plates, shot glasses,

1969; China's highway mileage more than doubled between 2001 and 2005,

beer steins, and tumblers commemorating the Pennsylvania Turnpike, New

extending the system by 15,350 miles in four years.'7 Transportation plan-

Jersey Turnpike, Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, and orher landmarks of American

ners have promised to plug every major Chinese city inro this system by 2010,

motoring. Even if the United Scares was not alone in developmng the automo-

and it is estimated that by 2020 China's National Trunk Highway System will

bile, it was the first nation to build them fast and cheap. and to transform its

include 5J,OOO miles of modern highway, besting by a long shot the American

very culture and identity to accommodate the new machine. And in China, roo,

Jnrersrare Highway System (currently about 46,8oo miles) and rhus stealing its title as "the greatest and the longest engineered structure ever built."'8 A good

Americans helped set the stage for the current motoring revolution. Derroir swooned over the possibilities of rhe China marker more than a century ago-

portion of this network will consist of urban expressways, which have been

a "virgin field," one writer pur it, rhat "should absorb in years to come all the

laced about and a round every major city, none more visibly so than Beijing,

automobiles that America and other countries produce over and above their

whose multiplying ring roads have turned it into a kind of Los Angeles in con-

own actual needs.'''9 As early as 1913, the New York Times reported that "on any

centric form. In the United Stares we have come to regard large-scale urban arterials as

pleasant day" in Shanghai. "you meet mandarins and merchants with their families, behind well-groomed chauffeurs, enjoying themseEves exacrly like

destroyers of communities- and for good reason. ln China, many more peo-

prosperous Americans."•o Americans srole the show ar China's first automobile

ple's lives have been disrupted or destroyed by such road projects, yet highways,

exhibition, held in a series of bamboo sheds in Shanghai in 1921 where half the

224

THE CO N CRETE DR AGO N

DRIVIN G T H E CAPITALIST ROAD

225

vehicles on display were from the United States." As industry analyst William

American auto dealers were "straining every nerve to gain a footing." He was

Irvine observed in 1923, the Chinese "no longer regard the automotive vehicle

a lso surprised to encounter a team of U.S. car salesmen in Tiber. an "expedi-

as a foreign freak fir only for the use of rhe white man" and promised that the

tion of adventurous young men" drumming up publicity for the Dodge Motor Company."8

"propagation of the automotive idea has borne and will continue to bear fruit" for Americans. 21 It would bear fruit for China, roo. Sun Yar-sen considered development of

Though Americans were also at the forefront of the Good Roads movement in China a.nd helped build some of China's first modern motorways, China in

a domestic automobile industry essential ro China's growth. In a 1924 lerrer

fact had developed an advanced road system many centuries before. An office

to Henry Ford, Sun commended the Michigan industrialist on his "remarkable work" putting Americans on the road and encouraged him to do the same in

of road construction was established during rhe Zhou Dynasty, as early as 1129 BC, which developed a five-parr hierarchy of arterials- from horse trails and

the Orient: "I think you can do similar work in China," wrote Sun, "on a much

can parhs ·ro chariot roads. Evidence from the Grw Yr1(Discourse of the Stares).

vaster and more significant scale.''2 3 Though he never responded ro Sun's mis-

written during rhe Warring Stares period (475- 221 BC), indicates that many

sive, Ford was keen on China, too, and rhat year hosted a visit by C hina's trade

of these ea rly roads were pia nted with shade trees. After unifying China in 221

commissioner, Chang Chien Jr., who g:we a speech- in Chinese- to a large

BC, the emperor Qin Shi Huang (a lso known as Shi Huangdi), later buried

group of Ford's Chinese service trainees then in residence ar rhe Highland Park

with the famed terracotta army, built roads from his capital a t Xianya ng. just

plant. Chien predicted an exrraordinary future for motoring in China: "More than 100,000,000 automobiles, or five rimes the present world total," he

many of these Qin-era routes were shaded by pine trees planted at thirty-foot

noted, "would be required ro provide China's 400,ooo,ooo people with the 4

same ratio of cars as lowa.''2 American automobiles quickly dominated rhe China marker and by 1922

north of present-day Xi'an, u:o Beijing, Guangzhou, Chengdu, and other cities; intervals. T hese early roads were later widened and improved for military use, and during the Yuan Dynasty, China's Mongol rulers repaired and upgraded some 2,ooo miles of royal arterials. But by the late Ming period, many of these

accounted for 95 percent of all motor vehicles imported to north China and

"splendid old imperial highways" had fallen into ruin, as Viola Smith and

75 percent of sales in Shanghai. By the 1930s, American vehicles were outsell-

Anselm Chuh put it in 1931. "until to-day a b it of causeway and a half-hidden stone pavement are all that remain.''29

ing British models by a factor of ten, in spite of clear British adva.ntages. The English custom of driving on tine left side of the road, for example, had been

By the early years of the twentieth century, there were few automobile-

introduced in China through the treaty ports, and gave British automakers

accessible roads in China outside of the treary ports. American industry ana-

an edge over the Americans, who were forced to retrofit their vehicles for the

lysts understood that if Ch ina's automobile market was robe maximized, good

China market. ~~ Even the British Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai had to

roads would have to be buimt quickly. But there were also altruistic reasons

concede that "one only has to walk the streets of this city to see the undeni-

why the United Stares helped China build a modern highway infrastructure.

able predominance of the American car."26 Detroit simply offered a berrer prod-

To facilitate shipment of food and medical supplies to famine-struck regions of Shandong. Henan, Hebei, and Shanxi provinces in 1920, the American Red

uct- lighter and less expensive than Brirish vehicles, and also sturdier and more powerful. The pole position o f Yankee automakers was also rhe result of creative

Cross oversaw rhe construction of nearly 1,ooo miles of simple ramped-earth

marketing. American salesmen drove their cars up the ramps of Beijing's city

which were credited with significantly reducing mortality due to the famine.l 0

walls and dispatched convoys to remote corners of China. "As this always calls for journeys over almost impassable roads or where roads do not exist,"

T he man who directed much of t he Red Cross relief work was another Michigan native, Oliver). Todd, a civil engineer who had earlier helped build

wrote Irvine, "it affords a fine advertisement of the ability of the cars.'' 27

the Hetch Herchy Dam in the Sierra Nevada mountains and the Twin Peaks

Hewlett Johnson reponed that even in Xi 'an, still a remote city in the 1930s,

Tunnel in San Francisco. Todd spent a total of eighteen years in China and

motor roads. Tens of thousands of laborers were employed on these works,

l H E CO N CRE fE DRAGO N

DRI V I N G TH E C A PITA LIST RO A D

supervised rhe construction of some J,OOO miles of motor roads in four-

stone cobbles with smooth concrete, and also urged that "all rhe city walls ...

teen provinces. Nor all these roads were in rural areas. In Guiyang, capital

be demolished to construct loop highways." Led by Shanghai physician C. T.

of Guizhou Province, Todd engineered an eight-mile loop road around rhe city

Wang, the association formulnred a development program that included "a tri-

in 192.6, which was then built by soldiers and "all able-bodied students over

angle of roads" linking Shanghai to Suzhou and llangzhou and eventually

the age offourteen" in town (the boys worked one week. the girls rhe nexr).

Nanjing, where even more innovative road building efforts were underway.

228

227

4

The motorway became rhe city's pride and joy. Ahead of opening day. a

There. American city planner E. P. Goodrich introduced to China an influ-

brand-new American sedan was hauled in pieces across the mountains from

ential early American road- the Bronx River Parkway. Goodrich, a founder of

Guangzhou; reassembled in town, the car was paraded about by the provincial

the American Institute of Planners, was retained by the Narionalist govern-

governor while 10,000 local troops and a military band serenaded Todd, the

ment in the late 1920s ro help make Nanjing "the most beautiful and the most

guest of honor, with a rendition of "Swanee River" and the "The Red, White

scientifically planned capital in the world."J9 Among other things, Goodrich

and Blue."• Todd's roads were primitive by roday's standards, but they were a vast

recently completed parkway in Westchester CounLy, New York. That seminal

proposed building a scenic motor route around the city modeled on the

improvement upon existing conditions. "By tamping and rolling rhe damp

route, the firsr modern highway in the world, was designed by landscape archi-

earth as it was thrown up in 6-in. layers," Todd recounted, "new roads were

tects Hermann W. Merkel and Gilmore D. Clarke and completed in 1925. In

made hard enough for immediate use so rhar autos could traverse them at

China, Goodrich proposed using a variety of "Oriental landscape adaptations"

miles an hour."l• Todd saw the mororways as modernizing agents, essen-

to adapt rhe road ro irs new culture, which included placing "pagodas and

rial ro China's economic development and rhe spread of stable government.

gate houses at intervals along the way, with the beautiful bamboo trees which

As jonathan Spence has written, Todd hoped "that one day trucks would roar

the Chinese highly esteem." As with the Bronx River Parkway. the Nanjing

JO

down them, carrying grain and rice to stricken areas, while the private cars of

road was meant robe the start of a metropolitan system of parks and park-

officials and merchants would speed by with rhe promises of fairer administra-

ways. Nanjing officials requested copies of rhe Westchester Park Commission's

tion and wider wtde."JJ Of course, it is likely rharTodd had American commer-

annual reports, and later sent the ciry's chief engineer ro personally tour the

cial interests in mind as well. After all. he was a Michigan boy. and he could

Westchester roads. ' 0

only have been pleased to see his stare's native industry Aourishing in China:

The fact that today China drives on the right side of the road is also the leg-

"American autos are being brought in robe used on these roads," he observed

acy of an American- a U.S. Army general named Albert C. Wedemeyer, whom

with approval; "American mining machinery will follow as will a hundred other

President Franklin D. Roosevelt chose to replace joseph Stilwell as commander

things American."1J Todd himself proposed a "Michigan in China" program to

of the China theater in 1944. Wedemeyer's main rask was to advise Chiang

train young Chinese road builders- a "school in the field," as he described ir,

Kai-shek in driving the Japanese out of China. Toward this end he drafted an

"mobile and highly pracrical."35 He later handed supervision of a 350-mile road

offensive, code-named "Carbonado," to culminate in the liberation of Hong

from Guiyang to Changsha ro a Chinese assistant engineer who had studied at

Kong and rhe south China coast. Carbonado was a massive operation and

the Ford plant. and who in turn trained eighty cadet engineers- China's next

required marshalling rwo full divisions of American-trained Chinese troops

generation of road builders.36

airlifted from Burma. Thousands of men and vehicles had ro be moved south

Todd's roads brought rhe ancient Chinese imperial road system into the

from Sichuan Province toward the Pearl River Delra, a 700-mile trek. To sup-

rwenrierh century and became "a nucleus on which more roads have been

port their China operations, the Americans had brought in American-made

built," as Todd pur ir in 192.6.J7 The expanding nerwork of motorways was

jeeps and other vehicles, bur because traffic in China at the rime moved to rhe

cheered by rhe Good Roads Association of China, launched in Shanghai

left, thanks to the British, the American vehicles were in effect being driven

in 192.0. The association advocated widening city streets and replacing old

on the wrong side of rhe road. So many traffic accidents occurred in bringing

T HE CO N C RETE DRA GO N

DR IVI NG T H E C A PIT A LIS T R O A D

supplies ro the front rhar the Army launched a driver-education program for

pur China on the road. Bur Wu discovered his vocation half a world away, as an

rhe troops, to little effect. ••

engineering srudent at Princeton Universiry in rhe 1950s. Wu was particularly

228

2211

Wedemeyer then determined that more drastic measures were necessary.

fascinated with a new highway that passed about ten miles east of campus, the

If the vehicles themselves could nor be easily retrofirred, why nor just change

New Jersey Turnpike. The road, running 118 miles from rhe Delaware River ro

the traffic pattern? Wedemeyer proposed to Chiang Kai-shek that, stmply, "all rraffic in China be transferred to the right side of the road." The generalis-

the George Washington Bridge, was nor yet the burr ofJersey jokes, or a symbol of America's overreliance on t he automobile. Rather, ir was hailed as a land-

simo approved, and Wedemeyer ordered a publicity campaign in rhe spring of

mark of the motor age and a masterpiece of engineering. Even rhe road's steel

1945. "Posters were placed on telephone poles and shop windows," Wedemeyer recalled in his memoirs, "showing diagrammatically how traffic would move

overpasses- all 400 of them- used state-of-the-art structural techniques. New Jersey's governor, Alfred E. Driscoll, called the turnpike "the finest high-

and giving insrrucrions to pedestrians in order to minimize accidents. Articles

way in the world."•s Indeed, the road set standards that would be applied to

were published in newspapers throughout the country." Bur there was resis-

interstate highways for decades- from the width and curve radii of carriage-

tance. Shortly after rhe plans were announced, Wedemeyer learned that ":Hticles were appea ring in rhe vernacular press strongly criticizing rhe idea of

ways to the ubiquitous green-and-white highway signs. The turnpike also stimulated residenrial development all along its route, transforming the wood-

breaking an old Chinese tradition a nd urging the Generalissimo ro reconsider

lands and dairy farms into a vast suburban kingdom that was itself cheered as

and uphold rhe old and the tried method of moving rraffic."d At first these appeared ro be innocuous, bur Wedemeyer was suspicious.

a brave new world. For Gordon Wu, the New Jersey Turnpike was a vision of things to come.

He ordered an intelligence officer to investigate rhe source of the articles,

The turnpike was also one of the first strands of a vast system of national

which was traced ro none other than the British Embassy. The British were certain Wedemeyer was surreptitiously paving the way for another kind of

highways that was about to be laced across the American landscape. The United Stares in rhe 1950s was in the midst of a sunny period of optimism

invasion

born of unprecedented economic growth. Veterans were ma rrying and hav-

an invasion of American automobiles. Nonetheless, rhe new traf-

fic law went ahead as planned, even afrer rhe Japanese surrendered and

ing babies, setting up suburban nests in places like Levittown, and buying new

Carbonado was called off. On New Year's Eve 1945· Wedemeyer "had the

cars to get them to work and their families on the road for holiday vacations.

thrilling experience of standing on the balcony of my rower apartment in rhe

In Congress a bill was making the rounds rhat would eventually become the

Cathay Hotel in Shanghai," as he larer wrote, "to watch the traffic ar mid-

Federal-A id Highway Act of 1956, authorizing $25 billion ro build a "National

night change over to move along the right side of the road." When Mao and

System of Interstate and Dfense llighways." In New York Ciry, Robert Moses

the Communists rook control of China several years later, they retained the

was at the apogee of his power, realizing his longtime ambition to stitch up

new traffic pattern, which had the added convenience of also being rhe pattern

"the loose stra nds and frayd edges of New York's metropolitan arterial tapes-

used by the Soviet Union.·•

try."46 Moses had already built a dozen bridges and runnels and more than Goo

"

. "'

miles of highway throughout the metropolitan region and was about to begin constructing the Cross Bronx Expressway. In rhe spring of 1955. Gordon Wu had a chance to meet this American llaussma nn- an event of no mean sig-

The Guangzhou-Shenzhen. or Guangshen, Expressway (GSE). one of the first

nificance for a young man besotted with highways. Wu was parr of a group of

and most inAuential modern h1ghways in rhe People's Republic, is itself a prod-

engineering students invited by a society of construction industry profession-

uct of American prototypes.44 The road was the brainchild of Hong Kong devel-

als known as the Moles to a dinner and lecture by Moses. Afterward, the guest

oper Gordon Y. S. Wu. As he was born into a family that operated the largest

of honor met with the student engineers and talked about highways and public

taxi Aeer in Hong Kong. it was perhaps inevitable that Wu would one day help

works. More inAuenrial still was the summer Wu toured the nation by road with

230

DRIVING THE CAPITAliST ROAD

THE CONCRETE DRAGO N

231

three Princeton classmates, ferrying a new Buick to California.4' Following U.S. Route 30 across rhe Grear Plains and over the Rocky Mountains, the jun-

ket carried rhe boys through a world that would soon be changed forever by theinrersrare highways. 1n 1958 Wu headed back across the Pacific. a Princeton

~etOh

EEKLY

diploma in hand and a head full of ideas. In his srudies of history he learned how rhe Erie Canal had changed rhe course of American empire in the nineteenth century by enabling the port of New York to rap a vast and bountiful hinterland. Canals, railroads, roads- infrastrucwre meant access, and access meanr trade, commerce, and prosperity. ft was a lesson he would call upon many years later. Back in Hong Kong, Wu helped his farher launch a real estate venture known as Central Enterprises Company. Nor long after. he founded his own engineering office-Gordon Wu and As:sociares-and in 1963 launched a construction company co build what he designed. He called it HopeweU Construction, after a New Jersey rown close ro Princeton. Wu's riming was perfecr, for Hong Kong was about ro enter the greatest construction boom in its history. By the lace 1970s Wu was one of the biggest builders in the British colony. Wu and his engineers imported a technique of high-rise building construction, the concrete slip-form method, that made it possible to erect a floor every three days. In 1980 Wu crowned the city's skyline with the sixry-six-story HopeweU Cenrre-rhen the tallest building in the territory. The soaring white cylinder was the openin g act in what would eventually become the most spectacular urban skyline in the world. After Hopewell Cen tre, Wu began casting about for opportunities across the border. in the long-closed People's Republic of China. He was one of the fi rst to understand chat the extraordin ary economic growth of Shenzhen and the greater Pearl River Delta could never be sustained without a modern transportation infrastructure. In the early 1980s there was nor a single mile of high-speed, limited-access mororway in Guangdong Province. The region was indeed blessed with an abundance of rivers and canals- a narural infrastructure that had long facilirared rrade with rhe outside world. Bur now the roaring economy demanded an extens ive road network t hat could reach

Gordon Wu on the February 23, 199Contribute ro regional and nation a I growth. He ex pia ined to

would force him to acquire scores of buildings and pay our immense sums in

senior ministers how rhe American interstate highway system worked, and how

compensation. [nan even more extreme case, developers got wind of the com-

roads like rhe New Jersey Turnpike had reconfigured the economic geography

ing highway and proceeded ro erect villas right in rhe planned path of the road.

of North America. In June t983 he .even led a delegation of Chinese officials-

Having rhus improved rheir land, the leaseholders proceeded to demand a

including the deputy minister of highways- on a road trip across the United

bloated payout in compensation for their "losses." In spire of such roadblocks,

Stares- a replay of his collegiate junker many years before. They started in

Wu was able to patch together a workable- if costly- corridor for his highway.

San francisco, where Wu purchased a used Dodge van, and then headed across the United Stares on a two-week tour of rhe American highway system. The

Construction, once ir finally began, proceeded rapidly. More than one-rhird of

group stayed in cheap morels, ate bad roadside food, and arrived in New Jersey

Nearly fifry-rhree million cubic feet of cement was used ro construct the road.

9

the highway had robe elevated on pylons a nell bridges because of surface water.

in time for Wu's twenty-fifth college reunion. • The trip was a grear success.

The project also required more rhan 43,000 beams, each weighing as much as

By rhe rime rhe Chinese officials returned home, they were smitten with cars

ninety tons. To lift rhese into place, Wu's engineers designed a special launch-

and had all become evangelists for an American-style highway system. The fol-

ing gantry that would move along rhe construction route like a giant mechan-

lowing year, Gordon Wu gained the endorsement of both rhe central govern-

ical spider. Building the level stretches of rhe highway required moving more

ment and Guangdong's provincial authorities for his highway. The light had

than one billion cubic feet of earth, enough to bury J,ooo football fields six

turned green.

feet deep. Though beset by rihese and other challenges, the road was completed

T HE CO N CRETE DR A GO N

234

DRIV I NG THE CAPITALIST ROAD

235

in only twenty-two monrhs. At the peak of operations, more than JO,ooo men and women labored on the project around the clock. The GuangzhouShenzhen Expressway officially opened in July 1994· Irs builder was hailed as a hero and knighted three years later by Queen Elizabeth for services to Asian in frasrrucru re. >2

*

* •

Much as the New jersey Turnpike did half a century ago, Gordon Wu's highway triggered extensive urban sprawl and created all along irs Aanks a landscape of motoring and motorists. Similar transformations can be seen th roughout rhe coastal region. On rhe road-laced suburban fringes of China's booming cities, the alchemy of asphalt and automobiles has yielded a range of artifacts and environments catering ro rhe car. These, too, often bear a striking similarity to American-style sprawl and the commercial ''srrip" culture thar dominates the ourskirrs of every American city- shopping malls and supermarkets, big-box retail stores adrift in a sea of parking, drive-through fasr-food restaurants, and

Maple Park Motor Conema. BeoJong, oggg, Nolo lho recycled concrete pavcrslrom Toananmen Square. tC01C. uRAPft 8Y Al 1H0fl

budget chain motels. Even icons of America's early motor age have been resuscitated in China. The drive-in cinema, a rarity now in rhe United Stares, has

and the French company Carrefour were among the first such stores in many

been welcomed by Chinese motorists much the way it was in America in the

Chinese cities, quickly followed by competitors such as Wai-Mart, PriceSmart,

1950s.s3 China's first drive-in was the Maple Park Motor Cinema in Beijing,

and rhe Taiwan-based Jin Run Fa and Hao You Duo. Wal-Marr. which has

which opened in 1998 with a single screen and a parking lor covered with recy-

sourced products in China for years, opened its first Chinese stores in 1996,

cled meter-square concrete pavers removed from Tiananmen Square during irs

initially in Shenzhen and Fuzhou. By rhe end of 2006 there were sixty-six Wai-

fiftieth-anniversary facelift.

Mart Supercenters and three Sam's Clubs in thirty-four Chinese cities, against

I took a taxi to rhe cinema late one afternoon in 1999, and the youthful

some seventy-eight Carrefour stores then operating in the People's Republic.

parking attendants- dressed in Desert Srorm barrie farigues- rold mel could

Industry analysts predict char by 2020 WaJ-Mart's retail bll!siness in China

rent a car across the street in which to enjoy the evening show. indeed, Maple

could exceed in scale rhe company's North American operations.ss

Park founder Wang Qi Shun soon figured our rhar he could exrend his mar-

As with McDonald's, KFC, and orher suburban standards. Wai-Martenjoys

ket by enabling carless couples arriving by bicycle to also enjoy the delights of

considerably more prestige in China than in North America. None of these

a drive-in date. During the SARS outbreak in 2003 , when restaurants and the-

brands has a particularly highbrow image in rhe United States . Bur in China,

aters throughout: rhe capital were locked down, Maple Park was literally the

all three are fairly expensive and rhus patronized by relatively afAuent families,

only show in rown. In the next few years a number of other drive-ins opened in

and are roughly analogous to Target or Srarbucks in the United States. Many

Guangzhou, Zhengzhou, Shanghai, and Nanjing.

big retailers opened first in center-city locations in China, adding ourlying

A more ubiquitous feature of China's evolving suburban motoring scene is

stores only when automobile ownership and the suburban population reached

the big-box and warehouse-style store, which debuted with Hong Kong- based

a critical mass- a ripping poim that came in rhe mid-2ooos in many cities. For

1993.5 '1 German-based

example, the popular Su Guo supermarket chain began in the center ofNanjing

Grand Mart in Shenzhen in

Metro, Thai-invested Lotus,

T H E CO N C R E T E D RA GO N

2315

DRI V I N G T H E CAPIT A LIST ROAD

and still operates dozens of rwenry-four-hour convenience shops and commu· nity stores throughout town; but it has recently begun opening larger stores in car-convenient: locales to tap the lucrative suburban market. Ocher big-box retailers in China- IKEA, the popular warehouse-club superstore M~tro, and British-based home-improvement giant B&Q. for example- made their initial market entries in suburban locales, a deployment strategy more similar to the ~xclusively suburban

focus ofWai-Marr, Target, Costco, and ocher mega retail-

ers in the United States.s6 China's motoring middle class also now enjoys some of rhe largest shopping malls in rhe world, commercial behemoths that have upstaged North American heavyweights like West Edmonton Mall or Mall of America. It is predicted that by 2.010 seven of the ten largest shopping malls on earth will lbe in China. Golden Resources Shopping Mall (Jin Yuan) in Beijing sn:mhed ~t:he

title from West Edmonton when it opened on the outskirts of the capi·

ml in October 2.004, bcrween rhe third and fourth ri ng roads. With interiors designed by nn Atlnntn-bnsed nrchitectural firm, Golden Resources contains 230

escalators nnd more thnn 1,ooo shops and restaurants, and its 6 mil-

lion square feet of lcnseable Aoor aren make it significantly larger than Mall of America (at 2..5 million square feet). But alas, its reign was brief, and a year later Golden Resources wns dethroned by the even larger South China Mall in Dongguan, with a total of some 7 million square feet of leaseable space (dis· cussed in Chapter 9. "Theme Pnrks and the Landscape of Consumption"). As of 2.005. two projected lO·million-square-foot monster malls were under development in China ( Mall of China and Triple Five Wenzhou Mall), by none other than the Ghermezian Brothers of Canada, builders of both the Mall of America and West Edmonton Mall . .1 The popularity of shopping malls in China, while certainly due to ris· ing discretionary income, is also a function of Chinese residential urbanism: shopping malls, restaurants, and city spaces in general are Aooded with people partly because most apartments arc small, and many life activities are exter· nalized ro rhe pu blic realm. People are "propelled," writes john Hannigan, "towards activities outside the home such as shopping, dining and moviegoing."58 In China the city street .and, increasingly, the semipublic space of the suburban shopping mall supply amenities and entertainments that in the United States are usually found right ar home-in the media room or home gym, or the privacy of the rypical teenager's bedroom, thumping with music.

Golden Resour~es Shopp.ng M.!ll, Be J'"B· 2005.

""0IOGR••"'" ,. "l

237

2311

IHE CONCRETC DR ... GON

DRIVING THE CAPITALIST ROAD

2311

Nan1mg's f.r't d<Mt throuch ta~t-lood restaurant, 2006.

In China's evolving suburbs, people generally enjoy more living space, bur rhc

twenty-six Chinese cities by 2007. Although McDonald's has been in Chma

popularity of rhe public promenade remains.

for more than a decade, it only opened irs first drive-through resrauranrs in

Another uniquely Chinese aspect of suburban commercial development is

2006,

beginning in Dongguan and Shanghai

cities rhar, not coincidentally.

the vast single-purpose retail centers that have appeared on the peripheries of

also boast rhe h ighest rates of automobile ownership in China. The compa-

most larger Chinese cities: miniature shopping "cities" formed by economies

ny's fi rst d r ive-in restaurant

10

Beijing opened on January 19, 2007, accompa-

of 5cale and agglomeration and unlike anything in the United Stares. Every

nied by rradittonallion dancers and Ronald McDonald (speaking Chtnese. of

major Chinese ciry now has a sprawling "furniture city" (jia jtt drcug) or "home the Jinsheng

cou rse). McDonald's had some 780 locations in China by 2007 and plans ro use the drive-through format for most of irs new restaurants. It is hardly sur·

market area west of Nanjing is just one example. These "cities" are similar

prising that, toward this end, McDonald's has recently entered a partnership

in >pirir to the clusters of goods and service providers traditionally found in Chinese cities, only now rhe client ele is largely auto-mobile. They often com-

wirh Chinese oil giant Sinopec, which currently operares some 30,000 ser· vice srarions throughout China {and is building more than eleven new ones

pnse several hundred shops and stores ranging in size from family-r un stalls

each week). "The deal," reported Reuters, "will take advantage of the fuel

to huge lumber yards and big-box retailers like B&Qand irs domestic {Ompeti-

company's nationwide network of JO,ooo service stations to serve China's

-improvement city" (:lwcmg slti cltcug) on the outski rrs of town

tors Home Way and Home World.

rapid ly growing popu lation of motorists.''59 Nanjing'-; first drive-through.

Big-box retailers and supermalls have been joined on the urban fringe by a

one of some 2,000 KFC srores nationwide, opened in 2006, just across the

variety of other commercial institutions aimed at suburban motorists. Anum-

street from a sprawling home-improvement center and big-box supermarket.

ber of budget morel chains operate in China now, in cluding Motel t68, Seven

Were it not for the Chinese characters on rhe signs, the scene could well be suburban Atlanta.

Days Inn, Home Inns, and U.S.-bascd Super 8 Motels, which had facilities in

CHAP T ER NI N E

Theme Parks and the Landscape of Consumption

China's motoring middle-class consumers also enjoy an extraordinary diver· sity of rhemed landscapes on the expanding s uburban frontier. The advent of such posrmodern spaces of consumption is , of course, first a function of the consumer revolution rhar has transformed China in the posr-Mao reform era. Gone is the blue-gray world of Mao suits and state-run department stores, infamous for their surly clerks and lack of variety. By rhe late 1980s China's cities erupted with pent-up entrepreneurial zeal and commercial activity. From roastyam vendors to Rolls-Royce dealerships, Chinese urban life today is defined by the rush and churn of the rna rkerplace. China's surging economy has expanded at an average annual rare of 9·4 percent since 1978 and is now s econd only to that of the United Stares in terms of purchasing power parity (a measure of a currency's marketplace mileage, perhaps besr known from the Economist's "Big Mac Index"). This growth has created an immense middle class, or "middle stratum," to use the term preferred by Chinese officialdom. Estimates in 2002 by BNP Paribas Peregrine put the number of middle-class households at about 50 million narionwide, while projections by the China National Bureau of Statistics suggest that 25 percent of China's population, about 170 million people, could reach such status by 2010.' The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) has predicted that by 2020, as much as 40 percent of China's total population (projected to exceed 1.5 billion by then) could meet the criteria for middle-class status; this, by official definition, means families with assets between 150,000 to JOO,ooo yuan ($18,072 to $36,144). If these estimates are correct, a generation from now there will be 6oo million middle-class people in China, far more ( fI

.:.f

Golfer at Grand Epoch Coty WJth 1/6-acale rej)foduehon of a B.iJonll city pte (Andongmen) on badaround, Xllfl&he. Hebel PrOVInce. 2006. PHO,....,.,...,"" ....r -

THE CONCRETE DRAGON

THE M E PARKS AND THE LANDSCAPE Of CONSU M PTION

rhan rhe entire current populations of the United States, Canada, and Mexteo

Growing afAuence and leisure time, and the rapid global dispersion of lifestyle trends from the West and elsewhere, has reproduced in China nearly all

242

combined.• Newly afAuem societies rend to pass through a period of spirited compen-

243

the forms of sport, recreation, and leisure enjoyed by advanced industrial soci-

satory consumption, as new wealth mingles with rhe memory of scarcity. Now

eties. Many of these require spaces and facilities of a kind never before seen

rhe hardships are past and it's time to enjoy the good life. This often comes

in the People's Republic. Since the early 1990s affluent Chinese have taken up

along with an increase in leisure time. In China, the six-day workweek, stan-

golf, tennis, backpacking, mountain biking, camping, paragliding, off-road

dard for decades, was shortened to five and a half days in 1994 and to five days

trekking, rock climbing, whitewater rafting, snowboarding, snow skiing and

in March 1995. Rising incomes and added playtime ignited a boom in domestic

water skiing, sailing. surfing, canoeing, horseback riding, hot-air ballooning,

tourism and holidaymaking. Thirty years ago. a week-long family vacation to

and bungee jumping. Teenagers have taken up skateboarding with a vengeance,

a distant part of China (ler alone a foreign country) was unheard of; most lei-

and Sh3nghai now has rhe world's largesr skare park. Go-kart fever swept rhe

sure and recreation activity took place locally and was organized by one's work

city a few years earlier, after China's first indoor kart track opened there in the

unit. Today China boasts the largest domestic tourism market in the world and sends out more tourists to destinations in Asia rhan any other country.

late 1990s. Bowling became a national phenomenon around the same time, and between 1977 and 1997 the number of public bowling lanes in Chinese cit-

In 1995 there were approximately 615 million domestic tourists in China. By

ies jumped from zero to 10,000.5 True to form, China now boasts the largest

2003 the figure reached 870 million, and two years later it was up to 1.2 billion.J As a result, the Chinese are in the midst of a grand rediscovery of their

single-floor bowling alley in the world Center in Beijing.

at the Gongti 100 Bowling and Tennis

own national landscape and cultural heritage, with tourism to "scenic spots"

Survival Island, also in the suburbs of the capital, is a 124-acre back-to-

of regional or national significance exploding in recent years. When I visited

nature park where visitors can build character through such activities as

the famed Yangtze River Delta "water towns" ofZhouzhuang and Tongli in the

archery, weaving, pottery throwing, papermaking, and tie-dyeing fabrics

early 1990s, local people were still plying the old ways of life. Visitors at the

(they can also pursue a variety of "military sports" and learn abour farming

time were few in number except during major holidays. I returned in 2005 and

within sight of peasants who farm to survive). Recreational hunting has also

found both villages utterly transformed by the booming tourist trade. Streets

made a debut. The Nan fang Hunt Club, opened in 1996 on a small island off

were packed with swarms of visitors, including rhe inevitable tour g roups led

the coast ofZhejiang Province, is a kind of hunter-gatherer theme park where

by guides with Aags and bullhorns. Every shop on every street in the center

patrons can choose from thirteen different hunting grounds srocked with

of town was now catering to tourists. The vast majority of these visitors were

"wild" animals. In its first year of operation some 4 .•ooo would-be killers vis-

mainland Chinese tourists.

ited the park, bagging 150,000 ducks, 20,ooo rabbits, and 6,ooo pigs, all

China is also quickly rising in rank as an international travel destination.

specifically raised for the hunr. In Shanxi Province the Oriental International

Until the early 1970s only well-connected foreigners from the West, mostly

Hunting Ground was one of five such parks under development there in the late 1990s.• Closer to the coast, in Hebei Province, is an equesrrian-themed vaca-

academics or diplomats, could secure permission to visit China. By 1999 the number of visiting overseas nationals topped 8 million, and in 2005 more

tion village known as Cowboy City. Situated about halfway between Beijing

than 20 million people visited rhe People's Republic from abroad. lf tourists

and Tianjin, it is China's firsr subdivision of rime-share holiday homes, devel-

from Taiwan, Macau, and I long Kong are added, the figure jumps to 120 mil-

oped by a businessman who learned of the time-share concept while studying

lion. The World Tourism Organization estimates that by 202.0 China will be the largest tourist market in the world, well ahead of the United States, France,

in the UnJted States. Cowboy City is something of a cross between Levittown and a dude ranch, where small homes with lawns and white picket fences cozy

Spain, and other current leaders.•

up to a s.p,awling corral and riding complex. The developer's website sports

.. I

2 44

THE CO N CRETE DR AGO N

THE M E PAR K S A ND THE LANDSCAPE

or

CONSU M PTION

245

pictures of lanky American cowboys, horses on the open range, and a pearl-

municipal courses like those in many American cities. As Charles McGrath put

handled Colt 45.1 Skiing, snowboarding, and other winter sports also arrived in Chima in the

full-blown, in irs high-end and even slightly decadent form." It is a game for

1990s, and with them a range of purpose-built leisure landscapes. Although

the super elite, and unapologetically so. "Golf and the imagery of golf, which

references to skiing appear in Chinese literature as early the Han Dynasty,

you sec all over, on TV commercials and highway billboards, are a kind of code

there were only a handful of skiers in the country in the early 1990s. Today

for the new China, the one where ... hordes of newly mimed millionaires are

it in the New York Times, golf in China did nor work irs way upscale; it "arrived

t here are several million, with more than 1,ooo committed snowboarders

not the least embarrassed about flaunring their wealth. Much more than in

in Beijing alone. China's first ski resort, or "snow park," opened in 1995 in

America, golf in China stands for money, power and social exclusivity."••

lleilongjiang Province. Ten years later there were more than 200 such facili8

Upwardly mobile enrrepreneurs and business professionals look to golf

ties operating in thirteen provinces. China's largut ski resort is Xiling Snow

nor :1s a postime but a passport to success. This has even led some universi-

Mountain Resort, at Mr. Daxuerang in the Xiling Mountains of Sichuan

ties ro introduce the game to their students. China's first collegiate golf asso-

Province, about a two-hour drive from the provincial capital of Chengdu.8 But Sichuan is a long haul from most coastal Chinese cities. In an effort

ciation was founded in 2005 at Peking University. whose administrator-; then announced plans ro build a practice green right on campus- to help prepare

to make skiing more accessible to well-heeled urban families, entrepreneurs

MBA

students "for a commercial world where deals are often made on the

have opened indoor ski centers in a number of Chinese cities, first in Shanghai.

links." In October 2006, Xiamen University even made golf a required course

The largest and most advanced is Beijing's Qiaobo lee and Snow World, which

for students majoring in economics and computer science, in order to "improve

began operating in the summer of 2.005. The facility, set in the capital's north-

their job prospects."

eastern suburbs, allows skiers and snowboarders ro pursue their avocation

Though the royal and ancient game appeared in China more than a cen-

even in the middle of Beijing's hot, dry summers. The immense structure con-

tury ago, introduced to treary-port Shanghai by the British, ir wa later purged

rains two slopes, one of which is 853 feet long and as tall at one end as a ten-

by Mao as a decadent bourgeois pastime. Perhaps to drive the point home, the

story building. The facility is the fruit of an unlikely partnership between a

Communists turned Shanghai's most famous course into a zoo.•• Golf resur-

Canadian refrigeration firm and none other than the architecture department

faced in the post-Mao reform era, this rime on Chinese terms. In 1979 a gov-

at Tsinghua University, China's most esteemed institution of higher learning.

0

At 17,598 feet Mt. Daxuetang receives plenty of natural snow all win-

ernment ban on the game was lifted, and five years later China's first modern course opened

the Chung Shan Hot Spring Golf Club in the Pearl River

ter. Urban ski parks, on the other hand, must resort to making snow, a par-

Delta. Built by Hong Kong billionaire Henry Fok to designs by Arnold Palmer,

ticularly dubious enterprise given a looming nationwide water crisis. China's

the course was graded by more than a thousand laborers using hand imple-

annual water shortfall is in the area of 1.4 trillion cubic feet, and hundreds of

menrs.'~ By the early 1990s some forty golf courses were either open or under

cities face water shortages, especially in the north. In the area around Beijing,

construction in the Pearl River Delta alone, and by 2006 more than 300

where a dozen or more ski parks were operating by 2005, snow- and ice-

courses were operating nationwide.

making equipment consumed an estimated 134 million cubic feet of water, roughly what 42.,000 of the city's residents consume each year."

Appropriately enough, China's flagship course, Mission Hills Golf Club, opened in Shenzhcn only months after Deng Xiaoping's historic 1992

Like a ski slope (the outdoor kind at least), a golf course may look natural

inspection tour of the special economic zone. A huge billboard advertise-

!bur is in reality a highly engineered landscape. And no nation has built more or larger golf courses in rhe last rwenty years than the People's Republic. Golf

ment fo, Mission Hills was erected at the Lo Wu border crossing from Hong Kong, giving countless China-bound travelers an unlikely first impression of

is as much a status symbol as it is a game, and nowhere more so than in China.

the migfity People's Republic: Jack Nicklaus swinging a nine-iron above the

There is no such rhing as low-brow golf in the People's Republic, no open-to-all

Shertzlhen River. Mission Hills has since become one of the top golf resorts in

(

248

THE CO N CRETE DRAGON

THE M E PARKS AN D THE L ANDSC A PE OF CONSU M PTION

Asia. Ir was rhe sire of rhe 41st World Cup of Golf in 1995. said robe rhe first uncensored television event broadcast from the People's Republic; and it hosted

Island Golf and Country Club is nor in affluent Nassau County bur in subur·

the Tiger Woods China Challenge in November, 2001.

Golf Club, where rhe $30,000 membership fee coincidentally costs about

247

ban Dongguan; and on the ourskirrs ofNanJing there is Harvard International

The Mission HiiJs facility is ro golf what Las Vegas is to entertainment. lr

the same as a year's tuition at Harvard College. Shanghai International Golf

features a 300,ooo·squnre·foot clubhouse, five·srar hotel, pools, spa, fifty·

and Coumry Club, with a course designed by Roberr Trent Jones II, features

one tennis courts, a 3.ooo·se:n tennis stadium, three driving ranges, and four

an English·manor clubhouse by rhe same architectural office that produced

pro shops. There is also a country club and palatial residential villas where the

some of Shanghai's most famous buildings of the 1930s. Sheshan Golf Club,

"grace of Tuscan forms combines with Hawaiian architectural themes." Bur the real draw is rhe greens. Mission Hills' ten championship courses bear our

also in Shanghai, offers players "a little slice of Tuscany,'' while nearby Tomson

Pinehurst, North Carolina's eighN~ourse complex, in 2004 to become the l:ug-

Mr. Fuji.

features a Japanese-designed course with hazards evoking rhe Great Wall and

csr golf resort in the world. An army of 30,000 workers moved 30 million cubic

China's golfing boom is nor without controversy. For all their greenery and

yards of earrh and rock in a record eighteen month's time to construct five new courses in 2002.' 7 Golf at Mission I tills is made more pleasant by more rhan

natural appearance, golf courses are highly managed landscapes. and their con· srrucrion and maintenance can have substantial negative impacts on rhe local

2,000 caddies, nearly all young women, equipped with red shirrs and long·

environment. In at least one respect, however, Chinese courses are more eco·

billed hnrdhnrs to protect against wayward drives. The courses at Mission

logically friend ly than those in rhe United Stares: herbicide use is relatively low

among

because it is cheaper to hire workers ro pick weeds than apply costly chemicals.

them Jack Nicklaus, Vijay Singh, Nick Faldo, Annika Sorensram, Jose Marin

Water consumption is a more serious mam!r, especially in China's arid north.

Olaz:ibal, and Greg Norman ("the Norman is by far the roughest," one golf critic observed: "extremely penal"). With irs "Ten Signature Courses of rhe

The rhirry·plus courses in Beijing, a city with looming water supply problems, require a vase quantity of water to keep the ponds full and the fairways green.

World," Mission Hills is a kmd of golf theme park, in which a variety of experi·

In south China, water 1s more plentiful, bur golf courses there have consumed

ences are presented for consumption.

a significant amount of prime agricultural land

Hills were designed by some of the world's most celebrated golfers

Of course, there is an element of ersatz pastoralism in every golf course; all are distant heirs of the game's prorolandscape in rhe fog·bound Scottish isles. But rhe virtuality of golf is heightened in China by rhe often extreme contrasts

especially around Shanghai

and in rhe Pearl River Delta.. Course development in Guangdong Province in the early 1990s are up more than 1,300 acres of crop fields and rice paddies and forced the removal

between idyllic fairways and nearby working farms or grimly polluted mdus·

of hundreds of peasant families. In 1993 irate farmers blocked rhe Guangzhou·

trial scenes. Chinese courses "seem as if they were rolled out like a mag1c car·

Shantou Highway in protest of land lost to golf development, delaying rhe

per on alien ground," writes McGrath; even Mission Hills "feels like a v1rrual

opening ceremonies ar a just-completed resort for seven hours." In Hebei

landscape. or a golf fantasy

and when you board

Province, elderly women in rhe viJJage of Longan defied bulldozers in protest of

rhe shuttle bus and head down the hill, our rhe gate .and past rhe factories and

a new golf development and rhe illegal clearing of land they had signed thirty·

calendar art come to life

bleak concrete apartment buildings, dodging bicycles and Rocks of pedesrri·

year leases to farm.• Ironically, local peasants whose livelihoods are ruined by

ans trudging along the road, it's like waking from

golf·course development often secure new work weeding or clearing stones off

3

reverie."•v In this sense,

the Chinese golf course is a tranquil green lull in a landscape undergoing car· aclysmic change. a kind of garden in the machine. This otherworldly aspect is

rhe fairways that cover rhe land they once farmed. Th~ government has

nor been deaf ro the golf menace. In November, 2006,

often amplified by references ro imagined geographies of status and prestige

China's srare·run Xinhua news agency issued a commentary warning char

even farther afield. Mission Hills rakes Its name from a well-known course in

"roo ro;my golf courses had been built in China, taking up badly needed farm·

Palm Springs, California, one of rhe first residential golf communities.

lan~ 1 sucking up scarce water and even running counter ro the creation of a

Long

THE CO N CRE lE DR AGO N

TH£ M E: PARKS A ND THE LA N DSCAPE OF CONSU M PTION

240

harmonious sociery."•~ Authorities have attempted to restrict golf-course development, usually to little effect. Beijing issued a nationwide golf-course moratorium in the spring of 2004, but eight of the ren courses under construction right in the capital had no governmental approval. For developers, the return on investment is so high it usually makes proceeding without permits worth the risk, and very often the approval of local officials can be bought ( perhaps with a complimentary golf membership)."

..

•

*

China's new suburban landscape is also home to places where reality and fantasy are brought together as a setting for euphoric consumption. Just as China has become the world's top producer of highways and call buildings, it is also churning out more theme parks than any nation on earth. Between 1990 and 2005

some 2,500 theme parks opened in China, though many have been short

I ived.' 6 And just as properry developers use imagined lifesryles and borrowed

Amoroun DrN m Park, 5Uburban Sh&nghao, 1999. rr Henry K. Murphy's 'Adapt1110 Arch•tecture, 'o9r4- 1935

'Outhne of tho Dossoer." 24. 51. Olds. 'Giobahzong Shanghai." 115-17.

Specoal Focus on Lu J1a Zuo· (paper pres.enled aiiAIA

52. Yang Yongsheng. ed.. Noted Atchotecls m Chma (Betttng: Contemporary World Press. 1999),

1993, Shanghao). 68. See Max Page. The Creot1ve Deslruct1on of

Moyer, Dragons of Tiananmcn: Beil'ng as a Sacred

228-29.

Manhattan. 1900-r940 (Chocago: Unovorsoty of

1991).

•3· Wu Hung. Remokmg Bet)lng: Tianonmen Square and tho Romofung of a PoltiiCOI Space

53. Other Chonese architectural landmarks that have been recalled on rooftop superstructure onclude

Chocago Press. 1999). 6g. Thomas J. Campanella, •Jon Mao Tower,

5. Meyer. 'Trad1toonal Pekong," 277- See also Paul Wheatley's semonal treahse on tradotional

(Ch1cago: Unoversny of Chocago Pross. 2005), 59. 63- 64.

I. M. Pe•'s Bank of Chona Tower on Hong Kong: the

Shanghai." Archrtecturaf Record. January 2000.

Chonose coty plannong. The Ptval of the Four Quarters

Central Plaza buolding on Hong Kong's Wanchai

82-89.

(Chocago: Aldme Publoshing Company, 1971).

14. lb1d.. •73. t72- 75. Tho patnhng IS also famous for the many tomes ols cast of characters changed on

4, Meye1, 'TradtllonaJ Pekong, • 266. Also see

Crry (Columboa: UntYersoty of South Carohna Press.

Distncl, woth ots pyramodal roof; and, more recently,

70.Ibid.

6. Ibid.. 266.

Charpentoer's Shanghai Grand Opera House, best

7t.lbtd.

7. Ibod., 268. 275- 76. Meyer quotes a Confucoan

accordance w1th pohtocal wonds and whims: as officials felt on and out of favor. they were removed OJ'

sayong that summan~es the astral symbohsm of the

added to the group of leaders on tho balcony.

emperor: 'He who rules by moral force (/e) 1S hke the

15. Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports! (New York: Henry Holt, 1958), 287.

evocahve of Terry Farrell's earher Peak Tower in

72. Thos closes at least one corcle: on 2000. former Chinese premier Li Peng cancelled a vosi t to the real

Hong Kong, 54· Ouoted on Thomas J. Campanella. "The

Allhongo on Iceland because a crowd had gathered al tho buildong to protest China's human rights record.

Vtstble City: Shanghai." Metropolis. March 1995.

Ulnka K. Engstr6m, 'Luodoan- a Slice of Sweden on

33-38.

Chona." Sweden.se, February 10, 2oo6. h11p://www.

Betting So Otfferenl?." Journal of the S
sweden.se/templates/cs/Artoclo_•37t2.asp•.

Archtteclurol H1stoTJans 45, no. 4 (D-ocember 1986):

known for tis ommense upswept roof. whoch os otself

(Hong Kong: Chonose Unovorsoty of Hong Kong Press. 2001), 2. 220n.

polestar wh1ch roma1ns 1n place whrle alf the lesser

stars do homage to 11.• 8. Nancy S. Steinhardt, 'Why Were Chang'An and

o6. In fact. the rolahonsh•p between Chona and the Sovoet Unoon was never one of equals. and by •96o tho two count roes had a.n epoc lalhng oullhat nearly led to war.

NOTES

THE CONCRETE DRAGON

31 0

311

The Politlca of the Put

32. lbtd.• 66-68.

55· S11, "Sov1et Influence." 467-69.

and Nool P111th1e, t7-24 (New York: Robert C.

continued 11. Voctor F. S. Sol. "Sovoetlnfluence on Urban

JJ. lbtd.• 64.

56. Sen·Oou Chang. "Some Observalrons on the

McBrrde, 1956).

Plannong on Blutong. 1949- 1991." Town Plonnmg

35. lbod.. 61. 36. lbod.. 62.

Knapp, Chmo's Walled ClliCS (Now York: Oxford

37. !bod.. 62.

Univers•ly Press. 2000).

38. N1kola1 Voronm. "Reconslruclton ol lho

58. lbrd.• 64. 64n: Alfred Schonz. The Mag1c Square: Cortes m Anc1ont Chrno (Siullgart: Axel

Rev1cw 67. no. 4 (1996): 465-71. Also see Greg Castollo. "Clites of the Stalinosl Emptre, • 1n Forms of Dommonce: On the Arch1tecture and Urbomsm of lhf!' Coloma/ EJipcnence, ed. Nezar AISayyad, (Aidershot.

UK: Avebury, 1992), 261-87. 18. Ouoled •n S•l. "Sovtetlnfluence." 469. •9· S•l. "Sov•etlnlluence. • 463- 64: also see James H. Sater. The SoVIet Ctly: Ideal and Realuy (London: Edward Arnold, 198o). 20. Stl, "Sov•ollnflucnce." 466.

J4. lbtd.• 65.

Rooccup•cd Sovool Unton Areas Formerly Occupood by tho Gorman Invaders." quoted tn LJang and Chon,

Morphology of Chtnese Walled Cthes. • 64n. 57. On tho subJeCt of walled cilios. see Ronald G.

Menges, •996). 325.

"Proposal for tho Locahon of tho Adm•n•strahvo

59· Chang. "Some Obsorvahons. • 69. Go. Sch•nz. Mag1c Square, 3•5. 325. 61. Cnang, "Some Observatrons." 611. 62. Han·Veng Woo. "Destgn ol Streets and lhe

Central Area." 62. 39. Voronm quoted m Loang and Chen, "P1oposal." 8o. 40. Ibid.• a•. Liang's chOICO of SoVIet re!oronCG$

(October og88): 355· 71. See Carl E. Schorske. Fin·do·s1etlo Vumna Pal1t1cs and Culture (New York: A. A. Knopf. 1980).

72. Wu Hung, Remaking BetJmg. 250n. 73. Quoted 1n Fa~rbank, Ltong and L.m, 43· 74. L•ang Sochong, "D1scusston on the Problem ol Preservation or Demolition of the Coly Wall of SetJong." on The Complete Works of Dr. L.rong Sochcng, ed. Yang Yongsheng. vol. 5. 85 (Booting: Cn1na

Use of City Walls ul the Development ol H•g~way

Construchon lndushy Press. 2001). Engl1sh lranslat•on by Cohn Zhang: pago numbers refer to the published Chmesc ed1t1on.

was stralcg>c: Voron•n and Schusev were no

Systems 1n the Mun•c•pal•lles of Ch1n::o" (unpublished

Be•png (Vancouver: Un.vorstly of Bntosh Columb1a

hghtwe•ghts. Voron•n's studoes of Russtan arch•teclure

masters lhe$is, Iowa Stale College. 1930).

Press. t999). 11. 22. Lo Sh•q•ao, "Wnhng a Modern Ch1nesc

earned hun tho Len•n and Stale pn~es. two of tho Sovoet Un1on's h•ghest slate honors. and Schusev was

63. It's possible thai Woo, whose lhos•s focused on Nantong, denved lhos 1dea from Henry Murphy. As

21. Wu L•angyong. Rehob111tolmg the Old C1ty of

70. Henry W. Lawrence, "Ongms of the TreeLined Boulevard." Gcogrophocol Re.,ew 78. no. 4

75. lb1d.• 86. 76. Here, too. L•ang's case may have been haunted by Japanese actions dur~ng the occupatton.

Archttectural H•story: L•ang Stcheng and L1ang

lhe dean of Sov•el archilocts by the hme he doed on

Jeffrey Cody has shown, Murphy wa,; commoss1oned

Otchao,• Journal ofArchitectural Education 56.

1949. He helped pi an Moscow after the t9t8

by Ch1ang Kao·shek's Natoonalist government to help

To connect the Old Crty 10 thu11 new center to the

no. 1(2002). 23. Wilma Fa11bank. L•ang and Lm: Partners m

tevolut•on and des•gned tho Lon•n Mausoleum'" Red

plan the nal1on's new cap1tal. In the spnng o( •929 he

west and an mdustnal suburb 1n the east. the

Square: h•s namo loday graces lhe Schuso" Slate

repeatedly urged the Nahonat Cnp1tal Roconstructoon Plannong Cornmrtlee to preserve the c•ty's maJesl•c

Japanase •n 1939 opened two new gatos •n the Ctly walls-Fuxtngmen (ong1nnlly Chang'anmen) 1n the

&plormg Chmo's ArchllllCiurol Past (Phtladelph1a:

UntverSlty of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 23-29.

Museum of Arch•leclure. 111. Wu L1angyong, Re/1obd1talmg the Old C1ly of

49-50. 24. The Ymg Zoo Fa Sh1 was not a style manual

Be1png, 23. 42. Sen·Dou Chang. "Bolttng: Perspectives on

per se, but rather descnbed "systems and methods of

PreseNalton. Env11onment, and Development." Cmes

converted 1nto a motorway. thus lurmng an anhqualod l•aboloty •nlo a modern asset. Ho 1llust•ated th•s w11h a

quantity suNey and matonal caleulatoon...used by the

•s. no. • (1998): 14.

perspectove draw1ng not unlike the one Woo drew lor

Imperial Govemmenl to control conslrucl•on m;,lenals and avo1d waste.• "It IS h1ghly unlikely."

43. L1ang and Chen. "Proposal." 60.

wr~tes Ma Otngyun "lhal they were used as (a]

44. Wu Lrangyong. Rehobolltotmg the Old Coty of Ber11ng. 18. Wu also argues that Ch1ang Ka•·shek's

resource for the produc11o11 of arch•tocturo. They

General Command for the Suppressron of

were equ•valent 10 today's cost os11ma1o manuals and code booi(s." Ma O•ngyun, stdebar on Chung ot al..

Commun1sts also operated on the area wesl of tho Old

walls. To make the tdea more palatable. Murphy

west. and Jtangguomen (onsmally Oommgmen) m the

showed how tho top of I he structure could easrly be

easl. These allowed Chang·an Avenue to pass through and eventually become Sot)lng's pnnc•pal oast·wesl

hos lhes1s. JoHroy W. Cody, "Amencan Plann•ng'" Republican Ch1na. 1911-1937." Plonnmg Pcrspectovos (1996): 355-58.

thoroughfare. See Wu Hung. Rcmakmg 8CIJ'"9· 2510. 77. Loang, "Dtscussran." 86·87. 78. lbod .. 88. The walls of Smolensk were constructed around 160o.

wcnp [Papel5 presented to Mr. Ltang S1cheng on hts

m Chrna. Trade Information Sones No. 120

26. Fa.rbank, Ltang and Lm. 169.

erghly·flflh borthday] (Be1png. 1996), quol&d on Wu

(Wash1ngton: Department of Commerce. 19Jt), 7.

2]. lbtd.• IJ7.

Hung, Remok1ng Bel}rng, 8: Wang Jun, Cheng J1

67. Woo. "Design of Streets." 23.

79.tb•d. 8o. Joanymg Zha. Chmo Pop. 62. 81. Orv•lle Schell. "GI•mpses of Old Ch•na on Modern Bo111ng." New York T•mes. October 4, 1987. 82. Em1ly Hon1g. "Soc1altst Sex: The Cultural Revolutoon Rev•s•ted." Modern Chma 29. no. 2 (Apnl 2003): t48. 83. Lm Zhu. crted on Farrbank, L10ng and Lm, •80-81. 84. Ibid.• t78-86. 85. Hunry James, Tho Amoncon Scene (London:

28. Ltang Stcheng and Chen Zhanxoang. "Proposal

(Story of a Coty). 177. c•ted '"Wu. Remairng

68. Wtllram I. Irvine. Automotrve Markets in Chrno,

Ch,.pman & Hall. •907). 408, n

Great Leap Forward, 191. 25. L•, "Wnttng a Modern Chtnese Archoteclural

C1ty. further taonhng tho doslnct. 45. Wu Hung. Remokmg Boopng. 8. 46. Chen Zhanxtang, ·y, Ltung S1cheng J1aoshou"

H1s1ory." 35-36; Nancy S. Stemhardt. "The Tang Archoteclurallcon and the Pol•hcs of Ch•nesc

[Rememberong Professor Ltang S•cheng]. on L1ong Socheng xtanshon danchon bosh1wu zhouman JIMJn

Architectural H1story." Art Bulletm 86 (2004).

for the Locatoon of the Adm•n•slraltve Central Area of the PRC Central People's Government." on The

Be1png. u6n.

Complete Works of Dr. L1ong S1cheng, ed. Yang

Be1png, •8-19.

47. Wu Lrangyong. Rehob1lolotmg the Old Crly of

II

64. J. Morgan Clements. Chmo: Automotove Cond1t1ons and the Good Roads Movement. T1ade lnformat•on Bullelm No.2 (Washmglon: Doparlmenl of Commcrco. 1922), •J-•5· 65. Ibod .. J, 18-19: Jelfrey W. Cody. "Amencan Plann>ng 1n Republican Chona." 342-43· 66. A. V•ola Smoth and Anselm Chuh. Motor Roods

8flliSh Molayo, and Chosen, Spectal Agents Senes-

No. Ut, Department of Commerce. Bureau ol

86. Zhang Wen. •nteNtew by author and Wu Wet. Zheng'An Palace Hotel, X•anghe, Bet1rng. Novembec

Fore1gn and Oomest•c Commerce (Wash•ngton,

4, 2oo6: also see Dt Yi Cheng {sales brochure)

Yongsheng. vol. 5. 65 (BeiJing: Chona Construcl!on

48. Wu Hung. Remokmg BeiJing. 8-9.

Government Pnnhng Ofhce. 1923). 32.

(X1anghe: CITIC Guoan Grand Epoch Coly

ln~uslry

49. lb1d.. 64-65. SO· tbod., t8-:l4.

Conference & Exh1b1toon International Company, 2006).

5•· tbid .. z2-'l4.

69. The hoax was not fully disclosed until after the death of last ol tha four reporre... Seu "Woll Chma'• Wall Come Down." New York T1mes. June 27, t899:

29. lbod .• 64.

52.lb1d.

Harry Lee Wilber. "A Fako That Rocked the World." m

Glory Bnck by Brick.· New York Times, Sop!ember

JO.Ibod.

53· lbtd.• 111-12.

Great Hoaxes of All T1me. ed. Robert Med•ll McBrode

JO. 2002.

Jl. lbrd.. 67.

54. Ibid., 109.

Press. 2001). I used an English translal!on by Cohn Zhang: page number'S refer to tho published Clunese edohon.

87. Enk Eckholm. "Resloflng an Ane•ent C•ty's

31 2

THE CONCRETE DRAGON

The P o litics of t he Past

School of Government Case Program [CIS-99·

continued

1525.0]. 1998). 2-6.

88. "Beijing's Imperial Past to be Restored."

Chma Datly, September 25, 2004.

12. For an overview of Beijing's peasant enclaves,

Capital Improvements 1. Ryan Ong. "New Beijing, Great Olympics:

23. "Demolition Begins in Old Beijing Pleasure District. • As1on Economic News, January 31, zoos: "Beijing's Historoc 01anmen D1strict Goes Under the

see Chaolin Gu and Hruyong lou. "Soc1al Polanzation

Wreckmg Ball." Agence France Presso, Apnl 28.

and Segregatoon ,,. Beijing." 1n The New Chinese Coty:

2005.

Globalization and Market Reform. ed. John R. Logan,

Zhang J1e, "Journahsts Cause Trouble Duung

2oo6.

NaiLonal Opera Elch1bohon." lole Times. July 22, 1998.

25. lbod. ~6. Ou Ning. "The Story of Zhang Jinl1": also

3· On the nexus between the Olymp1c Games.

43. George Watson. on The Lost L1tcraturo of

1998): 546-81. A particularly thorough study or

see Ou Ntng, ·street Lofe at Da Zha Lan." Urbon Chino (~oo6), hllp://www.dazhal an·project.org/

Webb. the vanguard Enghsh soc•allst, eugen•cs

Recanfigurotions of Space, Power, and Social

news·en/zoo6·07·11.html.

advocate, and Sov1et apolog>st. New York

Networks Wllhin Ch1na's Floatmg Populotoon (Stanford: Stanford University Press, ~001). The relallonsh•p belwtHin occupallon and regoonal ongm

ar>d Trans1ence.• Spazto e Socteta so (April-June

among m•grant workers IS also explored'" Chaolon

1990): 34-54.

Gu and J1anafa Shen. "Transformation ol Urban

27. "Beojing Awaots New 'Back Garden,'" Chona

Da1ly. July 7, ~oo6.

29. The proson garden is montooned tn Albert

Games: Catalyst of Urban Chango." Leisure Studies

Econom•es: The C.aso of Beijing," Habitat

Macmillan. 1976).

17 ( 1998): 195-96.

lntcrnatoonat 27 (2003): 107-22. For a more general

30. On Speer's plans, see Stephen D. Helmer,

Development through Hosting International Events: A

the developing world. $0e Bryan R. Roberts, C1t1es of

Hot/or's Berlin: The Speer Plans lor Re-shapmg the Central Coty (Ann Arbor, Ml: UMI Research Press,

H1 story of the Olympic Games." Plannmg

Peos011ts: The Poltttcal Economy of Urbanorotoon m

1985).

Perspecttves 14 (1999): 369-70.

the Third World (London: Sago, 1978) and The

6. "Trees Spnng Up at Noght as Be•1•ng Goes Green." South Chmo Morntng Post. Julys. 1999: Tang

Makmg of C1t1zens: Ctt1es of Peasants Revosl/od (Uihmo, Australia: Halstead Press. 1995).

Mon, "Molhons of Trees Planted on Capotal." Chma

13. L1 Zhang, Strangers m the Coty, 4.

Dally, May 18, 1999: Jasper Becker, "Rule of Noose

14. "1.000 Ev1cted 1n Games Bid." South Chma

as Beijing Spruces Up,· South Chma Morning Post. Jvly J, 1999.

1. "Tiananmen Square Reopens Monus Kotes."

South Chma Mornmg Post. Juno 29. 1999. 8. Mark O'Neoll. "Home ol Reformers Becomes a Thong of the Past as Demolttoon Squad Arnves."

South Chona Mornmg Post, September 27. 1998.

g. Feng Ke and Zhang Yan. "To Redevelop Beijong

Morning Post. June 22. 1993. 15. Anthony Kuhn, ·aeipng Starts Razong Muslim Area.· Los Angeles Times. March 16, 1999. 16. Cited in "Oemohhon Clean-up for Capital."

South Ch1na Mornrng Post. March 11, 1999. 17. There was some JUStice. however: w1thon 1n a few months mosl of the ev•ctees-and many morehad returned. "Beijing: A New Cultural Revolution, •

31. Arthur Lubow, "The China Syndrome.· New

York Tomes. May 21, 2oo6.

J4. On the structural differences between Asian

1998; TereSa Poole. 'Cily Lilt: Pek•n~t. • lnder>tndenr

Destroyed to Make Way for Olympic Tourists.· Trmes

(London). September 14, 1998. The story of

Online. May 26. zoos.

Professor Zhao, and the larger struggle to save old

20. See Ou Ning. "The Story of Zhang Jlnli, •

..s. Nella Sam•. "Local labor for Global Elcpos•hon." on Conference Proccedmgs (China Urban Development and Plann1ng on Chona. June

Urbon Destgn (Oxford, UK: Taylor&. Francos, 1999).

206). 217·

35. Yu Zhou. "Be•J•ng and the Development of

5. Choong let Sieu and Anne Naham. "Home

Dual Central Business Districts." Geagraphoeol

Truths: As Belttng's Old Houses aro Swept Away. a

Review 88, no. 3 (July 1998): 429-36.

New Lifestyle Is Emergmg," Astaweek, October 30.

36. Danny King, "Plans for Huge China Tower

Elcpuls•on." New York Tomes. Apnl18. 1999.

19. Jane Macartney, "Thousands of Homes

3· "Angry Shanghat Resodents Make Way for

Plann
regardong Old Haunts ReVIsited], Beojing, March 8,

Neoghborhaods Hurls Ameflca. and What We Can Do

Plannong. 2000). 13. The great Tangshan earthquake

Renewal," 67.

2002. www.ci2000.com/guard/reborlh/concept/

About II (New York: One World/Ballantine Books,

of July o976 leveled about eo percent of that coty and kolled upward of 250,000 people. See Lnwrence Vale

27. Quoted in Goldman, "From Hulong to Hogh·R•se," 88.

shengqo/wen.4.shtml: also see "You mu zai chong sh1

2004).

and nomas J. Campanella, The Res11tent Ctty: How

28. Ibod.. 83-94: Loi. "BoiJong's Old and

Modern Cot1es Recover !tom D1soster (New York: Oxford Unovorsoty Press, 2005), g-oo. 11. Dan1el BenJOmon Abramson. "'Markohuhon'

Dolapodated Houso ng Renewal." 67.

and lnstolullons on Chonose lnnor·City Redovelopmenl:

Dossallsfactoon. • Agonce France Prosse, August 15,

A Commentary or Lu Junhua's Be11mg's Old and Dilap1dated Housmg Renewal." Cittes 14. no. 2

2003. 30. A videotape was confiscated, bullne lolm was

( 1997): 72n. 12. See Wu, Rehab1fttalmg the Old C1ty of Bcipng. 13. Abramson. "'Markellzaloon,'" 74: Zhong. "Urban Desogn in the Inner Coty of Bei,ong," 13, 14. "Be•J•ng: The Fate of the Old." Chmo Hofllago Newsletter (Chona Herotage ProJOCI, Australian Nahonal Unovers1ty) 1 (March ~005).

15. Enc Eckholm, "A Burst of Renewal Sweeps old B.OIJOng Into the Dumpsters: Now York TlmOs, Maret.

29. Ouoted 1n Robert J. Saogel, "Bei1ong Defends Oeslrucloon of Inner Coly Amod Wodosproad

D.evelopmenl on the Hostoroc City of Beoflng." Ektstocs 64 (1997): 244. og. Jasper Goldman, ·From Hutong to Hogh-Rosa:

46. Harvey Mololch. "The City as a Growth Machono: Toward a Polohcal Economy of Place."

calculated us1ng the average famoly size of 3.4 persons.

sr. •Booting: The F:.le of the Old," Chona Hentoge

Fall. t88o•t950 (NI!w Haven. CT: Yale Unworstty

Nauonal Un~versoty) t (March 2005).

made anyway-8e11ong: From Hutong to H1gh•R1So

Development." South Chmo Mormng Post. Aprol 7,

(~002), d~tecled by Jasper Goldman and Bealroce

Urban Renewal, Public Housong and Downtown

Chen.

Rovotaltzatoon on Kansas Coty. Mossouro." Amer1can

58. See Mark O'Netll, "Human Cost of 2000. 59. lawrence Vale and I explored thos subrect on

31. Choong and Naham, "Home Truths, • 59.

Journal of Economtes and Soc1ology. January 2001,

The Rest!Jent Coty: How Modern C1t1es Recover From

32. "Chona Club Beopng Opens." Astaweek.

J02. 49. Fogelson, Downtown, 378. so. Jon C. Teaford, "Urban Renewal and ols

Dosaster (New York: Oxford Un•vorsoty Pross, 2005).

September 27. 1996. 33· Aryn Baker, "Cashing on on Mao-sl
continued

slruc:lured by htghways and otrenlcd to an ~vlo·

310

model lor rho prrvate·Seclor development communrly.

Commercrafrsalton of Urban Housrng on Chona,"

mobrle populatiOn. Zhou and Ma mako a useful

See Zou Denong, A HIStory of Modern Archtteefopmenl." The Iauer ·refer$ 10 the

of Chr~: An Hostorocaf Overvoew," rn E,.rg•ng Lond and Hoosmg Motkets lfl Chona, ed. Chengrr Dong and

lr311slormarron of suburban l~nd to more rntonsrvo

Press, 2001), 459-65 (rn Chrnese). cued rn Bray, "Urban Oesogn." 88.

New Year." Wosh,gron Tmros. J~nuary 30, 2006: John He11on, "Hohday Travel: 'Ta\erho ~;· CNN

com, November 2. 2006. hllp://www.cnn.com/2oo6/ TRAVEL/n/or/holrday.lra..,l.overvoew/rndo•.hlml

Yan Song. 163-72 (Cambrrdge, MA: lrncoln lnslolule of Land Poltcy. 2005). 13. Ya Pong Wang and Alan Murre, Housrng Pol~~:y

rnduslrraf. commercoal, and housrng developments regardless of where rho rmpetus fOf such ch.1nges

comes from," and can occur whether lha cot)' center rs bootrung or rn declone. The mohve force behond

34. Lrn Shao Zhau. "Oevelopmenr and Desogn of the Low·Den..ry Restdence Communny," (on Chonese) Sao Noon Joan Zhu Pong lun {ArcMoclure Century Commenlary) r (2002): 34-39.

35. Fulong Wu, ·Transplanted Cotyscapes: The

and ProctiCe rn Chono (New York Sr. Marlin's Preu,

suburban developmenl may be cent11fugal, comong

1999), 143. ctted tn Song e1 al., "HO<J~ng Pol>ey," •69-70. 14. Zhau and Logan, "Suburbanrzalton of Urban

erthor from I he crly cenler rtself, or cent11petal. ·COiftlng from more d•stant pi.Jce~ ow•na to,,.,.. aurac:lweness of the cenllal crly and ots suburban

Use ollma&oned Globalrzallon tn Housrng Commodtlocallon rn Beotrng." Atet> 36, no. 3 (2004)·

Concernrng Kmgcloms and Mar•els of the East.

Chrna. • 5 (draft).

areas.· On Ihe other hand, "6uburbanrlalron• ·rotors

BoiJrn~

"Chaplet XXII Concernrnarhe Crly of Cambaluc and

15. Zhou and Ma, •Economrc Reslruclu nng and Suburbantzalton. • 219.

lo the growth of suburbs resultrng from the

Suburbanl u.tlon and the Mac:hanlcll o-f Sprawl r. The Bool. of Ser Marco Polo· The Vene/oan

ors Grear Trallrc and Popularron." lranslalcd and edrled by Colonel Srr Henry Yule (London• John Murray. 1903). 2. Robetl Bruegmann, Sprawl: A Compact H11tory

r6. Trngwer Zhang. "Land Markel Forces." 130.

decenrrahzauon of populatron and economrc acltvrtres from the urban core after lhe core has expe11encod an

17. F. Frcderrc Deng and Youqrn Huang, *Uneven

exlended penod ol economrc growth and reached d

229: Toang L, "Talktng aboul Berrong's Townhouse."

E•cmng, cued 1n Wu, 230. 36. Crted rn Hannah Beech. ·shanghao Swrngs'." rtme Asra. September 20. 2004. 37. Quoted rn Ted Anlhony. *Now Yotk. Chrna· The

Crly So Nrce. They're Buoldong rt Twrce." Nowsday. Aprrl q, 2004.

Land Reform and Urban Sprawl: The Case of

hrgh level ol popular ron concenlratron and 1ntenswo

(Chrcago: Unoversrly of Chrcago. 2005), 18.

Berrong." Ptogress m Plonnmg 6r (2004): 225. Also

land use." See Zhou and Ma, "Economrc

3. Yrxrng Zhou and Laurence J. C. Ma, *Economu; Rowucrurong and Suburbonozarron rn Chrna." Urban

soe Peter Ho. *Wilo Owns Chrna's Land? Poltcoos.

AeSiructurrng .and Suburbnnrznhon." 2o6-07.

Properly Rtghls and Deltberate lnsltlutronal

Geography 21. no. 3 (2000): :123 4.\btd.

llmbtguoty." Chma Ouortorly t66 (2001): 394-421. r8. Hannah Beech, ·seeds ol Fury." Ttme Asra,

Beacon Press. 1959), '· 26. Zhou and Logan. ·suburbanozalton of Urban

Obscured Shanghar Suburb, 1928·•932." Dtologue 23 (Febr uaoy •999): 134.

5· Tongwer Zhang, "Land Mar~el Forces and Governmenl's Role rn Sprawl: The Case of Chrna. •

March 6, 2006: see also Edward Cody, "In Chrneso Uprosrngs. Peasanrs Frnd New Illites,· Woshongton

Chona." 9 (draft).

40. Torsion Warner. Getman Atchtleclure tn Chr110· Atchttectural Transfer (Berhn: Ernsr &. Sohn.

Ctlres 17, no. 2 (2000)1125-28. no •9951rgure

Post. November 26, 2005.

.ncludesrhe prevrously rural counl•es Pudong. Baow•, Jradrng, and Shanghar

Urban Sprawl," 2t4-t9, 227.

6. Davod Stay. "Urban Oesogn and Communoly G"'ernanea on Chona: A Sludy of Space and rn

Dena and Huang. ·uneven Land Re f01m and

tQ.

p.,....,,·

eom-nl ••vre ensemble, ad. Paot. Pellearrnr and

20.

Jryuan Lou el af.• "Chrna's Changrng

28. lbrd.. 220-22.

29· Tunney F Lee er al., ods., Vonlo Vt$1011: Sustamable Rosl(/entiOI Deve/oprnenr"' Shanghao

Urban Plo11r""g ond Destgn Handooo~. Vol. •-

Transformatrons EstJtnated wllh Satefhte Dara."

Research Sem·~r and Freid Su"ey (Cambndge, MA; MIT Oepanment of Urban Studoes and Plannrng.

Geophysocal Reseorch letters 32 (January 2005):

2006): Bray. SociQI Space and Go.ernanco rn Urban Ch•na The Dan..er System from Ortgms to Ref01m

•-5·

(SranfOtd: Sranford Unr.ersrly Pren. 2005), 94

Use Change on lhe Pearl R,.er Della Usrng Landsar

7. Bray. Soc10l Space and Govetnance, •99 ·200,

27. Zhou and Ma, *Econom>e Restruclu11ng and Suburbanrzatron." 226.

Landscape Durong the rggos: large-Scale Land

Paola Vogano, 83 (Ve"'c:a: Un.vers•l• luav dt Venezoa,

8. Benrham's ptrson. cttcular tn form wrlh a

25. Atberr l. Gordon. Jews m Subutbta (Boston·

21.

February 2oo6), •27See Katen C. Seto er al., "Monotorrng Land .

TM,• lnrernattOnOI Journal of Remote Sens•ng 23, no. 10 (COlO~ of prr!iOtler~ ~rmultaneously. g. Bray. "Urban Oesrgn," 84. Also see Laurence J. C. Ma. "Economrc Reforms. Urban Spaltal Rostruclurrng. and Plannrngrn Cluna," Ptogrcss m Plannmg 61 (2004): 239 ro. Prper Aao Gaubatz, "Urban Transformalton rn

11. Poper

A. Gaubatz. "Changong Bertrng,"

Geagraph~~:al Rev.ew 85. no. 1 (January •995): 2.

22. Anlhany G. 0. Yeh and Xra lr, "Economoc

new spaltal order tharos relalovoly low on densrly and

Ral~ol

Przarro, eds.. Southern Coltforma and the

Warld (Weslporl. CT: Praegor. 2002).

47. June Fletcher, "Dosognrngllmeroca." Wall S!fHI Journal. October 6. 2006.

4g. "Dr San Zhr Yan Kan Bte Shu," [An ObjOCitve

320

TH£ CONCRETE DRAGON

14. Jom Yardley. "Uneasoly, Boomong Chona Coty

NOlES

321

assembled on Japan and "knocked down" for

JG. Todd. "The Good Roads Movement,· 229-Jo.

o. "Chona AllOW$ C.r Loans For Forst Tome,·

Reaches Molestone,· lnternattonol Herold Trobune.

shopment to Chon~- an arrangement that would

37. Todd, "Modern Hogtoways on Chona." 2o8-19.

Jmrong Shoboo [Chona Fonancoal Tomes], October 13,

January 14, 2007. 15. In Bet1ong on tho oggos, studoes revealed thai

become oncreas.ngly problematoc ilS the relatoonshop

JB. J. Morgan Clements. Cl11no Automot•••

between the two countroes deteroorated on the 19305.

Condotoons ond the Good Roods Movement. Trade

nearly 70 percent of all traffic accodents onvolved

lnlorrnatoon Bulle ton No. 2 (Automotove Dovosoon) (Washongton, DC: Department of Commerce.

Drlvln& the Capltallat Road

,gga. Kong of the Ro.d on Chona.• Woshongton Post, March

2. Coted on Phohp P P•n. "S.Cycle No Longer

bocyctes, and bocyclosts accounted lor more than 30

24 "Chonese Ready for Autoo Saya Commouion Head," Ford News J, no. o6 (March 22, 1924),

12,2001 J. Coted on Song Mo lnd Wen Chohu•. "Dnvong

percent of tr~ff..: latalotoes on the coty. Elders were found to be espec~ally at ros~. those over age soxty

no. 5 (January o, ogn). In •934 Bt•tatn omported 30•

Ambotoon,• Chmo Dooly, September 2. 2006.,

were hve tomes more hkely to become an accodent

cars to Ch•na. the Unoted States, J,Oo4: see "Chona's

4 "Chona Stands IS World's 2nd Largest Auto Marlet." People's Dotty, January oJ, 2006. S· Enc Bacuhnao, "Chona'• Aulo lnduotry Takes

voc:tom. See X. Lou, L D. Shen, and J. Huana, "Analysos of Boc:ycte Accodents and Recommended

lmpon of Motor Truck$, BuSti, and Motor C.rs lor the Years 0933-June 0936 lnclusove." on Bureau of

Count•r Mea.,ures '" Beti'"B· Ch.na.; '" Tronsporratron Research Record 1487 (Washon11on,

Roads. H•ghwoys m ChottO To~s. Charts ond Moi» (Nankong: Natoonal Economoc Councol, Aprol 1935),

011." NBC News, January 12, 2007. 6. Choa·loang Tao, "Transformong Shanghao· The Redevelopment Conte~t of the Pudong New Area·

DC: TRB. Nauonal Research Councol, t995). 75-83. o6. Coted 1n Pan, "Bocycle No Langer Kong." Also

25 "Buold Ro.ds lor Autos •n Chona," F01d N~""' 2,

'922), J-19. 39 . HanVeng Woo. "Desogn of Streets and the Use of Coty Wollls on the Development of Hogtoway SY$tOms on the Munocopalotoes of Chona" (uni)<Jbhshed masters lhes•s. Iowa State College, t9JO), 23-25. 40 "Chona PIMs Park System." Dolly Argus (Whote Plaons, New York), August 6, •929: "Nankong

26. frvone. AutomotiVe MorAets. )2.

l..:lyout of ParkwaY' Somolar to County System,· Dotty

27.lbod. 28. Hewlett Johnson, "The Covolozong Road."

Argus. September oo, •929·

(unpubhshed masters thesos. Columboa Unoversoty,

see Geoffrey York, "Cars Conquerong the Bocycle

Faculty of Archotecture and Plannong, May 2005), 54· 7 "BeofOng Regosters Moro Now Cars Than Other

Kongdom, • Globe and Mod, January 20, 2007: Henry Chu, "BeoJing Street's Boke Ban Deflates Cyclosis."

Todd. Two Decodes m Chmo (Pekong: Assocoatoon of

Wedemeyer was orogonally to be assosted on the

Cotoes." Xonhuo Nows, October 5. 2006: "Beo1ong's Pnvate Autos Top One Molhon." Xonhua News, May

Los Angeles Times. October 21. 1998: "Medoa Blackout on Bicycle Suit." South Chona Mornmg Post,

Chonese and Amerocan Engoneers. 1938), 263: also seo Johnson, "What I Saw on Chona.· Ltstonor,

Carbonado operatoon by General GeorgeS. Patton,

22,2002. 8. Luo Rong Hua, ontervoew by author and Wu

January oo, 2007. Thoro has been some push· back from bicyclists and envoronmontalosts on recent yoar5.

September ogJ4, ropronted on Todd. Two Docodcs,

prepuong to 1oon Wedemeyer '" Chongqong when he was kolled on a traffic accodent on Germany on

Weo. Hang1hou Automobole Coty, Hangzhou, July 21, 2005. Luo was senoor manaaer of Automobole Coty at

In October 2006 on Beol'"ll· a moddle·aged expatroato cyclost became an overnoght celebnty when she

29. A. Voola Smoth and Anselm Chuh. Motor Roods tn Chona, Trade Information Seroos No. 120

the tome.

refused to move lor a motorost enterong a dosognatod

g. See "Drove· on Theaters. Auto Shows. Maguones Reveal Chona's Auto lnlatuatoon." Chmo

bocycle lane: she stood her ground even after the drover got out and flung her boke as ode. Eventually he

(Washongton, DC: Deparlmont of Commerce. t9Jt), 4-6.

On/one-Industry News, Aprol 27. 1999.

apolol!lzed. Seo "Foreogn Auntoe Challenges Rule

Joarnal of the AsSOCiotron of Ch•nese ond kroeflcon

Conghua, Chono The Consumer Revotutron (New

Breakong Vehocle," Nanfang Dotty, October 20, 2006.

Eng•neers, September 1926, on Two Decodes, 209; Basil Ashton et 11., "Famone on Chona. ogsB-6•."

York: Wtley, ogg8), 111.

Oostanc:e,• USA Todoy. Janu1ry 29, 2006; also He

Pbpulatron and DeV&topn,.nt Revtew oo. no. 4

Metro New Yor~. New Jersey Turnpoke." http://www

Bets on the Auto," Seattle Tt-s, M~rch oo, ogg8.

Wang Tong, "In Chtna. a Rush to Get Behond the

(December ogB..s).

Also $88 Macleod and Gesterland. "Autolocus,"

Wheel," Woshtngton Post. June 6. 2002. o8. The phrase os from Tom Lewos, D•VIded

nycro;ads.com/roads/nl·turnpoke/. 46. Ouoted on Sam Roberts, "Reappratsong a

Chona," 0flental Engoneer, May 1927, 223-28; Todd,

Landmark Btodge, and the Vosoonary Behond It," Ntrw

Hlflhways (0997: New York: Penguon, •999). ox.

"The Good Roads Movement on Kweodoow," Ch•na

York T•mes, July n, 2006.

19 "Auto Exports Show Marked Increase." New York Tomes. May 8, ogoo.

WeeAiy Revie·N, December 24, 1927. 229-31; Todd,

oo. "Beo1ong's Provlte Autos Top One Molhon," Xonhuo News, Mily 22, 2002. 11. Lance Doc~oe. "Drtvonl ~dilmto Gou: Chonil

Chmo On/one News, June 8. 2000. 12. The heilvy old Flyong Pogeon• (Feoge) are Stoll occasoonillty $88n on ltreet• 1nd c:ami)<Jses. Tho boke has a revolutoonary pedogree. Manufactured on a former Japanese artollery plant on To&nJon, the Flyong Pogeon was the braonchold of • model worler named Huo Bao1o who. lolled woth revofutoonary ardor. built a prototype of a "peoplo'5 bocycle" and presented ot to pany ollocoals on July 5. ogso. Four years later, the

o].

Calum Macleod, "Chonil's Hoghwaya Go the

20 "Mandarons Loke Motor Cars Now,·

Ttmes of London. July 26, •932· repronted on Olover J.

J48.

JO. Olover J. Todd, "Modern Hoghwilys on Chona,•

Jo. Olover J. Todd, "MotOI Ro.ds for South

"Hogloways on a Land of Barroers, • Asoo, January 0929. Page numbers refer to the anoc:les as repronted on

41. Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports! (Now York: Henry Holt. 1958), 221, 328-32.

woth whom he had worked on North Alroca: Patton was

Oocember 2o. 1945. 42.1bod.. 354-ss. 43, Ibod .. 355-56. 44 . Chona's forst modern superhoghway was the

Sheny•ng-DaiWI Expressway. opened on 1990. See Lo

45. Ouoted on Steve Ander$011, "The Roads of

47. S11 Gordon Y. S. Wu, ontervoew by aulhor, Hopewell Centro, Hon11 Kong. Aprol16, oggg, passom. 48. E.zra Vogel, One Step Ahead rn Chtna'

New York Ttmes, January 26, t9tJ. 21. Wolham I. lrvone, Automotove Markers m Chmo,

Todd, Two Decades. Also see "Kweochow's Forst

Guongdong Under Reform (Cambrodge. MA: Harvard

Auto," New York Herold Trobune. February 02, 1928:

Unoversoty Press. og8g), 220-22.

Brottsh Molayo, ond Chosen. Department of

and Jonathan Spence, To Change Chona Western AdvtsOis on Chmo, 1620-og6o (Boston: Lottie, Brown

Turned tho Ltghts On (Hon11 Kong: Chameleon Press.

Commerce. Bureau of Foreogn and Oomostoc

49. Rosemary Sayer, Gordon Wu: The Man Who

Flyong Pogeon was awarded forsl place on the natoon's

Commerce Specoal Agents Seroes-No. 221

forst quality appraosallor bocyclos. The heavy stool

(Washongton. DC: Government Prontong Olfoco,

bocycle, available on any shade of black, went on to

1923). J2.

Shantung,• Journal of the AssoctOtton of Chmcse and

2000), 64-66. SO· R. J. Neller and K. C. Lam, "The Env11onment,• on Guongdong: Survey of o Provonce

become as much an ocon of tho People's Republoc as

22.lbod., o. 23. Mora Wolkons and Frank Ernest Holl, Amerocon BuSiness Abroad: Ford on s,. Contm•nta (Detroot:

Ameroc:on Engmeors. November t92o, on Two Decodes.

Undergomg Raptd Change, ed. Y. M. Yeung and Davod

204-05.211. 33. Spence, To Change Ch1na, 210• o2.

and Company, 19G9), 211-12. 32. Todd, "Famone Rehel and Road Buoldong on

June 12, 2007. Pan os a proleuor ol urban plannong

Wayne State Unoversoty Press, 1964), 149-50. Ford

J.d. Coted on Spence, To Change Chtno, 215 • o6,

K. Y. Chu, 438 (Hong Kong: Chrnese Unoversoty Press, 1994). 51. George D. Hubbard, "The Pearl Rover Deltil."

at Tonifo Unoversoty.

automoboles were not actually manufactured tn Chona,

J5. Olover J. Todd, "A Practocal Educatoon

Lrngnon SctencCI Journo/7 (•929): 24

the once·uboquotous Mao racket. oJ. Pan Ha,.oao, ontorvtow by author, Shangh.>t,

whoch os what Sun was pressong lor. They wore

Movement." Chtna Wa.kly Rev-. January 26. •929. 1n Twa Decodes. JoG-•9

52. Leo K. K. Leung, ontorvoow by author, Hopewell Centre. Hong Kong. August oo, •999·

THE CONCRETE DRAGO N

322

NOTES

323

Drlvlnc the Capltallat Road

Economoc ReVIew 41 (October g. 1997): .42: · snanxo

27. Mochael Ma. "Oonosaurs Make Return on

continued

Plans to Construct Large Huntong Grounds." Chona

Sichuan Theme Patk, • South Chono Mornong Post,

Chona Tour~sm (Hong Kon11: Chona Tounsm Press.

Leung, executove dorector of Hopewell Holdonll•· managed mueh of the day·to·day road·buoldon11 wor~.

Travel New• and Evenrs. December 3, oggg.

June J, 2000.

1993).

~- The drove· on wu patented on •933 by RIChard

Hollingshead Jr of Roverton. New Jersey, who envosooned ·a new and useful outdoor theater" on

7. See Cowboy Coty websote, http:{{www. m66s.cona/2oo6·04/t8/contont.5707Q8.hlm. 5· Ron Gluckman. "Throll to a Now lnduSiry." Asooweck 26, no. 45 (N ovember 17. 2000).

2o. McGrath. "How Do You Say Shank on

23. "Farmland on Capotalllle11ally Cleared lor Golf

24. "Golf Crotocized on Chona." Globe and Moo/, November 26. 2oo6. 25. "Chona Axes Golf Course Prorects lo Curb F~>t Loss of Arable Land." People'• Dally.

Base,· Chona Travel News and Events. May 6, •999:

March 20. 2004. 26. Tang Yuankao, "The Theme of Thongs to

"'Huntong Island' Off Eut Chona: Far Eastern

Come,• BerJ•no ReVJew 48. no. 42 (October 20.

6. "BeoJonll Develops Survovallsland Tourosm

2005).

See Muschamp, "W~Ier Benramon: Tho Passages of

34. Muschamp, "Walter Bentam•n." 35. Mochael Dutton, ed .• Stt~tlofe Chona (New York. C...mbrodge UnoV~trsoty Press, ogg8). 230. 36. Dean MacCannell. The Tou"'r A New Theory

of the Lersuro Closs (London: Macmollan Press. 0976). 21-23. 37. lan Buruma. "Asoa World." Now York RoVIew of

Books, Juno 02, 2003, 55. 38. Kooth Marchand, "Wall's Schmohv Not a

47. Anne·Maroe Broudehoux. The Afol rng OJtd

so. 54-55.

49. Jean·Oenos Atloret S. J., "Letlre a M. d'Assaut, oer novembre '743." on Letrres edof10n1es er cuneuses licmes des mrSSIOfls 6rrongeres par quelques

nu$Soonnaores de Ia compagnoe de Jesus (Paros: Gueron, 0749), 27:o·6o. Enghsh translatoon of •752 by Joseph Spence (Sor Harry Beaumont), A Portocu/or

Accounr of the Emperor of Chrno's Gardens noor Po• on: roprontod on Tho Enghsh Landscape Gordon,

Mockoy Mouse Exhobot," Montrool M rrror, July J, 1997.

od. John Doxon Hunt (New York and London: Garland

Walt Dosney eventually parlayed thrs vosoon onto an

Publoshong. og82).

expel'lmental coly·buoldonll program known as EPCOT· Experomental Proootype Communoty of Tomorrow. Desmond C. K Huo, "Buoldon11 a Dream,· Xpressoons

so. Ibod. One of the hoghhghts of lhos quotodoan theme park was the enactment, several tomes • ye:~or, of all the ·commerce, Marketongs. Arts. Trade.

25 (March 1999): 2-4

Bustle, and Hurry...even a lithe Rogueroes· of a great coty. The actors were palace eunuchs. who would put

THE CONCRETE DRAGO N

3 24

Theme Parkland the landscape of

61. Hamosh McDonald, "Chonese Tourosts Urged to

Consumption continued

See Red Hostory '"the Makong." Sydney Mornrng

on "the Dress of the Professron or Part whrch rs

Herold. March t2, 2005.

assrgned to hom.· A vast srmulncrum would then

325

NOTES

Chi na Reinvent• the City t. "McDonald's Opens Drrve·thru on Se•ttng" lnrernor•ono/8usrness Ttmcs. January t9. 2007.

62. Jeffrey W. Cody, "Makrna Htstory (Pay) rn

9 lbtd. tO. Ronald G. Knapp has wrouen oxtensovoly on the subtecl ol Chtnese vernacular housong. See. lor

2. Th•s was reported tn Nan Feng, July 13, 2oo6.

example, Chma'a Vernocufot Archrteeturt: House

J. Yana Joanxoang, "Burldong Dreams on Brocks and

Form ond Culture (Honolulu: Unoversrty of Hawau Press, t989) Jnd Knapp and Kal·Yon Lo, eds., House Home Fam•fy. l•••ft'J ond Beong Chonese (Honolu\11·

unfold, complete woth choreographed chaos and "all

Shnnghat,• on Shonghot: Archtteclure and Urbomsm

the Confusron of a Fa~r." Wrotes At111e1: "The Vessels

for Modern Chma. ed. Sang Kuan and Peter G. Rowe,

Mortar." Ch1oo Dorly. September 14, 2004. The

arro•e at the Port: the Shops are open'd: and the

139 (New York: Prestel, 2004). 6J. Nancy S. Sletnhardl. Choneselmpe110l Cry Plonnmg (Honolulu: Unoverstty of Hawau Press.

housmg stoc~ on the Untted States on 2005 was about 219 btlhon aquare feel. see U.S. Census Bureau,

t990). t66. 64. Prof. Zhao Chon, ontorvoew by author. Nan1ong

Housong Survey lor the Unrted Stales. http://www

Progress." Reuters. January 29, 2007.

census.gov/hhes/www/housong/ahs/nattonaldat~

Unoversoty, Graduate School of Archotecluro,

hlml.

12. People's Ropubl8 Jen lin-Lou, 276 Jiarogmen. 31, 52 Jwoa Si1•g;oo 33 38 Jraopu Prov•"' · , 33, 108 J•a"C"'an (Stoancha•), 66-70 Jraog zem.n, 28, 1.12. 277 J~a. Zh.lng<e,

tiM. 258. Sill also The 'Aiotld

J1na", •4 Jm Mao Tower, 57, 84·87. 86, go, 139 Johnson Fam Partner\, 137 Johnson, Hewlett, •09·10, 224 Ju'er Hutoog. 150

174 ·79. 182, 186. 191-94. 253 MaOt$111, 18, 27, 126, 174, 175. 176. 177. 118. 119, 186, •II•. 193, 268, 284, 29J. Set' also Mao era M.>a Zedong. 27. 34. JS, !;4. 92, 93-94. g6. 98. 100, 102, 104-05. 106. 101, 108."' 112. 113. 114-16, "'· •SS. •59. 16o, 174. t76. 177. 178. •19. 191, 2SS. 265-66.268.293 Maple Part. Motor Ctnema (&il•ng). 234. 235 Man
Soo.l•el UntOn, ~8.106, 113. 174, 175. t76-n •78. 228,

theme towns. 88-go, 209. 210·'4. 211. 212, 213. See

Sou1h Korea. 19

also ·on~ Coty, N•nl! TO"Nns." now town'

urb.•n renew.J, 7•.129-JI, 146-.n tSS. •66-67, •7•.

t83. dePI(IOOM on folm, 81; foretgn senlemenl~>,

174. 175. 176. on: onfluence on urban ders, 80, oss. 222, 282: Chrnoso, 18. 22. 42,

276, 5oY10I, 98 100, 102-04, 107, 112, 113 14, Seo also L•ang SICheng. specrfiC names

C.ly, gil-roo, 174-75. 191•94: 'socr~h~m woth

246. 248-58. 249. 251. 252. :!52·58. 261, 301;

Ch•nese characton~t•cs, • 28, 31. See also Don..01

hostorocal. 2SS, 265-69, 267 mon•ature, 145. 146,

193. 282-84, 285, 281: classiCal Ch1nese. 94. 116,

254·56. zsg, 26o-6o, .ernac:ul.tr hou'•ng),, 37, 299

Zh.lng Xm,

10?.

267·68

•38-39

Zt..1ng Yu.1n, 162

YaoM•~I-22

Zh.1ng Yuchen, 22 23

Yeh, Anll1ony G. 0 ...12, .1]

ZhaoL•ans.•62

Ylng Zoo Fa Sh•. 101•02 Yuan Oyn.uty, 9A 95, 107. ·~1.125. 269 Yu.llltn~ng Yuan, 116, 26o-62, nou,,na e.I.Jie, ;>09

Zhao Shen. H'C! Oor>g Dayou lh••J•Jnc Provmce. 32••16. 51. 121. 2•9. :>.13. 268 ZhcJ•·•ng V•ll.tgu (S.•J•~g). 127

Yueyang, 49

Zhongsh~n. 18, 31, 46, ~8. 52, 54, 268. 273-7!1. 274

Zhont;ihan Un~>erMy. 266 Zhou Oynait). 95. ns Zhou Enl,lt, 98. 102. tdt Zhuh.11. J?, 45. 46, 47, .j8, 261, 262 lhu RonQJ•. 7? 19 8o