The Shanghai Bund in myth and history: an essay through textual and visual sources (original) (raw)
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China Review International , 2018
[excerpt] Let's start with a confession. I am a Shanghai scholar obsessed with old maps. Just holding Improvised City in my hands, with its beautiful Carl Crow map on [End Page 156] the cover, and flipping through pages of maps, urban plans, and architectural drawings and pictures, brought me unadulterated joy. I knew, before even having read a word, this review had to include two observations: (1) despite the dazzling number of works on Treaty Port Shanghai, Roskam has found unique visual material never published before; and (2) more academic presses should follow the University of Washington Press's example and invest in the physical quality of their books (paper, layout, typeface, etc.). Now let me turn to the book's contents. Improvised City examines the role of architecture in the political and cultural formation of Shanghai's foreign concessions. It "aims to provide a new theoretical framework for understanding the city as an extraterritorial environment" (p. 11), referring to the system of judicial exception that ensured foreign merchants would not be subject to Chinese law. "Ultimately, understanding architecture's engagement with the legal abstractions of extraterritoriality expands our understanding of architecture's representational capacity to convey and command meaning within a uniquely global urban context" (p. 12). It is precisely this insightful linking of architecture, governance, and law which makes the book truly stand out in a widely researched field.
Shanghai Industries in the Civil War (1945-1947
Journal of Urban History, 2017
This article examines the fate of Shanghai industries during the Civil War period in China. It argues that in spite of extreme difficulties in the later part of the war, Shanghai industries bounced back very quickly and reached early wartime levels within a year. Thereafter, a series of economic and political restrictions led to a slowdown, then a paralysis. The article is based on a large and unique survey of Shanghai industries published in October 1947, probably the peak of the economic recovery after the war. The data were processed in geographic information systems that the author implemented to examine what industry represented in the urban space, what its impact was, and how it defined the city of Shanghai. The author contends that issues of security more than economic factors determined the particular industrial geography in the city. The present study of Shanghai industries focuses on the Civil War period, a phase of acute social and economic turmoil from the perspective of spatial history. 1 Yet the selected time frame, as well as the nature of the major source on which this article relies, hardly allows for a study that incorporates a strong temporal dimension. The first part presents and examines the political and economic context of the postwar period in relation with the rebirth of Shanghai industries up to 1947. Hyperinflation in the following years just stifled this development. In the second part, I discuss the nature of the source and the methodology I used to process the collected data. This opens on a short analysis of the industrial structure and landscape in Shanghai. The last section explores the spatial dimensions of industries in the city for themselves but also in relation with various human and ecological factors, albeit tentatively. I argue that the late industrial development in Shanghai and the specific industrial structure produced a spatial arrangement that imposed a heavy industrial footprint throughout the city, much like the European cities of the first Industrial Revolution. None of the factors that drove factories and workshops out of central districts can be seen at work in the case of Shanghai due to considerations of safety and protection from war.
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 2004
This little book is not what its title purports it to be. It is not in any sense a balanced presentation of everyday life in mankind's oldest literate civilization; instead it is a compilation of articles culled from various recent issues of L'histoire, a historical magazine published in France. All touch to a greater or lesser extent on that life. They are written for the most part by acknowledged masters of Assyriology and underpinned by decades of scholarly engagement with the enormous and intractable mass of cuneiform texts (the word used is 'dossier') that permit an intimate insight into all aspects of human activity that is unrivalled in the study of ancient civilizations. Georges Roux begins with two perplexing matters of prehistory, the questions of where the first settlers of Mesopotamia came from (Chapter 1: 'Did the Sumerians emerge from the sea?') and of what actually took place in the extraordinary mass graves ('death-pits') excavated by Sir Leonard Woolley (Chapter 2: 'The great enigma of the cemetery at Ur'). Both questions remain unanswered. Jean Bottéro takes over with two subjects of universal interest, food and love, on both of which he has written extensively over the course of a long and distinguished academic career (Chapter 3: 'The oldest cuisine in the world', Chapter 4: 'The oldest feast', Chapter 6: 'Love and sex in Babylon'). The second of these touches on an important feature of Mesopotamian mythology, that the gods often make decisions when drunk. But the point is not elaborated, though the theological implication is a serious one: that many of the faults in the world can be blamed on a less than sober divine assembly. Sandwiched between cooking, eating and loving is wine, another favourite topic, written up by André Finet (Chapter 5: 'An ancient vintage'). Beer was a staple in ancient Mesopotamia but sophisticated people developed a taste for wine and other imported liquor. The place and role of women are still fashionable topics. Jean Bottéro's study of feminist issues in a culture where women generally were owned by men (Chapter 7: 'Women's rights') appears in tandem with André Finet's chapter on some very up-market chattels, a royal harem of the early second millennium BC (Chapter 8: 'The women of the palace at Mari'). Appended to these is Georges Roux's investigation of an unusual Mesopotamian queen who, by virtue of wielding real power as her son's regent, became in Graeco-Roman antiquity the vehicle of a fascinating legend (Chapter 9: 'Semiramis: the builder of Babylon'). The rest of the book deals with intellectual topics. Ancient techniques for the treatment of disease and other physical and mental disorders, and the rationales that informed them, practical and theological, are analysed by Jean Bottéro (Chapter 10: 'Magic and medicine'). The same writer next gives an 230 REVIEWS Treasure comes from Takht-i Sangin, as opposed to the nearby site of Takht-i Kavad as suggested by nineteenth-century English and Russian sources (see now, on the provenance of the Oxus Treasure, M. Caygill and J. Cherry (eds), A.W. Franks: Nineteenth-Century Collecting and the British Museum, London, 1997, pp. 230-49). Then, although there are drawings of both the Eshmunazar sarcophagus and the Alexander sarcophagus, and references to them in the text (pp. 209, 490, 503, 608, 912, 952), he nowhere discusses the cemetery now in the suburbs of Sidon from which they come. All he says of the Eshmunazar sarcophagus (p. 952) is 'on the date and the circumstance of the allocation to Sidon, see Kelly 1987...'. Nor is there any mention of the impressive sanctuary of Eshmun on the outskirts of Sidon, which is one of the best examples of an Achaemenid stone building outside Iran. On the grounds that such a valuable book will surely be reprinted and updated from time to time, it may be useful (and the author of this review hopes he will be forgiven for doing so) to draw the attention of the author and publisher to a few areas where modifications might be considered. The references or footnotes are presented in 174 pages of 'Research notes' at the back of the volume which are gathered in sections following the order of the main text. They are not further linked to the text, which makes them difficult to use. It is also difficult to find out more about the illustrations. For example, the information that the Cypriot-Phoenician bowl illustrated in fig. 50c comes from Praeneste in Italy is buried in the notes on p. 983. The overall quality of the illustrations, which are all in the form of line-drawings, is regrettably poor. This criticism also extends to the maps. The translation on the whole is excellent, although there are a few slips-e.g. gold 'plate' for gold 'plaque' on p. 501, and Oxus 'Treasury' for Oxus 'Treasure' throughout (on pp. 215, 254, 501, 954, 1025). These are minor blemishes, however, and do little to detract from what is a magnificent achievement.
Through a Beijing Fragment. The danwei of Textile Factory
Beijing, meeting point of cultures, core of the East, a complex reality generated by contradictions and opposites that forced us to dive deeply inside the urban space, interpreting and representing it with a distortion of the classic tools. The aims of our research are numerous: first, portraying the place to preserve its future memory; second, showing a possible methodology for other similar cases; third, focusing the architects and city planners' attention on the danwei model's great urban potential; fourth, questioning about hypothetical transformation scenarios originated by listening to the singular site and its inhabitants' stories.
Proceedings of the 16th International Planning History Society, 2014
It has become almost a commonplace to observe how fast-paced urban change in China is dramatically “disfiguring” centuries-old cities and more recent metropolis: some cities have changed so rapidly, that no record has been kept of what was there in the 1980s and is no longer existing. With a focus on planning, urban management, and heritage enhancement, we propose to discuss the importance of maps, particularly interpretative maps, as a tool to manage heritage as part of a wider process of spatial planning. Our point is that urban heritage depends not only on literary myths, nor even on great archaeological remains and fine buildings, but rather because the city’s structure has preserved the stamp of its foundation, of its roots planted in a strategic position, of its complex urban landscape made by individually anonymous buildings. Some parts (or elements) of the city have undergone successive reinterpretation over time, showing the complementary efforts of communities that have followed one another throughout the centuries, giving life to those complexly layered settlements that seem to enrich naturally distinguished locations. Citation: Bona, D., & Pallini, C. (2014). Interpreting Chinese cities through maps and travel accounts: Treaty Ports and their foreign enclaves as a testing ground. Proceedings of the 16th International Planning History Society Conference. Gainesville (USA): Florida University Press.